RWL Newsletter #48
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! When I was a hospital administrator, I used to joke that we could really have a smoothly operating hospital if we could just get rid of all the patients. Well, the University is running pretty smooth right now... In fact, I think I may be the only person on my floor of my building. It's a little spooky. (Pic is of the Oyster River, which flows through the backside of campus.)
So this week I thought I would do something a little different. I'm showcasing the work of Edmund Phelps. Phelps won the Nobel in Econ for his work on how to determine a nation's optimal savings level. He has since gone on to work on a variety of topics looking around what a society needs to create The Good Life and The Just Society for its citizens. These are among the most important questions we can ask as people living in community, and it is these questions that drew me to economics. I know, weird, right? I took the standard managerial econ class where we talked about supply and demand and equilibria. It makes you want to poke yourself in the eye with a sharp pencil. It's too bad the field doesn't bring out the big questions first, and then make you work backward to the technical stuff.
Leadership and management are a bit like that. Leadership and management are two sides of the same coin. Management, as I often say, is about getting the trains to run on time. Leadership is about getting the timely trains to go where they need to go. You can master the technical aspects of management, but leadership is about the big questions. Who do we serve? Where do we need to go as an organization to serve better? At the micro level, how do we create organizations that give our employees meaningful work that helps them flourish and fulfill their humanity?
Phelps is a macro economist, but thinking about the 30,000 foot level can help us think about the 5 foot level.
Read
What: New York Review of Books, Edmund Phelps, What Is Wrong with the West’s Economies?
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/08/13/what-wrong-wests-economies/
Why: In this excellent article, Phelps calls for "reform [that] places imagination and creativity at the center of economic life." A longer quote to entice you:
The good life as it is popularly conceived typically involves acquiring mastery in one’s work, thus gaining for oneself better terms—or means to rewards, whether material, like wealth, or nonmaterial—an experience we may call “prospering.” As humanists and philosophers have conceived it, the good life involves using one’s imagination, exercising one’s creativity, taking fascinating journeys into the unknown, and acting on the world—an experience I call “flourishing.” These gains are gains in experience, not in material reward, though material gains may be a means to the nonmaterial ends. As the writer Kabir Sehgal put it, “Money is like blood. You need it to live but it isn’t the point of life.”
Watch
What: Talks at Google, Edmund Phelps, Mass Flourishing
https://youtu.be/8AlK72Uggdw
Why: I stumbled across this Google Talk earlier this week, and it was what inspired me to do this themed letter. In this talk at Google he talks about the really big questions - how economics and justice intertwine to achieve The Good Life and the Just Society. This is what economics is really about, and unfortunately that fact gets lost in the details in most intro classes with all the graphs about supply and demand and optimization. The first 25 minutes are the most worthwhile, but the whole thing is good.
Listen
What: Econtalk, Phelps on Unemployment and the State of Macroeconomics
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/02/phelps_on_unemp.html
Why: from the interview -
There's never been a society in human history like the United States today--even today with unemployment--there's never been a time when creative people could use their creativity in extraordinarily exuberant and satisfying ways. Incredible environment for that psychologically satisfying human experience.
That's it for this week!
If you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
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 @bonicatalent .
Thanks for reading and see you next week!
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
Twitter: @bonicatalent
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor." - Henry David Thoreau