RWL #206
teams, promises, losers, marshmallows, and more!
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire - FOB LHH! We got about a foot of snow here Wednesday night into Thursday. It snowed all day Thursday. It was all powder until the end of the day when it started getting wet, so it was a lovely first real storm of the season.
I gave my last final on Wednesday and spent the day grading it yesterday, so now I am cleaning up the remaining discussion boards and what not with the hope that I will have grades in by Monday and put the semester to bed. I’ve struggled to connect with the students and keep them motivated. It’s hard to be the kind of teacher I try to be when I can’t spend time with them in person. Online is better than nothing, but it’s not ideal, especially for undergrads.
I just got word that I will be speaking at the ACHE annual congress this year with my ACHE colleague Karen Clements, CNO of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. We’ll be talking about creating a culture of mentorship. I hope you can join us (virtually)!
I am excited about this week’s links - and I know, I say that every week - but this week I have a bunch of stuff I have shared with my wife and kids, which is kind of unusual. If you check out just one, check out Neill’s TED talk.
Stay well and stay safe!
Read
What: The American Conservative, Too Few of the President’s Men
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/too-few-of-the-presidents-men/
Why: This is a critique of the Trump administration’s personnel policy and how it hampered the President’s agenda. It argues Trump was relatively ineffective as a president because he did not manage the personnel process and assemble a team that was both competent and ideologically aligned with his mandate from his voters. This article does not discuss whether his goals were appropriate or not, it simply focuses on how he assembled his team, or, actually how he and his advisors largely bungled assembling his team. To a degree, he hired very competent individuals who were not aligned with his goals, and that resulted in much of the internal conflict of the administration. From the article:
[W]hile there existed no shortage of expertise and ability available to the president, there was a stunning and unprecedented absence of individuals and institutions with a grasp of, and commitment to, the policy agenda that got Trump elected.
Controlling team composition is one of three core leadership functions that I discuss in my article about executive leadership, Learned the Hard Way. This is a great lesson (learned the hard way) for executives. It’s critical to get individuals who are both talented and aligned with your goals. Competence alone is not enough.
**
What: GQ, The Promise That Tested My Parents Until the End
https://www.gq.com/story/the-promise-that-tested-my-parents-until-the-end
Why: This is a lovely meditation on marriage and obligation. On the surface of the article there is an implied critique of long-term care facilities, but I think the author’s observations of his mother make the critique more complex and nuanced. Everyone I know who works in LTC is deeply caring and empathetic. I think the reputation of LTC suffers from the Nirvana Fallacy, and this article makes that clear. It is a lovely article, though.
**
What: Fast Company, Amazon wants to scan your body to make perfectly fitting shirts
https://www.fastcompany.com/90586835/amazon-wants-to-scan-your-body-to-make-perfectly-fitting-shirts
Why: This is a quick read, but I think there is a lot to think about behind this short article. Amazon is testing another personalization concept - making t-shirts to order. This is so Amazon. Think about it: Bezos started his business with the idea of selling stuff online. What stuff? Well, why not books? They’re easy to ship, don’t go bad, etc. Now to test the idea of personalized manufacturing, they are starting with the t-shirt. It’s simple, expectations are not too high. It’s a great test case. Perfect the process, and then expand. Will clothing brands get behind this? Will they create their own process, or use Amazon as their manufacturer? If you don’t know, most of Amazon’s profit comes from Amazon web services, which provides the backbone of much of internet commerce now. I read a book about Amazon a number of years ago (The Everything Store) that explained Bezos really wants to be a utility - where people and companies send him a monthly or annual subscription payment (do you have Prime?) and he provides services at cost on top of the subscription. The retail business by itself is not profitable - most of the profit comes from your Prime memberships. So I could totally see Amazon trying to become the manufacturer behind customized clothing for brands like the Gap. What do you think? Lessons for healthcare - more personalized medicine. Better use of the EHR. Better integration of services. There’s a lot to think about.
**
Watch
What: Peter Thiel, Competition is for losers (60 min)
Why: I always find Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal) interesting. This talk is no exception. It’s an excellent discussion of strategy, and a nice supplement to Porter’s Five Forces theory. Porter was allergic to head-to-head competition, and that’s the basic thesis of Thiel’s talk. It’s not that he’s against competition, per se - it’s that you want to create a business where there is no competition, which is something different. You don’t need to watch the video - I mostly treated it as a podcast and let it play while I was doing housework, but I’ll count it as a “watch” because it is a video.
**
What: Conor Neill at TEDxUniversidaddeNavarra, The Discipline of Finishing (23:41)
Why: I’m really excited about sharing this talk with my students next semester. Neill is a journalist and I stumbled on this talk after watching a lecture he gave about writing (trying to get myself motivated). In this video he talks a bit about writing, but a lot more about the secrets of high performing athletes. I’m not going to do it justice here, but he argues that the most important thing is to have integrity between your values and how you spend your time. He suggests keeping track of how you spend your time because it tells you what you actually value. He says failure is repeated bad decisions; success is repeated, consistent good habits.
**
Listen
What: Health Leader Forge, Steve Ahnen, President and CEO, New Hampshire Hospital Association (80 min)
https://healthleaderforge.blogspot.com/2020/12/steve-ahnen-president-ceo-new-hampshire.html
Why: I’ve been meaning to get Steve on the podcast for a couple of years. Steve has been the President and CEO of the NH Hospital Association since 2008. I think this is a great discussion about what it is like to be an advocate (i.e., lobbyist) working in the health policy space. Like most of us, Steve’s trajectory into healthcare was a bit of an accident early in his career, so I always find that interesting. He spent nearly 20 years with the American Hospital Association before coming to New Hampshire. I think you can get a great sense of what it is like to work in these important healthcare advocacy organizations from this interview.
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://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
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)