WISER LEADERSHIP

The Federalist Papers Challenge

How the Federalist Papers are inspiring me to write more, defend my views on leadership, and human-centric organisational design and start an extreme writing marathon

Where it all started

I suspect like most people in the UK I came across the Federalist Papers via the stage musical Hamilton but for those of you who don’t know they are a series of articles and essays that defend the US constitution.

Alexander joins forces with James Madison
And John Jay to write a series of essays
Defending the new United States Constitution
Entitled The Federalist Papers
The plan was to write a total of 25 essays
The work divided evenly among the three men
In the end, they wrote 85 essays
In the span of six months
John Jay got sick after writing five
James Madison wrote 29
Hamilton wrote the other 51

— From ‘Non-stop’ by Lin Manuel Miranda

The song ‘Non-stop’ immortalises the specific contribution of Alexader Hamilton who authored the majority of the papers with the title of the song referring to his work ethic.