Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes digging down into the hidden history of a project helps the project crawl out of a hole. And, of course, sometimes not. I used to do this frequently. I was given a project that had “lost its way” or “fallen out of favor” or simply been left to rot in the […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Instead of trying the magnificent, perhaps we should try something we can accomplish. Many problems confront us everyday. These are all opportunities to excel. Really, not just for those silly posters, but these are actually opportunities for us to accomplish something and do some good for us and someone else. It seems […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes you are best served and serving if you ignore a request or two. Me: The thing the boss just asked for, what is it? How do you do it? Older Co-worker: What? Oh never mind. Me: But the boss wants it, real quick, it is important. Right? Older Co-worker: Forget about […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips For some reason (and we have a lot of these reasons), we just let things go when we know better. Yes, that thing doesn’t work right, but you know, we just don’t fix it because… I don’t like fixing things It is someone else’s problem, they broke it or they installed it […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Some of us don’t want to stretch things at work. Stretching can create tension, and tension is, well, tense. It is okay. Go ahead and do it. I wish I remember where I was when I first heard or read the statement, You don’t need permission to do your job well. I […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Here is a simple exercise you can use with your team to learn something about how well you work together. Step 1: Get a deck of playing cards. Step 2: Hand every person on your team some cards. Hand some person a couple of cards and hand some persons a dozen cards. […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips The most important decision about a project may be when we say, “It is over.” Watching college (semi- or mostly-professional) football this weekend. Several times today I see a 19 to 21-year old score a touchdown and in great glee make enough of the wrong motions to be flagged for excessive celebration […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips We review A fundamental of project planning, execution, and incurring risk. Risk is the answer to the question, “What could possibly go wrong?” The answer is, “Many things could go wrong.” Some of the possible wrong, however, is avoidable. We can prepare better and ensure we do better. The key word in […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips What do you do with a person who isn’t doing their job, but seems to do other things? Fire him. He admits he doesn’t know how to do all the things you want him to do. He admits that he just doesn’t learn fast and will take along time to do the […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Someone on the team needs to be a little farther away from the problem than the rest of us. Once upon a time…a team of engineers and such had a major design review in Florida. The team didn’t live in Florida. The head of the team, thoroughly enmeshed in the details of […]

[Read more →]