Archive for June, 2009

How to set standards for excellence and back them with total integrity.

A Commitment to Excellence
Leaders have specific responsibilities and must fulfill certain requirements. One requirement of leadership is the ability to choose  what area of excellence, and hire people who are excellent where the leader is weak.  Just as a good general chooses the terrain on which to do battle, an excellent leader chooses the area in which he and others are going to do an outstanding job. The commitment to excellence is one of the most powerful of all motivators. All leaders who change people and organizations are enthusiastic about achieving excellence in a particular area.  Yours might be in building teams, communicating, or adjusting patients.  Know what you are great at and know what you are not is the key to excellence.

Be the Best!
The most motivational vision you can have for yourself and others is to “Be the best!” Many people don’t yet realize that excellent performance in serving other people is an absolute, basic essential for survival in the economy of the future. Many individuals  still adhere to the idea that as long as they are no worse than anyone else, they can remain in business. That is just plain silly! It is prehistoric thinking. We are now in the age of excellence. Clients assume that they will get excellent quality, and if they don’t, they will go to your competitors so fast, people’s heads will spin.  I know there is “no competition” in chiropractic, but what I am saying is this client will find someone who will deliver excellent service and adjustments each and every time.

Have A Vision of High Standards
As a leader, your job is to be excellent at what you do, to be the best in chiropractic. Your job is to have a vision of high standards in serving people. You not only exemplify excellence in your own behavior, but you also translate it to others so that they, too, become committed to this vision.

This is the key to servant leadership. It is the commitment to doing work of the highest quality in the service of other people, both inside and outside the office. Leadership today requires an equal focus on the people who must do the job, on the one hand, and the people who are expected to benefit from the job, on the other.

The Most Respected Quality
The second quality, which is perhaps the single most respected quality of leaders, is integrity. Integrity is complete, unflinching honesty with regard to everything that you say and do. Integrity underlies all the other qualities. Your measure of integrity is determined by how honest you are in the critical areas of your life.

Integrity means this: When someone asks you at the end of the day, “Did you do your very best?” you can look him in the eye and say, “Yes!” Integrity means this: When someone asks you if you could have done it better, you can honestly say, “No, I did everything I possibly could.” Integrity means this: When someone examines your life, you are living what you are telling them to live!

Integrity means that you, as a leader, admit your shortcomings. It means that you work to develop your strengths and hire strong people for your weaknesses. Integrity means that you tell the truth, and that you live the truth in everything that you do and in all your relationships. Integrity means that you deal straightforwardly with people and situations and that you do not compromise what you believe to be true.  Integrity means that the client gets a treatment plan that THEY need, not what the insurance company will pay for.  

Action Exercises 
Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, identify the area of chiropractic where excellent performance can contribute the very most to productivity and profits. Focus all your efforts in this area.  Most of the time this is adjusting and communicating. 

Second, do your very best in what you do, and train the staff to do their best. Imagine that everyone is watching (because they are) even when no one is watching. Imagine that everyone in your office was going to do their work exactly the way you do yours.

Never compromise your standards, go save some lives today!

Love and livin,

Doc W

Will  today’s thoughts be dominated by inspiration or desperation.  Circumstances will always come, and your philosophy will determine how you see life after.  One guy lets cancer lead him to Livestrong for himself and others, another chooses to stop living life before he is even dead. 

Dig deep on what you believe today about  how you see life should be lived, and live it full out.  Today I will live to be inspired so that I can inspire others.  Don’t just livestrong, but live inspired!  Inspiration begets inspiration. 

I believe that no matter the circumstances or situation, you have a choice in how you respond to it.  You deepest, conscious or even unconscious beliefs will dictate how you imerge from it.  Choose very wisely, what beliefs guide you each and every day!

Lovin and Livin,

Doc W

Nine years ago Dr. Christopher Lyden wrote an article claiming that every incident of a school shooting or act of extreme violence involved the perpetrator being on “psychotropic drugs” (mood altering medications, like anti-depressants). The local media in Philadelphia was not interested in printing it because it was too ‘controversial and inflammatory.’ He later created a PowerPoint presentation for other doctors around the country to use in their local communities to teach people about the problems of treating ADD/ADHD with Ritalin and psychotropic drugs. Such advice went largely unheeded. Since then, there have been thousands of additional incidents of violence associated with the use of psychotropic drugs in general, and with anti-depressants specifically. The relationship between these very common drugs and violence (homicide and suicide) appears to be more than coincidental. It is so consistent that some court cases have established it to be causal (one directly causing the other).

How does this affect you? People you know are on these drugs. One out of eight Americans has been on or is currently taking an anti-depressant!  You or a family member may be one of them. Your children and/or friends will likely be encouraged to take them at some point.

I urge you to click on the link below and see the volume of articles and cases confirming the vast number of incidents of violence associated with antidepressants. The list goes on, not by a few dozen, not even by hundreds of cases, but by the thousands and thousands. Every case of school shootings and violence committed by a young person seems to have been related to SSRI use. Not some–all of them–were taking some type of prescribed psychotropic drugs. These drugs are known to induce “violent behavior, psychosis, hallucinations, suicide, homicidal thoughts and ideation, delusions, altered affect (emotional state)”… and on and on. These, and many other similar ’side effects’ are actually listed in the fine print of the drug inserts. Any wonder why people on these drugs commit acts they normally would not?

The PDR(the drug reference bible for physicians) strongly warns against putting anyone under 18 years of age on SSRIs (anti-depressants), because it can increase their risk of committing suicide up to three-fold, yet over 6 million young people in America now take prescribed psychotropic drugs! Children as young as one year old are now given ‘peppermint-flavored’ anti-depressants! (Why?) I have seen perfectly normal patients go stark raving mad–truly psychotic–within days of starting an anti-depressant (prescribed by another physician).

Please share this with those you know to help stop one of the biggest (legal) drug problems in America. A few thousand people die each year from illegal drugs, while over 200,000 Americans die every year as a result of their prescribed medications. Forward this to friends and family.

Dr. Wilson