Comments on Lifehacker's post "How do I quit a job I just started."

http://lifehacker.com/5877886/how-do-i-quit-a-job-i-just-started

A better question is "Why do I want to quit a job I just started?"

If you are a new graduate from pharmacy school, I recommend against ever quitting a job you have just started.  Unless your new employer is a serial killer or has been taken away in handcuffs for war crimes, stick it out for at least one year.

If you made it through four years of pharmacy school, you can survive one year in a job you do not like.  Here is why you need to stay.

1.  Any less than one year looks bad on your resume.
2.  You will learn a lot in any job the first year after graduation.  It might as well be this one.
3.  You probably asked people to write letters of recommendation for you.  Don't make them look like jerks by quitting.
4.  If you make them look like jerks, they will remember.  The pharmacy community is surprisingly small.

Comments on Steve Jobs Commencement Speech

If you have't heard Steve Jobs commencement speech on youtube, I recommend you watch it.

The take-aways from my viewpoint are:

1. Don't go to college if you are not benefiting from it.

2. You are more motivated to learn if you have the choice -- and are not made to do so.

3. Sometimes your greatest failures lead to your greatest successes.

4. Doing what everyone else does will not lead to greatness.

5. Live each day as if it is your last. Because one day, it will.

What should every person know about money?

I still read magazines. I mean real magazines, made of paper, that you can buy at a news stand. One of my favorite magazines, Men's Journal, asks famous people (like Gene Hackman) questions about life such at "Have you ever cheated death?" or "What's the best cure for a heartache?". I like to answer the questions myself before I read the celebre-answer.

This month, they asked "What should every person know about money?". Here's what I think.

Money is a way of keeping score in life -- just not a very good one.

People with more money tend to be considered more successful in life than those without. Still...

"Money" is to "life" like "hits" are to "baseball".

In baseball, the team with the most hits tends to win more often. Not always, because it's possible to get a lot of hits and not score any runs.

And in life, it is possible to fail with a big pile of money, just like it is possible to succeed with little money.

The key is to find better ways of keeping score. Count the number of your friends. Total the number of times you help someone each day. Tabulate the smiles you cause.

Don't ignore money, but don't make it your only scorecard for success.

I don't know the future but...

There are a lot of blow hards who predict the future of pharmacy.

Since I was a student, educators and leaders have been saying that pharmacy needs to change. It needs to move from a drug-centric focus to a professional-service-centric focus. Well, we still focus on the drug product.

And we may be product-centric in the future. I don't know.

But I do know that change will occur. One of the reasons is illustrated in this website which totals up the cost of various elements of each taxpayer's tax bill.

Health care's portion of the tax bill is 24%. That is unsustainable.

We can't afford to continue doing things the way we always have. Taxpayers -- including you and me -- will not stand for it.

The only question is, "How will pharmacy change?"

The answer is......beats me.

“Procrastination: A hardening of the oughteries.”

I hate hearing students say, "I don't do my assignments until the last minute because I work better under pressure." One reason this is a sore point with me is that I have to grade some of the crap they submit. Another reason I hate to hear it is because I know that procrastination will hurt them in the future.

Procrastination might be one of the most important things that influences the success of anyone including pharmacists. That's the message coming from Piers Steel, author of the Procrastination Equation. Steel says that people who procrastinate are more likely to be poor, put off necessary health care, have damaged relationships, and many other bad things.

I doubt that our students are any worse than earlier generations at procrastinating. The difference today is that there are too many distractions that permit procrastination -- the Internet, cell phones, and 24-hour media.

Success in pharmacy requires individuals to learn to control their tendency toward procrastination. One strategy I have used which made a big difference in my life was removing all games including solitaire and hearts from my computer.

Now I know have plenty of time to find other excuses to procrastinate.

Can pharmacists be replaced by computers?

In the New York Times recently, the Nobel Prize winning Paul Krugman discussed the mistaken belief that higher education will ensure a good career.

He cited other economists who state that computers will be able to replace anyone who is doing, “cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules.” Computers are much better at doing these things. These are exactly the kinds of tasks that many pharmacists have excelled in over the years and therefore likely to be replaced by computers.

Success in the pharmacy of the future is more likely for pharmacists who are good at jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules — communications, pharmacoeconomics, personnel management, social marketing, and many other problem solving skills that students seem to resist.

If pharmacy students don't want to learn to work with ambiguity, there is another option suggested by Krugman. Most manual labor being done in the U.S. is hard to automate. Therefore, many jobs of the future will be truck driving, janitorial work, and other forms of physical labor.

Its the student's choice.

Attributes of a great pharmacist

A colleague of mine, Laura Morgan, asked students what attributes make a good pharmacist. She then put their responses in a word cloud. This is the result.

At first, I thought "these are great!"

Now, I've changed my mind. I now think the listed attributes indicate a certain level of passivity. I don't see advocate, leadership, innovative, or other proactive attributes. The attributes they list are nice but seem wussy to me.

Four stages of competence

Young people think they know everything.

Of course, that is a wild exaggeration, but many younger people are more confident about life than they should be. That is because many are unaware about how much they do not know. That knowledge tends to come with age and maturity.

In psychology, Abraham Maslow (Yes, the hierarchy of needs guy) stated that we go through 4 stages of competence.

The first is Unconscious Incompetence where we don't know what we don't know. In this stage we are highly confident in our ignorance.

The next stage is Conscious Incompetence where we realize our ignorance, but don't know how to address it. We have not yet learned.

The third stage is Conscious Competence where individuals understand and know how to do things -- but only with conscious effort.

The last stage is Unconscious Competence. At this stage, competence is so ingrained that it is "second nature" and internalized.

When students in the Unconscious Incompetence stage are taught by professors in the Unconscious Competence stage, it can sometimes be a case where a person who thinks they know it all is being taught by someone who has so internalized his knowledge that he can't teach it every well.

This is not the case in all educational situations but it is more common than desirable.

Word Clouds

I love word clouds. I think they elegantly depict the meaning of complex texts. Attached is a word cloud of my article, Managing oneself: an essential skill for managing others. J Am Pharm Assoc. 2009 May-Jun;49(3):436-443. The word cloud provides some idea of what concepts are important for successfully managing yourself.

What is your personal mission?

On one of the first days in my management class, I ask our pharmacy students at Virginia Commonwealth University is to complete a personal mission statement. A personal mission statement is the foundation for good leadership/management -- you need to establish what you stand for if you want to establish a vision for others.

I have included my mission statement in this post so you will know where I stand.

How to stop worrying

In the last post, I described a book by Dale Carnegie, "How to Make Friends and Influence People." I have another one of his books to recommend. It is "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living." There are all kinds of great ideas in this book, but I want to focus on a single one. It deals with HOW TO STOP STRESSING OUT OVER YOUR PROBLEMS.

If you think about it, a lot of things can go bad in this world. If we let them get to us, we can forget to enjoy all of the good things in life. So, if you find yourself worrying about some problem like, "What if I lose my job? What if I do really bad on this exam? What if my political candidate does not get elected?", ask yourself the following questions,

1. "What is the worst that can possibly happen if what I fear happens?"

I often ask this of my students when they worry what they are going to do with their life. I am kind of sadistic in even asking that question because their faces scrunch up and they exude stress as they think about the question. After listening to their fears, I ask them, "What is the worst that can reasonably happen to you after graduation?"

They usually answer, "I won't get a job."

2. The next thing to ask is "What is the likelihood that the worst case situation will occur?"

When I ask the students, what is the likelihood that they will not get a job, they typically say, "Not very likely, but still possible." I tell them that they are correct, that they might not get a job and they need to prepare themselves mentally to accept the worst--if they think it can happen.

3. The final 2 questions to ask yourself are, "What steps can I take to reduce the possibility of the worst case occurring, and how can I increase the chances that some other better outcome occurs?"

Immediately after asking this question, students typically start thinking of actions they can use to reduce the threat. They take control and their worry starts to disappear. It also steels them to do what it takes to be successful.

One of the benefits of this process is that answering these simple questions can help identify and assess the cause of the worry. In many cases, the worry is overblown and can be put into better perspective.

The other benefit is that even if the worry is real, imminent, and scary -- taking action helps give the worrier a sense of control over the problem. And worry is reduced when we feel in control.

How to win friends and influence people

If there are any more people out there that read books, I highly recommend Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People." It is easy to read and offers some basic insights that can improve the effectiveness of any health care professional.

What I still remember after reading it a couple of decades ago is that the way to to become likable and credible is to stop talking about yourself. Instead, listen to others. Ask them about their favorite subject -- themselves. That may not be the case in all people, especially in cultures that don't like to bring attention to themselves, but it is for most people.

You might say "Duh!", that is so common sense. And you would be right. But we often forget or get into the habit of making everything about us.

And in our tweeting; Facebook; me-me-me society, we often spend more time focusing on ourselves than on others.

Read the book. Dale Carnegie is still relevant to human interactions today.

How strong is your brand?

Each pharmacist has a personal brand whether they like it or not. Your name is your personal brand. You can chose to manage perceptions of your personal brand. Pharmacists who effectively manage their brand are more likely to be successful in their practice and career.

Branding is the process of developing strong, positive, and consistent images of your brand in the minds of patients and others. Your brand’s strength is determined by the extent that people (1) recognize your brand when they see it and (2) recall it when making a choice. The more familiar and memorable your name, the more likely patients will choose you when they need a pharmacist. The more positive and consistent your image, the more coherent the message patients have about your brand.

What images and adjectives come to mind when people hear your name?

Can motivational posters motivate?

The short answer is "yes". Despite the large number of "demotivational posters" available on the Internet which make fun of motivational posters (and rightfully so), motivational posters can help motivate in the following ways.

1. When an individual uses the poster to remind herself about aspirations and goals. A classmate of mine in college had a motivational poster above his desk titled "Justification for Higher Education". This poster showed an expensive beach front house with a five car garage filled with expensive autos. He is now a successful entrepreneur who I envision has a house similar to that on the poster.

2. When the motivational poster communicates a message that is accepted by team members. Motivational posters only work when they are consistent with the beliefs of those being motivated. They cannot change cynical or pessimistic viewpoints in the workplace.

3. When the motivational poster reinforces the message of a trusted leader. Without trust in the leader, the message of motivational posters will probably be resisted and mocked. However, if the team trusts the leader, the message communicated by motivational posters is more likely to be seen as credible.

How to be awesome

Common Sense

Students often complain to me that managerial problem solving is just "common sense."

In truth, common sense is not really all that common in actual work situations, because common sense is typically based upon mental models that are not tested or examined. Common sense also tends to disappear in times of stress and emotion. Common sense also does not work well for complex problems.

In real life, we don't have time to use our common sense, so we just wing it and suffer the consequences.

Bad Management Kills!

People don't typically think about true costs of poor management in health care settings. But bad managers kill people!

They do it by making it difficult for physicians, nurses, and pharmacists to serve their patients. Bad managers waste the time of people they manage. They cause distractions, waste resources, and hurt productivity. They reduce the performance of health care professionals with unnecessary paperwork, meetings, interruptions, and aggravation.

Let's get rid of bad managers in health care and save lives.