Leadership Economics

Aaron Phipps and Spencer Clouatre
  • 5.0 (11)
  • Management

Most leadership advice is a collection of motivational stories or checklists pulled from someone else's company. Leadership Economics starts from a different premise: that leadership is an economic problem at its core, a question of scarce resources, incomplete information, and choices made under uncertainty. Aaron Phipps, an economist at West Point, and Spencer Clouatre, a retired Army Colonel and former Special Operations aviator, work through new ideas about how people actually decide, lead, and create, and they sit down with leaders from across sectors to hear how those leaders think about the challenges in front of them. The goal is not hacks or formulas. It is a sharper way of seeing your own situation, so you can diagnose what is actually wrong rather than what is most visible.

Episodes

  1. Sep 9

    Leadership Is Simple But Difficult, with COL(R) Jay Powers

    Aaron and Spencer talk with COL(R) Jay Powers, former commander of 5th Special Forces Group and now a Scaling Up coach and high school wrestling coach, about why leadership is simple but difficult and why a leader's priorities so rarely reach the last person in the organization. Jay Powers and Spencer were West Point classmates. Jay went into the infantry, then Special Forces, and spent most of his 26-year career in 5th Special Forces Group, where he led at every level from a 12-soldier team to command of the entire Group. Since retiring in 2022 he has taught leadership through the University of South Florida, coached business owners through Scaling Up at his firm, Legion Consulting, opened a D1 Training facility, and become the head wrestling coach at Plant High School. Jay's central idea is what he calls the paradox of leadership: it is simple but difficult. He teaches four foundations of leadership, integrity, respect for others, accepting responsibility, and setting the example, and he says they are necessary but do not make anyone a good leader. Something like six thousand leadership books are written each year, so the challenge is not knowing what to do but doing it. People are influenced most by what a leader does, then by what the leader measures and decides, and last by what the leader says. Two stories from Jay's own career show how hard the doing gets as an organization grows. As Group commander he had three priorities. He talked about them constantly and walked the Group every Wednesday to see how the work was going. On one of those walks he met a junior leader in a key position who had no idea what the three priorities were. In Iraq in 2009 his headquarters made building local relationships the number one priority, with a written order, weekly briefings, and metrics. The team doing it best did not know what the program was. His explanation is that the number of connections in an organization grows much faster than the number of people. His answer is fewer priorities, as when Admiral McRaven took over SOCOM and named three things for 70,000 people, and his rule is that you only prioritize when you say what is not important. The conversation also covers September 11, when Jay's team received deployment orders marked "indefinite" where the return date belonged. It covers why time is a person's most important resource and people are an organization's, so that a leader who spends time developing other leaders is investing the one in the other, and it covers Scaling Up's four areas of people, strategy, execution, and cash. Jay's advice for tomorrow is to build feedback loops that tell you how you are actually affecting people, because the more senior you get, the more likely your impact differs from what you think it is. Mentioned in this episode 5th Special Forces Group, the 101st Airborne Division, and Ranger School The MacArthur Leadership Award (2002) and the Phoenix Award (2024) Legion Consulting, Scaling Up, D1 Training, and Plant High School wrestling The University of South Florida, the University of Tampa, and Tampa Bay Wave Todd Howard on leading by example (Episode 9) Coach Doug Morrow, Spencer's high school football coach Admiral William McRaven and his three priorities at SOCOM Pat Work, "at some point your soldiers don't recognize your voice in the dark" The Army's mission command philosophy and its principles Verne Harnish, Scaling Up, and Bob Verdun Jim Collins, Good to Great and Great by Choice The Night Stalker Creed Kirkuk, Iraq, 2009, and "180 Lunches" Featured guest: Jay Powers — Jay Powers is a 26-year Army veteran who retired as a Green Beret colonel in 2022 after a distinguished career leading within U.S. Army Special Forces and the broader special operations community. He brings deep expertise in leadership, planning, and operations developed through decades of experience solving complex international security challenges alongside interagency and coalition partners. Jay spent most of his career with 5th Special Forces Group, a unit regionally focused on the Middle East, where he led at every level from a 12-soldier A-Team to commanding the entire 2,500-Soldier Group. He deployed to the region ten times, including nine combat tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, where he led elite formations through some of the most demanding missions of the post-9/11 era. Since retiring from active duty, Jay has dedicated his work to developing leaders across business and athletics. He teaches leadership to business professionals through the University of South Florida's Office of Professional Education, advises business owners as a Scaling Up coach through his firm, Legion Consulting, and is an entrepreneur as a D1 Training franchise owner. He also serves as the head wrestling coach at Plant High School in Tampa. (Legion Consulting, Scaling Up coach profile) Subscribe to the newsletter — one short essay every other Tuesday: leadershipeconomics.com

  2. Aug 25

    Could AI Be a Good Leader?

    Aaron and Spencer ask A. Todd Howard, MetLife Investment Management's Head of Fixed Income - EMEA and a former Army Black Hawk pilot, whether an AI could ever be a good leader. His answer turns on accountability, soft information, and why commitment only counts when it costs something. Spencer opens this episode with thirty years of history. He and Todd Howard met as cadets, colliding on the sprint football field at West Point. They flew Black Hawks together as sister platoon leaders at Fort Bragg, then deployed to Bosnia. In the decades since, they have been close friends that help keep each other accountable. After the Army, Todd earned an MBA at Auburn and the CFA designation, and built a twenty-year career in fixed income that now has him leading MetLife Investment Management's fixed income business in EMEA from London. The conversation starts with a translation between his two careers. The helicopter pilot who has planned well stays in front of the aircraft, so navigation and radio calls never set him back. The portfolio manager does the same thing with information, anticipating the sequence of events, breaking the world into chunks where his team has a competitive advantage, and synthesizing more input than any one person could hold. Todd is candid that managing informational input, and knowing when it is biased, has become the hardest part of modern life, for portfolio managers and for parents alike. From there the episode turns to developing people. Todd's approach to younger teammates is to empower and then challenge, giving them rope, real problems with lead time, and commander's intent rather than an answer key. He makes the case for patience, noting that he did not start in investment management until he was 32, and argues that leaders who delegate development to HR undermine the very trust they are trying to build, because people notice quickly what their leaders' choices actually prioritize. The AI thread runs through the whole conversation and sharpens as it goes. Aaron argues that AI cannot lead because leadership is an act of creation under ambiguity, and the fuzziness in how humans imagine the future is precisely what the models lack. The three of them work through soft information, the kind of character judgment a regional banker makes across a table, and through whether AI helps leaders frame trade-offs. Todd brings a portfolio manager's eye to the AI CapEx cycle, laying out why the day is coming when CFOs ask what all that spending actually returned. Then Aaron asks the question the episode is named for by inviting Todd to imagine an AI as his boss. Todd's answer arrives immediately. He would know it is fake. The accountability you feel toward a person, the friend already outside your door for the morning run, cannot be manufactured by something you know has nothing at stake. Spencer names the underlying economics as the currency of commitment, valuable precisely because it is costly, and Aaron traces the question back to Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. Todd's parting advice is the most basic leadership principle that people do not actually do: lead by example, staying in it with your people regardless of rank or title, so they see your commitment rather than hear about it. Mentioned in this episode Yuval Noah Harari The Thomas Jefferson documentary on Netflix Demis Hassabis, "we've essentially found a way to make sand think," and AlphaFold Coach Bobby Knight Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments Rob Shaw on character and soft information in lending (Episode 6) Ben Summers, leadership as how others feel when you're in the room (Episode 7) The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment Anthropic, Hebbia, ChatGPT, and Copilot Microsoft Meta and Instagram The Norwegian World Cup team's rowing celebration Featured guest: A. Todd Howard, CFA — A. Todd Howard is MetLife Investment Management's (MIM) Head of Fixed Income - EMEA based in London. He is also a portfolio manager for emerging market debt strategies, multi-sector fixed income and the lead portfolio manager for the impact bond strategies. Todd joined MIM in September 2017, in connection with the acquisition of Logan Circle Partners (LCP). He served as a portfolio manager for the emerging market debt and multi-sector fixed income strategies at LCP. Prior to joining LCP in 2007, he was a trading specialist for Delaware Investments international bond group, where his responsibilities included non-dollar bonds and currencies. Prior to joining Delaware Investments, he was a U.S. Army Captain – Aviation Branch, where he piloted Black Hawk helicopters. He has over 20 years of industry experience. Todd received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Master of Business Administration from Auburn University. He is a CFA® charterholder. (MetLife Investment Management) Subscribe to the newsletter — one short essay every other Tuesday: leadershipeconomics.com

  3. Aug 11

    Uncertainty vs. Ambiguity and the Five Ways They Derail Leaders

    Aaron and Spencer draw the line between uncertainty, which the brain treats like a game, and ambiguity, which it treats like a threat, then introduce DICAO, the five failure modes ambiguity can produce in leaders and teams. In this episode, Spencer and Aaron expand on the Leadership Economics framework. Spencer opens by reviewing the show so far: scarcity, the production function, the AIME framework of allocation, information, motivation, and execution, and the six-principle playbook. This episode is the next layer down, what happens when you try to run the playbook and it does not work the way it should. The core distinction is between uncertainty and ambiguity. Uncertainty is a die you know: six sides, equal odds, you just do not know this roll. Ambiguity is a bag of dice you do not know: you cannot even say what the distribution of outcomes is, so you cannot connect what you do to what you get. Aaron walks through what two decades of neuroscience since the MRI has shown, that the two are processed by different systems in the brain. Uncertainty can raise dopamine and motivate, the anticipation of a piano competition where you know how you prepared but not where you will place. Ambiguity does the opposite: it suppresses dopamine, raises cortisol, and reads as threat, and a high intolerance for it shows up alongside anxiety, depression, and OCD. The good news is that tolerance for ambiguity is trainable. Spencer takes it to special operations, where you train across enough scenarios that whatever comes through the door has an answer, and where a great teammate is the best insurance policy against ambiguity. Aaron takes it to ordinary life, the first busted car door you ever have to get repaired versus the tenth. From there the episode lays out the three layers of the Leadership Economics model. AIME is what you are always already doing. The playbook is the principles that make those tasks go well. DICAO is why we do not run the playbook even when we know it. Along the way they name marginal value uncertainty, the mathematical way of defining ambiguity, and Spencer tells the story of the boat he and Jill bought for the Great Loop, a marginal analysis that looked right, turned out wrong, and ended the right way because they were willing to experiment and willing to pull the plug. Then they walk through DICAO, symptom by symptom. Discord: allocations drift toward the low-ambiguity option, the way teachers under high-stakes test incentives drill test problems instead of using the teaching methods they trained in, or the way whole Army companies train for the fitness test by only practicing the fitness test. Inconsequence: effort collapses when people cannot see how their input connects to any outcome, from a daughter who cannot study for a test with no defined material, to academia, to the soldiers of Black Hearts. Complexity: paralysis by analysis, decoy pricing, 187 salad dressings, and why the military always briefs three courses of action. Absence: failing to keep learning the production function as the world changes, from Blockbuster and Kodak to Uber watching Waymo, and the harder version closer to home, aging parents who are not aware that they are not aware. Overconfidence: the one failure mode that sometimes pays, because acting under ambiguity generates information, until refusing to look back turns confidence into bias. They close on the point of the whole exercise: you cannot eliminate ambiguity, but you can always reduce it and raise your tolerance for it. These are principles for diagnosing why the playbook is not working, not another task list. Mentioned in this episode Rob Shaw, "randomness is a lack of information about the system" (Episode 6) Ben Summers, allocating to the point of failure and the weapons-cache campaign (Episode 7) Adam Smith and the invisible hand DraftKings The Marine Corps lava monster commercial The 160th Night Stalkers, "I'd rather die than quit" Black Hearts by Jim Frederick Ben Britt, West Point economics student and Ranger School platoon mate of Spencer's Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, decoy pricing Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice Richard Thaler and behavioral economics, Nudge Blockbuster and Netflix Kodak and digital photography Uber, Lyft, Waymo, and Tesla Anthropic General Martin Dempsey, the bias to act Subscribe to the newsletter — one short essay every other Tuesday: leadershipeconomics.com

  4. Jul 28

    How Others Feel When You're in the Room

    Ben Summers, head of Vanguard UK and one of the original authors of the economic ideas behind this show, on shutting down a business without abandoning the people in it, what a booby-trapped weapons cache taught him about letting success validate your own decisions, and why leadership comes down to how others feel when you're in the room. Ben Summers is Head of Vanguard UK. He served nearly 13 years as an Army officer, deploying twice to Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne Division as an aviation officer, and finished his service as an assistant professor of economics at West Point, where he taught leadership, economics, and finance and led the Academy's Scholar Programme. While he was teaching there he was one of the people who first wrote down the simple but powerful economic ideas that became the Leadership Economics playbook, which makes him a plank holder of this show's framework rather than a guest being introduced to it. Spencer mentored him as a cadet. The conversation opens with his own definition of the job: leadership is how others feel when you're in the room. He describes threading the needle between challenge and support with the image of running a hill at West Point, where a leader can sprint ahead and shout, call the whole thing off, or sweat it out beside the team. From there, Ben walks through shutting down Vanguard's German business, where the sunk cost logic was clear as day and the human dimension was not, and where he concluded that the most caring thing available to him was helping the organization be honest. He admits he then held the people at arm's length until a leader on the ground told him, "Ben, that wasn't your best visit." He talks about designing off-ramps before you need them, staging capital on a new offer until it earned the next tranche, and firing bullets before cannonballs. The hardest part of the episode is a mission he planned in Afghanistan in 2012. A campaign against weapons caches along the Pakistan border worked so well, so fast, that the team kept extending it, until a cache was booby trapped and ten people were killed. His reading of it is unsparing: there was no room for healthy divergence, and the unit was using its success to validate its decision-making process. That leads into the case for diverging before you converge, and for leaders secure enough to absorb the friction that divergence creates. The last third is about trust. Ben separates trust from warmth, splits it into credibility and the humility to be convinced you are wrong, and tells the story of watching dashboards that were green on the surface and red underneath. His team now hunts for the brutal facts on purpose. Aaron argues that trust is finally about alignment, and Ben closes on the hedgehog: passion, unique talent, and what the organization actually needs, aligned so that the motivation is intrinsic rather than bolted on. Mentioned in this episode Jocko Willink, "Discipline will give you freedom" Annie Duke on quitting and off-ramps Jeff Bezos and the one-way door / two-way door framework Jim Collins, Good to Great; "fire bullets, then cannonballs" and the hedgehog concept Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard Sean McMahon, co-author of the original economic ideas at West Point General David Petraeus Everett Spain, "leaders run towards the smoke" Josh Richardson, "great is just good over time" (Episode 3) Rob Shaw, "eat your frogs in the morning" (Episode 6) The 160th Night Stalkers Adam Smith and the brewer, the baker, and the butcher Maya Angelou on how you made people feel Featured guest: Ben Summers — Ben Summers is Head of Vanguard UK, where we serve millions of investors directly with our Personal Investor platform and indirectly through advisors and other intermediaries. Mr. Summers joined Vanguard in 2019 to lead the company's New Ways of Working initiative and most recently served as chief of staff to the former CEO, Tim Buckley. Prior to joining Vanguard, Mr. Summers served nearly 13 years as an officer in the US Army. His last role was an assistant professor of economics at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he taught courses in leadership, economics, and finance and led the Academy's Scholar Programme. In 2019, he received the William F. Murdy Award for Teaching Excellence. Before teaching at West Point, Mr. Summers deployed twice to Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne Division and held a range of leadership roles as an aviation officer. From 2012 to 2013, he led a turnaround of an aviation maintenance company and was awarded the General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award for his efforts. (Vanguard UK) Subscribe to the newsletter — one short essay every other Tuesday: leadershipeconomics.com

  5. Jul 14

    The Only Deal Breaker Is Character

    Rob Shaw, founding President and CEO of Echelon Bank and a 27-year Tampa Bay banker, on the soft information behind every good loan, the culture of a brand-new bank, and why character is the only hard no. Rob Shaw has spent 27 years in Tampa Bay banking, from AmSouth's management training program through leadership roles at Northern Trust, Signature Bank, USAmeriBank, NorthStar Bank, and Flagship Community Bank. In April 2026 he opened Echelon Bank, the first new bank in Tampa Bay in five years, with a founding team of bankers he has known for decades and his West Point classmate Jonathan Field as board chair. The conversation starts in physics and works its way to banking as a way of getting at the truth about a borrower. Rob walks through the five C's of credit, why character is the only hard no, and the soft information that is hard to discern just from a FICO score. The few loans he regrets, he says, all trace back to ignoring his gut, or that "hard-to-define" information. He also explains why he tells his team they are in the manufacturing business, turning their neighbors' deposits into loans, and why he wants problems on the table early rather than handled quietly. Spencer extends the currency of commitment idea from earlier episodes, and Rob explains the echelon formation that gave the bank its name. He closes with the advice he wishes he had taken sooner, in his own words: it's later than you think. Mentioned in this episode Isaac Newton and predictive equations The three-body problem The Heisenberg uncertainty principle AmSouth Bank, now part of Regions Bank FICO and the Fair Isaac Corporation; TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax Elon Musk David Feaster of Signature Bank ("eat your frogs in the morning") Greg Olivier, Echelon Bank board member Jonathan Field, Echelon Bank board chair Major Steven Reich and the Night Stalkers; A Soldier's Story (Fox Sports) The Tour de France and the echelon formation Featured guest: Rob Shaw — Following an honorable discharge after serving as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Finance Corps, Mr. Shaw began his banking career in 1998 with AmSouth Bank as a Management Associate. After completing the bank's executive training program in Birmingham, AL, he relocated to Tampa and quickly advanced from credit analyst and underwriter into commercial relationship management. He later joined Northern Trust as a Commercial and Private Banking Officer before moving into the community banking sector as the Clearwater Market Executive for Signature Bank. Following the bank's sale, he joined USAmeriBank as Pinellas County Team Leader, where he spent six years helping build one of the region's top-performing banking organizations. In 2014, Mr. Shaw became the Pinellas County Market President for NorthStar Bank and was later promoted to Senior Lender and COO. After the bank's sale in 2017, he partnered with two veteran bankers to acquire Flagship Community Bank in 2019. From the capital raise and due diligence process through post-acquisition leadership, he played a key role in the bank's growth and success, serving as Senior Loan Officer and overseeing business development through 2024. Over the course of his career, Mr. Shaw has personally closed hundreds of loans totaling approximately $530 million and has led teams responsible for well over $1 billion in commercial real estate and C&I lending transactions. Mr. Shaw earned a degree in Physics Engineering from United States Military Academy at West Point, holds an MBA from University of Phoenix, and is a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is now the President and CEO of Echelon Bank in Clearwater, Florida. (Echelon Bank, Echelon Bank on LinkedIn) Subscribe to the newsletter — one short essay every other Tuesday: leadershipeconomics.com

  6. Jun 30

    The Person You're Trying to Become

    West Point economist Dean Dudley on how the best leaders reduce ambiguity, shape who their people become, and turn conflict into a problem disciplined thinking can actually solve. Dr. Dean Dudley retires from West Point this month after 33 years teaching economics and game theory to more than 33,000 cadets. He returns to the show to trace one thread from identity to game theory to the beaches of Normandy: what a leader actually does when the models stop working. The conversation runs from George Akerlof's identity economics, the idea that leaders and institutions can move the "bliss point" people measure themselves against, through the currency of commitment, to a working definition of the job itself: good leaders reduce ambiguity. Dean closes with the two case studies he teaches, D-Day and Gettysburg, showing how the side with the better model, not the bigger army, wins. Both anchor his forthcoming book, Game Theory and the Art of War, out in August. Along the way: why your team plays rock-paper-scissors against you and already knows you play rock, why a marriage is a harder allocation problem than a trip to Walmart, and why the most useful thing a leader can do is listen down. Mentioned in this episode George Akerlof, Nobel laureate, the "lemons" market and identity economics Identity Economics by George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton (recommended on air) Adam Smith, the invisible hand Sigmund Freud, id, ego, and superego John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, zero-sum game theory John Nash, the Nash equilibrium and non-zero-sum games Roger Myerson, Nobel laureate game theorist who reviewed Dean's book Bayesian and Bayesian-Nash equilibria Jordan Peterson, "chaos" Pema Chodron, "ungroundedness" The Night Stalkers (160th SOAR) creed D-Day: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt The Battle of Gettysburg Game Theory and the Art of War by Dean Dudley (West Point Press, out August 2026) Featured guest: Dean Dudley — Dr. Dean Dudley is an Associate Professor of Economics at the United States Military Academy at West Point. A recipient of the West Point Superintendent's Award for Excellence, he has spent over thirty years teaching game theory and strategic choice to future military leaders. His research translates complex mathematical models into practical tools for both battlefield tactics and corporate boardroom strategy. (Game Theory and the Art of War, pre-order (West Point Press, August 2026), West Point directory) Subscribe to the newsletter — one short essay every other Tuesday: leadershipeconomics.com

  7. Jun 16

    Your Unit of Reward Will Change

    Aaron and Spencer explore Andrew "Drew" Barnes's path from the job site to the classroom within the Leadership Economics framework, from why his students are paid from the neck up to negotiation as a master skill and why your unit of reward shifts from dollars to minutes. Most construction management programs are built around contracts, scheduling, and cost control. Drew Barnes built his around negotiation, communication, and the soft skills that firms say they need most. Drew is an Assistant Professor of Construction Management at the University of North Florida. Before academia, he spent five years with Dan Ryan Builders, where he developed a complete curriculum for preparing new hires to operate and lead well. We follow Drew's path from the job site to the classroom and explore the ideas he teaches: why construction management is a management degree and his students are paid from the neck up, why Getting to Yes anchors his graduate labor course, how your unit of reward shifts from dollars to minutes, what the scroll is really costing his students, and why the leaders who perform best have mastered their inner experience. What we cover The lumber-gopher origin: from carrying boards for a framing crew at 16 to a Ph.D. in construction management Mentorship that moves you forward: Edwin, and "how long do I have with you?" The missing curriculum: why soft skills, not just technical skills, decide who leads What even counts as a soft skill, and the trouble with teaching it at scale Reputation, fair prices, and trade partners: trust as the real currency of a job site Negotiation as a master skill, and why Getting to Yes anchors his graduate course The unit of reward: how it shifts from dollars to minutes, and what that shift costs Social media and scarce minutes: the brushing-teeth math and what the scroll really costs Everything is created twice: the blueprint, and controlling your inner experience Mentioned Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher and William Ury Harvard Business Review on Negotiation The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Garth Brooks, "Unanswered Prayers" David Hume and Adam Smith (Spencer's founding-philosophers aside) Featured guest: Andrew "Drew" Barnes — Andrew Barnes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Construction Management at the University of North Florida (UNF). After receiving his bachelor's degree in Construction Management from Brigham Young University in 2013, he spent five years working in Raleigh, North Carolina for the mid-Atlantic homebuilder, Dan Ryan Builders (now DRB Group) as a senior purchasing agent and later as the corporate instructional designer. In 2018, he left the workforce to attend graduate school at Virginia Tech where he received his Ph.D. in Environmental Design and Planning. Drew loves teaching young men and women how to build homes, bridges, buildings, hospitals, roads, and, most of all, themselves. His research focuses on construction management education, managerial workforce development, and residential construction with an emphasis on offsite delivery methods. (UNF Faculty Profile, LinkedIn) Subscribe to the newsletter — one short essay every other Tuesday: leadershipeconomics.com

  8. Jun 2

    Great Is Good Over Time

    Aaron and Spencer explore LTC (R) Josh Richardson's experiences and leadership lessons within the Leadership Economics framework, from the pace of trust to knowing when to stay the course or pivot, and why great is just good over time. Episode three of Leadership Economics, and our first guest. Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Josh Richardson is a West Point graduate, a Ranger, and a 75th Ranger Regiment veteran who now directs the General Wayne A. Downing Scholarship Program and helps build cultures of safety in American plants and factories with DEKRA. He joins Aaron and Spencer to put the playbook to work on a real career, from pickup basketball as a market to the pace of trust, the explore-versus-exploit problem of when to stay the course or pivot, and his closing philosophy that great is just good over time. What we cover Pickup basketball as a market: coordination, reading people, and being the role player who makes the team betterThe pace of trust: why trust between strangers cannot be rushed, and why it is built in drips and lost in bucketsTrust and lived experience: the Antonio story, and why "trust the system" is a harder hurdle for some than for othersWest Point as a pressure cooker: preparation as the muscle to keep going, and why time and experience make the leaderExplore versus exploit: when to stay the course and when to pivot, a problem with no clean mathematical answer, and the place of free willRules of the game: why leaders should expect people to test the rules, Douglas North, and the 1982 Ewing goaltending callTactical patience at scale: why large organizations struggle to mentor person to person, and the tension between moving fast and pacing yourselfA different lens on leadership: building a culture of safety so everyone goes home, and why great is good over timeMentioned Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American MindDouglas North, on institutions and the rules of the gameKevin Plank (Under Armour), "trust is built in drips and lost in buckets"The 1982 NCAA championship, Patrick Ewing's goaltending and Michael Jordan's game-winnerThe General Wayne A. Downing Scholarship ProgramDEKRA Strategic ConsultingFeatured guest: Josh Richardson — Josh retired in 2023 after 23 years of Army service including assignments leading units in the 75th Ranger Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, and NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps based out of Innsworth, England. He currently divides his time between two ventures: he is a Principal Consultant with DEKRA Strategic Consulting where he develops leaders to drive success through a culture of safety excellence; he also serves as the Director (Operations) for the General Wayne A. Downing Scholarship Program where he deploys a non-profit investment to build leaders to serve at the highest level of U.S. national security and defense. (DEKRA Organizational Safety and Reliability, General Wayne A. Downing Scholarship Program, Madison Policy Forum, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, CTC Sentinel)Subscribe to the newsletter — one short essay every other Tuesday: leadershipeconomics.com

  9. May 19

    The 6 Principles of the Economic Leader

    Aaron and Spencer turn the AIME framework into a working playbook, walking through the six economic principles every leader actually uses: opportunity cost, marginal thinking, incentives, trade and trust, information, and command and control. Episode two of Leadership Economics. Aaron and Spencer build on the AIME framework from the pilot and lay out the six economic principles that turn it into a working playbook — the tools every leader actually reaches for. The episode walks through each principle with examples ranging from the sunk-cost trap of a deteriorating boat to a randomized Army recruitment experiment that saved tens of millions of dollars. What we cover A quick AIME recap (Allocation, Information, Motivation, Execution) and why the framework needs a playbook of working principles underneath Principle 1: trade-offs and opportunity cost — every choice closes other doors Principle 2: marginal analysis — sunk costs are sunk; the next dollar is the only one that matters Principle 3: incentives matter, and they go far beyond money — culture, identity, and meaning all signal what people pursue Principle 4: trade is a win-win, and it runs on trust — markets and relationships work the same way Principle 5: information clears the market — read what people are doing, build structures that surface honest signals, and design real experiments Principle 6: command and control — the centralized-vs-decentralized trade-off and the principal-agent problem in mission command Mentioned Ray Dalio, Principles — radical honesty as a cultural mechanism for surfacing bad news Black Hearts and the West Point MX400 leadership curriculum — mission command, principal-agent failure, decentralization Carl von Clausewitz — the fog of war as a metaphor for information under uncertainty Adam Smith — the invisible hand and coordination through self-interest Subscribe to the newsletter — one short essay every other Tuesday: leadershipeconomics.com

  10. Apr 28

    How we got here and why leadership is an economics problem

    In the pilot, Aaron and Spencer argue that great leaders are quietly good economists, and introduce AIME (Allocation, Information, Motivation, Execution) as the four focal points of a leader's job. The pilot episode of Leadership Economics. Aaron and Spencer trace how the framework took shape. Spencer brings the operational side, a career flying assault helicopters and teaching at West Point. Aaron brings the academic side, an economics dissertation on incentives. Together they lay out the case for treating leadership as an economics problem and introduce the AIME framework (Allocation, Information, Motivation, Execution) as the four focal points of a leader's job. Every future episode will return to one or more of those pillars. What we cover Why the leadership shelf is full of books but short on a definitionWhy first principles thinking, the way Newton built physics, beats pattern-matching from observed greatsSpencer's path from enlisted combat engineer to special operations aviation to the West Point Economics DepartmentAaron's dissertation on teacher performance incentives, and the puzzle of why big financial incentives so rarely workThe Joint Allocation Meeting (JAM) in Afghanistan, a single decision that touched all four AIME functions at onceA first look at AIME: Allocation, Information, Motivation, ExecutionMentioned Adam Smith and David Hume, the intellectual lineage of treating human behavior with rigorThe Hero with a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell), Aaron's closing reference to the "coordinated soul"Subscribe to the newsletter — one short essay every other Tuesday: leadershipeconomics.com

  • 10 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

Most leadership advice is a collection of motivational stories or checklists pulled from someone else's company. Leadership Economics starts from a different premise: that leadership is an economic problem at its core, a question of scarce resources, incomplete information, and choices made under uncertainty. Aaron Phipps, an economist at West Point, and Spencer Clouatre, a retired Army Colonel and former Special Operations aviator, work through new ideas about how people actually decide, lead, and create, and they sit down with leaders from across sectors to hear how those leaders think about the challenges in front of them. The goal is not hacks or formulas. It is a sharper way of seeing your own situation, so you can diagnose what is actually wrong rather than what is most visible.

Information

  • Creator
    Aaron Phipps and Spencer Clouatre
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Leadership Economics LLC
  • Show Website
    Leadership Economics