CONNECTORx CORNERx: 021 - 2024-02-06

Pharmacy Strategy & Career Development Newsletter: Know Your Business, Leadership What & Why, and Mindset Habit

PHARMACY STRATEGY: Know Your Business

Do you believe know your business?  I mean really know it.  

Today we will explore the 4 areas you need to master to know your business.

I talk with current managers or aspiring managers that it's so critical that we know our business.  We must be ready to adapt and adopt new practices, but also really understand our volumes.  Do we have capacity or what are we going to have to stop? So the better we know our business, the better off we're going to be.

So there are four areas:

 - Know Your Business

 ○ Know The Data - KPIs & Benchmarks

 ○ Know Your Employees

 ○ Know Your Customers

 ○ Know the Environment (Scan)

There are all sorts of types of data that you may need to know.  When I boil this down to your key performance indicators for all of the different services that you provide in your department is critical. You will review your process, outcomes, and financial metrics. Understanding your benchmarks, both what you can benchmark against to know if you're doing a good job, but also what maybe your organization is going to benchmark you against.  

Your employees are your biggest source of information. If you're a current leader, you are probably doing things like leader rounding to get input from your employees and the more they feel that they can share with you as a leader, the better off the department will be because they are seeing the issues. Know your employees personally and support them in their roles.  If you are an employee, I encourage you to share, and something I like to call managing up, share the information that you're seeing help to identify the needs and opportunities for your department. If you don't share it, there's no chance that it'll be acted upon.

The third area is knowing your customers in pharmacy and healthcare. Often our customers are our patients, but when you are in a service area like pharmacy, we are providing care, but we also have other customers like nurses and physicians and other providers and clinicians that we support. Spending time with them, and rounding with both patients and your other customers is critical to having that input and having a free flow of information so that you can identify needs and opportunities.

The next topic is knowing the environment. This is a big part of your strategic plan, but you have to stay on top of things.  Annually it is important to read environmental scans provided by organizations such as the American Hospital Association and American Society of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP)  Pharmacy Forecast.  Then weekly or daily review news from the same organizations and others that impact your business. A favorite of mine is Becker's. 

So how is your business? 

CAREER DEVELOPMENT:  Leadership What & Why

What is Leadership?

• the action of leading a group of people or an organization
• the set of characteristics that make a good leader
• the art of motivating a group of people to act toward achieving a common goal

David Holdford defines leadership as:

The process through which an individual attempts to intentionally influence another or group in order to accomplish a goal

• Leadership has a purpose
• Leadership is a process
• Leadership is intentional 
• Leadership is about people
• Leadership is not about the leader

     Holdford DA. Leadership for Pharmacists: Facilitating Change in Pharmacy Practice. Washington, D.C.: American Pharmacists Association; 2018.

Why Leadership (in Pharmacy)?

• Leading change is a fundamental responsibility of being a pharmacist
• The status quo is no longer acceptable in pharmacy practice 
• Change is happening

” If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.“

   - Antoine de St. Exupery

What do you think of this quote, does it describe leadership?

FUN & JOY: Mindset Habit

Do you believe you can change your mindset and make it a habit?  You may be surprised by the answer.

Key Points:

• Mindset = A habitual or characteristic mental state that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations.

• Mindset Performance Loop

  ”Whether you think you can or you think you can’t. You are right.” - Henry Ford

Strategies for Effective Mindset

 ○ Step 1. Listen to yourself. The voice of a fixed mindset will stop you from following the path to success. Use thought awareness to recognize your negative thinking. 

 ○ Step 2. Recognize that you have a choice. Simply put, you can control your mindset by making a decision - only you can control it.

 ○ Step 3. Challenge your fixed mindset. If you begin to hear yourself thinking negative fixed thoughts like I'm not smart enough, remember to believe your abilities can be developed and express and growth mindset.  Marie Forleo says "everything is figureoutable"

 ○ Step 4. Take action. Practice the growth mindset. Help your teams through support and coaching to encourage learning and open discussion.  

Mindset Changes

 FROM  TO

 Fixed Growth

 Closed Open

 Victim Creator

 Powerless Empowered

 Reactive  Proactive

 Unaccountable Accountable

 Timid Bold

Identify an area where you can improve your attitude or mindset.  Reply and let me know. 

SUPPORT AND RESOURCES:

I am here to support you in your journey to advance pharmacy and accelerate your joyful engaging career.  Schedule time for us to connect.  

Get this CONNECTORx CORNERx Newsletter delivered to you.