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A Kinder/Gentler Alternative to “Something Went Wrong”

By Bill Flury In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with Haiku poetry messages. Haiku poetry has strict construction rules – each poem has only 17 syllables; 5 syllables in the first, 7 in the…
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Sarah’s Tale

by Bill Flury Sarah Has a Problem. Sarah was having a bad day, one of many in the past few weeks. Things just weren’t working as she expected them to. She was doing what she had been doing all along but, for some reason, some things…
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The Art of Teleworking

Now more than ever, being both physically and emotionally capable of working from your own home is incredibly useful. Technology has brought us the ability to share ideas and documents at unbelievable speeds, start video calls with multiple…
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Avoiding Potholes: Communication

by Bill Flury Cruising Down the Road You weren’t nervous this time. You had worked hard on this presentation. You had great slides and you cruised through your delivery. Now you were ready to handle any question about the details. The…
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Where There’s a Wall, There’s a Way!
Achieving Group Consensus

By Bill Flury When I was beginning to learn how to be a good systems engineer, my mentor gave me some advice that has served me well. He told me, “Never try to solve a big problem on a small sheet of paper. Some problems just won’t fit…
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White Paper: Encouraging Process Improvement

by Bill Flury Keep what you do simple. Many companies have found simple, practical ways to implement their programs and have achieved the benefits with little cost. The key factor in keeping the improvement effort simple is to start with documenting…