Fired? Laid Off? Graduating?

 

It’s All The Same Thing:

 

CONGRATULATIONS!

                                                                                                   

“Huh? How can being fired compare to graduating?”

Both set the stage for life change.

“But one is negative and one is positive.”

Yup! Congratulations!

“You can’t be serious.”

Why not? Both situations put great opportunities in your hands. You are finally in complete control of your own destiny. And whatever you decide is 100% your choice!

 

If you’ve ever dreamed of making your mark on this planet, these are the kinds of circumstances (being fired, being laid off, graduating) that can open the door for you. None of them is problematic unless you choose for it to be.

Some of the world’s greatest success stories have come from those who are in, or returning from, the depths of trauma. Great riches historically land on the shoulders of those who decide in favor of moving forward with themselves instead of choosing to dwell on or wallow in the circumstances that led them into darkness.

Strength of character comes from inside you. And it has more to do with what you decide to do with your life than from outside influences telling you what’s best. No one else can ever know more about you than you know about you. So don’t rely on the judgments of others to make up your mind about what’s best for your present and future.

In sports, when someone screws up, teammates yell: “Shake it off!” because the game continues. And standing around feeling miserable about letting down your team accomplishes nothing except perhaps serves to prompt another screw-up and compound the first incident even further. It’s no different in careers or business or life.

Aaaah, and there is also of course a divine presence that deserves mention here as well because –if you believe in a supreme being– surely every major shift in life status represents the chance to re-examine and re-explore whether the ways you are moving are indeed forward, sideways or backwards . . . and this relates to attitude, not career status.

Do the steps you take today serve the best purposes of your own ambitions? Do they serve or lead you to better serve others? Are you taking steps? Any steps? What’s the roadblock? Have you convinced yourself that any steps are too difficult right now? When will that change? Can you simply choose to change it now? Are you choosing to be resistant?

More often than not, forward progress gets stalled when we get ourselves caught up in our own self-sorrow. The world keeps turning. The clock keeps ticking. Your heart keeps beating. Don’t choose to waste your precious time on earth feeling sorry for yourself. A friend of mine once admonished: “There’s plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead!”

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 WHEN ”LEAN” IS FAT!

 

The buzz word in today’s management circles is “LEAN” — not as against a lamppost, but as trimmed back to basics and making the most of computerized technology to produce a measure of quality efficiency. This is a fantastic concept that works in manufacturing (such as with Swiss Screw precision parts, and with automated equipment operations).

Unquestionably, implementing LEAN can make a difference. The problem is that –as with MBWA and Quality Circles and Theory X and Theory Y and JIT and scores of other management and leadership approaches– too many leaders desperate to make a name for themselves by shaking up their organizations tend to latch on to the latest fad, and expect nirvana.

With LEAN, too many advocates of quality leadership in management are attempting to put this square LEAN peg in a round ultimate consumer hole. The result for many of these forced marriages — especially in healthcare (doctors, hospitals, and facilities of every description)– is that they can end up victimizing themselves by a rush to “leanness.”

It’s not unlike cutting back food consumption to lose weight, then ending up dizzy and disoriented. In other words, too much reliance on streamlining the process can easily overshadow the basic thrust of an organization’s purpose.

Consider for example, what the last few letters (hint: Not “EHR” or “EMR”) in healthcare, are all about. All the cost efficiencies and lightning record retrieval systems in the world cannot come close to the only thing that –in the end– really matters:  care.

Of course a LEAN approach in healthcare can mean more accurate, more efficient, more rapidly delivered patient care. But buying into LEAN as if it were the end-all, be-all, ultimate solution to healthcare is like saying that the process of flying the plane is more important than the pilot. And that may well be the case some day but, for now, reality dictates that computer technology apps are simply tools to afford providers the opportunities to provide better quality patient care.

Use LEAN. But give careful budget and strategic planning consideration to the kinds of staff training and practice development avenues that far override the values of LEAN, such as:

1) Staff, patient and patient family communication. [A world-leading hospital I am intimately familiar with has robots delivering meds to patient rooms, but staff physicians who file endless numbers of computer reports don't read one another's reports, or communicate with each other. Few even have direct contact with the nurses dispensing the drugs!]   

2) Staff, patient, and patient family stress management [Did you know that the more relaxed a patient is, the more accurate the diagnosis can be and the better the response will generally be to treatment? The better the odds for reimbursement too, not incidentally! Patients and their families seek trust and  reassurance. LEAN may set that table, but only physicians, nurses and professional staffs can deliver the meal.] 

Target your budget and your process emphasis behind the kinds of communication skills and stress management training that providers and provider support staffs most need and least often get if you really want LEAN to work. Diets are great if you stick to them, and success often reduces itself to maintaining an ongoing dialogue about it with someone who supports your pursuits.

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 WRITE THE BOOK.

SELL THE BOOK.

 

Your great idea will surely fly if you can just sit still long enough to make it into a book. Maybe it will even be a movie!? Well, if you’re already writing a book, you know that writin’ books ain’t no piece a cake. What you maybe don’t know is that sellin’ ’em is a nightmare . . . even if you happen to be a professional salesperson!

Many entrepreneur types might disagree with that thinking, but it’s hardly ever an entrepreneur that writes a book. So reasonable risk-taking is not even an issue. It’s really all about shifting gears in your work schedule and transitioning your mind to an unfriendly and foreign range of engagement. In other words, get ready to suck it up!

Even long after you’ve Googled your brain into delirium trying to figure out all the pros and cons of self-publishing vs. traditional publishing, and after you’ve investigated and perhaps actually tried some “crowd sourcing” adventures, the bottom line is that WRITING the book is the easy part! SELLING it is the real challenge.

For one thing, disenchanted authors often find themselves swimming upstream against well-intentioned reminders embedded in their friends’ and family’s declarations of ”it takes money to make money!” And these comments are no doubt accompanied by tsk-tsk head-shakes, knowing nods, and pitter-pat changes in discussion topics.

Oh, and then there’s those football coach-like claps on the shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay, boy!” OR “You go, girl!”—- “Y’all just need to put that writin’ stuff in a drawer and git on with life! Maybe someday, it’ll work, y’know?” Well, maybe someday it will. BUT if “them there is fightin’ words” to you, getting on with life means that someday is today, is now.

(It means you aren’t buying into depression-ridden chatter.)

Ta-ta-ta-dah  ta-dah! You’re brave. You’re courageous. And maybe stupid, but so what? If you’re ready to dig in, dig in! Start working an extra hour at night instead of watching TV news. carry a notebook or smart phone “pad” and jot down ideas as they pop into your head all day, every day, and keep it bedside for insomniac nights.

Here’s where it all comes together. Writing the book. Selling the book. Write and REwrite your brains out. Then devise two marketing plans, two sales plans, and two PR/publicity plans. The first of each of these is a CREATIVE plan (what to say and how to say it). The second of each is an IMPLEMENTATION plan (where, when, and how to distribute the creative plan results).

So, for example, plan what you say for a meaningful drum-up-sales interview, and how you will say it, then go out and drum up the interview. A book signing requires a table, chair, signage, pens, single dollar bills and rolls of coins, a pleasant appearance, beverages and snack foods. A news release had better be newsworthy! Your Tweets better be provocative!

Remember people DO judge a book by its cover! (And you, your in-person and online appearance, and behavior are all part of your cover.) Lest you think this is “all talk,” please visit my new book-for-sale site HERE!  Thank you!

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HOW LONG

 

CAN YOU HOLD ON?

 

Maybe a year? Y’think? Six months? Hmmm? Three or four weeks? Whew! Hours perhaps? Ack! First of all, if your answer is “forever” or “a lifetime” or “long enough,” you may want to revisit your brain because if you’re not living IN it, you’re dangerously close to fantasyland.

One thing I’ve learned in this blessed long life I continue to have is that NOTHING on Planet Earth is permanent. Nothing! That may be no surprise to scholars who know that circa 2600 years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said “Nothing is permanent except change!” (Pretty heady stuff for a guy that old, eh?)

Q. 

What are we talking about here?

Businesses? Families? Friendships?

Entrepreneurial ventures?

Professional practices? Our minds?  

A. 

All of the above!

 

We “hold on” in five different (yet mostly intertwined) ways:  financially, emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually. And most of the reasons we hold on are anchored in shifting sands. We have numbed ourselves with fear of failure. We have built artificial (and, admittedly, often flimsy) protective walls around our endeavors, pursuits, and ourselves.

So what am I saying? We should all run out and be more carefree? Take bigger risks? Throw away everything we’ve worked hard to earn? Change horses in mid-stream? Stop paying taxes? Buckle under to competitive pressures? Cut off shaky relationships instead of working them through? I’m saying it may be time to reassess what we’re holding onto, and why.

What’s the worst thing can happen by taking a couple of minutes out tonight and thinking through what is and isn’t worth it in your life —  your business or practice, your family, your relationships, your finances, your emotional stability, your intellectual pursuits and development, your body, your sense of spirituality and religious commitments.

Give yourself the benefit of doubt. Just dabble in this arena of yours for a few minutes. Think hard about what it’s all worth, and what you can and are free to choose to do right this minute by making a decision to change things for yourself for the better . . . and then choose it, and do it. It’s really not so hard –and can be fun– once you put yourself on the path.

Letting go may seem –and even feel– hard, but it’s a piece of cake compared with the stress and strain of hanging on to a piece of fantasyland. In the end, for all humans everywhere, reality wins. So why not grab it now and ride it to the finish line? — Your business. Your relationships. Your self. Old song lyrics:

“We may never pass this way again.”

 

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YOUR MEMORY CAN KILL YOU!

 

No, huh? Memory can kill? Of course it can!  STOP reading for a minute and recall your biggest life upset… go ahead, but just for a minute. That’s all you need to get the idea. The more we dwell on past events and behaviors and thoughts, the deeper we dig into the world of neurosis, and the sicker emotionally and physically that we make ourselves.

Memories serve a purpose when they are used productively in the present moment. Recalling something pleasant can actually soothe the neurological system. Recalling a mistake can help us make a corrective adjustment to a current course of behavior or activity and help ensure greater odds for success.

But when we get ourselves lost in our memory banks, even in the process of engaging positive past experiences, it’s as easy to slip out of the reality of the present moment as it is to take off a glove. The difference is that removing a glove has some conscious awareness attached. Focusing on a memory can easily suck us into a tunnel of no return.

You think this is not about you? Think again. All of us have an inherent instinct to recall past events, thoughts, actions, experiences a few times a day. Some of us are actually paid to do this and build careers around it: archeologists, CPAs, historians, history teachers, researchers, scientists, therapists, and detectives all come to mind.

And doesn’t everyone fantasize about something that was once great and, conversely, about something that was once terrible?

So what do we do with all this awareness and how does it relate to entrepreneurial leadership?

What we need to do –to be maximally productive at work and in life– is to consciously use past memories as tools for enhancing present moments and for planning future events. And then stop. When a memory goes beyond present-moment consciousness, it can cause accidents and illness. It’s just like worrying about the future! Both cause stress, actually: DIStress!

Okay, so now that that’s sitting on the table, what do we do to make our memories work for us instead of against us? And how can we help those we are responsible for servicing with leadership? Work harder at staying focused and more tuned in to the present moment as much as possible. Keep our sights set on what is happening right now in front of us.

And what are the best tools for accomplishing that?

1) Deep breathing (it need not be conspicuous!) and

2) Regular exercise (it need not be strenuous!) and

3) Eating foods and food portions that have genuine (vs. advertised) nutritional value (it need not be a 24/7 dictate!) and

4) Sleeping enough to wake up feeling rested and alert and

5) Anchor your soul in a faith-based harbor!

Is that so hard? Well, if we choose for it to be hard, it certainly will be. But since all behavior is a choice, we can instead choose for it to be easy. Think like an entrepreneur about your self as well as about your ideas. Be innovative. Challenge. Rise to the occasion. These aren’t just guidelines for building businesses and professional practices. They’re guidelines for life!

Because without a solid foundation of being focused on the here-and-now present moment as much as possible, we will –like an abandoned enterprise– quickly become then and there.

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Are You Expired

                               

Or Inspired?

 

When did you last check your expiration date? What did it say? What does it say now? What happens if you go past that date? You rot? You crumble? You turn green? You become poisonous? You get taken off the shelf? People pass you up and reach way in the back behind you to bring up some fresh dude who doesn’t expire until 2015?

If this describes you, or you worry about it, or you think it’s inevitable, you’ve got a problem, brother (sister), and it’s time to take a few steps on your own behalf. First off, do a few chin lifts and take some deep breaths.

Don’t run to look in the mirror. Just imagine yourself looking driven and productive and successful as you once were, or perhaps you presently are but feel like you’re on the wrong side of the hill.

Contrary to popular belief, life is not all about discovery. It’s about making the most of what you’ve got to get yourself and others to where you and they want and need to be. It’s about energy and drawing on strengths, acknowledging but by-passing –not struggling to overcome– weaknesses. It’s like knowing what you can and are willing to spend before you go shopping.

Yes, you’re right! That’s called leadership! Genuine leadership has no expiration date. It may shift gears at certain ages or after certain accumulated experiences, but true leadership –like true grit, true integrity, true honesty, true passion– doesn’t fade or need to reinvent itself. It simply is.

How to get it? How to keep it? How to have it take you far beyond someone else’s (or your own) imagined idea of your expiration date reduces itself to being forever on the alert to what INspires you rather than to what EXpires you. So it’s a matter of attitude? Hmmm! That’s over-simplified! Hmmm? There’s more to leadership than attitude! Hmmm?

Well then, if leadership is all about attitude, what does anyone need to read a blog post for, since attitude is a matter of choice, and we can just choose it? Do you trust yourself to just choose it, and stay with that? So maybe the difference between expiration and inspiration is self-trust? Hmmm.

# # #

STOP HIRING CONSULTANTS!!

 CUTTING EXPENSES

                                

DOESN’T MAKE SALES!

 

To paraphrase an old presidential quote, “It’s the government, stupid!” America’s entrepreneurial leaders are grasping for a lifeline to avoid being swept out to sea by the daily onslaught of misdirected government speak and arrogant government attitude — a trickle-down mindset — harbingers of total economic collapse. And it could be just around the corner.

Forget all that stuff your grandparents used to preach about turning out lights and closing doors to save money. You might save electricity and keep out drafts, but in small business, that kind of save money mentality has been the ruin of many startup ventures. In reality this government-style thinking process accomplishes nothing on the road to survival and growth.

NO ONE EVER MADE MONEY FOR

A BUSINESS BY SAVING MONEY!

Biting into economical practices does not make sales. Only sales make money! “Ouch!” you proclaim, “but I’m not a sales type!” Well, then, become one. Or find one. Or give up your business and go to work for the government. Or show some guts and stick it out. You can make your idea work if you stop taking government advice about how to make it work.

This is not suggesting you do an entrepreneurs gone wild act. A mainstay of our current government, though it may be, this post is not about spending. It’s about what you can do now to turn your business around and stand up to the sleazy, ramrod, phony compassion-soaked policies of the current administration that is desperately trying to control small business.

Just because you have an exciting idea and some startup funding doesn’t mean you can let your enthusiasm run rampant. Business success is about extraordinary customer service and relationship-building. It is about channeling energy and making the most of opportunities that present themselves within your realm of pursuit.

Chase one rainbow at a time! And remember that the best leaders are those who make leaders of their followers.

Running recklessly in too many directions at once will simply produce frustration, exhaustion, and distress — especially in this bare-bones economy. But you CAN run a bare-bones business. After all, small business is based on TRUST. Got some?

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Open Minds Open Doors

Beware GEEKSPEAK!

 

GEEKSPEAK. It’s another name for Tech Talk. Too many tech people are talking to too many tech people in too much tech-eeze and the real world of small business owners, professional practice principals, and even top corporate management is passing them by. If you are looking to make sales and grow your business, think twice about GEEKSPEAK overload.

In other words, don’t let website designers write words for your content. They haven’t a clue about effective marketing writing. Don’t let IT people decide on what and how to communicate with clients and customers and prospects. They know not where they come from . . . nor, it often seems, where they’re going when it comes to clarifying issues for non-IT people!

Don’t let your business messages get caught up in branding lines, site content, collateral/promotional material copy or news release text that contains language your grandmother wouldn’t understand. Nothing is so complicated that it can’t be simplified. Nothing is too technical to be communicated in easy-to-understand language.

When I ask you what time it is,

don’t tell me how to make a clock!

 

It simply takes more time and is harder work. But it’s often the difference between an enthusiastic buyer and a puzzled, overwhelmed one. Suffice it to say that all communication — interpersonal, impersonal, and otherwise, takes more time and is more work. Decide on what you want as a result, and if the extra effort is worth it.

Promoting and presenting complicated diagrams and examples only serves to underscore an oblivious, uncaring attitude to the markets you’re trying to reach. What’s the old axiom? Keep it simple, stupid! And don’t make the excuse that the prospects you seek understand tech talk because odds are pretty good that their bosses who need to approve purchase decisions don’t.

Sourcing people ultimately report to financial and/or operations people who hold the purse-strings. If those folks don’t understand a GEEKSPEAK message, they simply shut down their budgets. And why not? Would you buy something for your home or car that you have no sense of value about, can’t relate to, or fail to understand what you’re getting for your money?

Bite the bullet and give your business communications — especially to your customers, clients, and prospects — the extra effort that will make what you have to say clear from the git go. Not sure if what you’re saying comes across? Ask your grandmother.

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0911

Professional Healthcare Practitioners and Small business Owners BEWARE!

 

Just What Americans Need:

                                                                                                                                                                      

Less Healthcare. More Politics.

 

Shame on you, AARP, and tsk-tsk to Marsha Mercer, ”freelance journalist who lives in the Washington, DC area.” Neither of you appear to offer much in the way of common sense, or even the hint of a realistic viewpoint, when it comes to your manipulative and politically-charged-below-the-surface feature story that appears in the AARP March Bulletin.

Your front page hype,”Fixing The Doctor Shortage – Big Changes For Patients” (and guts of the story) deceptively suggests that the evolving physician shortage is one that’s the product of an aging doctor marketplace and by private insurers undercutting Medicare reimbursement rates. Simply not true.

Relentlessly increasing

government control is the culprit.

 

MEMO TO AARP: Put the premise that your article spotlights in the drawer, and start making phone calls. Ask a few hundred doctors. I have. They will tell you in so many words that relentlessly increasing government control is the culprit.

The article’s lead source, Dr. Steven Berk, is certainly a distinguished one, yet the context of his quote appears to have been quietly tucked away. Surely, Dr. Berk had more to say about the subject than thirty-six words? Could it be that the rest of his comments failed to support the sensationalist undercurrent of your story?

And how about adding the link for 2012 Physicians Foundation survey that you cited so people can check it out for themselves? Check it out here. Certainly the survey IS worth noting. Skewed, though it may be to represent the best interests of its sponsoring organizations, it seems credible enough.

So what is worth noting you ask? How about the glossed-over fact that all the alarming findings referred to have taken place since (and are compared only with) the survey of 2008? Does that strike you as worth noting?

Hmmmm! And what else happened in 2008? An increase-government-control advocate was elected president. So, are we to conclude that most of the problem we face today regarding doctor shortages and the systematic transitions in healthcare that have forced the issue are attributable to physician aging and private insurers, as the article purports? Not likely.

To Find Doctors we should be looking — instead of to state medical associations — to family, friends, neighbors, other doctors, and other healthcare professionals. After all, isn’t it TRUST we seek? Surely, it’s not more government in our lives, or politically-motivated state medical associations trying to justify their membership fees.

Let’s remember that –far and away– the single greatest reason that the vast majority of Americans seek any (even including ER) medical care is to get reassurance. Reality, even for seniors, isn’t a TV hospital show. It’s seeking reassurance.

Oh, and please: FORGET about .gov websites. They are not invested in helping you. They are invested in controlling you! Go instead to private practice websites. Go to The American Academy of Family Physicians and other non-governmental professional physician credentialing organizations. And stop believing what you read in AARP propaganda.

Unless you prefer some politician to give you a diagnostic workup, prognosis, and treatment program?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  

 

Hal Alpiar has served doctors and practice managers as a personal and professional practice development consultant nationwide in virtually every area of specialization for thirty years. He’s a former business professor and Amazon 5-star-rated author of DOCTOR BUSINESS…How to boost practice growth and build long-term relationships now (PMIC) for doctors. Hal won a national book award for his healthcare consumer work, DOCTOR SHOPPING…How to choose the right doctor for you and your family (Health Information Press). He was co-founding executive director of The Pennsylvania Heart Institute, and of Bio-Motion of America (motion analysis programs for physical therapy). Hal is also the past founder/CEO/President of e-Healthcare Ventures (NYC-based online healthcare services conglomerate) and co-founder of the NJ hospital program, Backpackers Spine Health & Strength Training. He is formerly a five-year member of the Public Affairs Committee of NCQHC (National Committee for Quality Healthcare), now Quality Forum, Washington, DC.

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0911