Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes events don’t occur as I planned. They do, however, lead to what I want. To discover the result, I have to listen to unwelcome messages. I often receive unwelcome messages. I plan something; I invite people who I believe will benefit from the something, and none of them come. There are […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some thoughts on Seth Godin’s idea of “pre digital” and how some places can become “formerly pre digital.” Seth Godin recently posted thoughts on what he calls “pre digital.” I liked his thoughts. I can punch a few security holes in the example he uses of a hospital emergency room, but that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips As a manager, when an employee provides short, pleasing answers sound all the alarms you have. Ask more questions until you pull usable information from the employee. Manager: How are things going? Employee: Fine, okay. Manager: (thinks to herself) Great! I’ve communicated with the employee, and we are good. Gosh. How many […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Take care when you have opposite types of people in the room for a meeting. Be sure to have someone in the room with the primary interest of ensuring communication among the groups. A few months ago, I sat in a meeting. On one side of the table were customers; on the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are times when I ask if my situation was caused by one of two shortcomings. Neither answer is pleasing. Then I move on to ask why I am in such an unsatisfactory situation. A couple decades ago, I heard a statement about explaining a bad situation. One paraphrase of the statement […]

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by Dwayne Phillips All bureaucracies, in my experience, stop the flow of information at each level of the hierachy. About half the important information is stopped at each level. There is hope, but people at the top have to work hard at getting the information they are being denied. The title of this post is […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Several years ago, I saw a sign proclaiming “Cubicle Suite” outside an office door. Cubicles are cubicles – yuck. A suite is some place really nice. The two works next to one another are nonsensical. What other words can we place next to one another and make no sense? How about: Short […]

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by Dwayne Phillips <rant>Baseball now moves into the World Series. You take the pennant winners from the National and American leagues and play a best-of-seven series to see who is the best in the world. Now, let’s see if we can ruin this. People must be trying to ruin this, because they are succeeding at […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Technical projects have plenty of opportunities to misunderstand what someone else is doing. Help yourself. If something is different, give it a different name. This is a post about a part of configuration management. But don’t stop reading yet. This makes sense and is not painful. Things change in technical projects. Software […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I find that there are three levels of knowing something. (1) understanding (2) using (3) explaining. Take care when assuming more than we know. I know a lot of things (there are many more things that I don’t know, but that is another matter). Over the years, I have been privileged to […]

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