Category: Marketing Professional Deccan Gymkhana

Everyone Has People Skills, Right?

Fortune 500 coach and author Peggy Klaus is a world-class trainer and has just had her second book released. Like her first title (BRAG! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It), this new one, The Hard Truth About Soft Skills: Workplace Lessons Smart People Wish They’d Learned Sooner, offers succinct, real life advice about how people can enhance their social, communication, and self-management behaviors so that they can move up in their careers. Here’s part one of my interview with Peggy:

LGL: After your BRAG! book, why did you decide to write a book on soft skills?

PK: Time and time again, my clients would ask me, “Peggy, why didn’t someone tell me…and if they did why didn’t I listen?” The stories they shared with me about missed opportunities and derailed careers would invariably track back to shortfalls in their soft skills repertoire. Yet although soft skills can make or break your career—and despite the increasing body of research underscoring their importance—most people continue to learn them the hard way.

LGL: What’s the difference between hard and soft skills?

PK: The difference between hard and soft skills is simply this: Hard skills are the technical expertise needed to get the job done, whereas soft skills are everything else! Most people, though, think soft skills are just those touchy-feely people skills. Yes, it’s true that people skills are part of the equation. But soft skills cover a much wider range of abilities and traits—from self-awareness to attitude, initiative to problem solving, handling criticism to communicating your agenda, leadership to time management, political astuteness to integrity, and then some. It’s the soft skills that allow people to more effectively use their hard skills. And in fact, as many of my clients tell me, soft skills are the hardest things you’ll ever learn.

LGL: If soft skills are so important to getting ahead, why don’t people pay more attention to them?

PK: First there is confusion over what they are. As I said before, many people think they are people skills alone. Another problem is semantics. How could anything described as soft be valued in the hard-charging, results-driven business world or impact the bottom line? There’s also the fact that colleges, universities, and MBA programs more often than not subscribe to what I call the Joe Friday school of education. Joe Friday, the Dragnet television show detective, was known for saying, “All we want are the facts, Ma’am.” When I talk with business school deans they say that they’re so tight on time teaching the quantitative skills like economics and statistics that they don’t have room in the curriculum for the soft skills like communication and leadership. What I say back to them is that they don’t have time not to teach the soft skills if they want their students to succeed in the work world.

Retail Clinics: Some Shakeout, Wal-Mart Moving In

The current wave of retail, urgent care clinics continues, and overall the future is still bright. There has been, and will be, some shake-out. One of the first companies in this wave, CheckUps, operated 23 clinics in Wal-Mart stores in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. CheckUps ceased operations last week, apparently running out of cash.
 
On the other hand, Wal-Mart has announced that it plans to open 400 store based clinics between now and 2010. Wal-Mart’s first co-branded in-store clinics with local hospitals will open under “The Clinic at Wal-Mart” brand in Atlanta, Little Rock and Dallas, with the first clinic expected to open in April 2008. Wal-Mart has signed a letter of intent to partner directly with St. Vincent Health System, a part of the Catholic Healthcare Initiatives system, to open four co-branded clinics in Little Rock, and also has signed a letter of intent to work with RediClinic, LLC (a division of Steve Case’s Revolution Health) and local hospital systems to open co-branded walk-in clinics in 200 Wal-Mart Supercenters, starting with stores in Atlanta and Dallas. See Wal-Mart’s Fact Sheet for more details of their plans.
 
I firmly believe that these retail clinics are here to stay because they address several consumers “pain” points: (1) convenience, in terms of hours and location, (2) predictable pricing/cost and (3) simplicity and narrow focus. The important takeaways from these developments offer potential opportunities for private practice physicians. First, the operating companies and their retail chain hosts want to work with local healthcare provides for the goodwill of the local “brand”. Secondly, the clinics need medical backup, something which local providers need to provide. Your hospital may be the preferred affiliate, but they need physicians to refer to – enter you. Third, you can enter into your own relationship with the clinics and use them as an after-hours option. In this kind of arrangement, you want the clinic staff to be calling you if they need to speak with you, and to insure that you get the follow-up appointment and a report. By being responsive to the clinic’s needs and by being respectful, you are also more likely to be called with referrals for patients without a physician (primary or specialty).
 
There have been several models of urgent care clinics around for some 30 years, but the retail clinics appear to be taking hold as a low overhead, low cost, limited service solution for real patient needs. You can’t stop it, but you can help your patients and work with them to grow your own practice.