Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips When you feel something tugging at you on the inside, you have hit a personal rule. Recently, I had three gentlemen riding around with me in my van. We were visiting other office buildings in our area. Our first stop was for lunch at an bagel place. We had sandwiches and soup, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Do people associate your appearance with bad tidings? There is another way. Let’s oversimplify and divide the world of bosses into two categories: 1. those bosses who only visit when something is wrong and 2. those bosses who visit everyday to chat about the weather I have worked for both and prefer […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It seems we still do this old time waster – hurry up and wait. Let’s try to reframe it into something more productive and creative. I am writing this blog while waiting. I had been working feverishly on something and completed the task. Now…well, you know… Hurry up and wait Let’s see […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We seem to believe that special things are for special people. And we all want to be a special person. We can employ this idea to surround ourselves with special people. A few years ago I was at a high school track meet. There was this little girl at the concession stand. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I have learned that I am not capable of being prepared for everything. Hence, I have learned to be prepared for being unprepared. I often speak in front of people, lead discussions, teach classes, and generally attend meetings where people ask me questions. I am often unprepared for what people ask. I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We do the things we do because we choose to do them from among all the other choices we have. These choices can be light hearted and they can be rather dark and scary. I learned a few things about myself in the past couple of weeks. For one, I like writing […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some people are undependable. Most of the time, I can choose to work with them or not. My choice can tell me much about myself. I know people who fit the title of this post. If they tell me they will be someplace at nine o’clock, I am almost certain they will […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There is a difference between deciding well and documenting a decision process well. The human condition means that we are mistaken a good portion of the time. Processes and documents can help, but they don’t erase that. I once worked in a government organization that prided itself on its excellent decisions. They […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Tradeoffs involve decisions. You choose that one thing is more important than another. This is not popular, especially in public projects. Last week I saw a post about people wanting to build high-speed train lines between cities. This would reduce automobile traffic between the cities, provide construction jobs, provide operations and maintenance […]

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by Dwayne Phillips In an earlier post, I discussed difficult people and reframing statements. Once again, I meet a difficult person. Once again, I can choose how frame the situation, and once again I can choose how to live and work. I worked with a different set of people this week. Some of those people […]

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