RWL Newsletter #51
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! Summer is officially here on the Seacoast and we are making the most of the warm months. I hope you are enjoying your summer. Here's a few leadership links to contemplate on a warm weekend!
Read
What: Reid Hoffman, The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age (slideshare)
https://www.slideshare.net/reidhoffman/the-alliance-a-visual-summary
Why: Reid Hoffman is the founder of LinkedIn. I read his previous book, The Start-Up of You, and I thought it was quite useful and insightful. I would recommend it to any professional. I have not read The Alliance yet, but I have scanned this slideshare and I think it is worth your time. I plan to order the book myself in the near future ( you can download the first chapter here: http://www.theallianceframework.com/uploads/7/8/2/9/7829688/_the-alliance_chapter.pdf ). The core message of this book is that the employee-employer relationship is a bit dishonest. Instead we should all take on the perspective of doing a "tour of duty", with the option to do follow on tours if those tours are mutually beneficial. In other words, the relationship becomes much more of a contractual alliance for a set time frame. I've always had an interest in virtual organizations, particularly ones with these sorts of fluid relationships. This isn't so far from many of the relationships we see in hospitals or in academia.
Watch
What: Michael Jordan's Top 10 Rules For Success (9 minutes)
https://youtu.be/NidqtkXq9Yg
Why: I'm not a big sports fan, but I have always been fascinated by Michael Jordan and his work ethic. This is a fun compilation of interviews that are motivating.
Listen
What: Free Thoughts Podcast, Stories from Putin’s Economist (1 hr, 8 min)
https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts/stories-putins-economist
Why: This is a fascinating look at the thought process of Vladimir Putin regarding economic freedom following the collapse of the Soviet Union and how we got to where we are today with Russian relations. I enlisted in the Army in April of 1989, only about five months before the fall of the Berlin wall. For the first 12 years of my military career, all of the notional bad guys we talked about were some variation of the Soviet military, or a Soviet client. Most Millenials don't remember Russia when it was the center of the USSR, and they don't remember the USSR at all except from history books and James Bond films. The conversation with Andrei Illarionov is fascinating at the macro level, thinking about how Putin as a leader was seeking greater economic liberalism. You can take this story down to the micro level and think about transitions of leadership, how to redirect organizations when the environment changes, and how the bureaucracy within an organization that kept it running in the old environment can obstruct the new way forward (think Clayton Christianson's The Innovator's Dilemma). Great listen - check it out.
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