RWL Newsletter #109 - strategy and life
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! It’s February 8th and we are expecting temperatures in the 50’s today. I have to say, that’s a little bizarre. It makes me feel like I’m back in San Antonio. My wife and I did something neither of us had done in a couple of decades this past weekend - we went skiing! And we achieved our major goal of coming home with all bones unbroken.
The picture above is of my “studio” (AKA, my office). I spent Thursday morning recording videos of myself working through finance problems so that I could post them to YouTube and give them to my students to watch when they got stuck doing the problems in the book. This is also where I record podcasts when I can’t do them face to face, hence the fancy mic.
I didn’t come into this week’s newsletter with a theme in mind, but I seem to have stumbled into something about strategy. We’ve got high profile ads from the Super Bowl, and the tiny company that made three of them, Clayton Christensen on using the tools of strategy to find meaning in life, and a strategic review of the long term care space from a VC perspective. Enjoy!
Read
What: AdWeek, How a 46-Person Agency Managed to Create 3 of the Year’s Biggest Super Bowl Ads
Why: I think like a lot of folks, my favorite part of the Super Bowl is the ads. The ads are incredibly expensive, and so brand managers are looking for appropriately buzzy returns. David Miami, a 46-person ad agency won the business from three national brands for their superbowl ads. The fact that a small firm got one ad is impressive; getting three is amazing. And all three are impactful (thought I have to admit, the Devour one is a little … well watch it and you’ll see).
Healthcare is a creative industry. It’s not creative in exactly the same way as making ads for the Super Bowl, but what we do is complex, it has difficult problems to solve, and requires intense coordination. There’s a lot of good stuff in this short article about flat organizations, communication, and collaboration.
I particularly liked this quote:
All that utopian discussion of open work culture aside, though, there’s also one very practical reality that keeps a small agency like David Miami focused on creating truly successful Super Bowl ads: When you don’t have a bureaucracy, you don’t have anywhere to duck responsibility or hide if a project goes sour.
The ads are fun. The Budweiser one is my favorite, though I really dislike the product.
Watch
What: TEDxBoston, How Will You Measure Your Life? Clay Christensen
Why: Author of the highly influential The Innovators Dilemma, Christensen asks how you can apply business strategy to your life and have a better understanding of why you have the life you have and what you need to do to get to the life you want. Christensen applies his theory of disruption to our personal lives, and how our pursuit of short run success allows us to be disrupted by our own short sightedness.
(please note, he’s had a stroke and has some modest challenges as a result when speaking, but he’s still a brilliant mind)
Listen
What: Venture Stories, Opportunities in Eldercare and Aging with Natalie Dillon, Lisa Marrone and Shawn Xu
https://www.spreaker.com/user/10197011/opportunities-in-eldercare-and-aging-wit
Why: I know in my department we don’t talk enough about long term care. My background is acute care, so I don’t have much experience in this field. This is an interesting and slightly different podcast. The speakers are more focused on strategic level changes in the industry than on jobs for early careerists. They are interested in the broad trends in the industry and where investors might be developing new business opportunities. This would be a good podcast if you are interested in strategy in the healthcare space.
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 by e-mail, 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