Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

One of the more beneficial techniques I have learned is how to reframe a situation or turn it around backwards or upside down.

Is it

• (1) the donors aren’t giving enough money or
• (2) the leaders aren’t inspiring the donors.

I hate my boss, so I should

• (1) become my own boss or
• (2) stop hating people.

These are “reframes.” The situation is changed, sometimes changed to its opposite. What good are these things? They help me understand how to consider something else. Sometimes they point me to a simple and far more effective course of action.

How do you reframe? I’m not sure. Here are some tips that may help:

Consider above and below the level of abstraction you are using. For example, the donors have leaders. Should the leaders be doing something else? The donors have recipients. Should the recipients be doing something else?

Consider the verbs in your statement of the situation. For example, “I HATE my boss.” Forget about the boss and how to be your own boss, think about hating people.

Consider the nouns in your statement of the situation. For example, “I hate my BOSS.” If I start my own business, do I really become my own boss? Perhaps in a business, the customers are the boss. If my business is really successful, I will have millions of customers. I have gone from hating one person to hating millions of persons. Now what?

As with most advice about advising, proceed with caution.

by Dwayne Phillips

There are alternatives to replacing your hated boss with yourself.

The title of this post came to my attention recently. It was part of one of those “Give me your money and I will make your life so much better” ads. If you hate your boss, you can quit your job, start your own company and be your OWN boss.

My question: If you  hate your boss and become your boss, will you hate yourself?

Perhaps you won’t hate yourself. Perhaps you will learn that as the owner of your own company, you will find your customers to be your boss. Then will you hate your customers? Now you hate a large group of persons.

Let’s retreat a few steps and consider this one:

learn not to hate.

Now you won’t have all that trouble with starting a business, working really hard, borrowing money, hiring others, and so on. And you won’t have to tolerate being hated by yourself.

Just a thought.

by Dwayne Phillips

I delve into politics or politicians and submit an ugly theory about polarization in American politics.

American politics seem to be polarized more than in the last few generations. There are plenty of explanations and denials (see a recent New York Times story as an example). One explanation that makes a lot of sense to me is (get ready for this):

America’s elected representatives have become just plain lazy.

Consider the theory of how America’s elected representatives should behave:

1. They run for elected office on principles, not specifics.
2. Once in office, they use their principles to guide their decisions.
3. They engage in compromise necessary to govern, i.e.,  budgets are on time, appointees are approved or not quickly, and the other little things that comprise governing.

Now for the laziness. Item (1) says that you don’t stand up in the campaign and proclaim, “I will never approve anything that so-and-so in the White House proposes.” If elected, that person is bound to vote “no” on everything. The nation grinds to a halt. It is much more difficult to explain principles to voters expecting them to understand what you say and see the good judgement in that.

Item (2) requires thinking, contemplation, and explanation. They have to return to their home and explain to their voters why they voted for this and against that. Those explanations take thought and time and enduring criticism. People may never understand your whys and wherefores. That, again, requires hard work.

Item (3) is perhaps the most difficult. The US Constitution is full of compromises. Everyone, well when I was in high school, studied these great compromises. No one got everything they wanted. Everyone settled for something less. That was hard work. Elected representatives today don’t want to do this work. Consider approving judges. There are 11 court openings. The party that has 51% of the Senate picks six judges while the other party picks five. Everyone is disappointed. Everyone gets something, but not everything. The vacancies are filled quickly and the nation moves forward.  The same happens with the budget. The party in power with 51% of the Congressional seats writes 51% of the budget. The others write the other parts. The budget is on time, we move forward. Everyone is disappointed, but the nation functions.

That is all hard work. What happened to that? Where did the adults disappear to?

by Dwayne Phillips

Another fundamental question in systems engineering. Like the rest of the questions, ask with caution.

Ever ask the titular question at work? Ever ask it out loud and expect an answer? Perhaps you are a systems engineer. Perhaps your workplace needs a systems engineer.

The question seeks to find the reason behind daily life in the workplace. Surely we are doing something for some reason for some person. Right? Let’s hope so, but hope is often at odds with reality.

The question seeks to stop the busy-ness of the work day and start some contemplation, i.e., some thinking. Really folks, what ARE we doing here? Who is paying us? What do they want? How will our current activity lead to something of value for those paying the bills? Why do we ask questions like this that don’t seem to have obvious answers?

As with other fundamental questions, take care when asking. Try doing it quietly in small groups of no more than three persons at first. Some people take great offense at such questions.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes we have to stop, go back to basics, and learn what we are trying to do before we try to do it.

Stupid, right? How in the world could I run off and start working before knowing what it is I am supposed to do?

Trust.

Someone I trusted told me what to do. I ran off like a faithful puppy dog and tried to do it. Silly me. I didn’t take the time to speak with someone and say, “Hi, I’m Dwayne. What is it you would like us to do?”

I felt that would be a waste of time. Silly, right? I was wrong again.

I am never to0 old, experienced, or too anything to skip the basics. It is ready, aim, fire—not something else.

by Dwayne Phillips

We still refer to the steam roller even though no one has one such a machine in over a hundred years. So what? Maybe something important.

We once used steam rollers to flatten things. They had a steam engine for power. They weighed a lot. They were effective.

We quit using steam engines on such machines over a hundred years ago, but we still call them steam rollers. Who cares? Cute name. No harm done.

It matters what names we use for some things.  It matters when we call hour-long meetings “stand up” meetings. It matters when we “sprint” all day long.

Somethings to consider.

by Dwayne Phillips

The follies and pitfalls of a trade study.

One of the more wasteful things governments, persons who work for governments, do is commission a trade study.

Go forth, study something, and report back to us.

Time passes. Persons run about asking questions and reading readings. The money flows. Keyboards clickety-clack, spots appear on computer screens, and toner is electrostatic-ally adhered to previously white paper. The commissioners fight off sleep to the last page, stand, and proclaim:

I already knew all this stuff. Why did I pay you to do this?

The question is of course rhetorical as no will utter the response. Hence, folks like me write blog posts like this.

How it all goes wrong:

First, the trade study is commission is vague. A few sentences direct the study-ers. The study-ers attempt to read the commissioners minds, but they are study-ers, not mind readers, and, well, it all flops. The commissioners need to write specific instructions. They commissioners need to provide specific questions (in writing). The commissioners need to write much more than they want to write.

The usual I’m-a-commissioner-not-a-writer response is, “They (the study-ers) are supposed to know what I want. I’m not supposed to write a trade study telling them what to study!”

Too bad.

Second, the commissioners underestimate how much they learned by reading the trade study. There is something called Hindsight Bias (see Heuert’s groundbreaking text on all sorts of mental biases). We all tend to underestimate how much we learn when we read.

The result: not good. Good taxpayer money is wasted. Persons on both sides lose trust in one another. Knowledge is not accumulated. Bad decisions follow.

by Dwayne Phillips

Often, the individual members of a group don’t understand what the group has decided.

This is wonderful. I found a discussion online where persons who care about words were trying to invent a word for the opposite of synergy. No one suggested the obvious—the US Congress.

Politics aside, or maybe politics of ordinary persons included, lots of groups of people do what Congress usually does:

The group decides something while most of the individuals in the group don’t know what the group decided.

“Someone else understands the details. I was told it was okay,” is the usual justification.

Some persons in the world, like me, always know the details. We can’t function in life without it. We put too much emphasis on facts. Sigh. The world drives us crazy. Unless, of course, we can see the folly and entertainment in the rest of the world.

by Dwayne Phillips

A new high or low in robots in the warehouse.

I find this one fascinating. This warehouse “robot” walks a human to the right spot in the cavern of products.

The touchscreen shows the human what product to load in the bin. Hence, the robot knows where the product is and how many products to ship. The human knows next to nothing. The human, however, has a functioning arm and hand. Automating the reaching and picking and placing is a bit too expensive at this time. Just wait a few years though.

Anyways, the smart robotic cart leads the not-nearly-as-smart person around the warehouse like a little puppy dog. The makers sell this as a collaborative robot in that it works with the human, not replacing the human.

Does anyone else see the arrogance here? The makers are condescending towards the little people who work in the warehouse. The warehouse owners admit that their human employees are morons.

How does a person think that way about a person they employ? How desperate are persons to take these jobs where the robot leads them around?

by Dwayne Phillips

Shortage of qualified applicants? A myth. Here is one of the explanations. Sorry if this exposes what you wear under your kilt.

There is a shortage of…

• qualified programmers
• qualified analysts
• qualified engineers
• qualified qualifiers

that is why we want more fill-in-the-blank-with-magical-government-magic.

Listen to what companies say: “We can’t find qualified fill-in-the-blank-persons.”

True statement. Note, the company representatives didn’t say, “Qualified fill-in-the-blank-persons don’t exist.” They merely can’t find them.

Now we are moving closer to the problem. Sorry if this offends you:

Companies have trouble hiring persons.

Big companies have big trouble hiring persons.

Here is a link to a “joke” interview process. The joke is this isn’t a joke. Interviewers ask questions like this and don’t understand the answers they receive.

Answer: Let persons who actually understands what they need in an applicant converse with the applicant.

Note: the above answer does not:

• use the word “interview”
• involve a recruiter
• use a standard interview script

But this is a pollyana world that does not exist. No one can afford to have working fill-in-the-blank-persons step away from their jobs to converse with fill-in-the-blank-persons applying for jobs.

Perhaps. Perhaps that is merely an excuse. Perhaps it is easier to lobby elected officials to plead for magic instead of doing the work.