Setting your intentions for a successful 2023 and beyond
by Michael C. Jones, MBA
Primary care, and the leaders, physicians, clinicians, and support team within those primary care offices, are truly at the heart of making healthcare better. As we close out 2022 and enter 2023, there is no better time to focus on something that’s often overlooked in the business of primary care - you and your intentions.
Every practice has its own culture, history, and purpose. From the well-established, multi-generational family physician practice in a small community to the FQHC or the large, complex multispecialty practice in a major urban location and every practice in between, each practice is unique and faces unique challenges and opportunities.
To thrive in primary care, especially with the host of different things and people competing for your attention, having a strategic plan is critical. You have regulatory and legal requirements, staffing, patient needs and intentions, and often competing requirements from payers and CMS and other entities, just to name a few. And always remember - you and everyone at your office is a person with a family and goals and priorities. You can easily get caught up in the tidal wave of just getting by, feeling like you’re treading water at best. This is where the strategic plan comes in.
But have you taken the time to do two other less quantitative, but equally important things to maximize your success?
Those two things are:
Reflect on the past year and celebrate your successes
Set your intentions and define what success means to you in 2023 and beyond
A January 2022 Harvard Business Review article by Whitney Johnson titled “Celebrate to Win” illustrates the point of celebrating your successes quite well. The article sets the stage for celebrating your successes by recalling office birthday or retirement parties, which are often planned, decorated, and put on with very positive intentions, but so many people, often including the guest of honor, simply drop by for a piece of cake and to exchange pleasantries, then go back to the busy-ness of the day.
Every initiative or growth journey, as shared by the article, has an S-Curve of learning, where there is an initial period of uncertainty and struggle, met by slow growth and accomplishments as breakthroughs and persistence takes place. As the team and the understanding of the initiative improves, wins begin to compound, momentum grows, and the initiative either succeeds or becomes a lesson. At this top part of the S-Curve, as Johnson points out, is a danger zone, as a team can succumb to boredom or simply move on to the next task.
Celebrating wins, early, small, and often, is an important part of any task. As behavioral scientist B.J. Fogg explains, “celebrating small wins stimulates dopamine release in the brain, a feel-good chemical that reinforces the learning experience and strengthens our sense of connection to those we work with. Change and growth are promoted through positive emotions more than through disciplined practice”.
The celebration itself is an experience, and as a leader, one of the most important things you can do is seek out these opportunities to celebrate your team members, and share that celebration with colleagues. The gift card, employee of the month plaque, or front row parking spot are meaningful and good gestures, but the emotion and pride is the real effectiveness of celebrating these small wins.
When you look back on the past year, use that as a time to recall those wins, large and small, and set the stage to do more of that in the moment.
Just as important as celebrating the wins is setting your intentions and defining what success means to you. Your strategic plan will be a key part of this, from a quantitative perspective, but just as important to having the strategic plan is having the intentions of success. The Army Rangers have a notorious test during their training that will show you how to approach setting your intentions. Throughout Ranger training there are many physical and mental challenges, and quite a bit of learning and growth. One of these challenges that’s both a physical and mental test is a random long run. The run is neither announced nor shared before it happens. The run can happen at any time, and it can be any distance, from 1 mile to 100 miles (theoretically).
The challenge to candidates is more mental than physical at a certain point. When the finish line could be minutes ahead or hours ahead, success depends on setting intentions at the beginning, and embracing a mindset of success, no matter what. The goal is the finish line, and those who commit to an intense focus and persistence will accomplish that goal.
How do you define success in your value based care contracts with payers, with Medicare, and with other entities? What do you want to accomplish for patient growth and patient satisfaction? How will you approach the annual enrollment period at the end of the year? These and so many other questions will come up, and beginning the year with a mindset of success is critical.
Not as rigorous or random as Army Ranger training, but still mentally challenging, your year will be met with unforeseen obstacles and challenges, and, to remain positive, many opportunities. As the great Tony Robbins shares, “Focus on where you want to go, not what you’re afraid of”.
This year and the future will depend on you as a leader acting with intention and vision, and these two tools are just one part of your arsenal.
So celebrate those wins and set your intentions for 2023 and beyond. These might be two things that you can’t put in a balance sheet, but they are critical to your success in your practice and in life.
And continue to join us as we share regular informative articles on specific topics of interest for you to learn, grow, and thrive.
