White wine, fast cars, career changing, and grief.
RWL #336
Greetings from the Last Homely House! My wife and I went to a work function for her job yesterday at Flag Hill Distillery and Winery in Lee, NH, which is a couple of miles from our house. We hadn’t been there since before the pandemic (in the before times, as it were). It was great to go back and appreciate this little gem we have practically in our backyard. At the end of the event, the vintner (sorry I didn’t catch his name) gave us a tour of the grounds and their operations. He spoke with such passion about wine making and distilling, I was completely captivated. If you’re already thinking, “Wine making in New Hampshire? This is going to be some bad juice…” you are in the majority. The vintner explained that if you think of good wine as hierarchically topped by dry reds, then you would be right. We’re likely never going to make good red wine in New England. The conditions aren’t right for it. But, he argued, parts of New England are potentially world class for growing grapes to make aromatic white wines. This makes sense because Germany makes fabulous white wines, and our weather is similar. And keep in mind, California wines were not competitive in the world market until 1976 when California wines competed successfully in Paris in a blind tasting against French wines, so it takes time, but it is possible.
One of the points he made which I found insightful (and obvious, in retrospect, as most insightful points are) is that regions that are good for growing grapes for red wine are not good for growing white, and vice versa. So, just as New England is not good for growing grapes for red wines, Sonoma, Napa, etc., are not optimal for growing grapes for white wine. The big California wineries make white wines, but they do so to round out their portfolio, not because they have a competitive advantage in whites. So the North East conceptually has a potential competitive advantage in white wine, while California has its in red. His recommendation was to drink the wines made from the grapes that grow the best in the region you are visiting. He also went off on chardonnay as being the worst white wine. He said it was like making wine out of chalk. I hate to admit I have always liked chardonnay… or at least thought I did. Probably because my palate is not particularly well trained.
I love listening to people who are passionate about their work talk. It’s a major reason why I love teaching about business, rather than being a practitioner. I can’t really imagine doing what he does. It would not appeal to me except in a wild flight of fantasy. But I could sit for hours and listen to someone like him talk about it. Especially if we could talk over a couple of glasses of wine. I also enjoy talking with people in other industries - healthcare of course, but manufacturing, other services, etc. It is a joy to get that second hand exposure to someone else’s bliss. I get to talk to people who are passionate about what they do all the time, and that is a real privilege.
If you’re in the area, I do recommend a visit to Flag Hill. And with that, here are this week’s links. See you Sunday with another essay. As usual, willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: Anti-Mimetic, Lamborghini vs. Ferrari—The Hidden Story of Desire
Why: Did you know Lamborghini was a tractor manufacturer before it became the premiere sports car manufacturer? This is a fun story about how Ferruccio Lamborghini added making sports cars to his portfolio after being spurned by Enzo Ferrari when he tried to tell Ferrari a way to improve his cars’ performance. It also has a very good lesson in recognizing when to stop on the road of competition - Lamborghini refused to let his cars race against Ferrari’s in his lifetime. This is a good business lesson on competition alongside one on innovation. Makes me want to go from being a wine maker to a sports car manufacturer, or maybe a wine maker-sports car manufacturer. But that might just be me.
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What: HBR, 4 Strategies to Prepare for a Late-Career Shift
https://hbr.org/2023/08/4-strategies-to-prepare-for-a-late-career-shift
Why: I’ve studied the career shift of military officers leaving the Military Health System and looking for jobs in civilian organizations and I saw many of the challenges described in this article. Even though the officers had medical experience, they faced challenges trying to convince civilian employers that they could lead in a civilian environment. This has some good advice for people thinking about making a career shift, regardless of how senior they are. We should always be ready to make such a shift. You never know when you might need to.
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What: Joshua D. Gottlieb, Maria Polyakova, Hugh Shiplett, Kevin Rinz, Victoria Udalova, Who Values Human Capitalists’ Human Capital? The Earnings and Labor Supply of U.S. Physicians
Why: The link above is to a research brief on the impact of government policies on physician allocation. Physician income is tied to public policy - especially Medicare - because Medicare reimbursement makes up a large part of earnings across the healthcare system including physicians, and private payers tend to follow Medicare reimbursement.
We use new administrative data to measure physicians’ earnings and estimate the influence of healthcare policies on these earnings, physicians’ labor supply, and allocation of talent… We find that these policies in turn affect the type and quantity of medical care physicians supply in the short run; retirement timing in the medium run; and earnings affect specialty choice in the long run.
The boldface is mine. I was just talking about this with a hospital CEO last week and argued this point, admittedly without the proof this article provides. If we have a physician shortage in primary care (we do), it is largely the fault of the way the government and the American Medical Association have organized the RBRVS system of reimbursement. Physician compensation is largely not market based. Government policy decisions have led to shortages in primary care and shortages of physicians in rural areas. I remember one pediatrician who was in a leadership role in a group practice telling me that she knew ophthalmologists in her practice made three times her salary, and her thought was, they don’t work three times as hard as I do. There are some problems with that logic - construction workers arguably work much harder than physicians and they make a fraction of what physicians make, so hard work isn’t a determinant of wages in a market-based system. Supply and demand determine wages in a market-based system. But in our system, the Federal government distorts physician income through the Medicare system by compensating specialists more than primary providers. If we had a market-based system, compensation for primary care would be higher, and compensation for rural-based practices would be higher. More markets are usually the answer when we have an issue of allocation.
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Watch
What: Jordan Peterson, How To Know Yourself (10 min)
Why: What I like about Peterson is his main theme of taking responsibility for our selves and our lives. In this video he talks about looking at yourself dispassionately and asking what you are drawn to and what you avoid, what you are afraid of that is keeping you from action, and what goals you have and why. I’ll be writing on this theme for the BITW article this weekend.
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Listen
What: Honestly with Bari Weiss, How to Live After Profound Loss (87 min)
Why: I attended a funeral last week and I have to admit, I never really know how to talk with someone who has just experienced loss. It’s always a bit stressful. This interview tackles the issue of death and loss head on. The guest, Colin Campbell, lost both of his children in a car accident with a drunk driver. He talks about how poorly our society prepares us to deal with death, and how to be helpful to people who are grieving the death of a loved one. It’s not exactly a fun and games interview, but it is one worth listening to because it really gives some useful insight into how to handle these sorts of situations, and also useful for thinking about how to deal with grief in our own lives. Death is one of the few certainties in life.