by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n
I have met managers who acted as though electrons, concrete, steel, wood, and other things could hear them screaming, “Work Right!” I never quite understood that, but the idea seems popular.<\/strong><\/p>\n I have overseen and managed many projects in the last few decades. Back in the mid-1980s (yes, I am that old), I was overseeing a set of tests for a computer-controlled system. We had a detailed test procedure that we executed one keystroke at a time. As is common with software tests, some of the tests failed in that the system did not do what it was supposed to do, i.e., the software failed.<\/p>\n When we hit a failure, I would turn to see the programmers standing several feet away and backing further away. Where were they going?<\/p>\n Finally, one of them told me, “You don’t act like the guy who has this job before you?”<\/p>\n I inquired to the meaning of that.<\/p>\n “The other guy would yell and scream when a test failed,” he explained.<\/p>\n It was as if the electrons on the disk would go in the desired direction in response to the yelling. Hmmm, electrons can’t hear, or at least that is what I always thought.<\/p>\n I have seen people also yell at concrete, steel, wood, fabric, and other materials as if those materials could hear them. Hmmm, I’ve never seen those materials react.<\/p>\n Let me emphasize something<\/strong>: this is not a theory.<\/p>\n This is my experience. If had seen electrons respond in a desired manner if I screamed, I would scream a lot. Since they never seem to react, I don’t scream.<\/p>\n Am I missing something here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Dwayne Phillips I have met managers who acted as though electrons, concrete, steel, wood, and other things could hear them screaming, “Work Right!” I never quite understood that, but the idea seems popular. I have overseen and managed many projects in the last few decades. Back in the mid-1980s (yes, I am that old), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,67],"tags":[132,187],"class_list":["post-1355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-management","category-work","tag-management","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1356,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions\/1356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}