Leadership Economics Transistor (https://transistor.fm) https://feeds.transistor.fm/leadership-economics 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. Leadership Economics LLC 99068d39-f25c-5b1f-a010-b3fc8ae308bd yes en Tue, 19 May 2026 06:43:09 -0400 Tue, 19 May 2026 06:44:36 -0400 https://www.leadershipeconomics.com https://img.transistorcdn.com/xYhAz3M9To-2Y5PosRhiSAWQKI6KCIcmKzpWwx4XKWk/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:1400/h:1400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mYzA0/YjdkMzU2Y2UxNzg3/MjE3NzA2NGJkYzFi/NDU2NC5wbmc.jpg Leadership Economics https://www.leadershipeconomics.com episodic Aaron Phipps and Spencer Clouatre 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. Most leadership advice is a collection of motivational stories or checklists pulled from someone else's company. Leadership Economics, AIME framework, leadership, management, decision making, behavioral economics, organizational behavior, military leadership, West Point, Aaron Phipps, Spencer Clouatre, evidence-based leadership Aaron Phipps No No The 6 Principles of the Economic Leader 2 2 The 6 Principles of the Economic Leader full 92bd0c3b-3ccf-4618-9a6c-c78ad3d1c425 https://leadershipeconomics.com/podcasts/ep-2-six-principles/ 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

]]> 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

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 06:43:09 -0400 Aaron Phipps and Spencer Clouatre Aaron Phipps and Spencer Clouatre 3958 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

]]> opportunity cost, marginal analysis, sunk cost fallacy, incentives, mission command, principal-agent problem, information and prices, trade and trust, centralized versus decentralized, leadership playbook, six principles, Army recruitment RCT No How we got here and why leadership is an economics problem 1 1 How we got here and why leadership is an economics problem full 26fdb6ad-4cd2-4779-b15b-0086a1e06faf https://leadershipeconomics.com/podcasts/ep-1-pilot/ 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 definition
  • Why first principles thinking, the way Newton built physics, beats pattern-matching from observed greats
  • Spencer's path from enlisted combat engineer to special operations aviation to the West Point Economics Department
  • Aaron's dissertation on teacher performance incentives, and the puzzle of why big financial incentives so rarely work
  • The Joint Allocation Meeting (JAM) in Afghanistan, a single decision that touched all four AIME functions at once
  • A first look at AIME: Allocation, Information, Motivation, Execution

Mentioned

  • Adam Smith and David Hume, the intellectual lineage of treating human behavior with rigor
  • The 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

]]> 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 definition
  • Why first principles thinking, the way Newton built physics, beats pattern-matching from observed greats
  • Spencer's path from enlisted combat engineer to special operations aviation to the West Point Economics Department
  • Aaron's dissertation on teacher performance incentives, and the puzzle of why big financial incentives so rarely work
  • The Joint Allocation Meeting (JAM) in Afghanistan, a single decision that touched all four AIME functions at once
  • A first look at AIME: Allocation, Information, Motivation, Execution

Mentioned

  • Adam Smith and David Hume, the intellectual lineage of treating human behavior with rigor
  • The 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

]]> Tue, 28 Apr 2026 03:05:00 -0400 Aaron Phipps and Spencer Clouatre Aaron Phipps and Spencer Clouatre 2984 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 definition
  • Why first principles thinking, the way Newton built physics, beats pattern-matching from observed greats
  • Spencer's path from enlisted combat engineer to special operations aviation to the West Point Economics Department
  • Aaron's dissertation on teacher performance incentives, and the puzzle of why big financial incentives so rarely work
  • The Joint Allocation Meeting (JAM) in Afghanistan, a single decision that touched all four AIME functions at once
  • A first look at AIME: Allocation, Information, Motivation, Execution

Mentioned

  • Adam Smith and David Hume, the intellectual lineage of treating human behavior with rigor
  • The 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

]]> leadership, economics, leadership economics, AIME framework, Aaron Phipps, Spencer Clouatre, Leadership Economics podcast, leadership podcast, first principles thinking, decision making under uncertainty, military leadership, West Point, AIME framework introduction, Allocation, Information, Motivation, Execution, scarcity No