We hosted Paul Levy in our Practicing Management class today. The class was an intimate gathering with only about 20 other students. Paul is the President and CEO of Beth Israel.

Key takeaways of the talk:

• how to stay productive - whenever something hits your inbox, immediately do it. Don’t file it or store it for later
• The best teacher, and best manager, has a good dose of empathy
• Why is learning frustrating? Because you need to shift your framework to understand new things
• Learning always follows three steps: interest, frustration, and then pleasure
• Paul’s management philosophy - the manager is responsible for creating an environment where people can learn
• People want to, and can, set their own performance goals and metrics, and these will undoubtedly surpass any marker you as a manager will set
• don’t have a meeting without an agenda don’t leave a mtg without an understanding of next steps and who will do them and by what date

Paul was a great speaker, and really engaged the audience. The class went by really quickly, I found myself wishing we could spend a little more time with him. It seems like Paul would indeed make a great boss!