Monthly Archives: January 2016

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Team Dynamics – Greater Than The Sum of its Parts

It’s no great secret that if given the option, individuals would prefer to be in control of their current situation, their short-term goals and long-term dreams. You’ve no doubt heard that sitting and waiting for opportunity to come along doesn’t usually end up as expected. It may knock once and awhile, and being prepared to answer that door takes commitment and a tenacious attitude. So what if the opportunity presented means being an integral part of a strong team?

A very close friend of mine has been in various leadership roles for well over a decade. He recently sent a message to his teams opining that some of his strongest teams did not always comprise of his strongest individual performers. I hesitate to use the word chemistry due to buzzword cliches, but we’re in the world of pharmacy so the subject shouldn’t be completely foreign. A mixture of complementing skills are necessary. Some people are excellent at rote tasks; they are consistent with details and process. Others have excellent customer-service skills and some may be solid project managers. If someone was behind on the prescription assembly counter due to an extended customer interaction, then another would recognize and backfill to prevent a bottleneck (and therefore a future, more negative customer interaction). A pharmacist manager working on staff reviews jumps out of the office to perform a flu shot because her staff is out of the dispensary for an OTC counsel. It takes a certain level of awareness and good chemistry to adapt depending on the circumstances.

The strongest teams seem to grow into that adaptive mentality and it never happens overnight. Routines are developed (e.g. mixing methadone batches on Wednesday afternoons), and trends are identified (e.g. many people pick up prescription orders on Thursdays over the supper hour). Folks begin to understand non-verbal cues or body language from their colleagues that betray a rising sense of anxiety, such as a deep-breath after a series of interruptions, or a rash of careless mistakes to suggest rushing.

I should point out that complementing skills doesn’t just mean balancing relative weaknesses, it’s also about enhancing inherent strengths within the team. That’s why the saying goes, “the result is greater than the sum of its parts.” So why does a team of strong performers not always share a strong level of success? This phenomenon happens in sports all the time; a dream team is bought or drafted and grossly underwhelms, looking disconnected and listless in the process.

There are a few different theories as to why this occurs. One is a measure of ego; a strong performer is used to having a degree of autonomy in their job, and has a specific way to complete tasks. The trust that another may be able to meet the same standard can take time to develop. In a competitive environment, the strong performer has an incentive to use these tasks to display their own skills and may feel a threat to their autonomy if another meets or exceeds the same standards.

In a similar vein, strong performers often have take charge attitudes. For team production, some of those folks need to be comfortable supervising, and others will need to follow. If there is no deference from anyone, it begins to feel like ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’. Everyone has their own plan but it may conflict with another. The whole point of being proactive is to plan ahead and avoid potential conflict, that’s why big-picture thinking is so important at the outset of any project.

As a manager myself, I certainly derive my work satisfaction from watching others being proactive and working together. They identify problems before they present, and take steps to always be ahead of any change on the wind. Those qualities can serve as fuel because there always has to be a new challenge, or a variety of tasks to master. I need to stay proactive to keep the team growing and motivated. The leaders I respect and look to for guidance all seem to do the same. We make each other better, and we find ways to reach heights we could never have imagined on our own.

Is your team ready to answer the door?

 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency, employer or affiliation.

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Giving Your 97%

What do leaders typically ask for? What do you often ask of yourself, no matter what you’re doing? In sports, the adage is giving 110%, to give more than you ever have, and push harder than you imagine you can. While in short spurts, this sounds good in theory, nobody can expect to operate at capacity all of the time.

I can tell from my flight of ideas that this can devolve into a rambling stream of consciousness. I’ll be breaking things up a bit to keep myself on track.

This concept grew out of something quite benign; I have inventory coming up at my pharmacy in the next six weeks or so (cue the collective eye-roll). No really! As a manager for a dozen years or so, I’ve always placed an importance on fiscal responsibility but also service. Running a pharmacy, up until about 4-5 years ago when expanded scope was introduced, usually meant that folks needed medications, and that we filled them as ordered. If we didn’t have the product, we could lose a customer, or if we didn’t have enough of one, it was an inconvenience especially if it happened repeatedly. We also knew that achieving 100% service level (having all products all the time) was impossible as well. There were strategies to combat this, but it really came down to this: the closer you got to 100%, the resources you needed kept on going up exponentially. Put another way, if having an inventory of $200K allowed you to fill 90% of orders, then it may take another $30K to get to 95, and another 30K to get to 97, then another 30K for 98, etc. There has to be a balance.

We used 97% as our benchmark. This meant that we aimed to fill orders for 97 out of every 100 requests, and accepted that 3 out of 100 may be disappointed in some way but of course, we took steps to mitigate these in some way, either by calling them ahead of time, or trying to obtain the product from another source.

So I began thinking about capacity in the workplace and decided that I should apply those same lessons to help myself and others. The ideal would be for an operation to run at 100%, but that leaves little wiggle room to grow. We should try to average out to be 97% to give that same balance between looking after our duties in the near and long term, but allow for training, transition, or having the ability to jump on new opportunities to increase volume or promotion without feeling helplessness and anxiety.

How about personal, mental, emotional, or professional capacity? Nobody can operate at their best all of the time. Life is rife with illness, distractions, drama, change, tragedy, you name it. To expect we can stay consistent, let alone at our maximum capacity through those highs and lows is pretty overwhelming. As professionals, we take pride in working through illness, and shutting out distractions because our patients need us to be there for them but sadly we are not immune. Some days, 80% may be all we have to give. We may need to take an extra few minutes for lunch, or feel we need to check an interaction a few more times because it doesn’t seem to be processing as usual. If we aim for that same 97%, we leave ourselves some leeway to learn, stay in control, and execute. It also allows us to have a bit extra to give when we need it. A couple things for clarification:

  1. One thing of which you can give 110% is your time but…You can absolutely work 44 hours in a week when the expectation is 40, but it can’t be equated to capacity or production. Fatigue is a big part of it, so those last 4 hours after a long week might be subpar to your standards and start to drag the average down from your personal 97. Get to know your skill-set and limits; they may project to a shorter, more intense week, or a longer, more relaxed week.
  2. My 97 may not be the same as your 97. Surprise! Everyone is different. The best performance from an inexperienced graduate may not offer the same production as a middling performance from a 20-year veteran in the field. Allowing that 3% space for personal growth and opportunity will continue to make the other 97 that much more dynamic.
  3. 97% does not apply equally to specific duties. By this I mean if pharmacists or technicians routinely made 3 mistakes out of 100, we wouldn’t be very effective and ridiculously unsafe. Instead it refers to our focus and energy to do the job properly as individuals and as teams.

For my New Year’s resolution, my personal goal is to trust my abilities and that the members of my team will step up when I need them. We will create the capacity we need to keep moving forward and continue to grow within those capabilities.

I don’t think it’s being unreasonable. I’m not asking for 110%…I’ll settle for a solid 97 🙂

 

 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency, employer or affiliation.