Find your Leadership Compass and reclaim your authority to lead

Editor’s Note: Welcome to “Eye Catching: Let's Chat,” a blog series featuring contributions from members of the ophthalmic community. These blogs are an opportunity for ophthalmic bloggers to engage with readers with about a topic that is top of mind, whether it is practice management, experiences with patients, the industry, medicine in general, or healthcare reform. The series continues with this blog by Donna Suter, president of Suter Consulting Group. The views expressed in these blogs are those of their respective contributors and do not represent the views of Ophthalmology Times or UBM Medica.

Many practices have a Lost and Found where things that have been lost are kept until they are claimed. Lost and Found items accumulate because either people who have lost things don’t know they are missing or because people who have lost something don’t think that the thing lost has much value, so they don’t come and claim them.

The result is that things go for inordinate amounts of time before being claimed. Therefore, utems lost that way remain unused.

Have you lost your practice’s core values-that spark that made you excited to come to work every day? A lot of managers have lost their leadership compass-their core values-and aren’t making strategic decisions.

In a sense, the practice is making knee-jerk decisions based on cash flow, internal challenges, or people. Leadership isn’t thinking about aligning actions with the practice’s mission statement and core values. In a sense, leadership has left the building. The writings of Sun Tzu would say that you don’t really know yourself.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Foundational values, often called core values, are a leader’s compass. These values and the practice’s mission statement strategically point the way towards meaningful goals. They are the foundation by which all tactical decisions are to be made. They are meant to resonate and give leadership confidence. A mission statement and core values give leadership the confidence to know which course of action to take.

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