RWL #185 - work friendships, cheap housing, learning from polio, and more.
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire - Forward Operating Base Last Homely House (FOB LHH)! It’s officially the height of summer when the blueberry bushes in the backyard are popping off blueberries like popcorn. We have about eight quarts of blueberries in the freezer as of last night, and the bushes are going strong. If you’re near the NH Seacoast and would like some berries, let me know! You can drop by the LHH and I’ll happily pass off some to you. We’re going to run out of room in the freezer at this rate. This pic is from my daughter’s FB feed - she’s our little blueberry picker. She doesn’t even like them. But my wife and I graze on them pretty continuously during this time of year.
Hard to believe we’re almost into August. The summer is flying by. I was able to get out and paddle a couple of times this past week which always raises my spirits. It was a crazy busy week with a few projects making real progress, but that’s why this newsletter is two days late. Sorry about that! I hope you are enjoying the summer. It will be over before we know it.
Stay well and stay safe.
Read
What: FastCompany, This boutique Brooklyn hotel is turning its rooms into offices for $200 a day
Why: Hard to imagine you could rent office space in Brooklyn under normal circumstances for much less than $200/day. As you know, I love stories about clever innovations. This seems like a brilliant response to the change in circumstances hotels are currently facing.
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What: The Atlantic, The Pandemic Is Changing Work Friendships
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/07/what-pandemic-doing-work-friendships/614407/
Why: When we went to remote teaching after spring break last March, a group of us thought it would be fun to hold virtual coffee hours to recreate the normal watercooler chats that we would have in the halls. The coffee hours evolved to happy hours through the remainder of the year. Not everyone in the department came, but we had pretty good attendance. One thing I learned many years ago was that it is important for a leader to touch base with her/his people frequently both formally and informally. Everyone has a different taste for how much socialization they want at work, so what “frequent” means in terms of how often and for how long, and how much is work-focused and how much is relationship-focused varies, and a leader needs to learn to read that. But all work, and only work-related is almost certainly not the right answer except in the most extreme cases.
Having spent a few decades and some change in the Army, living almost always far from my family and home, work friendships were quite important to me. I made a choice to make as many of my work relationships friendships as I could. You don’t choose who you work with most of the time, but you can choose to make friendships. Of course, it has to be mutual, but it makes work so much better in my experience. Post-Army, I’ve tried to do the same whenever I can.
Friendships require maintenance, which is why we started the virtual coffee and happy hours. I liked this quote from the article:
“Like any long-distance relationship, remote-work friendships depend on participants making extra effort to communicate. Evelyn R. Carter, a social psychologist at a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultancy firm, who had already been working remotely for about a year before the pandemic hit, told me that these friendships are worth the work: They can alleviate the feelings of stress and alienation that remote work often produces.”
Having work friendships smooths things out when things get complicated. If you have invested in a relationship, when something goes wrong, or you need something, the trust that comes with friendship can make things much faster and easier, so it’s not all about psycho-social support, it’s also about enhancing organizational capacity. It’s important to sustain those trust-relationships especially in a time of COVID.
What have you done to keep your work relationships alive?
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What: Taxi, Netflix Drops ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ Evidence In Folder You’ll Inspect Yourself
Why: I am not a true crime fan - nothing wrong with the genre - it’s just not my taste (my guilty pleasures are trashy Sci-Fi, space opera, and lately a heavy dose of contemporary fantasy - think American Gods or (also not me - just an example) the Twilight series). Anyway - I think this multi-media approach that Netflix is using for Unsolved Mysteries is brilliant! How do you get fans even more engaged with a show? Provide them with materials they can engage with after or between episodes. I love it! It’s like Netflix is taking lessons from asynchronous course designers.
Watch
What: 3D-Printed Home Can Be Constructed For Under $4,000
Why: I don’t know anything about the technical aspects of 3D printing. It just seems like magic. I think magic is cool, especially when it has the potential to radically change the cost of creating housing. Safe, affordable housing is a social determinant of health, and one of the most basic human needs. This video shows how the technology is evolving and might eventually be used.
I’m a little skeptical of the idea of bringing 3D printers to sites and using concrete as the building material - it seems like modular construction would still be more efficient - but clearly it depends on the locale and local costs. It seems to me that central printing with strong, lightweight materials might be more economical, but the markets will figure it out. For now, the idea is pretty amazing!
Listen
What: WSJ’s The Future of Everything Podcast, How Polio Research is Helping in the Hunt for a Vaccine
Why: I like WSJ’s Future fo Everything podcast so far - I actually just discovered it this week! This podcast relates the current search for a COVID-19 vaccine to the search for the polio vaccine. I’m not a public health expert by any means (I occasionally play one in the classroom - but only for a lecture or two - I leave the real expertise to my colleagues) so I learned a lot of history from this show. It’s well produced - worth checking 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
See you next Friday!
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
'It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.' - Gandalf (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)