Are you the ‘Doer’ or the ‘Thinker’ of your work team?

What if I told you the difference in your pharmacy manager type would predict your longevity in the profession? Listen to my comparison of these two pharmacists: Raph vs Leo. Which are you?

The Do-er is a manager that is constantly putting gout fires. They work extremely hard in a reactive and error-prone dispensary that delivers good results with that take Herculean effort. When this manager is away, there is usually a blast radius. Since this manager is forced to spend a lion’s share of their time on technical duties to keep things rolling, there is a lack of calculated, analytical, big picture succession planning and people development. Wait times are long, essential systems like inventory management cause trouble, patients make frequent low-value visits to the pharmacy and the staff spend way more time fixing problems than preventing them. Some of the customer complaints and stresses of the day are self-inflicted, but not seen this way due to a lack of awareness.

The Do-er is often less job satisfied, of shorter duration in one pharmacy site and less motivated to take on life-benefiting after work extracurriculars.

The Thinker behaves more like a shareholder. While capable of the heavy lifting, they avoid a large part of it not because they are better than others or lazy, but because they…