You have to believe in the changes that you’re going to make and why you are doing them. You know that there are tough times ahead and that you will get through them.

With any change there are ups and downs, there are days that you will feel things go backwards rather than forwards. However, focus on your vision and it will come true.

History is littered with people who believed in what they wanted: Abraham Lincoln, Steve Jobs, Rosa Parks and Richard Branson to name but a few. Without their belief in their vision, none of these people would have progressed.

Now put your plans into action

After your planning is complete, you next need to “just do it” – to get on with putting your plans into action. Don’t wait for the right time to do this – that right time might not come. Sometimes all it takes is a few minutes to take the plunge and make the first steps towards implementing a change that might otherwise seem complicated or daunting.

Conversely, it’s more than possible to put things off because your priorities are on other things and you never quite find the time. When was the last time that you actually had any spare time at al l to think about making plans for the future or bring in new ideas? But you do have to make some time, somehow.

To demonstrate what I mean, here ’s an example. We’ve been talking about setting up a texting service for our pharmacy for the last six months and, last Saturday afternoon, I finally did it. In the end, it didn’t take too long, once I’d decided that I was going to commit some time to this.

So, the phone has been ordered and I have designed a form for collecting the data. We will test this next week with a small number of customers and, when that is working, then we will roll it out to all of our customers.

The new text service will let patients know that their medicines are ready for collection. The benefits to the pharmacy will be that there will be fewer phone calls from patients wanting to check their prescription is there; people should collect earlier and, hopefully, less storage space will be needed for the prepared prescriptions.

We could have planned this better over a month or so to figure out exactly every element or we could just get on and do it, and amend the process as problems arise. I know we’re going to get it wrong in places, but we’re doing it, and that’s the only real advice I have to offer you. You know what there is to do: just do it.

 

The next step is to put these ideas into action. Finish by recording your learning outcomes.