Get What You Want: How to Present and Enact Change at Your Pharmacy

Whether you’ve recently been promoted to a leadership position at your pharmacy (congratulations!), or you’ve been a manager or director for months or years, you will at some point want to make some changes you feel need to be made at your pharmacy.

We’ve come up with a few strategies you can use to present your ideas in ways that have a better chance of being accepted and enacted.

If you’re going to be a leader, you’re going to have to take the initiative. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? But you’d be amazed how many managers or people who have found themselves in leadership positions somehow feel they can impart their wishes by hints, nudges or even innuendo. This never works. Speak up.
Objections will come up. They always do (people tend to hate change). Anticipate likely objections and have solutions/answers to them before you bring up the changes you want to enact.
You may be the leader, you may be the boss, but if your subordinates absolutely, positively don’t want to make the changes you want, they won’t happen. So it’s best if any big changes be made by consensus. Your staff must have say in the matter.
This means you’re going to have to be aware of your pharmacy’s subtle and not-so-subtle office politics. Who’s really the person who has the most influence about how things are done in your pharmacy? (Hint: It’s probably not someone with “organizational chart” authority, but someone who rules the roost by dint of his or her personality alone.)
You’re going to need to know explicitly how your employees will react before you bring the change subject up. That means you need to know inside and out the personalities as well as the dynamics of how those personalities interact with one another. This allows you to prepare for their reactions – and treat them with the respect they deserve as you move to make your changes.
As you move to make the changes, embrace the objections of your team members. They may have some good points to make. They also will have great ideas as to how to make the changes you want in a way that’s more pleasing to them, while still accomplishing your own goals. They could change your changes for the better!

What about you? Have you worked to institute changes you want/feel are necessary at your pharmacy? How’d it go? What did you do specifically to ensure the changes were enacted? What could you have done differently?

Are you a pharmacist or pharmacy technician looking to move to a new position? If so, send your CV/resume to a recruiter at Rx relief®. Dozens of hospitals, pharmacies, clinics, and other medical facilities are clamoring for your critical skills. Contact us today!