Show Notes

Description

Dr John Mahan visits the FAMEcast Studio as we consider the professional mission statement. This essential document guides our many decisions as we journey through a career in academic medicine. We hope you can join us!

Topic

The Professional Mission Statement

Guest

Dr John Mahan
Director, Center for Faculty Development
Nationwide Children’s Hospital

Links

Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement (FAME)
Center for Faculty Development at Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Professional Mission Statement Worksheet Packet

Episode Transcript

[Dr Mike Patrick]
This episode of FAMEcast is brought to you by the Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and by the Center for Faculty Development at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Hello, everyone, and welcome once again to FAMEcast. We are a faculty development podcast from The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

This is Dr. Mike coming to you from Ohio State, and this is episode two. We’re calling this one Creating Your Professional Mission Statement. Want to welcome all of you to the program.

So, we have an important episode for you this week because it really ties in with our first episode, which was on mentoring and coaching. If you haven’t listened to that one, that was with Dr. Kim Tartaglia, she was our guest, and I would recommend that you take a listen to it either before or after this one because they really do fit together nicely. And the main reason that they fit together is because as you think about mentoring or coaching faculty members, maybe faculty members who are junior to you, or even learners, medical students even, in their career journey as they are just starting out, it is important when you have a specific mentoring relationship to sort of have a starting point.

Like, okay, we’re going to meet for the first time, get to know each other, but what do we do from here, from our very first meeting? And developing a professional mission statement together, you know, it’s a short document, 30 words or less, but it can go a long way to really helping folks that we are mentoring sort of drill down into what is important for them. And that’s important because, especially in academic medicine, oftentimes we have lots of different activities to choose from, but you want to choose wisely.

You want to know what to say yes to, what to say no to, what’s worth your time, what may not be worth your time so much. And having that mission statement can really help us evaluate what’s important and what’s not. And using that as a jumping point for a mentorship or a coaching relationship can be very, very useful.

So, we are going to consider the development, use and review of the professional mission statement today. Now, just for the sake of transparency, I have to tell you, when we scheduled this topic, I thought, oh, great, now I need a professional mission statement because I don’t have one. And my next thought was, this is something else I need to do.

Because if you’re like me, you probably have a ton on your plate. Maybe you haven’t done a great job of what to say yes to and what to say no to, and you don’t necessarily need something placed on top of everything you’re already doing. But as I prepped the show and learned more about the development and use of the professional mission statement, I have to tell you, I quickly became a believer.

And now I’m actually excited to pause some of my work and spend a bit of time developing and reflecting upon my own professional mission statement. Because it’s really super helpful in so many ways as we are about to find out. We are going to take a deep dive into the professional mission statement as we consider its development, evolution, and benefits.

And to help us do that, we have another terrific guest visiting the studio today. Dr. John Mahan, he is the director of the Center for Faculty Development at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. He will be with us shortly, but before we get to him, I just want to remind you the information presented in FAMEcast is for general educational purposes only.

Your use of this audio program is subject to the FAMEcast Terms of Use Agreement, which you can find at famecast.org. So, let’s take a quick break. We’ll get Dr. John Mahan settled into the studio, and then we will be back to talk about the professional mission statement. It’s coming up right after this. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Dr. John Mahan is director of the Center for Faculty Development at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and a professor of pediatrics at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. He also served as the director of the Pediatric Residency Program at Nationwide Children’s for nearly 30 years from 1990 until 2019.

And I will say as an aside, that Dr. Mahan was my residency program director and a terrific mentor and coach in the early days of my career. And he has continued in those roles today. Dr. Mahan has a passion for mentoring and coaching learners and colleagues as they journey through their education and careers. And an important element of his work is raising awareness of the professional mission statement, explaining its importance and sharing best practices for the development, use and review of this document. That’s our topic today, the professional mission statement, but before we jump in, let’s offer a warm FAMEcast welcome to our guest, Dr. John Mahan. Thank you so much for joining us today.

[Dr John Mahan]
Thank you, Mike. And well, it’s a pleasure and it’s an even greater pleasure to see all the great things you’ve been able to do with your career. I remember when you were a young intern, clearly a green and a little wet behind the ears.

And so, you grow as a resident and become really such an effective senior resident. And then what happens? You get promoted to the next thing.

And it’s been really neat to see all the aspects of your career as a clinician and now as a medical educator, really utilizing technology at a high level. So, it’s really great to be on.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, really appreciate all those kind words. And it’s certainly, you don’t get out of medical school really knowing how to be a great doctor. That really takes time and practice and great mentors and coaches.

I think a great place to start would be with a definition. What exactly is professional mission statement and why is it an important thing?

[Dr John Mahan]
Yeah, this is actually a concept that I was first exposed to, oh boy, over 20 years ago at some national pediatric program director meetings where this was presented, and I was a new program director. And the idea was, what’s your mission as a professional and specifically as a program director? And I’m like, well, do a good job.

And it was like, no, no, it needs to be a little bit more specific and concrete and something that you know you can accomplish, and we’ll be able to know you’ve accomplished. And it was really eye-opening and mind-opening to me at that time. And with interest in that concept, I had a chance to end up doing some national presentations to the program directors.

And then ultimately, we’ve utilized a model of this kind of concept and workshop over the last two decades at Children’s, at OSU, through FAME and actually at some other institutions that really think this is a useful concept for their faculty and their trainees. And the idea is that we’re talking about a professional mission statement. It’s professional, it’s not what is the mission of your life, it’s what is the mission of you and your profession.

That’s important because we all have missions greater than our professional mission, hopefully. So, this is professional. But the idea of mission is this work that you want to accomplish, and you want to be your statement, your calling card, what you have done.

And it really contrasts nicely with vision. We all should have a vision, which ultimately is this big, hairy, audacious, amazing thing that ultimately will never get done. It’s so big, it’s so important.

But our mission then is what can we do that will help bring about the vision to the best of our ability? And again, it can be very inspiring to us when we think, okay, this is what I would like to achieve, this is what I want to accomplish. So therefore, what is my mission and specifically in my professional area of my life?

[Dr Mike Patrick]
How do you recommend someone go about actually writing it? Like is this paragraph form or these bullet points? How do you document your professional mission statement?

[Dr John Mahan]
Yes, and no, very good question. And actually, we have a handout that includes a sheet where the individual professional starts the process of defining their professional mission statement draft. So, I understand we’re going to be able to take these worksheets that I’ll refer to and put them on the FAMEcast site so people can download them.

But actually, what we ask the individual to do is very easy and very difficult. The idea is to write down in 30 words or less what you want to accomplish in your professional career. I say it’s very easy because 30 words, right?

We’re not asking for a big, long exposition, but very challenging because most people have a hard time really being able to put into a tight concept what they really want to accomplish with their professional life. So, in these workshops, we ask individuals to do that quietly by themselves and then share it with some folks. It could be with one other, two other people.

And what we find is when you try to explain that professional mission to someone else, you start to sharpen your thinking. Like, okay, that doesn’t sound quite right. Or the feedback you get is that’s a little confusing and you start to modify it.

So, then we ask people after they get a chance to share it with someone to rewrite it now after they’ve received that feedback. And then, as we’ll talk about, there are some specific parts of that mission statement and particular way of writing it that many people don’t intuitively do the first time. So, we help folks redefine it and basically refine it during that process.

So ultimately, what we would love for people to end up with is, in 30 words or less, what they want to be known for in their professional career such that they can share that with others.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah. And when you actually come up with this and you have those 30 words or less actually down on paper, how then is having that helpful in your academic career?

[Dr John Mahan]
So helpful. First of all, it’s helpful to you because many of us are busy doing things. Important, many important things.

And sometimes just having the mission statement on your computer, on a piece of paper in your office, on the wall, you look up at it and you realize, oh yeah, that’s right, this is what I set out to do. And also, for you, and we can talk about this, but it becomes a statement that you can check new opportunities and present activities against. And as we talk about, if more of your time and effort is devoted to things that are not your mission, you’re probably not going to accomplish your mission.

So, it becomes a really useful device for you. So, when you look at the activities you’re doing or when someone comes to you and says, like your boss, could you do this? You’re like, well, you realize I already have a lot of things that are not in my mission and let’s think and talk about this.

Where if you didn’t have that mission statement, you would not necessarily have that measuring stick. At another level, sharing that mission statement with your boss is so valuable because your boss ultimately has great opportunities to help you accomplish your mission. And if your boss understands that mission, how can they help you accomplish that?

And then lastly, sharing it with your colleagues. I think there’s some real value to the people you work with knowing that this is what you really care about, what you really want to accomplish. And again, there may be ways they can help you with that, but if they don’t know what you’re about, it’s going to be hard for them to intentionally help you accomplish what you want to accomplish.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
You know, at our institution, we have annual reviews and I’m sure there’s a similar process in place at academic institutions across the country. It seems like the professional mission statement ought to be a part of that annual review, like the first thing. And that would also force you to kind of maybe tweak it every year as perhaps your interests change or you start going in a bit of a different direction than you had previously predicted because I would imagine these things aren’t set in stone, right?

[Dr John Mahan]
Yeah, and Mike, I think what you just described is really a best practice. I mean, your annual review and your plans for the next year really should start with your mission. And as we tell people, you can’t change your professional mission every week.

On the other hand, everyone will change their mission during their career. No one starts out at the first day of their career and ends up having the same mission for the next 20, 30, 40 years. So, I think a best practice that we talk to faculty and trainees about is that, you know, at least once a year, you should take a look at your mission and say, is this still what I want to devote the majority of my energy and interest to?

And I think realistically, people are going to change that professional mission in three, four, five times in their career easily because life happens, opportunities. And new technology arises.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
There were no podcasts when I started. Exactly, exactly. Down the disposition trail.

It’s life. Yes, yes. Now, do you also need a vision statement?

You talked about the difference between a vision and a mission. Do you start with a vision statement and then work your way down? Or is that just optional?

[Dr John Mahan]
Yeah, I would say for most faculty and trainees that we do this activity, the vision is something we talk about, but it’s certainly not essential.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Okay.

[Dr John Mahan]
And I think a good example, just kind of think about it from a non-medical standpoint, but your vision might be to end world hunger. Your mission may be to develop a species of rice that can be grown in sub-Sahara Africa that doubles the amount of rice that can be produced in arid soil. So, the vision is amazing, and it is animating, but many people don’t really think, I mean, the vision’s almost sort of understood, but the mission is really that part.

Now, the mission is what’s going to animate me in terms of my actions.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah. And that, I guess, is a way in which the mission may change over time, because if you have this grand vision, mission number one may be this, and you might actually accomplish your mission and move on to another mission. And again, having that review of it every year kind of gives you that opportunity to change things up a little bit if you need to.

What are the three components, then, of a professional mission statement? In those 30 words or less, what’s required?

[Dr John Mahan]
Yeah, so a good or an effective mission statement should be specific. So, it really should specifically state what you want to accomplish. It should be something that is inspiring, it’s something that is worth it to you, and as you communicate that to your supervisor, your colleagues, one would hope that it’s going to be meaningful to them as well.

And then lastly, it should be measurable. There should be some way in that statement to know if you’ve accomplished that. So, unpacking that, if my mission is to develop, to be a national expert in pediatric cardiology education, okay, how would I know that I’m an expert in pediatric cardiology education?

Well, I can think of some measures that at some period I could go back and say, well, I am an expert. I’m an expert because I’m asked to give talks on this. I’m an expert because I’ve written articles on it.

I’m an expert because I actually do it in real life. I’m an expert because I write review articles. So, there is an element where if you can’t tell whether you’ve accomplished your mission, if there’s no metric, then it becomes this thing that you’re devoted to, but you never know if you accomplished it.

So, it’s really specific, compelling, and then lastly, with some ability, some measurable nature.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
We talked during our first episode of FAMEcast about SMART goals, and it sounds like this is sort of a specialized SMART goal that relates to your career. And for folks, again, SMART goal is something that’s specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. So, you have, which has some extra pieces, but those are all kind of important things to think about as you develop your professional mission statement.

[Dr John Mahan]
And Mike, that’s a nice way to sort of put the two of those aside, because in a mission statement, there’s an element where it needs to be inspiring, and a SMART goal may not be. A SMART goal may be something you need to accomplish, and it’s important, but a mission statement should really mean something to you. It should get you excited, right?

And then oftentimes in a mission statement, it’s not necessarily time bound. Like you don’t say, if I don’t accomplish this by 2030, then I’m a failure, or I didn’t do it. There’s an element in a mission that you don’t know how long it’s going to take to accomplish that, but you still are inspired to make that effort and make that a central point of your professional career.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You talked a little bit about the folks who it’s a good idea to share your mission statement with, certainly your boss and then your colleagues, maybe even if you’re a mentor, maybe sharing that with your mentee and perhaps even helping them develop their own professional mission statement. What is the value, not only to others, but also to yourself in sharing this with others?

[Dr John Mahan]
Yeah, so when we do our workshops, we request that the attendees take their professional mission statement draft home, and during the workshop, they may do two or three versions. Each one may be a little tighter, a little bit more on point, and then we ask them to, that evening or the next day, rewrite it again, like sleep on it a little bit, think, kind of step away from it, now step back and rewrite it again. And then we ask them, in the next few weeks, share it with your boss.

And sometimes we get some raised eyebrows when we say that, but the point is, if you share your mission with your boss, you will not only inform your boss, but you will become better informed. In other words, your boss’s reaction to that mission statement should be very important. You share your mission statement with your supervisor, your boss, and they’re excited for you, that tells you something.

If you share that mission statement and they say, well, here’s some things that maybe I can do to help you accomplish that mission, or just that they now know that as they are working with you and assisting you in the next time period, whether that’s months or years, is really valuable. But lastly, what we also find is sometimes when you share that mission statement with your supervisor or boss, the feedback you get may be really important to you. So your boss may end up saying, I’m not sure you can accomplish that mission here, or I’m not sure you can accomplish it unless we add A, B, or C to your resources, or now I’m not sure you can accomplish this on your own, let me see if we can connect you to this person or that person.

So, you get feedback when you share that mission statement with your boss that can be really helpful to you in terms of accomplishing that mission.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, and I will also point out that if you start your annual review off with your professional mission statement, you’re actually going to be a great role model and your department chief or your division chief may say, oh, this is a great idea for all of the folks that I’m having reviews with, and you can then make a difference in your division just by doing this.

[Dr John Mahan]
Yeah, and the experience that I’ve heard from people is their boss was impressed that they had a mission and that they could talk about it and that they could use that to really develop their career. So, I think it really can be very useful and really make a statement to your supervisor, your chief.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
You know, as I was preparing for this episode, my first thought just to be transparent was, oh, no, here’s something else that I have to do. But then the thing that really caught my attention was using the professional mission statement to help assess career decisions. Because in academic medicine, often there is a whole smorgasbord of options that are presented to us, and it’s sometimes difficult to say no, even, well, in particular, when you’re a junior faculty member because you want to dig in, but the next thing you know, you’re overextended.

And I think if you know what your mission is, it really does help to drive home, like what do I say yes to, what do I say no to? And if you’re a leader, knows your professional mission statement, then it’s less scary, I think, to say no.

[Dr John Mahan]
Yes, Mike, and actually in our workshops, the second activity we do once people have this rough draft of their mission statement, not that it’s finalized, but they have something now, is for them to fill out a chart that lists at least 10 activities that they’re committed to right now, and with a completion date, expect a completion date. But what’s really fascinating to these participants is the final column is how well does this activity align with your professional mission statement? And what people oftentimes do is lift their head up and say, wow, most of the things on here are not in my mission, and I never realized that.

I never realized I was doing all these things that were important, valuable, valuable to my boss, for example, or just I thought were really, not saying they’re not valuable, but again, if most of your effort is devoted to things outside your mission, you’re probably not going to be able to accomplish your mission. So, in addition to filling out that chart, what we suggest to people is when the next opportunity comes by, think about it in terms of is this mission central or not? There’s always going to be things we’re required to do professionally that are not in our mission.

Our boss asks us a favor, or there’s something where it’s not exactly my mission, but maybe I can learn some things from it, or I just need to be a good citizen, a good teammate, a good division member. So, there will be things outside your mission, but it’s a lot different to tell a senior person or your supervisor or even a colleague, no, because it’s going to take me away from my mission rather than to say no, from the sense that I’m just not a team player.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, and I would imagine that in a particular division or department, there are going to be lots of folks who could do the things someone is asking you to do, and maybe it would fit into their mission a little bit more than it would yours. So, as a leader, it is helpful to know what everyone’s mission is, because then you may have a better idea who’s the best person to approach for this, and maybe not just the person who I think is likely to say yes because they say yes to everything.

[Dr John Mahan]
Yes, and another really valuable benefit of having a mission statement is there are times when you can say, well, I understand that’s important. Let’s look at my activity list and talk about what I can drop or withdraw from so I can do this thing that’s important to you. So, if, and if you have 12 things listed and six of them are not in your mission, that’s where you’re going to look at, maybe it’s time for me to step away from this, or maybe this can be taken over by someone else so that I can do this other thing that is important to my boss.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
I would imagine also that thinking about, in your own individual department or division, the promotion criteria, kind of out and looking at it as you’re thinking about your activities and your mission statement, because there are specific criteria for promotion wherever it is that you’re practicing and teaching and such. And so, you do, if you’re interested in being promoted, but you still want to be faithful to your mission, it may take some creativity to figure out how you can fit your mission into the promotion criteria. Does that ever come up in your workshops?

[Dr John Mahan]
Certainly, and also I think this is an important place for sharing your mission with your mentors, because again, your mentors may be ideally in the sort of non-biased role of being able to look at what you’re saying is important to you, and then looking at what you’re doing and looking at, well, if you need to get promoted, what things could you do that would further your mission being accomplished and also deliver the value to the institution that makes you worthy of being promoted?

And sometimes, certainly your supervisor, your boss can serve that role, but a mentor can be really helpful that way. And again, if your mentor knows what your mission is, then the advice you’re going to get is going to be really aligned with what’s important to you.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Absolutely. There’s also an idea of what characteristics of highly successful academic physicians are there. So, if you look at someone who really you would feel like they’re at the top of their game, they’re doing the things that are within their mission, they’re getting promoted, they’re highly successful academic physicians, what characteristics do they have that I might be able to apply to what I’m doing?

[Dr John Mahan]
Yes, yes, and this is really a construct that Deb Simpson, a faculty development expert who works out of Medical College of Wisconsin in the Department of Pediatrics has developed, and I think it’s really a neat way to think about things that successful academic physicians do. And if this is what characterizes the successful ones, maybe as you look at that, there may be some things that you want to add from this list and sometimes things that people just had not really thought about. And in this model, the four sort of categories are colleagues, environment, personal style, and citizenship.

And what Deb Simpson and her colleagues developed is this list of 20 different things that they observed highly successful academic physicians in the Medical College of Wisconsin doing, and then went back and said, well, there’s some things on the list that maybe are counterintuitive or some things that maybe people don’t even understand could be useful. So, a couple of those things, for example, under colleagues, highly successful academic physicians have colleagues outside of their own institution that they work with. And again, a young academic physician may not realize the value of reaching out and cultivating and working with colleagues outside the institution.

In the area of environment, what they found was that for folks that are successful, they typically have resources and support in their own institution that are part of why they are successful. So, if someone is thinking about how to make things work for them to be successful, paying attention to those resources locally. And then one last example I think is really interesting is this idea of citizenship.

And what they found was that the academic physicians who were most successful were engaged in things like committee work at a national level, reviewing manuscripts or articles or abstracts, things that may in themselves sound like, well, maybe that’s taking away from your mission. But when you look at it from a bigger lens, those kinds of activities really allow you to build your network and demonstrate your effectiveness and value so that it helps you get more opportunities when you can deliver on that kind of being a good citizen in the academic world activity. So, I think this chart again will be part of the worksheet that you’ll have on the FAMEcast site.

And I really recommend people to look at that because there’s some items there that are not necessarily the first thing that people would think about when they think about what can help me be successful.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah. I want to run through those again just to have those embedded in the listeners’ minds. So, the four categories of habits sort of identified in this model of characteristics of highly successful academic physicians, one’s going to be colleagues and having a strong network both locally and nationally.

And I will put a pitch in, think what you will about social media, but I have a lot of colleagues across the country that I’m connected with that really, we connected through social media. And then you go to a conference and you’re seeing them for the first time in person, but you feel like you know them. I’ve had people stop me as I’m crossing a street going to a conference like, hey, is that Dr. Mike?

And then you have a conversation, but it’s someone you feel like you already know because you’ve engaged in those in social media places. So, I’ll just put a plug in for that. So, colleagues and then the environment, creating a productive and organized workspace, as you said, citizenship, contributing meaningfully to institutional goals.

And that’s where sometimes some of the things you say yes to may not be directly related to your mission, but by saying yes to some things, if you have the bandwidth to do it, might open doors for other things that do meet your mission statement. Someone may be more likely to say, sure, run with that project because you’ve shown that you can do other things that you’ve been asked to do. So, it’s complicated, but you have to kind of consider all the data points.

And then the fourth one is personal style. And that one is, highly successful academic physicians are good with the time management and work-life balance because those are all really important to putting your nose to the grindstone. That’s easier to do when you also have vacations, and you have some time off.

And of course, that’s different from one person to another in terms of how much they need those things.

[Dr John Mahan]
Yeah, and two items on that personal style list that again can be counterintuitive to folks is, one is that you should aim to work in small bursts of time. This idea that, well, when I have three hours, I’ll go ahead and work on that project or I’ll write that first draft is not necessarily what the most effective people do because life isn’t always that easy, right? So, work on your ability to work in small bursts of time.

And for example, what I find is many times if I have to come up with a talk, I’ll do a first draft and it’s very crude and rough, but it’s almost like once I get that first draft out, then I can find little bits of time to make it better. But until I get that first draft out, I haven’t started my work on that talk. And then the other personal style that I think, again, is really valuable for folks to think about is the idea of pursuing several projects simultaneously.

Again, in academic medicine, focus, work on the big things, but sometimes you’re working on the big thing and then you have 15 minutes, and you can get some smaller thing done. It’s a nice mental break and you get something accomplished, and you come back to your bigger project with more positive energy. So yeah, these are things about personal style that we talk about in these characteristics of highly successful academic physicians.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, and I love that they’re considered habits. Like, am I habitually connecting with my colleagues? Am I making sure that my environment is productive?

Am I utilizing my personal style to the most of its ability? Am I being a good citizen? How can we kind of judge how we’re doing with our habits?

So, are there markers of success that our habits are working?

[Dr John Mahan]
Yes, I think that’s a really interesting question because for many of these habits, the first step is just, are you doing it, right? Like, I think for people in academics, again, many of the things on this list of 20 habits are not things that come to mind, particularly to young academic physicians. So, number one is just, are you doing it, right?

And then in terms of, are you doing it, there is an opportunity for you on this checklist to basically say, you know, am I doing it well or am I doing it not well? Because you might be sort of like, yeah, I’ve got one or two external colleagues that I’m working with, but is there value to increasing that? And in this next time period, say over this next year, making an effort to add one or two other colleagues outside of your sphere.

So yeah, I think first step for many of these habits is just, are you doing it?

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, and another habit that I think is important is documenting what we do because there’s going to come a time, you know, it may be during your annual review, certainly when you’re going up for promotion that you’re going to want to have evidence that you are doing the things. And of course, internally, you’re going to want to make sure that those things mostly fit into your mission. So, talk a little bit about strategies for keeping up with what we’re doing in academic medicine in terms of documentation.

[Dr John Mahan]
Yes, and a term that I like that we’ve been using for a little while now, Mike, is CV hygiene. You have a CV; the CV is the record of what you have accomplished and what you’re doing. So, for example, you’ve just joined a task force or a committee or a QI project.

Two years later, you’ll forget that you worked on that QI project or task force, but if you put it on your CV, it’s captured. So, CV hygiene means regularly looking at your record, which is your CV, and updating it. So, people, again, develop their own habit.

What we suggest is that you block off time every couple months, and for some people, that’s every three months, and block off an hour to update your CV. And when you update your CV, you go through each section. Any committees that I’ve just joined or task forces or projects, let me put them down here with the starting year so that now it’s part of my record.

Have you done any presentations? Sometimes you do a talk and at the end of your annual review update a year later, you forgot you did it, right? So obviously publications, maybe things you’ve done with recording podcast or doing online education, new clinical initiatives that you’ve begun.

So, some people like to update their CV monthly. I really try to encourage people to not wait till the end of the year, because again, you’ll forget some of the valuable things that you’ve done during that time. So, every three months feels to me like maybe a nice, sweet spot.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
I’m at the other end of the spectrum in that I actually have my CV on my desktop. So, it’s staring at me whenever I’m working. And every time I record a podcast or do a television interview or am involved in committee work or whatever it is, I just throw it on my CV.

It’s like part of my workflow. I do it and putting it on my CV is just the next natural step. Because for me, even a month later, especially if you’re involved in a lot of things, so a lot of the work that I do is short bursts of activity rather than long, huge projects.

And so, if I waited three months, I am almost certain that I would forget some of the things that I’ve done.

[Dr John Mahan]
And I think what you’re highlighting, Mike, is everyone should find their own technique that works for them. I think a big thing about that is if you’re not going to have it like on your computer, updating it literally as you do it, you should put time aside. Whether that’s blocking off a half hour once a month or an hour every three months.

But if you don’t block off time to do it, you’re probably not going to get time to do it. And your method I’ve heard from people, I will say you’re a bit of an outlier in a positive way. So, you’ve got some positive variance there because most people don’t do it as they do it, but that is a great practice if you’re comfortable that way.

Yeah.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
I wanted to end with a couple of quotes that I know are important to you as we think about our professional mission statement. First one is from Dwight Eisenhower, and he said, plans are nothing, planning is everything. Why is that important for us to keep in mind?

[Dr John Mahan]
Yeah, I think we need to appreciate that no matter what we plan, it almost never works out exactly the way we planned. But that’s reality. And that doesn’t mean that planning in itself is not a good idea.

And many times, in the process of planning, we help define for ourselves more about how we’re going to approach this issue, this topic, this project. And if we didn’t do the planning, we would not be as effective as we roll out our activity or as we need to make the inevitable adjustments as we move forward. So planning is the key, even if the plan that you end up getting never exactly works out the way you thought it was going to work out.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. And then the second quote is from Peter Drucker, and that is, plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. I love this one.

Yeah, I love that one too.

[Dr John Mahan]
Because again, it’s great to have a plan, but if you’re not really committed to doing the steps that have been outlined in the plan, why did you bother to do that? And I love that sort of sense of accountability that, okay, we have a plan. Now, next step is, how are we going to actually carry out this plan?

How are we going to actually do it? And how are we going to have some level of accountability that we’re actually diving in and doing the work?

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, and it may be hard work, right? I mean, we can have plans, but if we want to get someplace, a particular place that our mission is taking us, it is going to require hard work. And I think that too is where saying yes to things, saying no to things, taking time for ourselves, taking vacations, not putting them off, and just having a full life really does prevent burnout and helps us on our way, on our journey to the end of the mission.

[Dr John Mahan]
Yes, yeah, plans are great intentions, but the plans are not work. There is something about being intentional with your planning though, right, Mike?

[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This has been a great conversation. And I’d really, the professional mission statement wasn’t on my radar at all until this topic came up.

You know, we started, our very first episode was on mentoring and coaching, and we hear a lot about mentoring, but I feel like we need more awareness about the professional mission statement. It’s 30 words or less, so it’s not something that’s going to take you an entire weekend to write, but you do want to have some thought put into it. And so, I would encourage everyone to head over to famecast.org.

This is episode two, and in the show notes for episode two, we’ll have more information for you, including worksheets on getting you started on developing your own professional mission statement. We’ll also have links to the Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement, which is FAME at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, and the Center for Faculty Development at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. We’ll have links to both of those as well.

So once again, Dr. John Mahan, Director of the Center for Faculty Development at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Thank you so much for stopping by and visiting with us today.

[Dr John Mahan]
Thank you, Mike. It’s really a pleasure.

[Dr Mike Patrick]
So, we are back with just enough time to say thanks once again to all of you for taking time out of your day and making FAMEcast a part of it. Really do appreciate that. Also, thank you to our guest this week, Dr. John Mahan. He’s the Director of the Center for Faculty Development at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Don’t forget, you can find FAMEcast wherever podcasts are found. We’re in the Apple Podcast app, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Amazon Music, and most other podcast apps for iOS and Android.

Our landing site is famecast.org. You’ll find all of our episodes there, show notes for each of the episodes, our terms of use agreement, and the handy contact page if you would like to suggest a future topic for the program. Reviews are also helpful wherever you get your podcasts.

We always appreciate when you share your thoughts about the show, and it is particularly important for a new podcast like this one. We’re only two episodes in, and so when there aren’t a lot of episodes in the archive, folks do tend to look at the reviews a little bit more just to ask themselves, hey, is this worth my time? And so, if you discover that FAMEcast is worth your time, please share that in a review on the whatever podcast platform that you’re listening on, and that’ll just help others decide that they might want to take a chance on this new podcast as well.

Some additional podcasts that I host that I just want to mention, PDA Cast CME. If you’re a pediatric medical provider, it’s similar to this program. We do turn the science up and offer free continuing medical education credit for those who listen, not only physicians, but also for nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, social workers and dentists.

And it’s because that Nationwide Children’s is jointly accredited by many professional organizations. That’s how we can offer credits that you need to fulfill your state’s continuing medical education requirements. Shows and details are available at the landing site for that program, PDA Cast CME.org.

You can also listen wherever podcasts are found. Simply search for PDA Cast CME. We also have an evidence-based podcast for moms and dads.

Lots of pediatricians and other medical providers also tune in as we cover pediatric news, answer listener questions, interview pediatric and parenting experts. That one is called PDA Cast without the CME. And shows are available at the landing site for that one, PDA Cast.org.

Also available wherever podcasts are found. Just search for PDA Cast. Thanks again for stopping by.

And until next time, this is Dr. Mike saying, stay focused, stay balanced, and keep reaching for the stars. So long, everybody.