Keeping New Year’s resolutions is difficult for everyone – especially when they revolve around your pharmacy and livelihood. The stakes are higher and the pressure to succeed is significantly greater than resolutions pertaining to yourself. So, why is it that setting and achieving goals for your pharmacy year after year is such a difficult task?
In our experience, there is one main reason that resolutions fail: the resolutions pharmacy owners make are vague. Here are some common resolutions:
- I will increase my sales
- I want to provide a new service
- I want to cut costs
Vague resolutions set vague goals and always lead to vague, and usually, unsatisfactory results. Resolutions and goals are vague when they missing several essential elements. If you want to see your resolutions through, you need to turn your vague goals into SMART ones.
SMART goals work because they are:
Specific: You must include precise details of what, when, and how to know exactly what you want to accomplish.
Measurable: What gets measured gets done. You must be able to assess your progress because goals that cannot be measured cannot be managed.
Attainable: It is important to set goals that are within your reach. Aiming too high will demotivate and frustrate you, more than help.
Relevant: The goals you set need to matter to you and your company. You and your staff must be able to clear understand the positive outcomes that will result personally and for the pharmacy.
Time frame:. All your goals need to have specific deadlines to counteract our natural tendency to procrastinate.
Two important resolutions that won’t kill you or your pharmacy
We would like to recommend you make time to achieve these two resolutions that are of vital importance to you and your pharmacy. We are making this recommendation because these two resolutions address two risks pharmacy owners typically don’t think about.
- Set up a Contingency Plan so that your pharmacy and family is prepared if something were to happen to you (e.g. getting sick or hurt)
- Develop a Selling Plan so that your spouse/family will know what to do to take over or sell the business if you die
You can see why most pharmacy owners don't think about these… they are not the most pleasant of subjects to address. But, developing these two plans using SMART goal setting, will help your family should something happen and give your employees piece of mind knowing that you have them and their best interests at heart.
At Waypoint Pharmacist Advisors we think different… we think you! That’s why we offer the tools and guidance you need to be prepared for the unexpected and to finally accomplish even the trickiest of New Year’s resolutions.
