Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips A  practice in government was labeling people. It was a lazy but oft-used practice. Happenstance was the main source of labels. I worked in government 28 years. Managers were often overwhelmed with things to do. Much of the “work” was self-created, but that is another story for another time. Anyways, one result […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Another age-old motivation technique that should probably go away. It was 30 years ago (yes, I am that old). The big boss of the organization was excited. A competing organization was trying to build a new product just like we were trying to build. By the way, we were both government organizations […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When confronted with non-sensical information, first ask to know what the other person knows. This first happened to me over 20 years ago. I was sitting in a medical office at a government agency. A doctor was reading my file and talking to me about my health. He made a few comments […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I explain how any government delay leads to wasted taxpayer money. No connection between the two items? Let’s walk through this. Company A contracts with the government. Which government doesn’t matter – national, state, local – as they all exist on taxpayers’ money. Company A has these smart, dedicated employees who work […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Once again we have a controversy about who owns publicly funded research. There is much debate recently about who owns the results of research that is funded by the public. See here for one article on recent policy statements. The simple answer is that when the public funds research, the public should […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The government sequester begins tomorrow as does the biggest advertising campaign in the history of America. Unless something unforeseen happens, the great government sequester begins tomorrow, March 1st. Also beginning will be the biggest advertising campaign in American history. Those who want government to be bigger will be out telling everyone that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This may be a waste of time, but I review how to calculate the percent change. I feel silly about this post. I am going to show how to calculate the percent change in numbers. I learned this when I was 12 or 10 or something in school math. A look at […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The FAA continues to ban electronic devices on parts of commercial flights. Technical: they cannot test all devices for EMC. Political: they cannot withstand the fallout of a mistake. The FAA continues to ban electronic devices during the takeoff and landing portions of commercial flights. This continues to exasperate just about everyone. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Companies are far more agile than governments. I hope that one day governments will accept this and work with companies instead of against them. A few recent stories have appeared about companies moving money to countries with lower tax rates. Some people are outraged about it. Governments will see what the companies […]

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Sometimes it just isn’t worth being on the leading edge. It was 1981 and an attempt to purchase an office computer turned into a monster. 1981 – the Apple II was fun and the TRS-80 was, well it was something you could buy at Radio Shack. These little computer things could store data on floppy disks. […]

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