agility

For 28 years I’ve been reading business books, print publications and business information I find on the Internet. Over the years I have seen many management theories that have obviously been written by university professors or solo consultants who have never managed a single day in their lives. It’s like getting relationship advice from someone who’s not in one.

I don’t profess to be a management expert. Managing others is probably the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. Believe it or not, managing attorney-clients and annual NACLNC^® Conferences with 1,000+ people and celebrity speakers are a piece of cake compared to managing my staff of 22.

I never expected to find myself involved in management. In fact, when I worked in the hospital as an RN, management was not one of my ambitions. What I’ve learned from my experiences is that managing a business is like being in a giant laboratory. Sometimes your experiments work, sometimes they catch fire and sometimes they blow up in your face. Anyone in management will tell you that we are all constantly discovering, learning, screwing up and responding. There’s no nursing care plan that applies to management. You get the picture. Ask any manager what they think of the comic strip Dilbert^® and they’ll tell you that yes, it’s funny and that their boss’s version of “Bossbert” is even funnier.

While I don’t know everything there is to know about management theory, here’s what I do know. I’ve got 5 executive managers and every one of them is different. Their differences make for a stronger company, but also demand that I be different in the way that I manage. I am called all day, every day to flex my agility muscles and interface differently with each one. Some of my executive managers perform at their best when I am totally hands-off. Some perform best when I am very hands-on and at least one performs best when I’m somewhere in the middle (one hand on, one hand off).

If I tried to manage each one the same way, the outcome would be disastrous. This is why I struggle with many of the management theories that are tossed out there and treated like gospel truths. The reality is, you have to manage on the fly and sometimes that involves mashing up any number of different theories to obtain a coherent response.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, you may not automatically think of yourself as a manager, but you are. You manage your CLNC^® subcontractors. Flex your agility muscles and seek out CLNC^® subcontractors who can bring different legal nurse consulting talents to your CLNC^® business. One of my favorite CLNC^® subcontractors cannot write to save her soul, but her clinical insights more than make for up her poor writing skills. She can see and grasp the most difficult issues with ease. I use her differently than I do a CLNC^® subcontractor who is an awesome writer. Both are important assets to my legal nurse consulting business.

Focus and capitalize on the strengths of each of your CLNC^® subcontractors and you will have a stronger, more diverse and more successful CLNC^® business.

Success Is Inside!

P.S. Comment and share how your management style makes a positive influence for your CLNC^® business.

Nurses naturally have the strength of agility. After all, you can’t be a nurse and not be agile. When you have five people talking to you at once, and you’re handling five different emergencies at once, that takes agility. When you go from this to that, without time to think and seconds are making a difference – that’s agility. When you’re floated to a unit you know nothing about – and you don’t kill anyone – that’s agility. As nurses, we’re all over that strength, aren’t we?

But agility is more than bending over backwards to satisfy a patient or even a unit of patients. Instead of simply using your agility to cope with your nursing practice or your day-to-day life, do you use your agility to stretch and grow to new levels professionally and personally? Agility is also flexing a curiosity about what else is out there for you professionally.

Agility is also about challenging fixed viewpoints that people (like the doctors, your supervisor, your spouse) have about you and fixed viewpoints you have about yourself. When I started my legal nurse consulting business, I had to challenge the fixed viewpoint that nurses don’t go into business. I also had to challenge the fixed viewpoint that if the business idea hasn’t already been invented, there’s probably no market for it. But more importantly, I had to challenge my own fixed viewpoints.

These include the belief that nursing didn’t prepare me for owning a legal nurse consulting business and the belief that I didn’t have time to start a business as a legal nurse consultant with my full-time nursing job at the hospital.

Open your mind and energy to people who can introduce you to new ways of thinking about nursing or your CLNC^® business and the unlimited possibilities that are available when you stretch your agility. You’ll need to be willing to change directions, just like you do in your hospital job. And be ready to shake things up.

Risking even minor change strengthens your agility to go where you need to go next and prepares you for future challenges that will undoubtedly require even more change. When you stretch yourself to a new level, the next challenge isn’t nearly as scary; the ground is more familiar. Agility is your path to a deeper, richer experience in nursing and in your CLNC^® business, as well as the strength you’ll need to side-step any challenges you’ll meet along the way.

Success Is Inside!