Do You Need Google Maps for Your Legal Nurse Consulting Business?

My husband Tom has a great sense of direction. You can plop him down in a city he hasn’t been in for 15 years and he’ll lead you to the nearest movie theatre or restaurant we liked through all sorts of detours without a pause. He’s even gotten us out of the woods (literally) with just a topographical map and a cheap compass after we missed a trail in a wilderness reserve.

My sense of direction, on the other hand, is terrible. I don’t try to hide it. If Neiman Marcus wasn’t in the Galleria (which is outside the 610 Loop in Houston) I’d never go there at all. Ever. Of course, with the COVID-19 pandemic and Neiman’s filing Chapter 11, Neiman’s probably won’t be challenging my sense of direction any time soon.

I may not have been blessed with a sense of direction, but I have been blessed with the ability to plan. I wake up each day with a plan. But I also know that I’m probably going to bust that plan before 9:00am. A strategic plan is important, but it rarely defines the whole direction. You head off following your plan towards one destination and often end at another.

Google Maps is not only great for getting you from Point A to Point B with clean, convenient restroom stops in between, but it also knows how to navigate you through a sudden freeway stall due to an auto accident. What kind of sense of direction do you have for your legal nurse consulting business? Is your CLNC® strategic plan as dynamic as Google Maps?

The most successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have a little Google Maps voice in the back of their heads that tells them when to detour from their plan and when to get back on it. When opportunities arise they’re able to detour from their plan and are primed to seize opportunities as they present themselves.

You need to develop a Google Maps-like sensibility for your CLNC business. This will help you cope with the detours, expected or unexpected that show up. Walk into an attorney’s office for an interview and there are five attorneys, not just the one you expected, and your Google Maps sensibility will route you into the correct mode to address them all.

An attorney calls you with a case outside your area of expertise. Your inner Google Maps tells you to surf to the NACLNC® Directory website and locate a CLNC subcontractor. A CLNC colleague calls and asks you to testify on your specialty and you’ve never testified before. Does your inner Google Maps plot the quickest way out of town? No, it points you to research to start boning up on what you already know well and then to Nordstrom’s curbside pickup for a power suit (the one you’ve secretly been lusting after) to wear to your virtual deposition.

Our inner Google Maps isn’t always right, it may sometimes be wrong, but it’s still our inner compass. It’s guided by what we’ve learned, what we want and what we need. It has our best interests in mind (but bears watching). Sometimes it’s a polite voice and sometimes it’s not so polite (screaming to get our attention). It’s 50% intuition, 50% training and sometimes 50% absolute total guesswork. It makes sure we return to our path but frees us to take advantage of the occasional detour without panic or fear. Occasionally, your inner Google Maps needs to be updated to adjust to current conditions – but then it works like a champ again.

When was the last time you touched base with your inner Google Maps? Was it today, yesterday or when you enrolled in the CLNC Certification Program?

Success Is Yours,

Vickie L. Milazzo, RN, MSN, JD

P.S. What’s the last thing your inner Google Maps told you? Did you listen? I’d like to hear your inner Google Maps stories and so would your CLNC colleagues. So please comment here.