Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Often it is better to let people watch a game show at work while they eat lunch. Here is a sad but true story. In the early 1990s I worked in a big computing laboratory. At one end of the multi-thousand-square-foot facility we had a “conference” room. This room had a sink, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes the arrangement of furniture in an office is far more important than a first glance indicates. Once upon a time, I worked in an organization that moved into some office spaces that were previously occupied by another organization. We inherited their office furniture and their arrangement of office furniture. In the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes projects “lose their way.” Of course that is impossible as what really happens is that people come and go and change their minds. In government, we had a phrase about projects that seemed to go forever and consume every penny in sight and produce nothing: They lost their way Some of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is fundamental project manager advice. Avoid at your peril. I’ve managed a lot of technical projects. These projects employed engineers, programmers, scientists, administrators, and so on. One thing I’ve learned is: People tend to keep their work to themselves. Hmm. So how is the working progressing? These people won’t come to […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We often assume desired outcomes when recommending practices. It often helps to know your desired destination. Once again, our government recently issued dietary guidelines. Some hailed the guidelines while others went as far as to say that our government officials were bribed. How else could they issue such bad advice? Perhaps those […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Persons in special positions have few people who will talk to them. The result is a problem. Leaders occupy special positions. One result is that persons view the leader as a thing: a Vice President of such-and-such, a Director of this-or-that. Persons speak to things in a different and usually less-helpful manner […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Too often, some of us take on the role of caretaker of everyone around us, i.e., we try to e everyone’s dad. Such is folly. Sometimes, people are struggling at work. No problem. I will step in and H E L P them. I will take care of the problems that seem […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we should assign one person. We already know that, so why don’t we do it? There is some old cliche about too many cooks in the kitchen or too many cooks stirring the pot or something. There is a a current cliche about too many people in the room I head […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Knowing how to repair a system indicates something about its quality. I know how to start the MS Windows task manager. You press the Crtl-Alt-Del keys at the same time. A window pops and displays option. One option is the task manager. The task manager allows me to kill processes that are […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The meeting is over. Hereafter, we are having a friendly chat.

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