Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Keep your earth-shattering new thing quiet for a while. Once it works, shout. This is basic risk management. Something has never been done before. That means it is difficult. I have a solution. I can do it or I think I can do it. The best practice, in my experience of doing […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some endeavors are so complicated that headaches are expected. Most endeavors, however, have headaches that are caused by the people involved and are unnecessary. Some endeavors are complicated. That is their nature. Concentration, lots of it, sometimes brings me a headache. I have worked in complicated endeavors and endured the natural and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes, the better thing to do is let people do what they think is best or at least what they think is better on any given day. “We are a fill-in-the-blank organization. We use best fill-in-the-blank practices as described by fill-in-the-second-blank who described fill-in-the-blank in the seminal blog post on fill-in-the-blank,” said […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Once again, thinking at one layer higher than usual may bring insights that prove effective. There is competence: someone is able to do something well. They know the topic, they know the skills, and they apply them all. The adjective “well” is used often and truthfully. Then there is meta-competence: this has […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Take care when confusing lab projects with real products. Both are good, but they are not the same. In all fields of endeavor, we have lab projects and real products. Both can be good. They, however, are not the same. Sometimes product managers and marketers confuse these at their peril. Students in […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Games are simulations of real life. Some games simulate real life better than others. The key is to connect the simulations to real life in a meaningful manner. Games are simulations. The Monopoly game is supposed to simulate business, commerce, and acquiring wealth or something like that. Tick-Tack-Toe simulates spatial logic and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Why do we wonder why middle managers don’t seem to do anything useful. That is the definition of “middle.” We disdain the “man in the middle.” He or she doesn’t seem to do anything but cause greater expense. We disdain the middle managers. They don’t do anything but add levels to the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Yet another statement about what happens in meetings shows itself to be something to toss away. For some reason, meetings tend to have many statements that are supposed to be proven by time and such but are nothing but folly. I have written about some of these before such as “silence means […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One key to learning how to juggle is to know how to drop something. The same is true for managing competing priorities and tasks. Just about every “Help Wanted” ad I see has something in it about managing competing priorities or managing multiple tasks. I guess they want someone who can decide […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We tend to have many meetings—”many” being subjective. Since we do this so often, let try to do it better. I worked for the Federal government for several decades. Government employees meet in groups several times every day. I have also worked for companies on government contracts. We met with the government […]

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