Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Lots of things to do. Which do I do first? Perhaps I go with the worst first. When my sons were little, they had tactics about the order in which they ate their food at dinner. One tactic was “worst first” in which they ate their least favorite food first so that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We move forward to the 1980s when the lawyers prevented artificial intelligence (AI) from helping us do our jobs. Note: This post is about legal maneuvers that prevent helpful AI systems. It is not about AI systems that were built poorly and mimic some human tendencies to discriminate against persons illegally. Those […]

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By Dwayne Phillips What is urgent and what is relevant often do not match. Should I balance them or is that not relevant? What are you saying or doing today? Is that the most urgent thing you can say or do today? No, but we have a plan. We are working towards something big, we […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This discusses a technique that helps move “decision meetings” in a favorable direction. You spend time to save time. It works more often than not. I have been assigned the task of presenting an idea to a meeting of decision makers. Yes, many organizations still have groups of decision makers, and they […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Should we be using systems engineering on this project? Here is a simple test. I think systems engineering is useful and brings many benefits. That is why I wrote a short book on the topic. The book is free here. Should we be using systems engineering on this project? Here is The […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We revisit an old tradeoff that moves to a different dimension, but retains the tradeoff. In the early 1990s, (yes, I am that old) we had about a dozen different computing systems in a laboratory. On any given day, one of the dozen would be “down” for repair. Too bad, but we […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is a variation on the question, “What is the difference that makes a difference?” When trying to modify behavior, we must be able to answer the title’s question. The title of this post is a fundamental science question. You are telling me that factor A is important here. Okay, it seems […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Have a direction? What did we lose in choosing it? Sorry, we traded something for something else. We lost something. I am never supposed to write “never” and “always.” And there is always an exception to all rules. Hence, the title of this post. I have yet to find a perfect solution […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We are almost always uncertain. That is why we should plan key decision points. “We knew what were were doing, right?” asked one of the decision makers after everything collapsed. “Well, it sounded good when we started,” replied another one of the decision makers after everything collapsed. No, sorry, we didn’t know […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A phrase to add to every assignment or action item or anything that goes on a “to do” list. Years ago, author and consultant Jerry Weinberg gave an assignment to attendees of his writing seminar. It was something like: Think of what you should write today. Write that. Do that tomorrow, too. […]

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