My Management Experience

My Management Experience

Nathaniel H. Chan

Ateneo Graduate School of Business-Iloilo Campus Regis Program

My Management Experience

I am a physician and I was trained to “manage” diseases. My education as a doctor did not teach me how to manage people and organizations but it equipped me with the technical skills to diagnose and treat human illnesses.  My experience as a manager started when I began my solo practice as an ophthalmologist thirteen years ago with a single employee, my clinic secretary. I was the employer, clinic manager and service provider rolled into one. My thinking was merely in terms of day-to day activities.  My goal then was very simple – to go to the clinic to see patients and earn a living.  Things began to change more than seven years ago when a group of eye doctors including myself decided to combine our individual practices into one group practice with the aim of making it more efficient and more professional. We decided to set up a corporation called The Eye City which initially started with seven employees who all came from the clinics of our solo practices. The group practice has grown through the years and presently we have a network of four clinics with eleven employees.   

I started as the founding President and CEO.  Without formal training in management, I did not have any idea on the different management functions of planning, organizing, leading and controlling.  Looking back, I was somehow doing all these management functions without my knowing it.  As the leader of the group, I was tasked with conceptualizing and planning the goals and direction of the group practice.  The challenge was how to integrate four different solo practices into one group practice.  It took us more than a year of almost weekly meetings to complete the planning stage of the corporation from the mission-vision statement to strategic, tactical and operational goals.  

After we completed the planning stage for our start-up corporation, we then proceeded to define the structure of our organization.  Since we brought our secretaries with us, we have to identify who among them can become supervisors or first-line managers to oversee the work of the other secretaries.  Initially, with a very lean organization, I have to do multi-tasking as a top manager, middle manager and line-manager at the same time while training our clinic supervisors. Realizing that it is not sustainable for me to perform all these functions, we decided to hire a clinic manager to implement the strategic goals and plans of the corporation. Today, our organization has grown as we have further added an accounting and inventory department.  Since we are a lean organization, the doctors-partners, aside from serving as board of directors also have line functions as heads of Finance, Human Resource, Purchasing and Marketing. Our secretaries also double as our staff for the different departments.  

After organizing our corporate structure, the next challenge for me was how to create a cohesive and inspired workforce.  Since our original employees came from our different individual clinics, they brought with them the different organizational cultures of our solo practices.  The different work ethics and values our employees possessed have posed a very difficult challenge for us at the inception of our organization.  Not having much managerial experience, I started as an autocratic leader. I was more concerned with the completion of tasks than knowing the strengths and limitations of my employees.  I wanted them to fear me so they will follow my orders.  With my initial style of leadership and management, our people did not develop their initiative and the attrition rate was high.  The realization that it is very difficult to repeatedly hire and train people for a particular job, I began to appreciate the importance of our human resource.  I started to value their contribution to our company.  This change in perspective has led to a change in my management style. I began to look at them as part of the team instead of just mere subordinates.  I started to give value to their opinions and began to empower them in their work.  This has resulted to an improved working environment which has translated to a more productive and efficient workforce.  

The type of management function that our corporation is admittedly weak is in the area of control.  With our employees, we try to assess their performance through a peer and supervisor performance evaluation form. However this review process is not done on a regular basis.  We also do not have a way of assessing the effectiveness of our customer service because our secretaries always forget to provide our patients the available feedback forms. Our financial performance is also not carefully monitored.  We seldom review our balance sheet and income statements.  I would directly attribute this to my lack of knowledge and proficiency in this aspect of management.

        The decision to form a group practice was borne out of my experience during my training in the United States. There I witnessed first-hand the value of managed medical group practice. Recognizing the advantage of this type of practice compared to solo practice, I decided to make a simple project proposal and presented this to some of my colleagues.  I explained to them that if we establish a group practice, we will have the advantage of being the pioneers in this type of practice in our city.  The economies of scale in terms of combining our practice will also give us more bargaining power with our suppliers of medicines, eyeglasses and surgical consumables which will result to a lower purchase cost and streamline our supply chain.  We will also be able to market our practice better since we will be using our trade name instead of our personal names which is professionally unethical.  These reasons convinced them of the benefits of the group practice and this lead to the birth of The Eye City.