Recently, the Paragon E-Magazine sat down with Paragon’s President, Ken Runkle, regarding Paragon’s focus this year, “Leadership Matters.”
SO, EXPLAIN TO US PARAGON’S FOCUS THIS YEAR…
Ken: Over the years we have had different themes. A theme for the last two years has been CAVU. It’s an aviation term that means “Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited.” That’s our theme for the rest of this year and we are certainly happy with it.
On the other hand, our focus this year is “Leadership Matters.” We have noticed that several of our client practices have become bigger and bigger, and faster and faster. It seems like the ones who are running well have good leadership teams who have focused on leadership. They have studied leadership, they discuss leadership and they work out leadership in their practice.
I once had dinner with a speaker for The Paragon Program™ who I consider to be one of the smartest men I have ever met. From his standpoint, he didn’t really think that one person in a leadership position really mattered. I told him I shudder to think about how the world might have turned out without a Lincoln, a Churchill or …. you get the point!
HOW CAN DOCTORS DEMONSTRATE MORE LEADERSHIP?
Ken: Doctors will need to focus on leadership skills, as well as their clinical skills. They also will have to select and appoint leadership teams. In some cases, the leadership team will be made up of people who are leaders of departments in the practice. In other cases, a doctor may have two or three people who are demonstrating leadership throughout the practice but are not leaders of teams.
HOW WILL PARAGON BE TEACHING LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT?
Ken: We have our second quarter Excelleration Meetings and recommended that our clients bring their leadership team to those meetings for leadership development training.
Also, we will be spending one day on leadership development at the Longboat Key National Study Club meeting in June as well as one day at the Napa meeting in September.
Finally, the Year End Review in December, will focus on leadership and will be called “The Leadership Summit.” We will have one speaker focusing on clinical excellence, and the rest of the speakers will be focusing on “Leadership Matters.” This will be the first time we have ever encouraged our doctors to bring their leadership teams to the Year End Review™. This year’s Year End Review™ is not designed to be for all staff, but it certainly will be designed to help with the development and training of leadership teams.
DO YOU THINK FOCUSING ON LEADERSHIP WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
Ken: Absolutely. Over the years, we have come to realize that when we really focus on something in The Paragon Program™, our client practices change as a result of it.
When we focused on clinical excellence, our doctors got better clinically.
When we focused on staff training through the Paragon Academies, the staff knowledge improved.
When we focused on building the Paragon community of doctors through the Success Network™, we saw that the Paragon network of doctors became much closer. (Some doctors have actually started to vacation with doctors from other regions or states simply because of relationships they have from the Success Network™.)
Recently, a long-term client of Paragon from northern Indiana shared an observation with me. He pointed out that at the beginning of Paragon we focused on clinical excellence. Later, we focused on staff excellence and staff training. Over the years, we have focused on new patient strategies as well as case acceptance. He pointed out that we even focused on personal development because we realized we needed to do that for our doctors’ long-term professional success.
He said that when I announced we would focus on “Leadership Matters,” he thought to himself, “Of course, Paragon will focus on that. In the end, it always comes down to leadership.”
In the end, I like to think this is a natural evolution in the training and development that we are doing in The Paragon Program™.