RWL #153 - rules, solitary, and a career
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! I’ve just turned in my grades for the semester and I am officially D-U-N done! (that’s not quite as effective when you have to write it out, but I’m a bit giddy right now - I literally just pushed send before I sat down to do this week’s newsletter) Sorry for being late, but I’ve spent most of the weekend wrapping things up. Now the focus turns back to research for the next few weeks, before we come back for the spring semester. I had a really great semester teaching. This crop of students was very good and we did a lot in the short time we have together. I’m looking forward to working with them again in the spring. I’ll be coming back to teaching economics, which is something I haven’t done in several years, and I’m super excited about that.
So here are this week’s links. I hope you enjoy them and I’ll see you next week!
(pic above - putting my feet up!)
Read
What: Inc., Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos: This Is How Successful People Make Such Smart Decisions
Why: This is such a short article, I feel like I should just say, “read it, trust me”. This piece provides a nice rule of thumb for when to invest a lot of time and effort into decision making, and when to just do it. That’s all I’ll say on the article itself. In related news… I had a colleague I once knew who had a similar rule of thumb. He used a tree metaphor. He said a tree has leaves, branches, and a trunk. Some decisions are like leaves - if you’re wrong, and you lose a leaf, it doesn’t matter. The tree has thousands more just like it. Some decisions are like branches - they represent a bigger commitment, and the pain of being wrong is greater, but the tree won’t die if it loses a branch. So it’s worth taking more time to consider, but to remember there are a lot more branches. Then there are the trunk decisions. These are life and death for the tree (career ending perhaps, or will put you into bankruptcy). These should be done with great deliberation, and only undertaken if the reward is truly worth the risk. Bezos’s rule is a little simpler, but the idea is the same. I like them both.
Watch
What: TEDx, What happens to people in solitary confinement, Laura Rovner (12 min)
Why: This is a really powerful description of the psychological effects of solitary confinement. Rovner calls it torture. Based on my research on this topic (the economics of prison was going to be my dissertation topic once upon a time - I spent way too much time reading about this stuff), I think that’s an accurate statement. I include this clip here because the question of prison and how we use it in our society is a public health issue. Some of these men (and women) are eventually going to come back out into society. We don’t want to break them. Even if they are not going to come back out, they are part of a larger community, some of whom will come out. The experience of being a guard is also important to remember - imposing these conditions on another human being has effects on the guards as well as the prisoners.
Listen
What: Health Leader Forge, Steve Roach, President & CEO, UMassMemorial-Marlborough Hospital (65 minutes)
https://healthleaderforge.blogspot.com/2019/12/steve-roach-president-ceo-marlborough.html
Why: In this podcast I interview Steve Roach about his career in healthcare leadership. He started as a financial analyst, was the CFO of a community hospital by 30, CEO by 33. He’s worked in a range of hospitals, and is something of a turn around specialist. We talk about his remarkable career journey, and conclude with a discussion of leadership. Check it out!
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
Also, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
Have a great weekend and do amazing things!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor." - Henry David Thoreau