I started writing this blog one year ago. I’ve published every week since, except for a short break this summer.
Back then, and still today, I believe our healthcare system has many problems. I also believe it can improve. But things will only improve meaningfully when doctors and other clinicians go beyond improving their clinical skills and learn to lead better.
I started this blog to share what I’ve learned from living and breathing medicine, learning and working in two countries, in both rural and urban areas, and leading in both private and public sectors.
Over the past year, I did just that, one post at a time. Looking back now, I see a pattern I didn’t notice while I was writing.
It all started with The Hidden Communication Gap in Modern Healthcare. Early on, I wrote about an endocrinologist I worked with during residency who wanted us to write our notes in reverse order: recommendation first, history last. That bothered me at the time.
Years later, in business school, I learned about Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle, which tells executives to do the same thing: lead with the main recommendations, then add the supporting ideas and data. Doctors usually build a case, while executives want the answer right away. Neither way is wrong, but when both groups are together, someone often leaves frustrated.
Last fall, I focused on hope, the kind that researchers study. In Why Clarity Matters More Than Vision For Hope, I argued that clarity motivates people more than vision does. People don’t get excited about “we will deliver world-class care.” They get behind “wait times drop from 45 minutes to 25, starting next week.”
By December, I wrote A Letter to A Younger Me on Healthcare as A Business — Part 2, about the business side of medicine, the part no one teaches in medical school. It’s about balancing profit and purpose without ignoring either. I wish someone had given me that letter twenty-five years ago. Writing it was the closest I could come to doing that for someone else.
In January, in The Why of Office Politics That Every Doctor Should Know, I wrote about how many physicians think politics is for others: the ambitious, the manipulative, or those who play games. I argued that politics isn’t a character flaw. It’s what happens when people with different needs share limited resources. If you stop seeing it as beneath you, you can actually get better at it.
Spring became more personal. In March, in Your Speech Has Only One Job – Serve The Audience, I wrote about working on the speech that took me to the semifinals of the World Championship of Public Speaking. The most important lesson wasn’t about technique. It was this: a speech has one job, and that’s to serve the audience, not the speaker. I learned this the hard way, cutting details about my late wife Uzma that I loved but that didn’t help anyone but me.
Come April, in Why Comfort and Meaning Are Not Enough For Physician Well-being, I challenged the usual conversation about physician well-being. A JAMA article said doctors need comfort and meaning to thrive. I agreed, but added a third ingredient: agency. Agency is built through impactful action.
May saw me write The Business Case for Servant Leadership in Healthcare, where I shared research supporting a belief I’ve had for years: servant leadership isn’t soft. It leads to lower turnover, better safety results, and higher patient satisfaction. If you lead people and aren’t measuring these things, you’re just guessing.
In July, in Leading Peers: How to Influence People Who Don’t Report to You, I shared my story of becoming Chief Resident, realizing the role had almost no real authority, and spending most of the year on the phone asking colleagues for favors they didn’t owe me. Twenty-five years later, though I have direct reports, almost all change I must bring still happens through influence, not authority. That’s not a flaw in medicine; it’s just what leadership in this field looks like.
Eight posts over a year, and they all come back to the same question: How to help people trained to heal learn to lead?
I don’t have a simple answer. I have a year of trying to figure it out, sharing my thoughts one Sunday at a time. Thank you for reading. I hope you’ll keep exploring this with me.
