Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips This bothers me—this bothers me often and deeply. We abbreviate or shorten descriptions of individual persons. We “lump them together” so as not to name individuals or describe them. Such removes accountability. This bothers me. Here is a news story about the Congress of the United States. There are hundreds of such […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Managers want to hear the summary. The details are delegated. It is unfortunate that the summary rarely agrees with the details. “Summarize it for me. Give me three choices. I delegate.”—managers everywhere all the time. Simple statement from the managers. They have manager tasks to do. They delegate work to others. The […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Almost anyone can gather the material. Organizing it or creating a story from it, however, appears to be a rare yet valuable skill. We have lots of information. Go to Wikipedia. Download PDFs of the pages. Concatenate the pages. There it is. Go to a search engine. Find a dozen hits. Copy […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We usually understand one another better when we speak in simple, real-life terms—also know as plain English (for us English speakers). Please speak in plain English. Instead of: What are the Key Performance Indicators in your organization this reporting period? Try this: What keeps you awake at night? Instead of: Red, Green, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips As crazy as it sounds, high-level, recognized expert, professionals still read their PowerPoint to the audience. I watch a lot of presentations. Not just a weekly briefing by someone who has relatively little experience on the job and making presentations. I watch presentations of research work. The presenters are experts, have years […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Common thoughts foretell a general consensus. Someone tells me something. Wait, I said that last week when talking to yet another person. Wait, two independent conversations with different audiences, and the same idea is stated. There is a trend here. A consensus is forming. Perhaps great minds think alike (wouldn’t it be […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The ability to immediately talk at length about a topic often shows a lack of forethought. “I could talk for hours about this.” I have heard that many times. I have said it a few times. What I later learned after saying it myself was that I had failed to think about […]

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by Dwayne Phillips For some reason, we often run away from the words that we want most to convey. I work with persons who are trying to write. They show me their draft, we talk, we walk through the words, and I ask questions. The questions usually lead to grimaces and twisted expressions, struggled breathing, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We often say things simply because we have heard others say those things. We are an odd lot. People say that because… they heard other people say that. And the other people said it with great confidence and bravado. Hence, it must be true, right? “Half of marriages end in divorce.” That […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Of course we want to communicate. That is a basic. Nevertheless, here is a small test to measure the actual desire to communicate. Here is a quick test to measure a person’s desire to communicate to others. Here is a blank piece of paper. Here is a pencil. Write three things (plus […]

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