Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! Wow, how did it get to be the 200th letter? I guess I’ve been doing this a while. I actually started this newsletter when I was the advisor for the HMP class of ‘19. I decided that they should hear from the department during the summer, so I started sending them emails with links to keep them connected to their studies (we’re a very involved department - we are very nosy with our students and try to build relationships with each of them). The first message I sent happened to have something to read, watch, and listen to, and I stuck with that concept. At the end of the summer I decided to try publishing a newsletter, which I named RWL, and here we are, four years later. So it’s apt that today’s picture includes two alumnae (Ashley and Monica) of the class of ‘19. About the picture - I’ve been teaching a career preparation course for our juniors and I have been inviting recent alumni to come back and talk to about their experiences in different parts of the industry. This week I featured a panel of four alumnae who are all nursing home administrators (or administrators in training) with Genesis HealthCare. The picture is a screen shot of the Zoom call after we were done. It’s a real privilege to get to help young people get launched on their way out into the world.
Oh, and there’s this election thing going on. So far it looks like we have an answer, and it looks like it will have been resolved reasonably peacefully. Because that is one of the great things about the American system, and something that should be celebrated. For most of human history, the transfer of power between groups in society was accompanied with extensive bloodshed and suffering. Game of Thrones is the historical norm for human societies, and still is in most parts of the non-Western world. Even though there has been some awful rhetoric and some protests and violence, and this election will no doubt be talked about for years to come, the scale of the violence is nothing compared to world history. I hope we can keep it that way. I have strong feelings about who I want to win, but from my perspective, the most important thing is that we preserve the system and the institutions. I’m willing to sacrifice the specific winner so that the system holds. That way there can always be another election.
This week’s theme is work, work, and work! Stay well and stay safe!
Read
What: HBR,Managing a Team with Conflicting Political Views
https://hbr.org/2020/10/managing-a-team-with-conflicting-political-views
Why: The business case for diversity is that having different ways of seeing the world can make a firm more profitable by preventing groupthink. People have strong opinions about politics, perhaps stronger than I have ever seen in my lifetime. It’s easy to be blinded by your own ideology, and not realize that you are speaking from your ideology, whether that ideology is popular nationalism or Critical Race Theory. Unless you're a political or religious organization, there isn’t a need for ideological purity. If my officemate believes in creationism and I believe in something else, but we teach healthcare management, there isn’t really a need for us to work out our differences. We can teach how hospitals are managed without agreeing on the origin of the universe. I’d suggest that if a person’s political beliefs don’t impact their job, then people should be considerate and leave that person be. I work in an office where I am a political outlier. And we literally teach policy. It’s hard to not express your ideology when you teach, either directly in your statements or subtly through your choices of material and topics. We get along because we’re professionals and we understand that at the end of the day it’s the mission that matters - taking care of students and doing high quality research. And we care about each other. For every political conversation, you need to have a hundred conversations about your colleague’s (non-political) ideas about work, or ask about how they are feeling, or how their family is doing. I talk to my colleagues every day (when we can be in the office) and I always try to connect with them in a meaningful, but not nosey way. If you try, you can find some common interest to connect with almost anyone. That’s how you build relationships so that you can have hard conversations when the time comes when they are necessary. You have to put a lot of coins in the trust bank before you have a conversation that is going to draw down on that trust.
Watch
What: TED Talk, Scott Dinsmore: How to find work you love
https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_dinsmore_how_to_find_work_you_love?language=en
Why: As some of you know, one of my intellectual heroes is Henry David Thoreau. One of his great lines from Walden is “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Scott Dinsmore kicks off this TED Talk paraphrasing that line. Dinsmore has built a business around life coaching, which I both find fascinating and a bit like snake oil sales. His coaching philosophy is built around three principles: 1) get to know yourself - your strengths, weaknesses, and purpose; 2) start doing the impossible by setting small goals and achieving them; and 3) surround yourself with people who inspire you and are already pursuing or maybe already have achieved the goals you want to achieve. He concludes his talk with the question, “What is the work you can’t not do?”
I remember back in 2006 or so having a sit down with my boss at the time, Dave Bitterman. He wanted to talk to me about my application for long term health education and training (LTHET) - I wanted the Army to send me to get my PHD (spoiler alert). He asked me, are you sure you want to do this? Because right now you are on track to make Colonel. The Army funds these PHDs, but almost no one who does the PHD track and goes to teach makes Colonel. It is basically the end of your career advancement. My answer was, yes, I knew that, and I had thought about it, and I was willing to pay that price. Dave responded, good. Because I’ve been watching you and you are always setting aside time to teach. He listed the things I was doing in addition to my duties as CFO - among those were I had a started a weekly journal club to talk about leadership, and I had developed a series of training classes to teach basic Excel and Access skills to our analysts and administrators. It’s clear you love teaching, he told me, so you should do it.
I’m lucky - I get to do the thing I love - the work I can’t not do. But it’s not all luck. I made a lot of sacrifices to get to do the thing I love doing. I didn’t make Colonel, just like Dave said I wouldn’t. My income is a fraction of what it could have been if I had stayed on the professional path I was on, and I’ll be honest, sometimes that bothers me. But most days it’s enough for the lifestyle I lead (kayaking, as a hobby, is wicked cheap). And the rewards, for me, are profound. To get a chance to help point young people toward their own goals is amazing. I’m not saying everyone should teach - please don’t - I don’t want the competition - but think about Dinsmore’s question. What’s the work you can’t not do?
Listen
What: HBR Ideacast, Why Work-From-Anywhere Is Here to Stay
https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/10/why-work-from-anywhere-is-here-to-stay
Why: I miss my office. We’re a small department, and we already had flex work and work from home options built into our normal work flows. I generally opted to work in my office because (as an extravert) the act of changing environments is a stimulant for me. But I also l have a great team of folks whom I really enjoy interacting with. When I need to take a breather, it’s great to walk across the hall and shoot the breeze for a few minutes. We’ve tried to replicate some “water cooler” encounters, but it’s hard. We did virtual happy hours for a while, but they petered out. This interview has some interesting insights on how companies deliberately redesign workflows around remote work and replicate or even improve on the casual interactions we would have in physical space. I’m slowly getting used to this remote thing and there are some things I will definitely keep whenever we go back to unrestricted contact again, but I do look forward to the day when we are all able to breathe the same air again.
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 .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, 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)