Apr 2024
30 Apr
3 tips to help pharmacy leaders clear the slate
Clearing the slate means that I come to work each day with the discipline of delegating as many items from my to-do list to others as I can. I explain ahead of time that I am passionate about what we do and I think about it a lot.
23 Apr
Pharmacists, you are movie stars!
Whether pharmacists like it or not, we are the celebrities of the pharmacy. We have important staff around us that keep us afloat but to many of our patients, especially our most regular ones, we are their main event.
16 Apr
What’s your pharmacy leader strategy? Are you ‘in charge’ yet ‘out of control’?
Great pharmacy leaders find themselves organically in charge of the operation yet out of the control of the minutia. How? They create an environment where people contribute to the development of their plans.
09 Apr
When do you suck it up and ask your pharmacy staff for answers?
The best pharmacy leaders do not have all the answers, but they do know how to mobilize teams that find those answers. Before making big decisions, ask pharmacy staff what they think.
02 Apr
Are medication review quotas the new traffic tickets?
Companies need to stop setting service goals and instead strive to solve their operator pain points.
Mar 2024
26 Mar
Every pharmacy has a Sherlock Holmes on the team. Who’s yours?
The best gift you can give someone is an idea. Ideas spark hope, motivation and a new beginning. The more ideas we can generate, the greater the opportunity for positive outcomes to occur.
19 Mar
What’s the best compliment you can give someone in your pharmacy?
In one of our pharmacies, we hired someone without pharmacy experience for the front shop. She worked part-time being a secondary student and was quick to learn. She was quiet, listened attentively and absorbed information like a sponge.
12 Mar
Pharmacy leadership—old school versus new school
Today, the best bosses are leaders. They take care of others before themselves and serve those who execute their vision, which was developed from collective opinion. Leaders give others a chance to ask why and explain the reasons for major decisions.
05 Mar
A (good) four-letter word for pharmacy
Of all the things the boss can provide to a staff there is one critical element that is easy to miss.
Feb 2024
27 Feb
5 questions to help validate a pharmacist’s negative thoughts
What if you could control the way you felt by controlling the way you thought? Like a remote control for television, our negative thoughts take us to the shows playing in our heads.
20 Feb
5 must-hit sleep tactics for zombie pharmacists
Pharmacists are bad at taking their own advice. We counsel on sleep. We counsel on sleep hygiene. Then we go home and flush it. We doom-scroll our phones, grab a snack because we skipped food while busy at work, and sometimes even pour a drink.
13 Feb
Is your pharmacy a lion or hummingbird?
Have you ever stopped to consider how much you actually make per hour as a pharmacy owner? And have you considered how much you make based on the type of operation you run? You might be surprised to run the numbers.
06 Feb
Where are you on your pharmacy job ladder?
Reflecting on 15 years of being a pharmacist, which started as a part-time pharmacy cashier making $6.85 per hour five years before that, I have held all these traditional job titles that we find in community pharmacy.
Jan 2024
30 Jan
5 strategies to deal with pharmacy sick calls elegantly
People get sick, it happens. But when we see obvious patterns like repeated incidents of staff calling in sick before a weekend or the same employee being sick on a weekly basis, there is some work do to.
23 Jan
5 strategies to help pharmacists negotiate more effectively
We are not lawyers. We are not real estate agents. However, that does not mean we are devoid of negotiating skills.
09 Jan
Why you should divide your pharmacy into its compartments
Compartmentalization permits risk management. Viewing your pharmacy down into its pieces can bring tremendous advantage.
09 Jan
Top tips for pharmacists who need to be babysitters
Ever find yourself working harder than you need to in the process of buying something for your pharmacy?
02 Jan
Hey pharmacists, don’t act while swallowing (bad) pills
We know that emotional decisions rarely end being up the right ones. When this happens, great leaders have the ability to zoom out, resist the urge to be swept away by the details and focus on the overall broader situation.
Dec 2023
26 Dec
Your boring pharmacy – staying the course for long-term success
In a repetitive pharmacy world that craves constant peaks of new-ness, those with the ability to grind will out-succeed those that make impulse decisions and routinely make big pharmacy system changes.
19 Dec
How do you manage both quiet and loud pharmacy staff?
One job of the pharmacy leader is to moderate the range of personalities on the team.
12 Dec
How to be memorable to your pharmacy patients—be a pickle!
Spend time building meaningful patient relationships instead of focusing on the empty calories of transactions. Transactions pay off once, while relationships pay off repeatedly.
05 Dec
The best pharmacy leaders are great passers
In the pharmacy, there are countless ways of being a set-up person.
Nov 2023
28 Nov
Snow storms and the growing theme of the pharmacist waitlist
Pharmacy is like a snow storm. During a heavy storm, we cannot keep up with the falling snow even with constant shovelling. We end up going about our lives, then dealing with the damage when the storm is over.
21 Nov
One pharmacist’s rant – we need to discuss debt and ‘owings’
For the pharmacy world struggling with back orders, recalls and mixed-up orders, owing is a part of the job. But owings – or debt – for a pharmacist are analogous to the problem of lost luggage.
14 Nov
What to look for while conducting a pharmacy job interview
With a very sparse number of pharmacy staff in the neighbourhood to choose from, we now often select workers without actual pharmacy experience.
07 Nov
Pharmacists, it’s time to think like the scientists we are
By their scientific method, scientists’ actions demonstrate that they do not know the true answer but have ideas as to what it could be. Scientists resist the urge to form irreversible public opinions.
Oct 2023
31 Oct
Pharmacists, use your filter to understand the true problem
Pharmacy does not come with a user guide. Pharmacy leaders must hear what is going on in the game and help the players find a solution that fits within the rulebook. To do this, we do not necessarily need to invent the answer ourselves.
17 Oct
3 ways your pharmacy can fail
Pharmacy is a little like jumping out of an airplane. It takes bravery, practice, training and most of all, a parachute. While the primary parachute is obvious, there is another essential need before jumping out of the plane: the back-up chute.
16 Oct
Pushing your pharmacy stress threshold is good for you!
Gone are the days of a "druggist" using leeches or being the only druggist in town. Gone are the product-driven experts solely paid for dispensing. Pharmacists have stretched the limits of their horizons before us and now it is our turn.
10 Oct
Why pharmacists should avoid cutting their own lawn
Some bets in life are simple once you wrap your mind around them. For years, my wife and I resisted paying someone to cut our lawn.
Sep 2023
28 Sep
Hiring pharmacy staff without actual experience
Like many pharmacy manager-owners, I have conducted a few interviews in my time. Some were highly collaborative and resulted in all-stars still working strongly with us today. Other résumés turned into napkins or scrap paper.
26 Sep
Are you a jaded pharmacist?
The problem with pharmacy is that it is all practice. It is training without race day. The daily grind offers much of the same training as it did the day before. After a short time, we become jaded.
19 Sep
Negotiating 101 for pharmacists
Important negotiations are about relationships, something pharmacists know a ton about. Each day we make friends with strangers needing health advice and tools to pair them with.
12 Sep
A pharmacist’s journal: writing to find answers in pharmacy
In writing about the anecdotes and lessons offered by managing people, the business and the profession, I found seven recurrent themes, which I called the seven dimensions of the ideal pharmacy leader.
05 Sep
The new pharmacy sweet spot
In an era when pharmacy scope of practice is changing rapidly and we venture out into new practice models, we may feel insecure at first.
Aug 2023
29 Aug
Pharmacists have teleprompters for brains (revisited)
All pharmacists have at least one thing in common: we passed a few multiple-choice exams. Remember when your classmate said he would know the answer when he saw it listed in the options? He was right.
22 Aug
What if you hire the wrong people in your pharmacy?
Once we invest (or waste) time doing (or not doing) something, we do not get it back. Staffing your pharmacy is much the same, since time spent recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, training and support a new employee will never be given back.
15 Aug
The unfortunate truth: every pharmacy staff member is replaceable
This sounds harsh, but it often goes unrecognized so here it is straight: no matter what your pharmacy role is, you are replaceable. While you may not imagine that someone else is capable of taking over your job, there is.
08 Aug
Accepting bad news in your pharmacy
Bad news is confrontational. We hesitate to disrupt homeostasis because we are afraid of the negative emotions it will cause others and ourselves. The imagined response in anticipation of our inflammatory reaction makes others procrastinate.
01 Aug
Is your pharmacy staff high maintenance?
Do you have a friend with repeated car problems or perhaps own a car like this yourself? That car ends up costing you time and money repeatedly and the frustration has you thinking about a new vehicle. That car is high maintenance.
July 2023
25 Jul
The second opinion: the art of changing your pharmacy-boss mind
It is the boss’s job to filter the conversations of the workplace and make informed decisions. The hardest part of being the pharmacy decision-maker comes in the times we are wrong. When that happens, do you have the guts to change your mind?
18 Jul
What Goldilocks teaches us about difficult pharmacy work
You know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Remember the porridge that was just the right temperature and the bed that was just the right softness?
04 Jul
Thick skin: how not to take patient feedback personally
As part of the duties of being a pharmacist, our job involves helping people when they are not at their best.
June 2023
20 Jun
3 reasons pharmacists are lonely
There seems no reprieve to the pharmacist’s daily battles, let alone carrying the weight of nurturing a high-volume prescription count, staff that need plenty of attention and keeping an eye on a business that depends on a ton of moving parts.
20 Jun
Letting the phone ring can be good customer service in pharmacy
While a pharmacist is counselling a patient in-person, would it be appropriate for them to stop to answer the phone? Would we expect this of a surgeon or a plumber?
13 Jun
Pharmacists, firefighters and architects: which one are you?
Some urgent moments of pharmacy involve getting prescriptions filled, managing wait times and dealing with due dates like order cut-off times, answering phones and patient line-ups.
06 Jun
Solving the pharmacy hiring drought, Part 2
People are any workplace’s most valuable asset. They are what make it all tick. To run a great pharmacy, we need great people. To find great people, we need to interview like a champion.
May 2023
30 May
Solving the pharmacy hiring drought, Part 1
Gone are the days where your next hire would walk in, shake your hand and a conversation led to finding your next all-star. The fact that this may have even worked in the past is mind-blowing.
23 May
What do you do when all your pharmacy staff quit?
Workplace exit happens organically when new philosophies and overarching reassessments happen inside a team.
16 May
Do you want every patient as a patient in your pharmacy? Discharging the incompatible ones
The patient-healthcare provider bond is an alliance of honesty, understanding and trust. In our best attempts to provide patient care, we sometimes fail to establish the required relationship based on the way a patient treats us or the staff.
09 May
Are pharmacists too nice to get paid?
The pharmacist personality is commonly a confrontation-avoider. We will often put ourselves out for the sake of others. People are used to getting our attention whenever they want it, no matter how small their query.
02 May
Can you selectively diversify your pharmacy day job?
For the past five years my work portfolio has been a mix of corporate and independent pharmacy work.
Apr 2023
25 Apr
Is your mental chatter about pharmacy your worst enemy?
If anyone wrote down the negative thoughts that go through the minds of pharmacy people, it would alarm you (and a psychiatrist). Trust me.
18 Apr
How to deal with the mental aftermath of confrontation
Leaders must be prepared to put their bulletproof vest on and own it. To process the time-waster’s feedback, remember that the issue is not a reflection on you, but a reflection on a set of circumstances that you were a part in building.
08 Apr
Update: Pharmacists and minor ailments. Howzit going?
At the stroke of 2023, Ontario pharmacists were capable of initiating prescription medications without patients seeing a prescriber beforehand. It is a major solution to a major ailment plaguing a complex and congested healthcare system.
04 Apr
The important difference between two types of feedback in pharmacy and what to do with them
We get a call in the pharmacy asking if we have a drug. The busy pharmacy assistant checks our software that tells them we have what they are looking for.
Mar 2023
21 Mar
What is Layered Leadership (and why should you care as a pharmacist)?
Bold prediction: Pharmacists will grow in medical responsibility and clinical expertise. But while complexity (and exhaustion) increase, who will take care of the pharmacists?
14 Mar
Mature pharmacy teams know how to lose together
The simplest way to obtain buy-up is togetherness. A team matures when they are united and have each other to follow. During turmoil, if they win as a team no one overstays their welcome by taking too much glory.
07 Mar
Newbie to pro: are you good enough at something to need a coach?
Whether you like it or not, optically you are the expert. Your words and actions drive behaviour change and it is up to you to provide the feedback that allows staff to navigate their own individual mastery curves.
Feb 2023
28 Feb
Why triathlon makes me a better pharmacist
To be a better pharmacist, unmask new success by committing to your obsessions and unleashing your inner badass.
21 Feb
Pinballs: Do your decisions as a pharmacy boss invite customer agony?
Decisions are like pinballs. They bring downstream side-effects in both predictable and unpredictable ways. Some pinballs change the internal (staff) environment while others change the external (customer) environment.
14 Feb
Are you the James Bond of pharmacy or just another average labcoat?
The ‘complete retail pharmacy experience’ has a way of bringing out the pharm-grumpies. But take heart, there is an antidote.
06 Feb
Pharmacy leaders build pipelines
Leaders build pipelines. They manage the future by thinking ahead while still managing the day. They forecast, they calculate, they design without allowing the anxiety of the unknown to take over.
Jan 2023
31 Jan
3 steps to solving your hiring puzzle
Solving hiring in pharmacy will first mean finding more candidates without a sizeable investment of our time.
24 Jan
Pharmacists have teleprompters for brains
Relative to the history of our profession, only more recently have pharmacists been pushed to invent from scratch through prescribing.
18 Jan
5 steps to help pharmacists validate negative thoughts and turn them around
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is something pharmacists recommend. Scientific literature proves its place as a first-line therapy in mental health.
10 Jan
Plan your perfect morning before opening the pharmacy
As pharmacists we can’t live like students in an adult world. We need to invest in life structure because life as a pharmacist is longer than a four-year degree.
Dec 2022
13 Dec
Where's the green light for predictable pharmacy?
Your job is to create the systems and structures paired with people and resources that shift the balance of your Rx count as far to the predictable side as possible.
06 Dec
Your non-lame pharmacy succession plan
The right succession plan isolates your strengths and weaknesses, or depth, while putting you in control of your destiny.
Nov 2022
29 Nov
Isolating your pharmacy leader identity
We love superheroes and villains because they are unique in their clear identity. We understand their strengths, their weaknesses and what makes them special. Why should you be any different?
22 Nov
No longer invisible: shifting from do-er to thinker as a pharmacist
In any given hour the always accessible, no-appointment needed, world’s number one trusted health care provider has phones ringing, patients in the aisles looking for recommendations, patients waiting in the counselling room for vaccines, deliveries
15 Nov
Pharmacists are like camels but they can't 'hold it' forever
Yes, without genuine washroom breaks it’s true that pharmacists can hold water like camels, but there is a more important similarity: they can both carry significant loads on their backs.
08 Nov
Why wearing a labcoat doesn't make you a pharmacy leader
From the first day I became a pharmacy manager 15 years ago now, I wondered what the difference was in flipping my nametag from Pharmacist yesterday to Pharmacy Manager today.
01 Nov
6 things a pharmacy manager should measure (but usually doesn’t)
Your boss might not make these metrics mandatory but that doesn’t mean they don’t provide insightful data into your store-level operation. Just like individual practitioners, pharmacies themselves have identities. What's yours?
Oct 2022
25 Oct
4 top U-turn decisions pivotal to your pharmacy practice
A U-turn is a manoeuvre to completely change direction. For most decisions in life, changing direction goes without much notice or consequence. Most of life’s day-to-day decisions don’t carry much consequence if we get them wrong.
18 Oct
Five top sleep habits for pharmacists and how to win with them
Pharmacists don’t always take their own advice. We counsel on sleep hygiene and appropriate sedative use, then go home and turn on the TV or burn 35 minutes on our phones.
11 Oct
Pharmacy leaders resemble triathletes in at least 7 ways
The make-up of a triathlete is not all that different from that of a pharmacist.
Years of triathlon training and racing have taught me many translatable skills and qualities that have translated into my becoming a better pharmacy leader.
04 Oct
Sleep on it! Turning it on and off in your pharmacy
Sleep permits the brain to process the day, wipe away the emotional fragility of our interactions and wipe the slate clean. That’s the reason we say ‘sleep on it’ since you will be fresh-minded in the morning to decide.
Sep 2022
27 Sep
Stop setting goals for your pharmacy. Do this instead
We were pushed to set goals as kids. What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you think you can achieve on the exam? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? So, what's the problem with goal-setting?
20 Sep
Succession planning: Delayed gratification sucks (but it’s so worth it in your pharmacy planning)
As a pharmacy leader your goal should be to have the team deliver greater results after you are gone, demonstrating the power of your leadership in building teams, systems and culture.
13 Sep
How does a pharmacy rebound from criticism?
When pharmacy staff get angry words from patients, what the pharmacy manager says next means something. Something potentially very important to how the interaction carries on.
06 Sep
Your pharmacy staff: generalists or specialists?
Like doctors, in pharmacy we have specialists and generalists. I am referring to each of your registered and unregistered staff. The specialists are bone-deep great at a few skills that they have honed over years of experience.
Aug 2022
30 Aug
Spinning bad pharmacy problems to your advantage
A good staff member gave us her resignation the other day. This is certainly not the first time a staffing change presents a problem in pharmacy, yet every time you lose a good person it has you feeling like you have a new problem to solve.
23 Aug
Give and take in pharmacy – On finding mental balance
So many times, life defaults us to approach mental 'balance' from the negative instead of the positive. In order to take, we must also give.
23 Aug
Give and take in pharmacy – On finding mental balance
So many times, life defaults us to approach mental 'balance' from the negative instead of the positive. In order to take, we must also give.
16 Aug
Size matters in pharmacy: more people, more problems (Part 2 of 2)
A succession plan is more than fluff. It puts what is repetitively swirling in your head onto paper. Either write it down to get it out of your head or accept that it will haunt you tonight.
09 Aug
Size matters in pharmacy: more people, more problems (Part 1 of 2)
Recently a mentor of mine said: “You don’t want to grow too much, Jason; more people, more problems.” While I understand what they mean, I prefer to think about staff size as what fits tightly into your depth chart, a visual of your current staff and
02 Aug
Don't be afraid to find your competition
Surrounding yourself with the right people will keep the competitive juices flowing and allow you to accomplish things you otherwise would not have. But that will only be part of the battle.
July 2022
26 Jul
3 top tips to plug your pharmacy holes
Without municipal water you would have to carry an empty bucket to a well two miles away, take a scoop to fill your bucket and walk it back to your house.
19 Jul
Feedback loops in pharmacy workflow
There are feedback loops with positive and negative impacts happening all day long, whether you notice them or not. What if you could harness positive loops and blunt the negative ones?
12 Jul
Great staff don’t grow on trees and what to do about it
While we all dream of this fairly-tale orchard-type succession plan, the current environment and low inventory of perfect people simply do not allow it. You know people-development should be your highest priority, you just don’t know where to start.
05 Jul
What type of pharmacy manager are you?
A recent Canadian Pharmacist Association national survey on pharmacists’ mental health revealed some disturbingly negative results with many of us at risk of leaving the profession and others currently looking elsewhere for work.
June 2022
28 Jun
Your Rx count: predictable or not?
Pharmacy leaders appreciate that some percentage of their Rx count is predictable and the rest is unpredictable. The leverage comes in pushing the scale toward the predictable side
21 Jun
Are you the ‘do-er’ or the ‘thinker’ in your dispensary?
The Do-er is often less job satisfied, of shorter duration in one pharmacy site and less motivated to take on life-benefiting after work extracurriculars.
14 Jun
The rewards in pharmacy need work
In pharmacy, the work and the rewards are what you make them. Putting the work in the right way yields the right rewards.
07 Jun
3 ways to fix the start barrier in your pharmacy
In pharmacy, we can make it easy to start by first automating the repetitive. Identify tasks that need to occur like clockwork. Use a weekly task log with day of the week headings to list what you need done on each day.
May 2022
31 May
Pharmacists, interruptions can kill your train of thought
There is a dramatic cost to restarting. In my previous article The Fear All Leaders Face I discuss the power of a mental health challenge called FOMO and how to reframe thought process to overcome it.
24 May
The fear all pharmacy leaders face
After turning the dispensary lights out at night, despite a fear you may feel, you are not alone.
17 May
A leader's principal job: take care of your people!
You have one job as a pharmacy manager or owner.
10 May
Why hiring is pharmacy’s biggest problem and what to do about it
You are the average of the 5 people you hang around with most. But what does that mean for a pharmacy dispensary if people are too hard to come by? We have a few problems in the mix right now. Pharmacy is a tough, grinding job.
03 May
Reacting vs leading – how do pharmacists stay ahead as leaders to prevent returning to the ‘labcoat’?
The difference between elites in any category is less than one per cent. The best of the best out-perform their colleagues across many measures of success, but in the end, what separates the greatest from the good pile lies in the fine details.
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