It happens everyday in offices all over the world, people come to work to complete the tasks that they were hired to do. they are doing what they have been hired to do, but something is missing. They have developed tunnel vision with what it is that they are doing.
Possibly they do not understand why they are doing it or how it effects the bigger picture, they are only seeing a small dot (where they are) on the bigger map, which is blurred.
Working in a medical office or any office where you work with people should not be like working on an assembly line where you are producing widgets. Everything we do is connected in one way or another to completing a bigger picture.
The attached article about a story of “The Stonecutters” where a man sees three stone cutters working and wants to find out what it is that they are doing. He asks the first man “What are you doing?” and the man answers “I am cutting stone!”. With no real answer the man goes to the second stonecutter and asks the same question. This man answers “I am cutting a block of stone to make sure it is square and its dimensions are uniform so it fits exactly right with the other stones in the wall.” The man was a little bit closer to finding out what they were doing, but what they were working on was still unclear. The man then went to the third man, who seemed the happiest of them all and asked “What are you doing?” The man smiled at him and said “I am building a cathedral!” Even though each of the men were doing the same task each saw what they were doing a bit differently.
As a business owner or manager we need to make sure that we and our staff fully see the bigger picture of what we are doing collectively, “The Big Picture.” It is not that the front office person just answers the phone and schedules appointments, they are the “Director of First Impressions” that can make the difference on how your patients/clients see you and your office as a whole.
Even if our job tasks do not have us come in direct contact with the patients/clients themselves, what we are doing supports those who do and we come in contact with our co-workers everyday. Spend time together as a team talking about what it is that you do together helping each other see the significance of what they do and how it connects to the Bigger Picture for the good of those you serve. Knowing the ultimate vision of what you are collectively working together for, inspires each person. It is a big world out there.
08/05/14
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