Working Up

Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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If We Tell Him, He’ll Get Mad

October 8th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips People are free to choose their reactions to events. I am included in “people.” We all are. I don’t know how many times I have heard the phrase that is the title of this post. There are countless variations: You tell him that! That’s easy to say when s/he isn’t around. The […]

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Tags: Adults · Breathe · Choose · Communication

The Proximity Law

September 14th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Things that are similar tend to be near one another. The same seems to hold for people. I am sure someone has already named and explained this law. Oh look, here is an actual definition. Oh well, I won’t get credit for inventing this. It is a shame that few persons understand […]

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Tags: Choose

Economy Requires Neglect

June 15th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Unless we are rich, we neglect those persons and things that are far from the normal. Economy requires neglect; sorry. In schools, we have big classes. We try to reach the middle of the class, the group near the center of the normal distribution (we used to call this distribution the “bell […]

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Tags: Choose · Education · General Systems Thinking · Management

Proudly Inefficient

June 8th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes, we just plain do things that are inefficient by choice for the better. Sometimes we are going to do some things where we don’t care about scaling to gain efficiency. Sometimes we won’t video record the talk to play it later to millions of persons. Sometimes we are going to spend […]

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Tags: Authentic · Choose · Integrity · People · Scale

Success Leads to Dissolution or Bureaucracy

March 12th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The success of many endeavors should lead to dissolving the endeavor. It is unfortunate, however, that the result is often bureaucracy. I have seen it many times. Let’s start an association: to improve the performance of X, to increase the awareness of Y, to teach the practice of Z, or some such […]

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Tags: Adapting · Change · Choose · General Systems Thinking

Efficiency from Laziness

March 5th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Some of today’s more efficient technologies are efficient because we are lazy. FORTRAN is an efficient programming language. The executable files are small. The programs execute quickly. There is a simple reasons why FORTRAN is an efficient programming language: the compilers were created at a time when computing resources were much less […]

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Tags: Choose · Computing · Excuses

That is for Someone Else

February 18th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Let’s be practical, but let’s still try to attain what we wish. When told that something is “for someone else,” question to motives of the person telling you that. I first encountered this practice when I was in high school. I attended a small, rural high school in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana (Loranger […]

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Tags: Change · Choose · Differences

Don’t Try so Hard

January 26th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I try hard at everything. Sometimes I try hard too much. <start advice> Slow down. Back away. Breathe. Drink a cup of coffee. Relax. Take a nap. Find your own little zen thing that helps you to not try so hard. <end advice>

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Tags: Breathe · Choose · Coffee · Health · Problems · Process · Thinking · Time

The Zero-th Step of Any Process

December 8th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Before doing anything else—think. Yes, this is old advice, but it still works. Process, process, process. The world uses Agile processes now. (At least those people whose job it is to tell everyone else what their organization does tells the world that they are Agile. I tend to doubt that they actually […]

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Tags: Choose · General Systems Thinking · Learning · Management · Process

It’s Not the Event, It’s the Reaction

November 6th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We don’t choose what happens in life. We do choose how we react. The title of this post is something that I’ve heard numerous times from consultant and author Jerry Weinberg. It seems that almost every day I trip over yet another example of this. The phone rings at 2 AM. Something […]

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Tags: Choose · Reaction