Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips I’m not sure what the job title is, but every organization needs a person whose job it is to find the stupid that is hindering everyone. I have seen this every place I have worked. Somewhere in the greater organization, people—often smart, loving, caring people—are doing something that is just plain stupid. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Someone stole a copy of the OPM database. That database is full of errors. The thieves might make good money with an algorithm that finds and corrects the errors. Someone recently hacked the OPM database. I am certain that all sorts of good information about me is in that database. I’m not […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Want computer voting? Want it to be secure? Here is how to do it. Just about everyone in America today votes on some sort of computer. Now and then, someone writes a story about how someone discovered that their computerized voting machines are insecure and easily subject to election fraud. Here is […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When a performer doesn’t perform as predicted, the predictor is in the wrong. Too bad that we usually fail to recognize that. I write this the week after all the big tech companies posted their quarterly financial reports. Some companies didn’t perform as expected, i.e., as predicted. The result was that the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Online education may one day make it, but for now, we have excellent online learning. You must, however, prove you learned something. Enter the portfolio. A parchment is another name for a diploma. We get a diploma from some education organization that says we spent time and money at that organization. Everyone […]

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by Dwayne Phillips For many of us, being close shows us the details, and those details make us sick. I give to several non-profit organizations. One of them is based ten thousand miles away. Another is based five miles away. I see many details of the one that is five miles away. I don’t like […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Here is a brief explanation of why innovation doesn’t work in government. Too bad as there are clever, innovative people in government. I worked several decades inside the US Federal government. There are plenty of dedicated, smart people working inside government. They often have good ideas for things and gadgets the government […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Competence evaporates when we are upset. There are some things we can do to work our way back to competence, but they are not easy. I recently watched a group of otherwise competent people behave in a most incompetent manner. They had an excellent excuse as they were under great emotional stress. […]

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