In this week's podcast episode, John describes three communication mistakes that will easily derail your career in many large organizations, if you do not stop making them.

Communication has ALWAYS been a big deal. And with social media, email, and texting, we have so many more ways to screw it up than ever. The higher you progress in an organization, the more important communication becomes. 

It is key to ensuring accountability, completing goals, and executing effectively. Good teamwork relies on effective communication! And your relationship with your boss depends on it.

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Why Is Communication Important?

There are so many aspects of communication that need to be mastered. There is spoken and written communication. And various forms of each.

When I was working as a medical director and CMO, the demands were high. We had many projects in play. And we needed to complete those projects on time and under budget. Accountability was important. And effective communication was a big key to success.

As you move up an organization, communication becomes even more important. Therefore, today I would like to discuss three big communication mistakes. These are mistakes that will impair your performance and derail your career if you don't address them.

Big Communication Mistakes

So, what do I see as three of the biggest communication mistakes? Here they are…

1. Choosing the WRONG MEDIUM

It is easy to default to more convenient methods of communication, using texts or email. But such methods lack the observation of body language and the opportunity to hear vocal intonations.

And it is common for a complicated text or email “conversation” to run into dozens of entries when a three-minute phone call would have resolved the issue.

2. Lacking CLARITY

Too many messages, whether direct or via written word, are incomplete, or ambiguous. When we fail to spend sufficient time crafting our message, or reviewing what we've written, we can easily introduce confusion.

If you are building a culture of accountability, it is totally dependent on communicating with clarity. If a colleague or direct report is not clear on what is expected, it will be impossible to meet expectations.

3. Failure to Use REPETITION When Needed

Repetition is required for important messages. Creating a new corporate culture or adopting new goals requires repetition. It has been shown that repeating a message accomplishes the following:

• improves learning and understanding,
• breaks down resistance to the message, and,
• ensures that no one misses the message when it involves a large group.

Important messages should be repeated in different venues, in different ways to be effective.

Communication Mistakes BONUS: Being REACTIVE

Especially when communicating with your boss, it is best to anticipate what she expects. Then meet those expectations proactively. Develop communication styles and tactics that streamline and enhance the transfer of information. 

You will know you're being successful when your boss no longer needs to quiz you for updates during your one-on-ones.

Summary

Communication is a vast topic. But I have covered three major mistakes I’ve seen that you can easily train yourself NOT to make. And there is a BONUS tactic that will help you meet your boss’ needs and set you up for advancement.

For more thoughts on communication in healthcare, you can listen to my interview with Dr. Andrew Tisser on the Talk2MeDoc Podcast Episode #2.

Links for Today's Episode:

• The Three Disappointments of a Lack of Clarity
• Stop Making These Business Email Mistakes
• The Eight Essential Abilities the CEO Wants in a Chief Medical Officer

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

The post 3 Big Communication Mistakes That Will Derail Your Career – 161 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Some years ago, a young African-American came to the realization that the key to escaping the poverty and hopelessness into which he had been born was to escape from illiteracy. Hence, he devoted much of his youth to educating himself. He not only learned to read, but to speak and write passionately and eloquently.

After moving from his birthplace in Maryland as a young man, he began to write about his experiences and found a following for his writings. Eventually, he published a book describing his life as a young black man in the U.S. Those writings and his speeches inspired thousands of persons who read them to join the movement that he had committed himself to.

His book, written and published at the age of 27, described in detail his life under, and escape from, slavery. It was published 16 years before the start of the U.S. Civil War, and made a meaningful contribution to the abolitionist movement that eventually ended slavery. That author was Frederick Douglass.

Great writing can have profound effects. It is an essential skill of any leader. Verbal communication is important. But writing serves as the basis for most important forms of lasting communication, even if the message is delivered in a speech. Whether writing a scientific presentation, book, white paper, or newsletter to our colleagues, it is a fundamental skill that must be learned.

When I think about improving my writing skills, I tend to think about writing from two standpoints:

• How to improve the process of writing, i.e., how can I make my writing more effortless and productive?, and
• How to improve the quality of writing, i.e., how do I create a message that is more engaging and persuasive?

I have found that blogging has enhanced both aspects of my writing. I am no expert, nor am I the next Twain or Hemingway. But I have spent hours studying the process of writing. And through blogging, I've experienced a crash course in creating content.

I have written in excess of 100,000 words in the past nine months. During that time, I have learned some things about writing more productively and efficiently that I think that other physician executives might find useful.

For this post, I am going to focus on the first aspect of writing skills: the methods I use to write in the most efficient way possible. Attmepts I've made to improve the quality and persuasiveness will be presented in a future blog post.

How I Used To Write

When I was preparing a presentation for the board, a lecture for the medical residents, or writing a paper to present to my medical staff colleagues, I usually wrote using the following approach:

1. Select the topic,
2. Decide on the three or four most important points I wanted to make,
3. Begin with a short introduction,
4. Write the body of the text, being careful to correct my grammar and spelling as I went along,
5. Write the conclusion, emphasizing the major points,
6. Create the title of the paper, based on what I had written, and
7. Go back over everything once or twice to clean it up.

This approach works, but it can be very inefficient. As a hospital executive, it might work out if you are only preparing one or two major presentations a month, and only occasionally writing articles in excess of 1500 words.

Unless your writing produces one complete coherent message (which I have never been able to do) it is unlikely that creating these documents would take less than three to four hours each, especially if they need to be converted to a slide deck for presentation to a medical staff or executive team.

Creating something like this twice a week will chew up a good day or two, especially if substantial research and inclusion of references are needed.

My New Keys To Writing Quickly

These are the methods I have learned and adopted over the past year. I found them useful in focusing my efforts to create content that is of equal quality to prior efforts, but in less time.

1. Create Writing Rituals

I was taught the concept of “state learning” when I was in college. This is a phenomenon in which memory retrieval is best when the learner is in the same state of consciousness as when the memory was formed. A similar process occurs when creating. Without getting into a long discussion about deep work or achieving a state of flow, suffice it to say that we each write best under certain conditions.

For me, it is early in the morning when I'm able to concentrate and unlikely to be distracted. I've already consumed at least a half cup of fresh coffee. And I have disconnected from phone calls, social media and email. Other rituals are described in this piece by Kathleen O'Shaughnessy. This may be the most important of my keys to writing quickly and clearly.

2. Start With a Descriptive and Compelling Title

As noted above, I used to believe that it was easier to brainstorm my content, write out the majority of the material, and then use what I created to help develop a title that was pertinent and descriptive. Over time, however, I have come to believe that by spending my time on the title first, based on the purpose of the article, it will drive the rest of the writing process. It forces me to be sure that my content truly delivers on the promise of the title.

Besides describing the point of the article or presentation, I try to create a title that will pull the reader in. It should be compelling and inviting. For this site, I think some of my titles might sound a little clichéd, but it is usually clear what I'm writing about.

3. Use the “Brain Dump” (or “Vomit”) Method

I've come to use a method recommended by other authors in which I write very quickly, without any censorship, dumping as much content on the page about the subject as possible. The idea is not to worry about syntax or spelling, poor construction or even vulgarities in this first iteration.  Just get the ideas down.

I have learned to ignore the spell checker. Some writers turn it off for this part of the process. I try to capture every related thought or idea about the topic, regardless of how peripheral it may seem initially.

And I don't want to be side tracked by any editing as I go. Editing comes later.

4. Use Google Docs for the First Draft

I use Google Docs because it has the best spell checker, hands down. I have noticed that some spell checkers are good, some are terrible, and Google Docs is awesome.

For example, although I would never write an article using email, I've noticed that the spell checker in AOL is awful. Because my typing is so crappy when I'm in a hurry, I often spell “the” as “teh” and “would” as woudl.” The spell checker in AOL never catches those mistakes.

Microsoft Word is pretty good, but its list of proper spelling suggestions often places my intended spelling in the middle of its list. The same can be said for the spell checking in my WordPress text editor. So, I must take the time to select the correctly spelled word most of the time, before moving to the next one.

However, Google Docs catches every misspelled word, and it somehow places the correctly spelled word at the top of its list every time. So, I just accept every suggestion and can correct an entire 1500 word document with dozens of mistakes in less than 10 to 15 seconds. I then copy and paste that draft into WordPress for the final editing if I'm writing a blog post.

One more advantage of Google Docs is that it automatically stores every document in the “cloud.” So, I don't have to send it to DropBox or Evernote to keep it accessible. This is great for me because I use three different computers to write (depending on if I'm at home, at work or traveling), one of which is a MacBook! I can access Google Docs on any of them flawlessly.

5. Use a Template

I learned this from Michael Hyatt. He uses different templates for all kinds of documents. For blogging, I have created a template that reminds me of the overall structure of the article. It can be changed, if necessary, but it eliminates the need to recreate the structure each time. If you write regular updates or board reports, using a template will maintain consistency and speed up the process.

The template I use for a blog post generally follows this structure:

• Title
• Personal experience or story
• Introductory paragraph
• Photo
• Body
• Photo/Quote/Table or Graph
• Summary/Conclusion
• Call to Action

This helps keep me on track. Also, if I get stuck on one part, I will work on another for a while, then jump back and finish the previous section later. I use a different template for different types of articles (e.g., a journal submission versus a blog post).

6. Do Research After the First Draft

This just sounds wrong! And it's true that for a scientific paper, I better have my facts organized and referenced, because the purpose is to present those findings to support a thesis.

But for white papers, guest posts, and non-peer-reviewed journals, the number of footnotes or annotated references is small. And the research is often used to support only a handful of statements. I don't know I'm going to include most of those statements until after the brain dump is completed.

If I do extensive research before I write, then I spend time chasing down some arcane fact that I end up not using in the article anyway. I can waste hours running down these rabbit holes.

For me, it's better to get a first draft on paper, then track down the references for the one or two statements that need support and include footnotes or links as needed. Often times, I may already have the reference stored in Evernote, since I use that to collect information proactively to help stimulate ideas for my writing.

For example, when I started this post, I had no inkling I was going to mention deep work and flow under: 1. Create Writing Rituals. But there they are, so I looked up the links to those terms after the completion of the first draft.

7. Set It Aside, Then Edit

Once I'm satisfied with the first draft, I really like to step away from the copy for several hours, or a full day if possible. I think I make better decisions about paragraph placement, eliminating clichés, and assessing section headings if I am looking at the content with fresh eyes. What seems like a logical statement sometimes reads awkwardly after taking a significant break. And remaining misspellings and missing words jump out much easier.

And I edit ruthlessly. I cut, shave, shorten and reorder until it sounds the way I want it to. I sometimes eliminate 30% or more of the original material in this step.

8. Read the Article Out Loud

It would be nice to have the material reviewed by an editor. But because I'm focusing on productivity and speed, this is not an option in most cases. Reading the content out loud is one more way to pick up poor sentence structure or phrases and paragraphs that sound awkward or confusing.

9. Write More

The final key that I've come to realize is that writing more helps me write better and faster. Nothing works like practice!

Wrapping Up

There may be additional little tricks that I've forgotten. But if you adopt some of these nine suggestions, you will certainly improve the speed and quality of your writing. And you could start writing a blog to practice these techniques and enjoy the other benefits of blogging that I described in a previous post.

Next Steps

Please tell me about any writing hacks that you have discovered and applied. My readers and I can always use more hints to help us improve our writing.

In a future post, I will provide some ideas about writing that is more compelling and inspiring.

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Email me: john.jurica.md@gmail.com

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The post Blogging Has Taught Me 9 Keys To Writing Quickly And Clearly appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

As chief medical officer, one of my primary challenges was connecting with the members of the medical staff. I regularly needed to inform them about initiatives undertaken by the organization, new mandates by accrediting agencies, upcoming staffing changes and dozens of other issues.

I needed to solicit input from our physicians about big issues like how to implement a hospitalist program, how to address coverage for high risk newborns and what new drugs to add to the formulary.

There were also less pressing issues that I wanted input about, such as continuing medical education needs or remodeling the physician lounge.

The list was endless. I was frequently brought into new initiatives because of my “expertise” and understanding of communicating with physicians (after all, I was one!). I remember being asked a question like this:

“Doctor Jurica, how do we communicate with all of these physicians? Can we do it through the medical staff structure? Through department meetings? Should we send out a memo? Meet with the doctors in small groups?

Should we publish a newsletter? Or meet with informal leaders to get the word out? Or send staff out to the doctors’ offices?

Invariably, I would just pause for effect and respond, “Yes”.

Versatility Is Needed

My point was this: There is no single best way to communicate with physicians. They all have preferred styles of communication. They have different schedules. Some prefer to meet; others hate meetings. Some prefer written communication. Others would like a video, if possible.

Some cling to the medical staff structure and formal communication. Still others disdain the medical staff structure, but love gossip and the informal grapevine.

As a result, it is not possible to select one means of communication with members of a medical staff. It is a bit easier to get engagement with medical group members, because they may be partners or shareholders. But to achieve our communication goals as healthcare executives, we’re going to need to use multiple methods of communication.

Unless we wish to spend countless hours in individual meetings, phone calls, group meetings, forums, writing white papers, sending out memos and publishing newsletters, we need to develop more effective tools for communicating with our constituents. While there is no single best answer, there is a relatively new, but well-tested means of communication that may meet of these needs.

Why Healthcare Executive Blogging May Be The Answer

By now, almost everyone understands what a blog is. Derived from a contraction of the words “web log” it is generally a type of website that consists of regular posts or articles. The most recent post is at the top of the home page, and the earlier posts follow below it in reverse chronological order.

The content of a blog can be anything from a personal journal shared with a very select few, to news stories shared with millions of readers. Its content can be subjective and personal or well-researched with footnotes and linked sources.

Some very successful CEOs have adopted blogging as a way to communicate with constituents. The most famous of these is probably Richard Branson of the Virgin Group (Virgin Airlines, Virgins Records, etc.).

What does he write about on his blog?

He shares his vision and strategy, observations about business and travel and about healthy lifestyles. His posts are read by millions, and shared on social media by thousands of readers.

For our purposes, consider what a blog written by a healthcare CEO or CMO might look like. It might consist of regular articles addressing timely, high priority topics designed to advance the mission, vision and strategic goals of our organization. It is a tool that can replace other forms of communication, achieving greater results, better connectivity and improved efficiency.

The Benefits of Blogging

Let me list the benefits of blogging, and describe some of the features of a well designed blog that produce those benefits. As I do so, I will contrast the benefits for the CEO and the CMO.

1. Promoting the Mission, Vision, Values and Culture

For the CEO, this is an opportunity to present an image of the organization to the community; to express the vision, values and mission of the organization; to communicate directly with the community of patients, clients and customers of the organization. Some might call this building the brand.

For the CMO, this means reminding constituents of the need for quality, safety, stewardship and excellent care. It means writing about new safety and quality initiatives, medical staff bylaws issues, and proposed new services. The CMO can use this venue to announce staff changes or promulgate new evidence-based guidelines.

And both can use this “soap box” to express their personal passions, interests and opinions and promote the organizational culture.

2. Enhance Leadership Skills

Those who write and publish are seen as experts. The act of writing and publishing regular content forces the CEO and CMO to study, read, reflect and cogently express their opinions and plans for the organization.

This serves the dual purpose of enhancing the learning of the writer, while improving his or her credibility with the reader. Those who regularly share their opinions and plans with their audience are seen as more transparent. Credibility and transparency are two vital characteristics of an effective leader.

Writing and publishing forces us to be more creative, to think strategically, and to communicate with clarity.

3. Building Relationships

Blogging has the ability to be bidirectional. Through the use of comments, this forum-like environment can create an ongoing dialogue between the author and the audience and even within the audience. In large blogs it is not unusual for one of the audience members to become an informal curator of the comments.

The author can jump in and respond to questions and participate in the dialogue to achieve the goals of the blog. Both the CEO and CMO can address questions and concerns in this way, and move the conversation forward.

4. Expand Participation

A blog can address the preferred styles of communication to some extent. It is generally a written medium. But a blog can contain audio and video content too.

The CEO might include a video of a short presentation to the board for the medical staff to watch.

The CMO can post a video of a presentation given at a recent medical staff meeting for those that were unable to attend. Physicians might like to hear a clip of the discussion about a formulary addition considered at the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee. The options are endless.

5. Other Features That Make Blogging Useful

• The articles are in posted in reverse chronological order and are available forever, or until the author chooses to remove them.
• The posts are searchable by keywords or category, so the audience can review topics most important to them.
• Additional resources can be linked to. Unlike a written memo or letter, references can be readily accessed. Links to evidence-based protocols and supporting documentation can be easily embedded.

The Newsletter Vs. the Blog

It should be very obvious by now that if you have been using a newsletter to achieve some of these goals, you should consider switching to a blog. A blog has all of the benefits of a newsletter, with the advantages of being searchable and bidirectional.

Challenges

• A blog is a bit more complicated to set up than an email newsletter. But a reasonably attractive and functional blog can be created in a few hours with minimal technical knowledge.
• A good blog will be well planned and consistent. It is worthwhile to set up a schedule of planned content, with flexibility built in for breaking issues to be addressed.
• If you’re not already writing a regular newsletter, it will take time to become proficient at crafting and editing your writing. But you will improve with practice.
• You will need to set time aside for responding to comments and engaging in dialogues with your readers.

As to privacy and confidentiality, blogging platforms have the ability to be limit the audience. The CEO may wish to write a public blog, and will need to adjust content accordingly. But the CMO’s blog may be limited to members of the medical staff and/or division directors and other employees through the use of standard password protection techniques.

Summary of Benefits

With a little bit of preparation and time to create a blog, you will achieve all of the desired benefits noted above:

• Promoting your mission, values and goals, and a desired culture.
• Enhancing your expertise, credibility, transparency and clarity.
• Meeting the needs of your constituents for regular, two-way communication so they can remain informed and be heard.
• Expanding your reach by using a method that is more flexible and adaptable to your audience's communication styles and needs.
• Creating a searchable, annotated and referenced archive of content for your audience.
• Reducing the need for less efficient and less effective modes of communication.

Next Steps

I suggest that you check out these free tutorials on creating a blog using WordPress:

• Setting Up a WordPress Blog in 20 Minutes Using Bluehost by Michael Hyatt.
• How to Start a WordPress Blog from wpbeginner.com.
• Set Up a WordPress Blog in 4 Minutes by Pat Flynn in which he creates a blog and his first post in under 4 minutes. Since it was created in 2009, it is dated and may not be accurate, but it shows how easy it can be.
• Set Up a WordPress Blog step by step by the minimalists.com created in August 2016.

That should do it for today. Thanks for visiting today.

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The post 5 Benefits To Healthcare Executive Blogging Guaranteed To Deepen Your Influence appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Your directors will create their goals as well, as we discussed in SWOT Analysis and Goal Setting. You will then review their goals and help adjust them as needed.

Using the SMART acronym will help you to identify appropriate goals. And they will ensure that you continue to remain indispensable to your CEO and board.

SMART Goals

Various words have been used for each letter in the SMART Goals acronym. I prefer to use the following.

Specific

Each SMART goal should be written in a way that is not ambiguous or inexact. You must avoid any lack of clarity, for the reasons discussed in my post on Clarity. An example of a nonspecific goal might be: “Our unit will improve our patient safety scores this year.” A much more specific goal would be: “Our unit will achieve a central line-associated blood stream infection (CLABSI) rate below the national average rate for the coming calendar year.”

Rather than use an outcome measure, you could also define completion of a project, such as “Our unit will put in place a multidisciplinary team to reduce CLABSIs, which will achieve 100% compliance with completing the AHRQ central line maintenance checklist and audit form on each patient, and will achieve 100% compliance with placing the central line under ultrasound guidance.”

Measurable

It is easier to track goals that lend themselves to measurement. It is clear when they have been succcessfully completed. The preceding example demonstrates this principle well.

Attainable

This is usually not a major problem. Most of the time, our direct reports are going to think carefully about attempting to achieve a goal that is not within reach. This is especially true if there is some type of salary increase or bonus attached to achievement of the goal.

But there needs to be balance. I have had pharmacy directors who thought they could make remarkable improvements in inpatient drug utilization. Then they experienced the intense resistance to restrictions on the formulary that physicians demonstrated.

Relevant

Management goals should be REALLY relevant. You and your staff are going to spend significant amounts of time and energy trying to accomplish these goals. They therefore need to be the top priorities for your division or department for the coming year.

Try to weed out the peripheral, “nice to have” goals and focus on the “must have” goals. These are teh goals that will advance the mission and vision of the organization.

For example, consider a facility that is addressing the patient safety issue of CLABSIs as mentioned above. Accuracy of documentation and codingis very important, since there are very specific inclusion and exclusion criteria being applied. Your CLABSI measures may be calculated and published inaccurately if coding mistakes are made.

Therefore, a relevant goal for the Nurse Documentation Specialists might be: “Put in place a process to review all charts of patients with a discharge diagnosis that meets CLABSI ICD-10 codes prior to final coding.” A less relevant goal might be something like: “Achieve 100% pre-discharge chart review by Nursing Documentation Specialists for patients with catheter associated urinary tract infections.” The latter might be an important goal, but it is just not relevant to the more pressing issue of CLABSIs in this case.

Time-Limited

Every goal must have a deadline. After all, a goal without a deadline is just a dream. (Sorry, I have no original attribution for this quote. It has been quoted in various forms by many authors and speakers, including Robert Herjavec on an episode of the TV show Shark Tank!)

One Bonus Requirement

It is also very helpful to add milestones to each goal. These are the steps that must be completed or reached along the path to achieving the goal. Starting with the goal in mind, the milestones can be developed by working backward to the present state. It is helpful if the milestones generally follow the same SMART format, but it is not always necessary.

My Turn

Now, I am going to use these guidelines for smart goals to set some goals for this blog. That will allow me to use another tool to achieve accountability: publishing my goals to the world (or at least my blog readers!). Here are a few to begin the year…

1. Add a new blog feature – interviews with successful physician leaders – by the end of January, 2017.

The interviews will start out in written format. I will include answers to a series of questions about the path a leader or executive took in the journey from clinician to formal physician leader. The final question will address advice for the fledgling physician leader. These interviews will be posted once each week.

Milestones: create the interview template; identify the first five interviewees; contact those colleagues to enlist them to participate; send out the survey(s); collect responses; prepare them for publication; begin publishing the completed interviews.

2. Write an e-book about hospital patient safety, and make it available for free to my audience by the end of March 2017.

This is intended to be a practical guide for any hospital executive involved in understanding, supporting or improving patient safety. It will focus on the recognized components of patient safety that are currently being measured and reported. The e-book will include advice on how to improve patient safety in the hospital setting. I will also provide guidance on improving safety rankings published by HealthGrades and Truven (Top 100 Hospital).

Milestones: complete the background research for the book, create the outline, design the layout, write each chapter, compile the complete e-book, post the e-book, publicize the e-book on Facebook, LinkedIn, my email list and through guest post on other blogs.

3. Write a second e-book by the end of June 2017, topic to be determined.

Milestones: select topic, complete research, etc., etc.

4. Compile a list of physician-authored blogs and post on LinkedIn by the end of January, 2017.

I am personally fascinated by the blogs being written by my colleagues in medicine. I enjoy reading the breadth of blogs being produced. But I am surprised that some topics, such as physician leadership, are not well represented in the blogosphere. I believe other physicians might find this list of interest, so I have slowly been compiling the list in order to share it. I will do so on various social media sites and my own blog in the near future.

Milestones: search other physician-authored blogs for blogrolls; complete additional searches; compile and organize list; publish list.

Start Using SMART Goals

Go ahead and give it a try. Write down your goals for 2017 now. Use these guidelines to rewrite old goals.

Let me know what you think of my new goals for the beginning of 2017.

Don't forget to subscribe here.

As always, write me directly at john.jurica.md@gmail.com

The post How I’m Using SMART Goals for 2017 and You Can Too appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Office email had become a major aggravation for me. Along with the occasional helpful or important message, I was wading through dozens of useless and bothersome emails whenever I had a spare moment. I was deleting dozens of messages that added nothing to my effectiveness as chief medical officer.

Many of the incoming emails were rambling or outright confusing. Some left me wondering about their purpose: to inform me? ask for advice? or seek approval? And my direct reports and colleagues were using email in a way that didn't seem appropriate.

For example, is it appropriate to use email as a real-time communication tool, expecting immediate answers like an instant messaging system or chat room? I thought that email was designed as an asynchronous tool for communication.

Complex and subtle arguments were being misconstrued. Staff was feeling angry about seemingly critical or negative messages. So, I stepped back and reassessed my use of email. I developed a set of guidelines that I follow to prevent these and other email mistakes.

My Guidelines for Eliminating Email Mistakes at Work

1. I limit my emails to neutral or positive messages only.

I never send emails that might be considered negative. Without sufficient context, body language and tone of voice that comes with face to face meetings, it is easy for a neutral message to be taken as negative. If I need to deliver a negative message, bad news, or constructive criticism, I do NOT use email. Face to face is preferable; via telephone is alright in some cases. And when congratulating someone via email, I try to do it in person as well.

2. I try to be very careful to whom I reply.

If I'm not careful when responding to an individual following receipt of a group email, I may accidentally respond to the group. This can be embarrassing or offensive, depending on the content and who gets it.

3. I never use “bcc” (blind copy).

I can't think of many situations in which I want to send a copy of an email to someone without the primary recipient knowing. That would be like secretly taping a phone call and sharing the tape with someone not on the call. The blind recipient may not remember it was blinded and an embarrassing interaction may follow. It also seems a little sneaky to me.

4. I rarely use abbreviations that the recipient(s) may not understand.

Abbreviations can be annoying if they're not obvious. I think the use of jargon and non-standard abbreviations is just lazy and hampers communication. If a message is important enough to be drafted and sent, it should follow the rules of clarity.

5. I use proper spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Shortcuts are appropriate for text messages. But most business emails are sent from a computer and can be properly formatted. Sloppy sentence structure only leads to confusion, and may be taken by the recipient as evidence of lack of professionalism. There is even a Chrome Gmail plugin (Just Not Sorry) that can help avoid certain words and phrases to help your messages sound stronger and more confident.

6. I keep each message to a single topic.

Many persons, including me, sometimes file emails for future reference. When an email message addresses multiple issues in a single email, it can cause 2 common problems. While the first issue is usually addressed, the subsequent ones may be ignored. And filing the message becomes problematic. Do you file three copies, each in a separate location?

7. I'm trying to use more descriptive subject lines.

If someone is scanning emails, make it easy for them to pick yours out. In fact, consider treating your subject lines like a newspaper or magazine headline – pithy and inviting. I've seen some of my colleagues present the entire message in the subject line, leaving the body of the message empty (e.g., “Confirmed – tomorrow's meeting in Room A at 2:00 PM“). Now that's efficient!

8. Other helpful practices to reduce email mistakes.

If I am unable to respond immediately to an important message, I respond with a brief note acknowledging its receipt. And I include an estimate of the timing of a full response. Being proactive prevents the sender from re-issuing the message and cluterring up your inbox further.

Sometimes my attachments cannot be opened due to compatibility issues. This can usually be resolved by converting and sending the attachment as a “PDF” file.

Maintaining Control of Email

Beyond what may be considered “etiquette” issues, email can paradoxically eat up time and impair productivity. In order to avoid being overwhelmed, there are some regular practices and dozens of software products that can improve email management.

1. I spend time un-subscribing on a regular basis.

I hear  complaints of “I have over a hundred new emails to go through every day.” Many of those are subscriptions no longer worth receiving. So, I try to take a few minutes each day and un-subscribe from those I no longer wish to receive. Some email services will ask if you wish to un-subscribe when you mark a message as “spam,” which can be very helpful. There are also tools that will supercharge your ability to unsubscribe like Unroll.Me, Unlistr and Unsubscriber.

2. I try to batch email reading to once or twice a day.

I learned this from The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. It is much more efficient to run through 30 emails at one time than to stop every 15 minute to respond to one or two emails (this is one example where batching is good, in contrast to usual Lean Principles). If you find it difficult to ignore emails as they come in, turn off notifications, or use BatchedInbox to deliver messages at times you specify.  To support this practice, you can batch your outgoing emails to late in the day or first thing the next morning, to avoid the back and forth that can otherwise occur (these options are built into Outlook and Gmail).

3. I try to process email more efficiently.

There is an adage that one should only handle a document in your physical inbox once. The same is true of email messages. If an email can be dealt with immediately, do so and then file it or delete it. This includes taking action personally or delegating it immediately to someone else.

Items that cannot be dealt with in this way can be sent to a “Later” or “To do” file to be emptied during dedicated, scheduled time each day. If I need to keep an email message indefinitely, I send it directly to Evernote, as described in Productivity Tool for Physician Executives.

There are literally hundreds of more ways to reduce these email mistakes and make email more effective, but those are the major ideas that I follow. Some authors recommend the goal of emptying your Inbox completely each day. I rarely accomplish that. And like other's have advised… DON'T SEND EMAIL MESSAGES THAT ARE WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS!

Well, folks, what did I miss? Mention other suggestions in the comments below.

And don't forget to subscribe to my list at Subscribe Now.

As always, email me directly if you have any questions, or if you'd like me to write a guest post for your blog at: john.jurica.md@gmail.com

The post Stop Making These Business Email Mistakes appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Remodeling Fiasco

I promised my wife I would arrange to have the wallpaper in our kitchen and laundry room removed. Then those areas would be repainted. I contacted a painter referred to me by a colleague and met him at our home to go over the plans.

My wife and I had already purchased the paint, so when I met with the painter, I explained what I wanted to be done. Although he was a native Spanish speaker, his English was good and he seemed very confident in his ability to complete the plan (I speak a little French, but no Spanish). He would remove the wallpaper, repair and prep the walls, and paint the areas that had been stripped, leaving the matching wallpaper untouched in the adjoining powder room.

He was to do most of the work during the day while my wife and I were at our respective jobs. At the end of the first day, everything seemed to be on track. Most of the wallpaper had been removed from the laundry room and kitchen and our painter was scraping and repairing the walls.

At the end of the second full day of work, after arriving at home I was surprised to find our painter in the powder room applying the first coat of paint to the walls, having already removed all of the wallpaper!

It wasn’t the end of the world, and the bathroom ended up looking nice. But I had clearly failed in my efforts to communicate with our painter. I had not written the instructions down and I had not had him repeat them back to me. There had been a breakdown in clarity on my part.

Clarity is One of the Keys to Effective Management

I have seen similar breakdowns countless times in the senior management meetings, with my direct reports, and even within my family.

In his book The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, Patrick Lencioni describes his belief that organizational health is the greatest advantage any company can leverage to achieve unrivaled success. He goes on to describe how to ensure organizational health using four disciplines, three of which relate to clarity:

• Create Clarity
• Overcommunicate Clarity
• Reinforce Clarity

He makes a very strong case. As a physician executive and leader, I have seen failure to achieve clarity result in three major disappointments.

Within the context of making an organization healthy, alignment is about creating so much clarity that there is as little room as possible for confusion, disorder and infighting to set in. – Patrick Lencioni

The Three Disappointments

Here are three serious consequences of a lack of clarity:

1. Lack of Confidence. Team members come to depend on their leaders for defining and communicating the mission, vision and goals of an organization. If those are not clearly and consistently articulated, employees become disenchanted and confused. The resulting lack of confidence has numerous consequences, including internal conflict, poor performance, and turn-over.
2. Lack of Alignment. Your team can accomplish little if members are working at cross-purposes. Misunderstanding causes those on the organizational “boat” to row in different directions. A primary role of the senior executive team is to identify the organizational goals, align themselves on those goals, and then achieve clarity in communicating those goals to the rest of the organization. Failure to do so causes disorganization and misalignment.
3. Lack of Accountability. As a physician, how many times have you seen a hospitalized patient fail to follow his/her discharge instructions? We have added “teach-backs” by patients to nursing staff as a way to ensure that they have been understood. We also provide written instructions for our patients. If I don't know, explicitly, what I am assigned to do and when it is to be done, I will probably not get it right and on time.

It is incumbent on us as leaders to infuse clarity in our communication. Clarity requires repeating our message and using multiple channels of communication. A future post will be devoted to ways in which clarity can be enhanced.

In the meantime, how has a lack of clarity affected your performance or that of your organization? And what other serious consequences have you noticed from a lack of clarity?

Next Post

I think the next post is going to be a longer one in which I get into the “nitty-gritty” of understanding relative value units (RVUs) as they are used to measure physician productivity.

The post The Three Disappointments of a Lack of Clarity appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.