RWL Newsletter #132
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! I’m getting this out a day late because I’ve taken the last two days off to hang out with some old Army friends who came up this way on business and then stayed for a visit. There’s nothing like old friends - to quote the poet Thomas Moore, “What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine.” Old friends who knew you when you were young and foolish understand the older you so much more clearly. Of course I took them kayaking, in case you were wondering.
Enjoy the weekend and let me know what you think of the links!
Read
What: Tyler Cowen, How I practice at what I do
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/07/how-i-practice-at-what-i-do.html
Why: If you don’t know Tyler Cowen, you should. Especially since I’ve posted some of his interviews from his podcast, Conversations with Tyler. Cowen is, amongst other things, a professor of Economics at George Mason where I did my PHD. I had him for a course in Industrial Organization (on our final exam, one of the two questions was “write your own question and answer it” - how terrifying is that?). He’s better known for his blog, Marginal Revolution (which I am linking to for this week’s “read” and has a few million followers), and as a columnist for Bloomberg. He’s the author of a bunch of books on top of that, and has an “online university” called Marginal Revolution University. He’s pretty amazing. In this post he talks about what he refers to in his podcast as the “Tyler Cowen Production Function” - that is, how does he do all these things? It’s a short post.
Watch
What: Sylvia Ann Hewlett: "Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor" | Talks at Google (44 minutes)
Why: I heard Hewlett talk about her theory of sponsorship on the HBR Ideacast , so I went looking for more of her work. This is a longer, more in-depth version of her interview. She differentiates between mentorship and sponsorship, and claims sponsorship is really what is lacking for women and minorities in getting ahead. In my work on mentorship, I include sponsorship as part of mentorship - from my perspective what she calls mentorship is really coaching - you can’t really be a mentor without putting some skin in the game through sponsorship. Giving advice is necessary but not sufficient to call yourself a mentor. Nevertheless, she does a really nice job explaining the power of sponsorship. I try to do this a lot with my students - I give them introductions and access to my connections in the healthcare community, but I do it judiciously - I keep in mind that the people I am presenting them to are judging me in part based on the candor with which I introduce students. Sometimes the introduction is, “This kid is amazing! You will thank me later” and sometimes it is, “this kid has potential but needs someone to guide them.” It’s an important function that those of us of a certain age have to the next generation. Think about whether you have been sponsoring people and how you have been using your power.
Listen
What: Health Leader Forge, Jake Poore, President and Chief Experience Officer, Integrated Loyalty Systems (60 min)
https://healthleaderforge.blogspot.com/2019/07/president-and-chief-experience-officer.html
Why: I met Jake at the 2019 ACHE conference. We were both attending a session on mentorship and happened to sit next to each other. We struck up a conversation about his consulting business, and how he applies the lessons he learned while working at Disney to improve the patient experience, and of course I invited him to be a guest on the Health Leader Forge. Worth the listen!
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