Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

25 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

Gaining Admiration From Followers Using Charismatic Leadership Style

A study that used eye-tracking technology mounted on 18 Dutch participants watching 42 short clips of meetings between people working in an automotive company, revealed that people direct their attention towards emergent leaders attracted by their leadership skills rather than their physical appearance. This brings forward the notion of charismatic leadership style distinguishing people who emerge as leaders from people who prefer sitting back and not taking responsibilities.

The charismatic leadership style is characterized by a highly effective approach to take the best work out of people, know how to motivate and encourage people to do things, and formulate the impossible into a possible equation. As optometrists find themselves moving forward in their careers as practice owners and team leaders they come across different approaches that coincide with their traits and personalities and deem to be effective in adopting and applying as well as overtime worth being refined. Leaders with strong communication skills find it easy to adopt a charismatic leadership style. They top their communication skills with persuasiveness and a little bit of charm to impose their conviction about their love for the work on others around them and easily get the most out of them.

Very similar to the transformational leadership style, however a charismatic leader uses motivation and intellectual stimulation instead of fear to empower his followers to do their best work. No doubt risk-taking is among the most relevant traits of charismatic leaders, they have personal behavioral characteristics like vision and determination, however their self-confidence to communicate those characteristics to their followers inspires them to give their best.

To become good charismatic leaders, optometrists and team leaders should always focus on strong motivating factors that yield results, encourage positive change, focus on achieving the goals of the practice, encourage collaborative work, treat mistakes as opportunities to learn, stay humble, beware of self-sabotage, and refrain from developing a God culture in the practice that shows that they are irreplaceable and invisible.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

23 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

Pricing In Eye Care: Would You Rather Adopt A Low-Cost Strategy, Differentiate, or do Both?

According to Harvard Business School Professor and one of the best thinkers in strategy and competition, Michael Porter, a low-cost strategy is a zero-sum game. The strategy should not be a zero-sum game but a competitive position, “deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.” He emphasizes the importance that a business needs to understand the market and its competitors and build its strategy accordingly. For example in eye care, specialization is one way to promote operational effectiveness, reduce costs, and be able to command a higher price in exchange for the products and services you deliver. The competitive strategy of specialized practitioners basically consists of differentiating their services from their competitors rather than competing over commoditized products having recourse to a low-cost strategy which drives the competition to do the same leading to the erosion of profits by lowering prices. The only winner in this type of competition is no doubt the customer and not any of the competitors.

From a technical point of view, a low-cost strategy is generally demonstrated by cheap prices, low quality products, limited choice, reduced profits, commoditization, and the absence of customer service, whereas a differentiation strategy is demonstrated by higher prices, better customer services, better products, wide choice, customizable offers, and certainly higher profits.

From a strategic point of view, a practice has a choice between becoming a low-cost or a differentiator who provides value (design new appealing products, constantly innovating, creating new product mix, branding, delivering exceptional experiences, etc). Generally incumbents in a market charge premiums and over time they develop their business to serve a specific segment in the market. They rarely consider shifting to a low-cost strategy unless a new entrant targets the same segment they are serving. In this situation what used to be an offensive strategy toward the new entrant shifts into a defensive strategy based on cutting prices, making exclusivity deals with key suppliers, and heavily advertising challenging the competition with better prices. Conventional wisdom suggests that incumbents in a low-cost competition are not at an advantage. In most of the cases where the incumbents managed to become at an advantage, they created another unit to compete with the new entrant. Because a low-cost operation’s sources of competitive advantage aren’t the same as those of the parent company, the newly created unit was housed separately.

Low-cost new entrants will continue to appear in the market, while some target noncompeting market segments others will compete over the incumbent segments. If incumbents decide on a low-cost strategy they are at disadvantage. However, wise incumbents that create a separate completely independent unit will have a chance to win when they understand that there will always be consumers who make their choices based on price and consumers who value the differentiator offerings. The old unit will remain as a differentiator whereas the newly created unit can escape the zero-sum game by adopting an offensive strategy aiming to slash prices, tap new markets, bring new features, connect with new suppliers, and secure new channels of distribution.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

22 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

When Should You Worry About Customer Churn And How To Avoid It?

Very few practices have a bold strategy to defend themselves from customer churn. Those who do, are certainly in the category of businesses who have great customer success based on excellent customer services and experiences, great product adoption based on full onboarding programs, and an exceptional focus on customer retention. Practices usually experience customer churn on different occasions but very few know about it early on and deal with it in the right manner. Some practices find themselves struggling to keep customers only after they discover they had a massive churn. Others don’t realize a churn occurs due to the immense number of new customers and the highly profitable transactions from retained customers who keep the business growing at a steady rate. Whether noticed or not, customer churn must be detected early on and avoided. Many reasons lead to customer churn among them:

1- Not being able to attract new customers: for some reasons -internal or external- practices find themselves unable to attract new customers. This should be resolved by spending more time understanding customers’ needs and organizing your practice around solving and answering the customers’ jobs to be done. Improving communication could be another way to avoid this situation and facilitate engaging with new customers and understanding their needs. Always make it easy for customers to find you and be able to try your services (location location location, search engine visibility, social media presence, …)

2- Not being focused on loyal customers: Identify the right customers who benefit and appreciate the experience you are providing and turn them into loyal ones. Not every customer will end up on the list of loyal customers, some are just passing by others may never visit you again because they live abroad. Therefore it is very important to identify the customer who will be affected by your service and experience and is most likely to become a frequent buyer. Building, managing, and maintaining relationships with this type of customer is mandatory.

3- Ignore of forget to chase down and eliminate all root causes of poor customer service. Make a resolution always ready immediately whenever a customer has an issue of any kind. always remember that you can never satisfy a customer unless you already have a satisfied employee.

4- Put enough effort into offering personalized experiences to those who seek it but also keep in mind that with the disruptive technology happening in every industry many customers seek the over-the-counter type of products and therefore offering a customized experience to them won’t create any value and may lead to losing new customers.

5- Not giving enough importance to the customer lifetime value and the revenue you can get from a customer over a long period. Expansion of revenue and sales can be made through upselling and cross-selling and can be directly affected by how pricing is being made to increase customer lifetime value, increase retention, increase revenue, and avoid customer churn.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

22 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

How Can Creative Leadership Help Optometrists Solve Problems?

When we talk about product-centered or production-centered leadership we point to leaders who are fully preoccupied with production and the only thing important to them is finding ways and the right tools to get the work done disregarding employees and consumers’ well beings as well as not thinking of them as human beings with needs and emotions. An Optometrist with production-centered leadership is mostly oriented towards achieving sales scores and making sure that employees and staff have enough work done and enough jobs disregarding how they are distributed. Yet as eye care providers we distinguish ourselves as healthcare leaders with a mission to improve patients’ experiences that require us to be human-centered leaders who employ creative leadership based on finding innovative solutions that change current situations into more desirable ones. Patients visit us with vision problems and leave us with perfected vision. We design specific processes to make the job of perfecting patient’s vision more efficient by improving patient’s and employees satisfaction, and avoiding Optometrists and staff burnout.

One way to employ creative problem-solving is through the process of Design Thinking that is widely used among innovative eye care hospitals and providers like Sankara Eye Care Institutes, Aravind eye Care system, and Rotterdam Eye Hospital. For those large facilities that provide eye care, design thinking improves customer’s experience, but also improves efficiency, increases productivity. Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving that doesn’t have to be exclusive to large eye care hospitals and settings. It can benefit small practices who want to understand their patients’ experiences as well as every person who might employ it in his day-to-day problems.

With the rapidly changing world Design thinking with a human-centered core encourages practices to focus on the people they’re creating solutions for. With the use of technology, even creative leaders who are not trained as experience designers can create better products, services, and internal processes that address numerous challenges and solve problems. To do so they should start by focusing on the patient, observing his behavior, listening to his problems, and understanding through empathy and questioning. The second step is try to come up with defitions to problems that hard to define: in other words making complex problems simple. Once the problem defined, they should proceed into coming up with ideas to solve the problem, determine or create tools and instruments to test those ideas. Design Thinking comprises of five stages in total: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

Problems identified by focusing on patients help in increasing sales and productivity. Some examples include solving delayed or no-show problems, helping avoid overwearing contact lenses, increasing the sales of blue-light blocking ophthalmic lenses, providing awareness of the importance of UV blocking sunglasses, etc. Employing Design Thinking to solve employee’s problems increases efficiency and job satisfaction reducing time off, multitasking, burnout, and increasing effective communication with the patient and the optometrist.

Poster Presented at the Lebanese Congress of Optometry: A Comparative Study on the Effects of Preservative Free and Preservative (0.01) Benzalkonium Chloride Artificial Tears on the Tear Film

Rola Abdel Razzak

21 Jul, 2022

Poster Presented at the Lebanese Congress of Optometry: A Comparative Study on the Effects of Preservative Free and Preservative (0.01) Benzalkonium Chloride Artificial Tears on the Tear Film

Dry eye disease (DED) is a multifactorial disease characterized by the loss of homeostasis of the tear film(1). It is classified into two categories, the aqueous deficiency dry eye (ADDE) and the evaporative dry eye (EDE). Each one of these can be caused by different factors including the use of preservatives which is our major discussion in this poster. Also, in this poster, the effects of preservative benzalkonium chloride (BAK), which is the most commonly used preservative in topical ophthalmic preparations, on the ocular surface are discussed and compared to those of preservative free artificial tears and artificial tears with alternative preservatives. Studies conducted in an effort to demonstrate the effects of BAK were mainly focused on two populations, DED population and glaucoma population. Both groups showed a significant decrease in ocular symptoms, conjunctival signs, superficial punctate keratitis, and ocular surface disease index (OSDI) after switching them from preserved eye drops to preservative-free medications. This has led to developing alternative preservatives having same efficiency against bacteria but little or no harm to the ocular surface. Finally, as recommended by a report for the TFOS DEW, DED can be managed in two ways. In case the patient has severe dry eyes, it is preferred to go for the option of preservative free eye drops. However, patients with mild or moderate dry eyes can use preserved eye drops containing alternative preservatives other than BAK.

Reference:

Shimazaki, Jun. “Definition and diagnostic criteria of dry eye disease: historical overview and future directions.” Investigative ophthalmology & visual science 59.14 (2018): DES7-DES12.

Contact information:

To view the whole poster click here

Rola Abdel Razzak is an Optometry Student at the American University of Science and Technology

Currently going into 3^rd Year of Optometry. You can reach her at: abdelrazzakrola@gmail.com

LinkedIn: rola abdel razzak

Facebook: Rola AR

Instagram: _rola_ar

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

16 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

Assemble A Team That Learns From Productive Failures Rather Than One That Celebrates Unproductive Successes

The COVID-19 pandemic has made massive changes to the workplace, bringing tremendous need for career transitions, new career paths, skill based retention, and internal mobility, all based on the ability of individuals and teams to learn, upskill, and develop new skills. Ikujiro Nonaka, a Japanese researcher, best know for his studies on knowledge management is famously quoted as “In the knowledge-creating company, inventing new knowledge is not a specialized activity– the province of the R&D department or marketing or strategic planning. It is a way of behaving, indeed a way of being, in which everyone is a knowledge worker– that is to say, an entrepreneur.”

After the COVID-19 Pandemic, organizational learning is no longer an option. The Pandemic is a great experience for individuals, teams, and organizations to learn from. However, learning as the ability of each business entity to learn from every experience is a formal and systematic way -as Nonaka points out- that involves experimenting, analyzing situations, and evaluating the successes and failures of each business entity as well as its competitor’s performance.

The mindset of teams with effective organizational learning helps in recognizing the importance of learning from productive failures as contrasted with unproductive successes. Those teams come out with insights and solutions from productive failures that will help enrich their company’s commonly held wisdom. Unlike unproductive successes where no insights are being collected for future understanding of things, productive failures develop guidelines and set the path through taught lessons that can be applied in the future. Not all teams and companies think of the importance of productive failures because they are often overtaken by the unproductive successes that they celebrate regularly and rarely spend the time to analyze and learn from failures.

Being able to apply what’s learned from experiences like failures promotes new opportunities for change replacing a fixed mindset with a growth mindset thinking about its successes in the future. Peter Senge, the author of The Fifth Discipline, describes learning organizations as places where employees develop knowledge and acquire skills to reach the results and ends they desire. Therefore, team leaders should nurture new and expansive thinking patterns continually encouraging collective and collaborative learning. Senge asserts that learning occurs in organizations with five components technologies that include system thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning. Learning needs to be empowered by technological tools that help analyse situations (reports, KPIs, KPOs, …). Learning cannot be forced on your team members, you need to let lifetime learners embark on your boat. Shared vision, common identity in approaching problems and open communication and exchange of ideas and thoughts are critical to team learning.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

15 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

Your Brand Will Reflect How Good You Were At Doing Exceptional Things Exceptionally Well

While very few eye care professionals achieve the level of success attained by any CEO of unicorn companies (valued at over US$1 billion), there are a lot of tips and valuable lessons to learn when we look at them and figure out how invaluable those lessons could be for all of us. The following are few quotes about branding from top CEOs:

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well” Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” Warren Buffet, business magnate, philanthropist, and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.” Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company

“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time” Elon Musk, tech entrepreneur, visionary, and CEO of Tesla Motors

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” Seth Godin, entrepreneur, blogger, and best-selling author.

All five CEOs have an approaching point of view about branding that can teach us an invaluable lesson. From Elon musk’s perception and reality analogy and Henry Ford’s reputation building, we understand that we ought to husband what’s true and real and avoid pretending what we cannot do and what our products and services cannot deliver. We should never think of ourselves as Gods, nevertheless, we have to solve hard to solve problems and deliver exceptional services and that’s what Jeff Bezos inferred.

You may spend all your time on the media building a God figure and thinking this is branding. When things go wrong and you cannot deliver what you promised, you have to take responsibility, own your mistake, and not blame somebody else. You cannot allow the reputation that you built during twenty years to be destroyed in five minutes like Warren Buffet said. Everyone makes mistakes, when you make one, you have got to own it.

You are the brand, the person the brand is about, you own the brand, moreover, you also work on the brand and are responsible for growing it. The role of the agency is to tell you about the importance of branding, common practices to grow the brand, and what others experience with branding. However, if the brand fails it is your responsibility. Remember there is no revenue without risks, if you think building a brand is easy: it is not!

If you succeed in building a brand, know that you are not the only one who has one. Everyone has a brand and everyone grows his brand day in and day out. But customers can only trust one! What you become known for is what your customers will choose to visit you for even in the presence of competition as Seth Godin referred.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

14 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

Is Your Experience With Patients More Emotional Than Elon Musk and Richard Branson’s Experience With People

Presidents and founders of big corporations are known to have strong personalities but also know how to harness their emotional intelligence when it comes to working with subordinates on whom most of the work relies. Business magnate Elon Musk, Virgin founder Richard Branson, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have exceptional ways to make others feel comfortable working for them and use their high level of emotional intelligence as a means to encourage others to put all their efforts into getting things done a work. Emotional intelligent chief executive officers (CEO) know how to praise the work of employees, customers, and partners maintaining a human connection and demonstrating that the relationship is more important than business.

Daniel Goleman, author of the bestselling book “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ” emphasize the importance of leaders appreciating others’ emotions and understanding their feelings to manage their own emotions and succeed in their environment. Like any other healthcare environment, the eye care environment is highly affected by the eye care experience and players including customers, employees, and doctors. Tough times set aside emotionally intelligent CEOs from the others. The pandemic has largely shown how employees and doctors are vulnerable to burnout. Self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills are common components that we find among emotionally intelligent CEOs like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos. Among Optometrists, men and older individuals as well as those who have a higher education level, higher monthly pay, and more experience of turnover appear to have higher levels of emotional intelligence.

While some individuals are born with high emotional intelligence, many managers and leaders have acquired and developed it throughout their careers from other coaches and tours and their own experiences and the tough times that they have been through. Fortunately, all five components Self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills can be learned and taught. As they develop their emotional intelligence, effective leaders gradually realize their ability to manage difficult situations using a common language grows at the same time as trust builds up.

Fairness challenges rose in the workplace over the years. The pandemic has made things even worst. In a survey conducted by Harvard Business Review in 2021, only 18% of respondents indicated their workplace is a high-fairness environment. Fairness at work will become a major topic in the future and is one great example where emotional intelligence plays a major role in addressing emerging problems.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

12 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

The Rise In Hybrid Work And Its Effect On Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Hybrid work empowered by telehealth and technology can help optometrists see more patients, reduce burnout rates, and surmount employees shortage. Telehealth started to appear before the pandemic, however hybrid work is getting established right after the pandemic when work shifted from online during confinement to hybrid, and many employees preferred to operate from home. The American Medical Association’s new Physician Practice Benchmark Survey revealed a 65% increase in virtual care during the pandemic. A significant part of the work that has been done in the office is now made from home. People spend more time in front of their Personal Computers (PC). When we look at how the global PC shipments have exceeded 340 million in 2021 we realize the PC has become an important key touchpoint that marketers can use to target their audience.

The significant growth in the PC market during and after the Pandemic indicates that marketers should focus their strategy on PC users. Moreover, research showed that 56% of online retail sales are made through PCs. An important audience has been created as the result of the hybrid work but still marketers need to change demographic targeting by incorporating the consumers’ mindsets into the digital strategy. Subscribe to read more…

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

7 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

Having a Plan is Simply Easy to Play, Having a Strategy Should be Simple To Easily Win

An Optometrist may want to add a specialty contact lenses department to his practice or not. He may want to craft ophthalmic lenses in-house or outsource them. If he decides on any of those two projects he will have to prepare a budget, set timelines of when he will be ready to launch the new services to his patients, and what will the new responsibilities related to any of the projects be. This is what constitutes a plan that he will certainly respect and implement. But every part of this plan does not give any information on what the competition in his market is? What other choices he has to integrate? and whether he will be able to win the competition or not. For this he needs more than plans.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II and 34th U.S. President is famously quoted as “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable”. In pointing to plans being useless compared to planning being indispensable, he emphasizes the role of rigor, preparedness, and strategy over fulfilling plans, laying projects, distributing responsibilities, and setting deadlines.

Battles we fight in business cannot be compared to the importance and seriousness of the battles Eisenhower fought. However, a lot can be learned and applied from a simple quote from someone who has been through tremendous stress and has been able to decide on critical and sensitive issues that changed the course of humanity.

Professor Roger Martin, writer and strategy advisor who topped the 2017 Thinkers50 ranking of Management Thinkers in 2017, asserts that plans and strategy complement rather than substitute each other. When companies find laying plans easy to stay in the game, companies that make effective strategies win the game. He affirms having a plan will not save a company from the fate of not having a strategy. He adds “strategy is the act of making an integrated set of choices, which positions the organization to win; while planning is the act of laying out projects with timelines, deliverables, budgets, and responsibilities”.

From Martin’s explanation of strategy, we conclude that a strategy of integrating logical choices that determine what position the organization will take and what processes will lead it to win over the competition. The strategy then is not constant, however, constantly changes and evolves as the environment and logical choices change. Putting plans on the other hand requires well-defined projects that need to be accomplished within a specific timeline, deliver specific outcomes, use specific resources, and specify the responsibilities of everyone involved. When plans complement strategy, plans are used to plan projects that the strategy determined the company should do based on the set of choices.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

4 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

Paid And Non-Paid Partnership in Marketing Your Optometry Practice And Customer Targeting And Segmentation

Those who are deep into social media and Instagram, in particular, know about the term “paid partnership”. Even many followers know about paid partnerships which means that the person or business account that shared the post with a paid partnership mention is compensated for the post and has a commercial partnership relation with the business that is mentioned. The paid partnership with Instagram is a helpful tool for disclosing a brand and your relationship with that brand. Paid partnerships fall into the branded content category, simply put it is very identical to what “organic influencer branding” is. Before social media appeared we use to call it targeting customers and segmentation through partners.

Any practice that offers Starbucks coffee to patients in the waiting room is employing brand partnership. During the pandemic, many practices used branded germ control products like Boecker. This type of brand partnership is classified as a feature partner brand. Opticians use Ingredient partner brand which is another type of brand partnership consisting of branded ophthalmic lenses like Essilor or Zeiss or other brands mounted on the frames they sell. Moreover, they provide the patients with a certificate card to tell them what their lenses are made of. The co-branding type of brand partnership consists of two partners working together to produce products. Like Optometrists who refer patients to opticians or vice versa comanaging cases and when they make community appearances they both show up together providing awareness. The Joint Provision type of brand partnership example consists of two or more optometrists sharing the same practice reinforcing the brand equity of the practice. The Joint R&D brand partnership type consists of two or more practitioners developing products or research and studies together.

Marketers, practice managers, or optometrists need to be aware and knowledgeable about which type of brand partnership they should employ. Should they go for explicit brand partnerships like Starbucks and Boecker example or discrete and less branded partnerships and what decision returns more benefits? How strong is their brand compared to the partner’s brand? In terms of discrete and explicit brand partnership the type of partnership, we provided examples of, goes from the most discrete and complex like joint R&D to the most outsourced service delivery that is a full co-branding.

Brand partnership in its conventional and digital or social media form helps brands in targeting customers and segmentation and leading them to strategically gain additional competitive advantage.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

1 Jul, 2022

Blog Posts

How Well is Your Energy During Your Work Day?

Optometrists who own or work at private practices are gradually working long hours six days a week. This trend is becoming common in many parts of the world or at least in countries I visit to attend and participate in conferences and exhibitions. The reason for most of them is that Optometry is in demand yet it is hard for the graduating force to fill all positions. Since time is scare and finite Optometrists start to work all day for six days a week trying to extend the liners time they have and the consequences become dire for them first, their health, the quality of work they are doing, and their families and friends. Burnout is very common in the workplace even though lately we’ve attributed it mainly to the pandemic and our lifestyles that have changed due to the lockdown but also due to the remote work setting that didn’t cover all work tasks. Now that the pandemic is over the potential for burnout is still growing as we often express that we don’t know how our energy is getting drained during the day.

Tony Schwartz, author of “The Way We’re Working isn’t working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance” emphasizes that since time is limited energy is different and you know you are heading for an energy crisis from changes in the dimensions of the energy four wellsprings that are the body, emotions, mind, and spirit. An energy crisis will occur when:

Your body suffers from not getting enough sleep, not following healthy diets, not working out enough, and not taking regular brakes to reset, recharge, and refocus;

Your emotions are tired often feeling anxious at work, not providing enough time with family, little to no time for activities that you enjoy, and not being present to others to show appreciation and support them and savor their accomplishments;

Your mind is suffering from not being able to focus on one thing at a time, constantly getting distracted, constantly have immediate uncontrolled reactions to events and crises, never reflecting or strategizing, and letting work, calls, and emails follow you home on evenings and weekends;

Your spirit is suffering from not spending enough time doing the things you enjoy doing at work, not allocating time to what you say is important in your life, and your work decisions are influenced by external forces rather than being fueled by a clear sense of your purpose;

According to Schwartz, even though we cannot stretch or extend time to do more jobs, however, we can systematically expand and renew each of the four dimensions to increase energy and be able to accomplish more in less time.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

30 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

Leveraging Social Media Paid Ads in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Paid ads in Google and social media involve native ad tools to social media platforms that create and control how, where, and when to schedule a post, a video, an ad, or a link targeting a specific predetermined market. The messages conveyed by employing paid ads in social media can be awareness-related, announcements, or for conversions to buy, subscribe or take an action on your website. Three things to consider when starting your social media ads campaign: the target audience, the budget, and the destination or call for action you want your target audience to do. Besides those three elements, a social media ads campaign remains the best and the fastest way to build and grow your practice online audience, grow your business by increasing conversions, and maintain your brand.

Very few practices rely solely on organic reach or employ paid ads in a single platform. The majority employ two platforms for their social media ads. The most popular ads are Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Certainly, when you limit your ads to one or two platforms you are limiting your target audience because every social media platform has a different audience. Therefore, you are encouraged to extend to other platforms even if they are priced higher at cost per click (CPC), like Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, tik tok, etc.

Google audience search for topics and specific keywords revealing their intention. In Google Ads, you can reach and select your audience by choosing the Display Network of websites you want your ad to appear. The Display Network consists of websites that are subscribed to Google AdSense program and get a commission every time an ad is displayed on their pages. Facebook audience drive traffic, create engagement, and influence friends who are not your target audience. Google search is complemented by the remarketing process in Facebook and other platforms that keep showing your ads to people who visited your website or showed interest in a product you sell on your website.

Instagram audience is younger than Facebook audience and interested in photos with short captions and hashtags. Even though Instagram is owned by Facebook it is better to organize your campaign separately targeting different audiences. While Instagram audience is less predisposed to click and follow links, Twitter audience responds to links and tweets that you can promote to your followers, followers of other accounts, and similar audiences based on other accounts because you can promote tweets on other’s feeds. linked on may have the most expensive per click but you can achieve a high degree of targeting customers with constantly updated profiles, job descriptions, titles, and accomplishments. So finding your target on LinkedIn is the easiest and the most accurate among other platforms.

Pinterest is similar to Facebook Ads in campaigning to build awareness, increase traffic, and install Apps however it is more relevant to shopping and conversions to your website where users are converted into buyers. YouTube ads by Google, are videos run either at the beginning of people’s videos or anywhere during the video stream. While Google ads are charged per click YouTube ads are charged by the view and are extremely affordable.

Your social media Paid Ads should be diversified on many platforms to benefit from the different audiences on each one. Social Media Paid Ads may be affordable but you easily exceed your campaign budget if you don’t make balanced decisions. The good thing is that you can measure not just your ad spending but also track and measure the effect of each ad on each platform. Tacking your ads allows you to understand each campaign’s benefits and how many conversions to buy from your website your campaign generated.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

28 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

True Loyalty and False Loyalty: Are You Retaining Chronically Unhappy Customers?

In a previous post, we emphasized the importance of word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing and the importance of developing an appropriate WOM marketing strategy. The loyalty concept is a very potent concept that every practice puts efforts into increasing right from its inception. There is an accepted knowledge that maintaining a recurring customer costs less and brings more revenue to the practice than attracting a new customer. We differentiate none loyal customers who stop buying from us from loyal customers who buy regularly from us and for a significant period. A customer who buys from your practice for a significantly long period may not necessarily be considered loyal because if we look closer at the concept of loyalty we recognize there are false and true loyal customers. Creating and maintaining loyalty programs is an important part in word of mouth marketing strategy. However, companies should be able to differentiate between true loyal customers and false loyal customers. A quick, easy, and simple way to do that is to discover who is likely to recommend you among those who are satisfied with the products and services you provide.

Being satisfied can be temporary as long an alternative is not available. Sometimes even if an alternative exists, there might be no significant difference between you and them or the switching cost is remarkably high or unjustifiable. Moreover, customers may not switch because of the benefits and reward points they have accumulated in your loyalty program that they don’t want to lose. The day will come when your so-called loyal customer who is a false loyal customer will dump you with no regrets when either he finds an alternative, a lower price, or finds no obligation to buy from you.

As eye care providers our purpose is to help people to see better, we don’t differentiate or select to whom we provide our services. However, when it comes to calculating how our business is doing and what products, services, and innovative experiences we should be developing and offering to improve our quality of care and productivity it is crucial to know who are our loyal patients and customers. Customer satisfaction plays a major role in increasing loyalty in both competitive and less competitive markets. However, in markets where competition is low or simply absent, customers may find themselves obliged to buy from you but that doesn’t mean they are truly loyal customers. Moreover, customer satisfaction may not be the only driver of false loyalty, however, your inadequate processes of keeping true loyal customers who you should allocate your practice resources to serve profitably have driven you to attract the wrong target of false loyal customers who are difficult-to-serve, chronically unhappy customers who drain your practice’s resources hurting your morale and your staff’s morale without bringing any profit.

You must become able to read and listen to what the data about your customers say and mean. Accurate conversations with patients around recommendation and referral are to be routinely conducted. Priorities your time to serve true loyal customers and work diligently with false loyal customers. Perhaps sometimes you should not be reluctant to actively discourage a false loyal from remaining your customer if you find yourself morally hurt by this customer who might disparage your practice to other potential true loyal customers. Excellent observation of the market and the changes in both your competitors or your customers need to be met with a preparedness to shift to another strategy with different processes, products, and offerings.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

26 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

How Do You Leverage Word-Of-Mouth in Your Optometry Practice

In a previous post, we emphasized the importance of word-of-mouth (WOM) in influencing referrals’ decisions to visit your practice, try the services you provide, and purchase your products. We highlighted the two categories of WOF and the different types of WOF that many eye care professionals employ. Every practice must formulate and design a WOM strategy that goes hand in hand with other marketing efforts like social media and digital marketing. When we formulate any strategy we focus on what we do best and most often we forget what we don’t do. However, any good strategy should begin by stating what we don’t do and when it comes to WOM your strategy should clearly articulate what you don’t do because that’s what you want your referrals to know and talk about before they visit you. For example, what we don’t do in our practice are heavy discounts. You will never find an 80% discount on optical or sunglasses. We always have the latest designs and models in our stock and we have good stock and inventory management to be able to constantly bring about new collections without having to go through sales or heavy discounts between seasons.

A good WOM strategy should start by defining the patient’s job to be done. In other words, the patient or any individual in the referral chain your strategy will aim to build needs to be helped to fulfill a specific job to be done. Examples of jobs to be done:

A patient who got a great experience visiting your practice: “I need help reciprocating for the exceptional service that this optometrist was able to provide me, how can I refer patients to him?”

A potential patient looking for recommendations from a friend who visited your practice: “I need help finding a skilled and trusted optometrist to get my eyes checked”

A none competing business partner who could be any healthcare provider or retail store next to your practice:” I need help getting more referrals who should I refer clients to and will reciprocates?”

An Influencer job to be done could be: “I need help influencing my fans and followers to follow a healthy lifestyle for their eyes, who should I refer them to? Whose expertise should I refer to?”

The list of jobs to be done is unlimited, however, it is after you get this first step completed that you start designing your products to fulfill each job to be done. For the patient who visited your practice and needs help reciprocating by referring friends and family members to your practice, you create a specific referral product. This product can be valid for one-time use only Cash Card of a given US Dollars amount redeemable within the next month. For example, a 50$ card when its holder spends more than 150usd during the coming thirty days. In the case the patient may use it himself, you give him another card that benefits another person and then he will most probably give it to a family member or a friend.

Once you have your job to be done and the product defined and designed you follow through every time by creating the experience, adding a cause, solving a real challenge, tapping into people’s emotions, and calculating each customer’s lifetime value. Subscribe to learn more…

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

24 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

Word of Mouth Strategy That Grows Your Optometry Business

Most eye care practices are busy marketing their products and services using google paid ads and social media sponsored ads without giving too much attention to word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing. WOM influences up to 91 percent of purchase decisions. It is significantly more important than any other way of marketing to study and figure out what strategy best works with it. The truth behind a successful WOM strategy goes beyond ensuring an exceptional customer experience and letting the customer accidentally talk about it. A whole strategy should be deliberately built, accounting for all types of WOM, operational from day one and ready to be implemented, and be improved using feedback from emergent events. Before you start building a WOM strategy you should know what makes WOM different, how WOM are categorized, and what are the types of WOM.

Very few practices focus their marketing efforts on WOM yet it is simple, powerful, personalized, and can be significantly effective without being expensive. If conducted correctly WOM can turn your customers and patients into ambassadors and marketers to your practice, the products you sell, and the services you perform. Three things come to our mind when we think of what makes WOM different than and preferable to other marketing tools: it is directly related to trust by your customer, you don’t have to think about the pitch message once it starts everything is left to the customer’s ways of talking, and there are no barriers to where talk leads, it spreads very fast and everywhere.

There are two categories of WOM organic and amplified. Organic WOM is completely free because it relies on what customers tell about you and your products without any direction or action on your part. Organic WOM can be unpredictable and controllable and you learn about it from the referrals you get and when they tell you who influenced their decision to visit you. Amplified WOM is directly encouraged by you through your marketing campaign. Amplified WOM can be controlled and tracked examples include referral programs, affiliate programs…

There are many types of WOM marketing that most optometry practices use without necessary having a deliberate WOM strategy however, they adopt them because of the results they get and sometimes because of the control they may have either because they advertise them on social media or simply because of the nature of the tools that can be controlled like for example rewards programs. Among the most employed WOM marketing types we find:

Referral programs for customers, patients, employees, and their families employed to refer people they know in person by talking to them directly in person or through social media or emails;

Marketing using Influencers and celebrities on social media or through TVs and radios influencing fans and followers;

Partners programs are employed among two or more none competing businesses who promote or refer their customers to each other to receive services they each provide. This can be done through social media, emails, or simply adding banners and marquees or backlinks on their websites referring to the other partner’s website;

Other types of WOM marketing include Brand Ambassador Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Reviews and Testimonials, and User Generated Content.

Valuing relationships and knowing what WOM is, it’s important in influencing decision-making, its categories, and types are the first steps toward putting down an effective WOM marketing strategy that should be designed, implemented, and followed alongside other marketing tools in the overall marketing strategy of your Optometry practice.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

23 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

Optometrists Locus of Control: Trust to Fate or Make a Decision for a Course of Action?

Humans have never-ending wishes, wants, and needs that they want to be fulfilled. Some believe that they can and have full control over their definitive course of action that leads to their desired needs others believe that fate plays a major role in making everything happen. A study conducted in 2018 revealed a high positive correlation between a manager’s locus of control and leadership qualities such as individual influence, inspirational motivation, individual consideration, and management by exception. Leadership is very relevant in Optometry around the world as those leadership qualities are found significantly among eye care professionals demonstrated in the different ways they share their expertise online and during lectures. Leadership has played a major role in the optometry profession since its inception in raising the standard of eye care as well as in raising the standard of living of eye care professionals which is also related to the significant economical model of practices, optical shops, and clinics.

The notion of locus of control is among the first lessons that a Master of Business Administration (MBA) student learns about in business school. Rotter, in 1966, developed an instrument to measure the locus of control. It consists of a survey questionnaire with high reliability comprised of 29 questions designed to measure whether a person has an internal or external locus of control. Individuals with high scores of internal locus of control believes that their lives are determined by their decisions and behaviors, whereas individuals scoring high on external locus of control believe that everything and every event happens outside of humans’ control.

A recent study showed that education has a direct effect on the locus of control and individuals with higher education degrees have an internal locus of control. The notion of locus of control explains why optometrists chose to become employers or employed. Moreover, the high positive correlation between internal locus of control and leadership explains why servant leadership and transformation leadership styles are the most prevalent among successful optometry leaders. They focus on individual followers and nurture them to become leaders.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

22 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

Flexible Work Keeps Getting Easier After The Pandemic

Despite some technical and professional boundaries, Optometry among other healthcare specialties has been embracing flexible work long before the pandemic. Healthcare providers discovered earlier than professionals in other industries that flexible work structures help optometrists, staff, and patients. Since 2008 studies have been showing that flexible work settings were most likely to appear in the healthcare industry than in other industries. During the pandemic, we’ve seen the rise of work from home type of flexible work. However, years before the pandemic many healthcare providers integrated and employed flexible work in their practice strategy as a tool not as a way to reward employees. Unlike in other industries healthcare providers understood how to use flexible work to attract and retain good employees.

In addition to remote work that has been largely adopted during the pandemic, flexible work types include:

Sharing the same job to fill multiple shifts consists of employing one full-time employee with one part-time to complete the shift. It can also consist of employing two or more part-time employees.

Having staff ready on call during the rush time or peak seasons. This works quite well with staff from another branch or sometimes an associate or a doctor who comes to help or even replaces another doctor when he’s traveling for conferences or vacation.

Employees who still can do their work from home because it’s administrative rather than providing patient care can come once per week. Some full-time staff can cover unexpected absenteeism for work that cannot be telecommuted.

The most difficult part of flexible work arrangements is being able to align workers’ schedules, minimize training efforts, enable optometrists to focus on their jobs and delegate other jobs, and improve productivity in providing better eye care for the patient. Among the many flexible work arrangements, Taking time off seems to increase job satisfaction and decrease the likelihood of stress the most. In fact, a study using data from the General Social Survey- Quality of Worklife, revealed that work flexibility prevalence remained relatively stable between 2002 and 2018. While Working at home and taking time off increased job satisfaction respectively by 65% and 100%, Changing one’s schedule increased job satisfaction by 62%. Working at home, taking time off, and changing one’s schedule respectively decreased the likelihood of job stress by 22%, 56%, and 20%.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

20 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

How Your Leadership Style Affects Attracting and Keeping Good Employees

Practice managers and Optometrists constantly look to hire the best employees because they heavily rely on them to get most of the work in the practice done. They build great teams who understand that doctors cannot do their job without their help. With good employees joining their team, doctors can lead by example by working hand in hand with their employees and dividing jobs demonstrating that they are not above everyone else, they are in the same boat, and they are working to accomplish the same objectives. Doctors may take the lead in some projects however they also allow other team members to get a leadership role in projects to motivate them and show them that they want them to build strong leadership too. Employees know that the whole practice relies on them moreover they are more valuable than customers to sustain the practice’s success and productivity. The more they are happy working for the organization the more retention rates increase.

Robert Greenleaf founder of the modern Servant Leadership which is the most powerful style of leadership employed in healthcare emphasizes the benefits of leaders with a mindset based on serving their employees first. In servant leaders, employees benefit too in that they gain personal growth and become more engaged and committed to the organization fostering that opportunity for growth. Employee engagement and commitment translate into lower turnover rates over time, moreover influences the development of a great culture of shared commitment, nurturing, and employees helping each other achieve a greater goal. The servant leadership effect on culture transforms the workplace into a collaborative environment leading to higher profit, productivity, and growth.

Level 5 leaders are described by author and university Professor Jom Collins in his book entitled “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t“. Jim is highly influenced by Greenleaf’s servant leadership style. In his book, he emphasizes Level 5 Leaders possess deep personal humility with an intense professional will that allows them to be able to achieve enormous successes in driving their companies to successfully transition from good to great. Servant leadership does not mean being adorable and soft, however, it requires holding people accountable for the work they undertaking. The most important characteristics of the servant leadership style include humility, empathy, active listening, persuasion, stewardship, direct engagement, facilitation, and commitment to employees’ growth.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

17 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

Things You Should Never Do With Your Sunglasses

We’re only ten days away from National Sunglasses day 2022. National Sunglasses Day is observed on the 27th of June. It has been brought to life by the Vision Council to celebrate the significance of wearing sunglasses to protect our eyes against ultraviolet (UV) rays emitted by the sun that can cause eye problems ranging from irritation, photophobia, and tearing to aging, burning, and cancer. Our delicate eyes are constantly at the risk of developing damage related to sunlight because UV rays are present year-round even in winter and on cloudy days. Having said all that, sunglasses should be used all day long however, there remain few moments where wearing sunglasses should be avoided, moreover to better take care of our sunglasses and ensure that they are always functional in protecting our eyes few things should be avoided that include:

When not wearing sunglasses people often wear them on their heads instead of putting them directly in their designated case. This can cause them to bend and stretch out over time;

Putting sunglasses everywhere, not in their designated case, on dirty or sandy surfaces can lead to dust accumulating and scratching the surface of the lenses;

Putting sunglasses on the dashboard or the console of the car directly under the glass tempered windshield puts them under extreme heat due to sunlight being concentrated by the windshield and causing the frames to soften and stretch out and the lenses to present irreparable cracking on the surface;

Cleaning your sunglasses with a handkerchief or your shirt can scratch the surface of the lenses and will reduce their ability to filter sunlight. Moreover, putting your sunglasses on surfaces with lenses face down will produce scratches on the front surface of the lenses. The same thing happens when you throw your sunglasses in the purse, the bag, or your car’s gloves box without their case. You put them at risk of getting scratched or broken by other sharp objects like keys, pencils, or keychains;

Wearing sunglasses indoors in meetings or when visiting someone is disrespectful, looks unprofessional, and should be avoided;

Wearing your sunglasses during the day and during the night is not healthy. Wearing sunglasses in the morning will block morning exposure to light necessary to regulate your body’s sleep rhythms;

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

16 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

What are the Best Practices For Opening a Second Practice?

When Optometrists start in a location and quickly grow their practice to a level where they beat all the competition around them, the first think they think of is to sustain a double digit growth and start looking to expand to a second location. At first they wonder how are they going to do it but it never takes long before they start emulating others before them: They study and read about success stories and leaders who have mastered all aspects of the profession, they take business courses, they get themselves a mentor, and they dive into their project limiting the risks and dedicating themselves to this new experience.

There are some steps that most optometrists who have more than one location followed at one point during their journey and they include:

Making sure the primary practice is financially healthy to support the new practice for the first couple of years;

Preparation that includes both financial capital and finding a good location significantly far from the primary practice in order to benefit from a new market and not cannibalize their primary practice when their patients follow them to the new location;

Make a clear statement of values, vision, and mission early on and begin by growing the culture of their practice by building a diverse team. It is easier to work with a none diverse team than with a diverse team at the beginning however the results for performance and productivity are significantly higher when they employ a diverse team;

Make sure they preserved their brand and their core technology remains reliable, valid, and accessible in two locations. Train their staff in a way to conserve both their core technology and brand image;

The list is long, however, those are some examples of what first comes into mind for every optometrist opening a second location. We often hear that their competitive advantage will be a great factor in the success of the new location. Sometimes their competitive advantage that made their primary practice beat the competition will not work in the new market. Therefore, they must be able to determine whether their competitive advantage work in the new market and if not what will their next step be.

Researchers found that three primary factors determine whether a competitive advantage transfers into a new market: the new market competitive landscape, customer preferences, and the practice’s willingness to adapt to local demands. In the event, that the practice’s competitive advantage happens to be none transferable to the new market they’ll have to be ready to follow one of three strategies that include adjusting existing offerings, developing new competitive advantages, or simply leaving the market.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

15 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

Waking Up The Day After National Bourbon Day

Bourbon is the official spirit of America bringing back in memories to the days of prohibition. National Bourbon Day on the 14th of June recognizes the joy and pleasure of tasting a barrel proof neat glasses of bourbon or mixing it with bitters brown sugar and soda to drink the best Old Fashioned cocktail.

Like Scotch, Champagne, and Cognac, Bourbon derives its name from the Kentucky county of the same name. It is made out of more than 51 percent corn which makes it’s Alcohol by Volume (ABV) higher than wheat based scotch whiskey.

For Marc Twain it was always the good time to stop whatever you are doing, pour a glass of Bourbon, and smoke a fine cigar not just on National Bourbon Day.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

14 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

Where are the Multiple Pairs Sales Gone? How To Revive Selling Multiple Pairs After The Pandemic

We’ve seen the sales of eyewear during 2020 and 2021 plummeting due to different factors directly related to the COVID19 pandemic. Most optical shops were forced to close or work at a reduced capacity containing essential services. Disruption of the supply chain and the impossibility of being able to refill on time and purchase new products either because shops received fewer representatives so the access to new products was difficult or because patients and customers became more price-sensitive and the factors that most affected their decision to buy were not brands and fashion but the price, durability, and lens features. Given that patients became more price-sensitive, less attracted to brands, and more inclined to hear the advice of the professionals selling them frames and sunglasses, the sales of multiple pairs significantly dropped.

Now that the pandemic is getting over and practices almost regained all activities in stores and offices alongside online selling. The focus of large chains and retailers is on omnichannel selling comprising both online sales and in the office. Independent practices that put a lot of emphasis on patients’ experiences delivering the best products and best services to patients also emphasize the importance of selling multiple pairs which they missed ever since the Pandemic started.

To improve the sales of multiple pairs, they need to make part of the practice strategy. The strategy should incorporate persuasive doctors and staff, bundles and packages being communicated with patients in the waiting room, always target new generations on social media platforms, and constantly introduce new products with detailed features.

One way to look at selling multiple pairs of glasses is through the lens of the marketing mix comprising of the four Ps.

Product: is the multiple pairs packages. It could vary from two frames to many frames. Every package is uniquely designed according to the patient’s needs.

Price: based on the features presented accounting for the healthcare program covering the eyeglasses or the job that the package of multi-pairs will accomplish or do to the patient.

Place: in-store sales or online. A study using an eye tracker to assess customers’ visual attention factors in and out of the optical shop recently revealed that customers’ decision factors to shopping glasses were attraction to spectacle design of frames displayed in-store more than out-of-store.

Promotion: bundled pairs have to be presented in distinct packages and displayed in a special corner and a special way. All staff should be immersed in promoting multiple pairs starting from reception by identifying and informing patients of the available possibilities covered by their plan. The refractionist should inquire about the activities and get informed about the patient’s lifestyle. The Optometrist should talk about the different solutions and visual benefits of multiple pairs that suit the needs of the patient. The optician should demonstrate the different features carried by every pair of glasses for example polarized testers, transitions testers, blue light filter testers, progressive lenses, etc.

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Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

11 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

How to Stay Focused With Patients And Improve Focus At Work

Every time the staying focused subject is mentioned I recall my first year at college when I spent most of my time with classmates exchanging ideas and experiences on how to improve our focus, following with the instructor, understanding the lecture, and taking notes at the same time. We immediately noticed that some of us were better listeners, better note-takers, and certainly aced the focus game. Of course, physical training and healthy food and beverages were mandatory. I still train regularly and eat healthily. Not to mention the plan of study but some of the ideas and techniques we use to practice were brain training to solve puzzles and memory tasks and taking regular breaks to play video games while eating small pieces of snacks or fruits to avoid burnout. When I was studying at home, I woke up early to exercise and start studying at 6 am according to the plan I wrote the evening before. The first two breaks are once every two hours at 8 am and 10 am then the frequency increases gradually to reach one break every thirty minutes in the afternoon before I stop studying at 6 pm to exercise after I put the plan of study for the next day.

Being able to concentrate, stay disciplined, and gradually develop your ability to focus is crucial to learning and absorbing important amounts of information during college to succeed during exams and graduate. Staying focused is also important in everyone’s career when working with colleagues, partners, students, and patients. The good thing is that we can use all the techniques we used in college to improve our ability to absorb and focus. Factors we should consider that affect our ability to focus include: health, rest, distraction, time management, planning, and work-life balance.

As eye care practitioners we need to be in good shape: a good diet means eating healthily, drinking healthily, exercising daily, sleeping well, and never overloading your office schedule.

Even the smallest distraction should be avoided. Distraction sources include messages or phone calls from family members and friends while you are conducting an eye test. Any question asked by the patient that leads the conversation away from its purpose of bringing better eye care is a distraction. You may want to ask about your patient’s family but not answer too much when the patient asks about your personal life. Chatting with colleagues over coffee is another distraction that should be avoided to stay focused on providing better eye care.

Prepare everything in advance when you come early before anyone else and review your day plan set the night before and start looking for ways to execute it during the day. Understand that every minute counts during the day so prioritize tasks. Profit from breaks to eat your snacks or drink your blended vitamins and text your friends and family. Use technology to automate tasks and improve communication with staff and patients.

Put all your efforts to achieve a work-life balance. Your career is important but meaningless if you don’t discover your purpose early in your career.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

10 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

Why Optometrists Need To Know How To Build Self-confidence?

The number of lawsuits for malpractice cases brought against optometrists are still small relatively to other medical professionals. Nevertheless, we all know a colleague or more who have been called in medical malpractice lawsuits. Most malpractice cases are related to retinal detachment, glaucoma, corneal injury, ocular injury due to broken frames when not recommending polycarbonate lens. There are also other cases that required the optometrist to be more vigilant and prevent it from happening. Some examples include delay in diagnosis, wrong diagnosis, not knowing and being expert on how to manage eye problems before they become a serious issue.

When malpractice lawsuits are brought against an optometrist they affect his ability to make sound decisions leading him into a period of lack of self-selfconfidence. Therefore, optometrists should have an objective to increase professional confidence and competence in patient communication. Increasing self-confidence becomes essential to every optometrist’s in order to be able to make their job, perform difficult procedures, … Subscribe to “optical forum.space” to read how to increase self-confidence…

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

9 Jun, 2022

Blog Posts

The Biggest Myths About Starting and Operating Your Own Practice That Nobody Tells You About

Most students, fresh graduates, and employees develop a certain image about starting and operating their own business based on myths and misconceptions that they collect from different eye care professionals or sometimes university instructors. Some of those myths drive professionals and motivate them to open or acquire a business and be their own boss, others drive them away from taking such a step.

Your decision to operate your practice or get employed should only be influenced by what you want and desire deep inside of you and facts that prove whether it’s doable or not. From the time you start studying optometry to the time you decide whether or not to start and operate your business, you would certainly meet professionals and hear a lot of information regarding this subject. Among that information are facts but also myths about starting and operating a business as private practice founder or getting employed:

1- Optometrists founders will find themselves doing all jobs in the practice including optical selling and reception work. Therefore they rarely find time for marketing and developing great relationships with customers and patients.

2- If you start your own optometry practice you will become rich. The truth is that a large number of startups fail within the first couple of years. Your chances of becoming rich are higher if you invest your money in numerous other businesses with less risk of failure.

3- The best available marketing for new optometrists founders is digital and consists of investing on social media, and international events. Some of the best marketing strategies for optometrists founders relies on exceptional customer experience to fuel word-of-mouth marketing.

4- As a founder, you will never be able to hire high and top talent, with your limited budget you will only be able to hire average people. The truth is that not all top talents are motivated only by money, therefore you should spend enough time talking to people and understand what really motivates them.

The list for myths of starting and operating your own practice is long and constantly updated. Developing critical thinking is very important in discovering those myths and being able to make an informed decision rather than listening to myths.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

5 Jun, 2022

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Questions Are Rising Whether An MBA Degree is Still a Worthy Investment In 2022

The demand for the MBA program continued to rise over the last few years. Despite the pandemic, Students still want to pursue an MBA program to advance their careers, get into management, grow their business knowledge, change their careers, improve their critical thinking and analytical skills, and get a holistic understanding of the team they are leading. Sangeet Chowfla, president and chief executive officer at the Graduate Management Admission Council said last year “The world was changing rapidly even before the current pandemic and while COVID-19 has brought with it perhaps unprecedented challenges across every sector, b-school classrooms have long been preparing MBA students for a dynamic and often uncertain environment. Employers place a premium on that kind of talent and perspective.”

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Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

3 Jun, 2022

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20 Things That Motivate Your Employees More Than Money

Responses to the Facebook workforce survey conducted twice a year reveal career, community, and cause to be the main motivators for employees. While more than a quarter of Facebook employees saw all three as important more than 90% rated at least two as the most important. The culture at Facebook indicates that its employees fundamentally are motivated by the same things. Whether they work in sales, marketing, or are engineers, they are all looking for the best career, the right community, and a cause. With these motivators revealed to Facebook, a psychological contract is built based on career, community, and cause to evaluate fairness and trust and if the employer is honoring the agreement between them. Any reduction of any of those motivators will increase employees’ insecurity and reduce their motivation to do their job.

From the days of famous psychologist Abraham Maslow, employers based their motivation on his theory of needs that we all have a hierarchy of needs that are piled to form a pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the basic psychological and safety needs that people run to fulfill the first. At a higher level in the pyramid people seek to fulfill self-esteem and prestige needs before raising to an even higher level of self-actualization. Famous psychologist, David Mclelland, known for his work on the motivation Need Theory, is quoted as “I don’t understand the question, how do you motivate someone. Anyone who is alive is motivated”. He infers that every person alive can be motivated we don’t need to look at “how they are motivated” but rather “what motivates them?”. Money and bonuses can be a great motivator: In Facebook’s career, community, and cause. Here are twenty things that might motivate your employees more than money:

1- Power: the need to control and have power over others;

2- Energy: being around an energetic boss fuels many and motivates them to become productive;

3- Positive workplace: reassures and provides employees with the sense of everything is going to be good ok, whatever you do whenever you go;

4- The opportunity to grow: a practice that is taking care of employees’ future and how they will advance in their career;

5- Affiliation: resembles Facebook’s “community” and the sense of belonging to certain community;

6- Achieving goals: while young employees maybe highly motivated by achieving goals and reaching targets, seniors maybe inclined to protecting the world and helping others around them benefit from their experiences;

7- Change: many employees are motivated by the passion to create change and different levels within the practice and the society as a whole;

8- Nurture, coach, and help others benefit from their experience;

9- Greater yet interesting challenge: they want to test themselves and their ability to perform greater tasks;

10- Recognition and appreciation: they want to be appreciated for the work they are doing;

11- Getting Feedback: they seek good advice and want to grow and learn from their mistakes;

12- Genuine caring bosses: employees want to know that they are needed as humans not like any other asset in the company;

13- Support: employees want support in every job they perform;

14- Clear communication about all that is going to affect they daily activities at work;

15- Feeling a sense of purpose and their values are being preserved;

16- Having all the technology required to get the job done;

17- Mastery: upskilling and allowing employees to self improve and continuously attend workshops and seminars to help them get great at what they do;

18- Autonomy: employees’ best motivator could be the ability to have full control over their job and be willing to work at their own pace.

19- Flexibility: the pandemic has increased the levels of work flexibility like no other previous historical event;

20- Make leadership an available option for all employees, value their ideas, and make your ideas theirs. Encourage intrapreneurship;

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

2 Jun, 2022

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You Know You Are An Entrepreneur If You Have These Two Traits

In a recent interview with Forbes, Reed Hoffman, co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, as well as author of New York bestseller “The Startup Of You” asserted that following the pandemic the world is becoming more entrepreneurial. It is not that everyone will become an entrepreneur, however, the stage is more then ever ready and prepared for people with certain traits to discover, identify, and capture opportunity. In his 2012 book he provides a lot of advice on how to become a good entrepreneur. He cites ten rules for those who want to become successful entrepreneurs which include being disruptive, aiming big, growing your network, planning for better or worse, maintaining flexible persistence, launching early, seeking honestly, being everywhere, knowing that culture is key, and lastly breaking all the above mentioned rules. All ten rules he provides are boiled down to the last rule which explains clearly that being able to break all rules, entrepreneurship rules prove to be merely laws of nature. In other words, make rules, follow rules, however, keep in mind that sometimes rules are made to be broken so they are not binding or getting in the way of the opportunity.

With that being said, I stopped at Reed’s rule of maintaining flexible persistence, which he explained in the interview as good entrepreneurs need to maintain persistence, never give in, and pull all their resources into what they see as the ultimate opportunity, however, they need to remain flexible. By flexible he means, testing and experimenting rather than going blindfolded. Experimenting and testing are among entrepreneurs greatest tools for success.

Flexible persistence also stands for adaptive discipline that helps people successfully drive their way up to success even in the current times where along with risk and uncertainty, economic volatility still creates opportunities for those who are ready to manage risk and play the offense. The only way to do that is to identify risks, who’s going to be affected, what are the consequences, and take action to prevent them. Hoping things will get better is very dangerous. Both pessimists and optimists will not understand what flexible persistence is. However, people who can imagine how things will be like in the future in a very realistic way they can take action to make changes. So realists are good entrepreneurs who understand things the way they are and take action to change.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

2 Jun, 2022

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How Do Parents Affect Entrepreneurial Spirit and Children Becoming Entrepreneurs?

Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, who was one of the world’s top experts in innovation and growth, repeatedly said “we need disruptive innovations that prioritize tackling authentic projects at home, with both children and adults working together. This could build up a generation of young people equipped for the future”. He always emphasized that when there’s a lot of work going on at home, children will become immersed in the day-to-day projects alongside their parents. This means that as they grow and by the time they reach adulthood, they develop a sense of responsibility for how to address real problems that they have learned and applied as well as experienced throughout their life.

However, when parents can afford to hire or outsource the work at home, children may grow up without the ability to address complex problems and jobs. Online learning has brought education to children at home and has involved parents in affecting their children’s development by trying to solve together what was originally the student’s problem. This way of co-management of problems will increase the innovative spirit of the children and will be reflected in their ability to innovate at different levels in the future.

Like innovation, entrepreneurship can largely be impacted by parents. Albert Einstein is frequently quoted as “All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual”. The literature is full of research studying the relationship and the effect of family on the entrepreneurial spirit, among them are researches that studied the effect of having parents entrepreneurs, having enough money to try and fail and retry all over again, gender, context, etc. Having entrepreneur parents increases the probability of entrepreneur children by 60%. Moreover, the effect is more relevant in adopted children as they are influenced by both pre-birth and post-birth parenthood effects.

Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus William A. Sahlman who is the author of many articles and books on entrepreneurship emphasizes four key elements of entrepreneurial activities that include the people they will be working with, the specific opportunity that they are after, the context that sets things outside of our control, and the deal about the opportunity, people, and everything that comes along. There are many interesting things about these four elements, however, how they are interrelated to each other is the most important characteristic to study. Once again the people influencing the entrepreneurial activity being among the family members and parents are a major key element.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

31 May, 2022

Blog Posts

How Creative Problem-solving Impacts Optometry Practice Management

Complacency often stands in the way of innovation pushing Optometrists and practice managers to apply rules and practices they know to solve problems rather than researching and trying to apply new ideas and create norms and new rules to solve problems. In previous posts we emphasized the role of management to encourage creativity among team members by providing what is needed and making it available to everyone.

Creative problem-solving is among the tools needed to help team members come up with innovative solutions when faced with problems that are not defined and the skills to solve the problem are not defined too. International keynote speaker and author of the best-selling book “Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change.”, Greg Satell, created the Innovation Matrix to help leaders find the right strategy to solve a specific problem based on answering two questions How well can we define the problem? and How well can we define the skill domains needed to solve it?

From the matrix, there can emerge four types of innovations for solving four types of problems. Breakthrough innovations when problems are well defined and skills are not well defined. Sustaining innovations when both problems and skills are well defined. Basic research innovation when both problems and skills are not well defined. Disruptive Innovations when problems are not well but skills are well defined.

When problems are not well defined we will have recourse to Basic research innovations and Disruptive innovation. Creative problem-solving is needed in those conditions to help you find solutions where it’s hard to find or define the root cause of the problem. Creative problem-solving is less structured than other innovation tools encouraging creativity in solving problems using open-ended solutions and helping in finding creative solutions to complex problems, helping business leaders to adapt to change, and fueling innovation and growth in the company.

To solve problems, creative problem-solving is based on key principles that include:

1- Balancing divergent thinking based on generating ideas in response to the problem and convergent thinking is based on narrowing down and shortlisting those ideas.

2- Reframing problems as questions focusing on solutions rather than obstacles and freely brainstorming potential new ideas.

3- Deferring Judgment to ideas increasing idea generation through brainstorming.

4- Focusing on using positive words instead of negative words to encourage creative thinking and innovative ideas.

Subscribe to the Optical Forum blog to read an example of a problem in the eye care practice with a step-by-step explanation of how it has been solved using creative problem-solving.

World No Tobacco Day

Maria Adra

31 May, 2022

World No Tobacco Day

World No Tobacco Day is celebrated around the world every year on 31 May. It was created in 1987 by the World Health Organization to draw global attention to the tobacco epidemic and the preventable death and diseases it causes.

The effect of cigarettes and tobacco on health are widely known thus smoking has a big impact on ocular health.

Cataract:

“Smoking can double your risk of developing cataracts at an earlier age.”

Cataracts are one of the leading causes of vision loss. Cataracts develop when the crystalline lens becomes cloudy, causing blurred vision, light sensitivity, and difficulty driving at night.

Uveitis

“Smoking more than doubles your risk of developing uveitis.”

In a matter of fact, smokers were 2.2 times more likely to have uveitis than those who don’t.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD)

“Smoking can increase your risk of developing AMD by up to 4 times.”

Smoking causes your retinal blood vessels to constrict, which can increase your blood pressure and your risk of permanent vision loss from both the wet and dry forms of AMD.

Research also suggests that people who smoke have lower levels of the macular pigments lutein and zeaxanthin, which are responsible for protecting the macula from ultraviolet (UV) radiation— another risk factor for AMD.

Dry eyes:

“Smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke double your risk of developing dry eye syndrome.”

Studies have shown the effect of smoking on the alteration of the quality of tears and diminishing the Break-up time.

Furthermore, smoking has also an effect on the tissues surrounding the eyes, it’s a favorable factor for developing Blepharitis and meibomitis.

We as eye care practitioners and optometrists have a crucial role in educating our patients to prevent any infection leading to loss of vision.

Maria Adra, Owner of Adra Eye Care, Optometrist. She worked in refractive surgery for 10 years, Contact Lens Fitting, and Activist in spreading awareness about ocular health and general knowledge.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

30 May, 2022

Blog Posts

What Can The Pandemic Teach Us About Mentors

Many Optometrists build relationships with mentors, especially during the years of study or residency. It is much less common to find an established optometrist looking for a mentor. A mentor is an experienced and trusted adviser who provides guidance, motivates, and supports the mentee in career choice, setting goals, and developing contacts. Mentors help mentees by sharing with them their own extensive experience, information about their career path, and decisions they should make to reach both short and long-term productivity. The relationship that is formed between the mentor and the mentee is a mutually beneficial professional relationship. The mentor helps the mentee grow and become the best version of himself and the mentor learns twice by teaching.

Students usually see in the mentor the person who, during the time spent at the university, he can be the teacher, sponsor, advisor, role model, or coach. The type of relationship that grows between the mentor and the mentee can be traditional one-on-one mentoring, distance mentoring where both are far, and Group Mentoring where a single mentor is matched with a cohort of members.

In Optometry, we may find that mentorship is focused mainly on students. However, experts say everyone needs a mentor no matter what they do and what they are in life. Mentors serve as coaches who can help you during the time of the recession as well as the pandemic. Many employees have lost their job after the COVID-19 pandemic. The role of the optometrist has changed over the years so does the role of the mentor and the mentee. People now look for jobs that can provide them with greater flexibility. Remote work has become the norm.

With the changes that the pandemic has brought to our markets and daily lives, different aspects of mentoring have changed. Distance mentoring is being made online. After identifying their goals and describing the job that the mentor will have, mentees have different places on the internet to look for mentors. They can start by a second-degree online network like LinkedIn. There are training programs for mentors available online, as well as methods for mentees to get in touch and network with potential mentors.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

27 May, 2022

Blog Posts

How Strong Can Culture Affect Your Optometry Practice?

Knowing and understanding your team culture is something very important in working to improve your practice productivity and performance. Management guru Peter Drucker repeatedly said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Without a strategy, an organization can go nowhere. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, we should infer that culture assumes the organization’s stability and keeps change from happening. The same way culture resists management attempts to deliberate change, it helps an organization become more resilient. Moreover, affected by workplace values and the context of the organization, organizational culture changes over time and can either empower or thwart the organization’s strategy.

Your organization’s culture consists of the shared values and beliefs that distinguish your organization from other organizations. Culture is the collection of values that shape your organization and makes it what it is. Workplace values determine the organization’s culture as well as affect each employee’s career path. An employee whose values misalign with the organization’s values will not be comfortable working around other teammates. His performance will be reduced and given the significant amount of time that we spend with teammates in the workplace, it is very hard to remain productive when each employee has different values. Even when most of your staff are part-time employed it is very important to understand your workplace values that set the tone for your workplace culture. Not identifying and understanding your workplace values will reduce job satisfaction, engagement, the love of helping others, and the will of doing challenging things. As a result, not knowing your workplace values will reduce performance, productivity, earnings, recognition, and job security.

Identifying and evaluating workplace values is the duty of HR and the Optometrist. In the absence of HR, an optometrist should know that workplace values concern employers and employees therefore they should include all teammates, executives, managers, employees, and part-time employees. Optometrists should also know that most large companies list that their culture includes specific values like integrity, customer-centricity, and respect while in reality, very few employees live up to their company’s values. For this reason, investing more time brainstorming with all staff is crucial to get an understanding of what your workplace value is and how you should work your strategy.

If your practice is not ready to build a customized questionnaire for assessing values based on brainstorming and starting with open-ended questions before constructing the final questionnaire you can have recurrence or practice on many available models that will help you assess value and include the Business Needs Scorecard, Job Satisfaction Survey, Organizational Cultural Assessment Instrument, or Hofstede’s Organizational Culture Model. Inc.com outlined a list of nine factors that you can use to quantify culture in your practice, it includes Formality, Analytics, Transparency, Teams or Individuals, Performance Tracking, Innovation, Frugality, Humor, and Conformity. Practices assign a value of 1 to 10 to each factor and present the survey as a quiz to its employees.

Again the most important way to measure your practice’s values is to be able to come up with the factors based on one or more brainstorming sessions to develop the survey.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

26 May, 2022

Blog Posts

What Can You Do to Improve or Help Improve Your Staff Time Management Skills

Have you ever had your staff at the reception desk miss their lunch break or stay twenty minutes overtime waiting for the taxi to come pick up your last patient who happened to be an elder patient or a person who needs special care?

Like every healthcare professional, optometrists don’t have any time to waste and they understand how they prioritize activities during the day so that they can use time at the office efficiently and make it most rewarding for the efforts they put in. Many colleagues learn about time management from reading books, taking executive courses and trying to apply what they learn, or simply by trial and error based on self-teaching themselves through assessing daily experiences, reflecting on patient encounters and touchpoints throughout the patient’s visit, and constantly imagining better processes, designing, and implementing those processes. When implementing time management processes, whether learned or self-taught, Optometrists and practice managers are so occupied by time management best practices that they often forget to spend time on improving their staff time management skills and putting them into action.

Practice owners should be able to invest in the technology that helps their staff prioritize tasks and expedite certain aspects of their work in a way not to waste their time on repetitive and duplicated tasks that can be eliminated to make the eye care process efficient. A good example is the technology used to make a paperless practice where retrieving and updating patient data is all done without using papers, pens, folders, drawers, and paperclips.

The first lesson your staff should learn is they may offer to help each other sometimes, however, everyone should be able to complete his tasks and deal with his problems, without wasting others’ valuable time. Time is scarce and is the most valuable asset to everyone.

Keeping your patients in the loop is an excellent time management tip that every optometrist should use as well as teach his staff to use too. Your staff should be able to explain every step of the eye care experience and be able to anticipate events. Good communication skills help you, as a doctor, build a better relationship with the patient and help your staff improve their time management and make the practice more efficient. Your trained staff would anticipate that the elder patient may have to wait for the taxi an extra twenty minutes and would intervene and communicate a planned action that consists of calling the taxi in advance, saving themselves and the elder patient twenty minutes waiting for the taxi to come. Your staff should employ effective communication with patients through phone, online, and in-person making the patient’s experience more pleasurable and efficient from the first touchpoint to rescheduling.

This is a good example to start working on improving optometry staff time management skills by starting by observing and analyzing everyone’s workload, setting tasks according to priorities, design individual and collective processes that maintain focus on productivity and efficiency by eliminating waste of time and distraction along the eye care process from the first touchpoint to rescheduling.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

23 May, 2022

Blog Posts

Think Before You Send Your LinkedIn Message Pitch

Over the years, salespeople and new managers developed myriads of lines and strategies to come out with the perfect elevator pitch or what makes a perfect cold call. LinkedIn, as a social media platform for recruiting, presenting project ideas, the partnership offers, and sales has become the go-to platform for head hunters, Human Resources, as well as a way to pitch ideas and sales proposals. I don’t have enough gray hair to may have been on the elevator pitch bandwagon, moreover, I never was a proponent of cold calls. I have always been an opponent of bulk emails because they are intrusive and almost always end up in junk mail folders as spam messages. I sometimes call bulk messaging the worst and most unprofessional way to make a contact with anyone.

It appeared that with the advancement of the internet and the emergence of social media, the cold call has taken a whole new concept. In the old days, cold calls experts told us that less than 3% of calls on average yielded sales. LinkedIn messaging is closer to the elevator pitch than it is to cold calls or spam emails. Moreover, it is a two-way communication that is facilitated by the introduction option that you have maintaining an updated profile that resonates and the level of connection that you have with the prospect to facilitate connecting and help in creating a network. A person with a 2nd level connection is most likely to respond to a connect request or an e-mail. Otherwise, I personally prefer simply having an updated profile and being approached by contacts instead of making random contact requests or sending inmails.

Many professionals I know never or very rarely send connect requests, yet they are able to build a contact base through LinkedIn by employing messaging and enlarging their business network of connections and partners by solely relying on other people taking the initiative. The beautiful thing about LinkedIn is that you can build and grow your network without ever having (or very rarely) to send a connect request or cold call anyone. If you send a lot of connect requests you will certainly fall into one of these “9 types of People to Ignore on LinkedIn” who are usually ignored and even sometimes blocked.

Unless you have met someone in person and both agreed to connect on LinkedIn, it is preferable not to send random requests. If you add random connections you will most probably end up with an Instagram-like LinkedIn profile where one-way-follow-relations are being built. LinkedIn relations are two ways relations and you have to start by building a strong profile with detailed information about what you do, your credentials, your professional achievements, and your publications. On the other hand, the person you are connecting to should have done the same things. By doing so, people will approach you, and every time you login to your account you’ll get new connection requests along with profile views. Log in regularly and don’t keep your next contact waiting. Filter requests by visiting their profiles, learning about people approaching you, and interacting by liking and commenting.

The most important step is to send a thank you message for reaching out and connecting. Send a message to every contact you accept his request to connect. Make the initiative and break the ice by first thanking them for having reached out and requested to connect and then highlighting how you can help them and how you can both help each other out. Being grateful for their action to connect is the first step to be followed by trying to learn how your relationship will develop in the future.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

19 May, 2022

Blog Posts

Fake Leaders Show Off True Leaders Show Up

Bruce Lee, a legendary martial artist is often quoted by “showing off is the fool’s idea of glory”. Great leaders don’t show off, in fact people barely know they exist. True leaders show up every day to get things done, walk the talk, and when they accomplish their goal they attribute all the work to the people they worked with to achieve this goal. To be effective, true leaders start by defining facts and reality. They don’t invent things and they don’t stage scenarios and situation that make them appear as a protagonist.

Leaders who show off are leaders who didn’t spend enough time growing themselves before they started growing and affecting others’ lives. They haven’t understood the true reality of how success is built so they start by building false illusions and try to project them on others. They don’t know the way so they have nothing to teach but to impose their title on others. Great leaders never rely on their titles.

We have all seen leaders like this who show off instead of showing up, never inspire confidence, and never raise a person’s performance to a higher standard. Great leaders are great servants who know their responsibility and obey and abide by them. They bring up results and attributes that speak for them and not phony speeches that they use to deceive audiences.

Finally, great leaders know and can easily identify fake leaders who show off and never show up. They never let them into their teams and they constantly recruit leaders alike seizing every opportunity to make a change and improve their environment and the lives of people around them. Today, the world needs more leaders who influence new leaders and do not impose authority on others. They are fueled by a passion for doing things and are not motivated to occupy positions.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

18 May, 2022

Blog Posts

How Well Do Your Employees Know Your Organization’s Purpose?

Many companies don’t have a clear purpose statement. I look at companies’ websites and I discover that while most of them have”mission statement”and “vision statement” many don’t have a clear and defined “purpose statement”. I often tried to ask executives I know about their company’s mission and vision statement. A significant percentage of executives don’t know their company’s mission and vision, and half of those who know their company’s mission and vision are not motivated by the company’s mission and vision.

Lately, we’ve been watching a new era starting: Where employee turnover rates are increasing, as well as the number of employees who worked for most of their life in one company. Employees who have a genuine and strong connection with their employers and literature feel and know what their boss and the company are trying to achieve are becoming scarce these days. Most employees are becoming less aware of why their company exists, what is their company’s competitive advantage, and how is their company sustaining success and growing in its market and environment.

Those employees rarely imagine or picture themselves and their bigger role in the company. They lack connection and motivation to perform better yet many don’t think of quitting because they are convinced that finding a job where they can be inspired by the company’s mission and vision is a hard task.

Very few employees get the chance to work for a company that has similar values and purpose. Moreover, employees are rarely aware of the company’s values and purpose. Therefore, they should find a way to connect themselves and their purpose with the company’s values and purpose. This can be accomplished by first being aware of yourselves by identifying your values and role in the company and second by identifying the company’s values and understanding its mission and vision statements. A few questions employees should be able to answer that identify their values include:

What is their passion, what mostly motivates them, what values make them operate, what qualities they admire in others, what annoys them in others, what environment causes drive them, what makes them happy, and what makes them satisfied, recognized, and admired among others.

Employees should be able to bring the common answers with the company’s values from the mission and vision statement. Having done so they can work on these common points and improve upon them to become certain they have a purposeful job and career.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

13 May, 2022

Blog Posts

Leadership Lessons From Top Gun Pilot Instructor

Today is Top Gun Day, a very special day for Aviators and aviation enthusiasts; especially this year as everyone is waiting for the release of the Top Gun movie sequel on the 27th. As a sports pilot and aviation enthusiast myself I find it a great opportunity to wish everyone a happy Top Gun Day and share with you my favorite Top Gun movie leadership quote from Tom Skerritt, call sign “Viper”: ” Up there, we got to push it. That’s our job. A good pilot is compelled to always evaluate what’s happened. So he can apply what he’s learned”. What leadership lesson did you learn from the Top Gun movie? How do you apply it in your practice and your day-to-day life? How is it affecting everyone around you?

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

13 May, 2022

Blog Posts

Why Do We Celebrate International Nurses Day on May 12

International Nurses Day is celebrated on Florence Nightingale’s birth anniversary. Here’s why

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

12 May, 2022

Blog Posts

About Success

Albert Einstein is known for “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”

Optical Forum Flipbook Issue 14 News And Editor's Perspective

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

10 May, 2022

Optical Forum Flipbook Issue 14 News And Editor’s Perspective

April is Sports Eye Safety Month to spread awareness about the importance of wearing appropriate eye protection when engaging in sports activities. Technically any given sports activity involves physical exertion and skills for competition and entertainment. E-Sports are on the rise as new electronic sports in the virtual world where competition and entertainment are involved and where the risk of getting eye injury is relevant for both people competing and spectators. From there the importance of wearing appropriate eye protection against the radiation from digital devices employed to get involved in e-sports is becoming relevant. Extra vigilance is required for kids whose vision has still not completely developed.

At Optical Forum and during April we created new original content on daily basis. The topics we wrote are inspired by problems and issues we face in the practice on daily basis. We hope that those experiences will help eye care professionals and invite them to comment and share their experiences with us and the community.

We’ve also put together Issue 14 with the support and help of the Optical Forum Editorial Board. We are forever thankful for everyone who volunteered to create and review the content of this issue.

Gilbert Nacouzi, BSc, MBA, DBA, EIC

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

9 May, 2022

Blog Posts

Why Is Employee Commitment So Important In 2022?

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”
― Peter F. Drucker

During the last three years, we’ve watched hiring becoming difficult and employee retention becoming even more difficult. We use to think that hiring employees is more difficult than keeping employees, however recent studies showed that employee turnover has been dramatically diminishing in the workplace. Companies are finding it more difficult to keep employees because of the rising costs of retaining them. Among the reasons for higher turnover rates are little or no advancement in career, weak practice management policies, organizational culture, employee burnout, or lack of resources necessary and technology improvement to perform and deliver good quality standards. Knowing the causes is the first step toward avoiding them and reducing employee turnover rates.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

8 May, 2022

Blog Posts

How Often Do You See Yourself Struggling to Optimize A Process That Is Not Even Worth The Effort?

Management guru and top thinker Peter F. Drucker is often quoted as “there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all”. We’re often focused on using a single approach in doing things that we forget to update or search for new approaches to solve problems. To stay ahead of the competition, every practice should look for opportunities to improve productivity and quality at the same time. A way to reach this goal is by employing the Lean principles that we talked about in a previous post.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

7 May, 2022

Blog Posts

What Lean Practices Emerged As Winners After The Pandemic?

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was different in each optometry practice. Some attribute it to the organizational resilience that every practice has built over the years, while others credit preparedness and resilience to sound management strategies like Lean management and the collective culture of the team and the leadership behind it. For whoever is emerging as winner after the pandemic they surely must have not just mastered value identification but also are perfectionists who constantly look for opportunities for improvement in every step of the process of value stream even on the rarest occasions like the pandemic.

Lean manufacturing is a production method derived from Toyota’s operating model that brought it to global leadership. The Lean method focuses mainly on reducing waste in the production system. Time wasted during production and response times from supplier to customer are tracked and eliminated. In Lean systems, the first thing to identify is “what do your customers value?”. The second step is to identify the value stream that consists of resources and processes accounting and eliminating waste and unnecessary steps that don’t create value. Once the flow is established ensuring smooth progression leading to finished products, pull value is then established creating a just-in-time or on-demand model to eliminate work-in-progress inventory resulting from incorrect production forecasts. The final step in the process is seeking perfection in following every step of the process to find an opportunity to improve value stream. All steps are perfected with the collective effort of all employees from production to the management.

During the past decade, there have been constant efforts into pushing Lean processes into eye care whether in ophthalmology or optometry. The purpose was primarily around improving practice efficiency, decreasing waste, increasing profitability, improving quality of care, and improving patient satisfaction. The American Academy of Opthalmology emphasizes Lean success when physicians and all staff collaborate to create a high-functioning practice. Through the lens of lean principles, practices identify duplication of work by constantly reviewing the operations and creating a culture of continuous improvement. Practices have seen an increase in both physicians and staff’s satisfaction with the implementation of Lean.

Practices that were following Lean principles even in the middle of the pandemic had a single point in their mind that is Lean is not just reducing waste and costs but it’s mainly improving efficiency and increasing production to enhance the value delivered to the patient. Even if you had the best Lean application during the pandemic the number one metric of efficiency was being able to fulfill orders to patients and customers. In events like the pandemic, those who were able to fulfill patients’ orders were those who were technology and data-driven and those who leveraged technology to get real-time insights using telehealth and telemedicine among other technologies.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

6 May, 2022

Blog Posts

Are Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing Becoming Mutually Exclusive in 2022?

In a previous post, we emphasized the return of the marketing segmentation with the rise of the digital divide after the pandemic. We’ve been captured by the idea that the pandemic was the last nail in the coffin of marketing based on segmentation and the reign of digital marketing. However, as the pandemic began to unfold a digital divide has risen separating people into two groups. The ones who want to return to normal office work and the ones who want to continue utilizing the technology to stay virtual and work remotely. We also emphasized the importance of rethinking your marketing strategy by integrating your practice inbound marketing strategy (blogs, social media, digital marketing, …) with the outbound marketing strategy (TV ads, billboards, radio, newspapers, magazines, sprees, …).

We received many comments and messages regarding our conclusion being not so accurate because with the digital divide in 2022, inbound marketing and outbound marketing are also becoming mutually exclusive. For inbound marketing proponents, this has been largely caused by the fact that inbound marketing is proving to be better over time.

The list of arguments in favor of inbound marketing is long. One often-used argument is that the Return on Investment ROI of inbound marketing is traceable, whereas it is hard to trace ROI in outbound marketing. Another argument against integrating inbound marketing and outbound marketing is that each strategy has completely opposing language therefore outbound marketing dialogue reverses the relationship created between the organization and the customer by inbound marketing. Outbound marketing is intrusive, it pushes the product into the view of the customer without even expressing his interest in the product. Whereas inbound marketing is not intrusive, it is where the customer pulls the product from the organization after being convinced through searching, reading blogs, and reviews that he is interested in this product.

It is true that customers are becoming more demanding, mobile buyers, and rely on social media interactions to make decisions. For these reasons, outbound marketing is not sufficient to address this era of digital buyers. On the other hand, inbound marketing may address those demands but is not intrusive. We cannot assume that one of them is the right strategy and go along with it. We believe integrating both strategies is better than selecting one of them. Recently we’ve seen the four Ps of the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) shifting to something completely new. The Product is now the Experience, the Price is now the Value, the Place is now Omnichannel, and the Promotion is now Influencers and Storytelling.

To provide the customer with valuable experience available at his convenience and that he has seen or heard of from his influencers you need to build an extensive marketing knowledge and expertise. If we take contact lenses as an example: when disposable contact lenses were first introduced in the market they were pushed into the view of the patient by employing outbound marketing. As marketing contact lenses shifted to inbound marketing, it became more vulnerable to the intrusive marketing of refractive surgery as well as the increased number of dropouts who need to be reached by intrusive outbound marketing.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

5 May, 2022

Blog Posts

5 Ways To Provide Your Patients With a Great Waiting Room Experience

When patients think of visiting a doctor they first think about the time they have to waste waiting in the waiting room. During the past couple of years, the practice waiting room has dramatically changed due to the pandemic restrictions and social distancing rules. If you can hire a concierge who knows a bit more than front desk in managing patients waiting room, you will ensure a five star hotel service to your patient. However you don’t need more than few tips and tricks to keep in mind as the basis of what makes a great waiting room experience.

Here are five ways that help provide patient with the best waiting room experience:

1- A staff member needs to be present to greet patients, help them check in, offer a refreshment beverage, discuss with them the purpose of their visit and what they look forward to be discussed during the visit. Keep the most recent magazines available and in good condition to the patient. Moreover, today’s patients are more interested in having mobile phone chargers in the waiting room.

2- Make sure the waiting room is furnished using comfortable chairs, kids area, free wi-fi, and interactive screens and touch kiosks. With the help of digital screens patients will get information about the team, the services and products they will get, and the remaining wait time. Tablet PCs are a great way to add to the information kiosk to invite your patients to follow your social media pages.

3- The pandemic has taught us to maintain social distancing, put hand sanitizer in many corners of the practice, and if possible skip the waiting room entirely whenever a patient checks in online. There are many available platforms and software that help checking in online, scheduling, surveying, and educating patients.

4- Always put yourself in the patient’s shoes and try to emulate the steps they go through when they visit you. Test new ideas and scripts and then update your services accordingly.

5- Adding a music playing in the background creates an environment of calmness. Add a warm lighting, paintings, and art. The waiting room is always the right place to display team activities, achievements, and awards.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

4 May, 2022

Blog Posts

6 Ways To Align Your International Exhibition Visit With Your Practice Strategy

It has been a month since Vision Expo East in New York and yesterday MIDO closed its doors in Milan after three successful days of business. Every exhibitor and visitor is now preparing himself to participate in the coming weekend at Opti in Germany. All three exhibitions are the most renowned international events for networking and the best places where manufacturers and suppliers in the optical industry meet with distributors and eye care professionals.

International events attract opticians and optometrists from all over the world. Some visit to collect information and stay up to date with the latest products in the industry and some to gain knowledge of the future trends. Many visit the exhibition to purchase products and put orders. Planning to visit an exhibition begins months earlier. Business owners consider benefiting from every minute during the three days exhibition by employing effective appointment scheduling. Given the short amount of time you have related to the number of booths, no one can see n a small fraction of the number of exhibitors.

Because you only have time to visit a small number of exhibitors and purchase, you should select your appointments based on what suppliers go in line with your practice strategy. Some examples of the strategy include:

Cost strategy: I am not a fan of cost strategy because it brings a zero-sum reward. However, the cost strategy consists of killing prices and gaining market penetration by selling at prices lower than the market’s lowest price. Cost killers go to manufacturers’ booths where they get the lowest prices available in the market.

Cross-selling strategy: is an effective way to offer bundles of various products and you find many booths that provide you with a large portfolio of products.

Innovative products strategy: you need to visit manufacturers of innovative products that tap on addressing previously unsolved problems.

Technology Advantage strategy: if your practice is oriented toward being equipped with the latest technologies, you need to invest in machinery that provides you with an advantage to sell more, improve productivity, and dominate the market you operate in.

Avantgardist strategy: always invest in newly developed products and innovations. This strategy consists of constantly introducing new products that replace old ones.

Product differentiation strategy: I am a huge fan of differentiation strategy. You differentiate your products and services by adopting the latest technology, foster innovation products, cross-sell, using style, and providing the best prices.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

3 May, 2022

Blog Posts

All The Necessary Steps For Successful Email Marketing

Right now email marketing is the most cost-effective way of doing marketing for eye care professionals. Along with mobile phone text messages, personalized email marketing is the best way to get patients to respond to your messages and call for action. Mobile phone text messages are a great way to send short notifications. They are very effective and get a high response rate. Calling your patients or leaving a voice message is furthermore very engaging and should never be ruled out even with the advancement of digital communication.

There are many steps to keep in mind for succeeding in email marketing.

The first step is to collect and store the emails of your patients with their complete permission and knowledge that they will be added to the listmail. Collecting emails can be completed in office, on the phone when scheduling an appointment, by filling forms on your website, blog, social media or by sending links to forms by mobile phone text messages. Even though you asked the consent of the patient to be added to the listmail you should never forget to add an unsubscribe button at the end of every mail you send.

Once you have your listmail data ready, the next step is to determine the segments you will be employing and what respective messages you will be submitting.

The third step is to prepare the call to action according to the segments. Knowing that baby boomers respond to emails but rarely shop online. The call for action employed for baby boomers could be to call the office to set an appointment, visit the office for more information on the advertised product, or read more about telehealth topics by following a link that you provide. Knowing that millennials and generation z are online shoppers and digital natives, your call to action message could be buy now, browse our whole collection, claim your discount, go directly to check out, add to cart, or we’re available for an online consultation to help you decide.

The next step following targeted messages is to prepare scheduled and personalized messages. These emails are one-to-one in nature along with the phone call they constitute one inseparable part of the consultation.

The fifth step consists of evaluating the effect of the email marketing campaign. Analytics is a very important step in determining what works best and which mistakes should be avoided in the future. A way to do that is to experiment with offers and announcements using pilot groups before submitting them to your whole database.

The process is not restricted to the above mentioned steps however these are necessary steps along other important steps that can be added to make your campaign more effective and your patients more responsive.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

2 May, 2022

Blog Posts

Factors Leading Eye Care Professionals To Reinvest in Traditional Advertising

Long before digital marketing and social media traditional marketing comprised different marketing mixes that allow companies to reach their target audience, work on building brand awareness, gain trust, increase loyalty, and constantly attract new customers. Unlike what many marketers predicted a decade ago, traditional marketing remained alive and it’s even regaining importance in one way or another.

It has been a while since marketers have been talking about the end of third-party cookies and the search for an alternative. One traditional way is to use contextual targeting when setting your pay-per-click campaign. Your ad will show up on websites with content similar to your contextual targeting. Your ad will appear to anyone who lives nearby your practice and is looking for optical products or optometry services on the internet. Unlike behavioral targeting where ads appear to users based on their online behavior, contextual targeting is based on matching keywords with topics. Direct emails are another way to target patients and customers who already know your services and opted to be included in the mailing list.

Traditional marketing methods are equally on the rise. Even though the costs of printing and distributing handouts, brochures, and catalogs as well as direct mail may have not decreased but their effect is still acceptable. On the other side finding billboards and unipoles on highways and strategic locations in the area of your practice to display advertising, offers, and events, as well as to display your practice name and address has become way less expensive and much more affordable than before digital advertising emerged. People who see your digital ads may not remember you, however seeing your billboard while driving back from work every day makes it easy to recognize your business and remember your offers.

Direct mail marketing is based on sending print materials, letters, and postcards to your existing customers and patients about products and services they have interest in as well as to a target area advertising to new customers who live nearby your practice. Direct mail is characterized by being an emotional marketing tool that counts on the personal connection between the business and the customers to either introduce your business or ask them to support it. Additional traditional marketing methods include event marketing, word of mouth referrals, and television and radio broadcasted messages.

A novel method for broadcasting messages is podcasting. Even though podcasting takes part in digital marketing, however, it does not appear and interrupts the customer browsing experience, it is followed and listened to on-demand just like television and radio programs. Podcasts are seeing tremendous growth during the past couple of years. Monthly listeners to podcasts have reached more than 100 million. It also appears that podcast listeners pay attention and listen to podcast ads and don’t try to skip them like they usually do on other social media platforms like Facebook and Youtube.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

1 May, 2022

Blog Posts

10 Reasons We Love Wearing Glasses

It is this time of the year when eye care professionals from around the world come together to attend Mostra Internazionale Di Ottica di Milano (MIDO) one of the most important – if not the most important- exhibitions of eyewear and everything related to the optical industry. Tens of thousands of eye care professionals, visitors, manufacturers, marketers, and industry leaders from around the world participate in this global event to get to find out and experience new products and learn about the latest innovations in the optical industry.

Throughout decades we’ve had the opportunity through MIDO to see and try tons of glasses from all brands and with very attractive and unique designs. The adage “if there is demand, we supply!” perfectly applies to the eyewear industry and the millions of new designs and creations we see every year at MIDO are the proof. Eyeglasses are more than a pair of lenses set in a frame to rest on the nose and ears. There are many reasons for wearing eyeglasses, among them:

1- Eyeglasses correct vision and make us more perfect as human beings. Eyeglasses can solve vision problems resulting from many eye diseases.

2- Eyeglasses are among the most sophisticated piece of fashion accessories that anyone can wear. They are the first thing we see in any person before we start talking to them;

3- Eyeglasses protect eyes from dust or any projectile;

4- Sunglasses protect the eyes from harmful Ultraviolet radiation like UVA, UVB, and UVC thus preventing the risk of aging, burning, and cancer.

5- Eyeglasses with filtering lenses protect the eyes from harmful light projected from digital devices;

6- Many look smarter with eyeglasses while sunglasses give a great personality impression;

7- Eyeglasses made out of polycarbonate material are a mandatory shield for sports activities.

8- High technology is employed in manufacturing the ophthalmic lenses mounted on eyeglasses taking into consideration the best quality of vision that has to be provided to eyeglasses wearers;

9- Designer eyeglasses and sunglasses are very affordable compared to other designer accessories and fashion products;

10- Many vision plans cover the cost and all related charges for replacing the eyeglasses and ophthalmic lenses.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

30 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

10 Ingredients For Building Trust in Your Organization

We’ve been posting a lot of posts where we emphasize trust as an integral part of building a successful business based on successful relationships. But how do we build trust in the workplace? Is there a secret recipe or a magic formula that everyone can employ to build trust?

There are numerous things we can do regularly that help in building trust. If we look up ways to build trust on the internet we find that the number one ingredient or way to build trust is “listening” and “listening more than speaking”. Listening is an integral part of being an effective leader too. By engaging in active listening you not only recognize that your employees or colleagues have their own perspective that they are trying to communicate but you also inquire upon the untapped opportunities and ideas that your employees can share and that you and other colleagues can reflect on. Applying active listening by asking interpretive and exploratory questions will give you ample time to listen to what they have to say and will improve the quality of life of everyone.

Listening is not the only thing you have to do to build trust. There are many other ways and lists of ways you have to do among them:

1- Appreciate everyone’s efforts and reward them accordingly;

2- Solicit feedback, accept both positive and negative ones, and take action and improve based on the feedback;

3- Start by trusting your people first so that they reciprocate;

4- Don’t make a lot of promises but when you do, keep every promise and walk the talk;

5- Be consistent day in and day out. Demonstrate integrity and commitment;

6- Be caring and show empathy when faced with difficult situations. Be result-oriented, help your people reach their goals, but also have patience and be welcoming to any result;

7- Build an inclusive workplace and prioritize inclusion so that everyone develops a sense of belonging, being welcomed, and equally valuable to the organization;

8- Ask for help and advice when you are not knowledgeable about something. Don’t pretend that you know more than anyone else however encourage coaching;

9- Always tell the truth, be transparent, credible, and behave in a calm and normal manner. Never overreact to events, situations, or unexpected outcomes;

10- Never Ever expect or think you can become trustworthy in a matter of days, months, or a year. Legendary investor, billionaire, and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet is known for his quote “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently”

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

29 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

20 Things You Should Never Say To Your Patient

In a previous post, we emphasized the importance of communicating effectively to patients waiting to see the doctor in the waiting room. A creative and persuasive way is to use sticky notes by applying them to a brochure or any leaflet or magazine that we can simply hand out to the patient. No matter how good you and your staff are at communication skills you need to constantly learn and improve to be able to effectively communicate with the largest population. Some practices have weak communication skills and they know that they need to work a lot to improve. However, very few know that success in eye care practices is highly dependent on communication.

Successful practices master the art of communication that consists of both communicating persuasive messages and restraining from saying certain things. There are many things that you should avoid saying to patients and/or to their parents, family members, and people accompanying them. Those things can cause dissatisfaction and therefore should be avoided at all costs. There are also printed things that convey dissatisfying messages like providing deceptive promises, false claims, unsupported guarantees, forcing personal opinion, and incorrect information about research results and products effects.

Among those messages that eye care professionals should avoid saying we find:

I’m going to be honest with you and tell you the following fact…

You are wrong, …

What this practitioner told you is not true…

You cannot believe what you read on social media or what you hear on the radio, …,

Google it, …

Go ask anybody, they will tell you the same, …

How many times have you been through this to argue about it?

I have done it before, don’t worry about it…

That’s dirt cheap, …

Haven’t you heard what I just told you?

You are the only one complaining about progressive lenses…

If you will not take care of your contact lenses, you can simply stop wearing contacts…

I will check it when I’m less busy, …

Next, …

Please don’t waste my time, …

Why are you worried? You have the best insurance…

If God permits,

This is unprofessional, … We don’t do such work…

The last time one of my staff performed this service we fired him…

I’m not sure I said that, …

I’m sorry.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

28 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

Communicate Creatively With Your Patients In The Waiting Room

What would you tell a patient when he has to wait an extra hour for his appointment? How do you address the situation when a patient is not allowed to leave unattended children in the waiting room when he goes in to see the doctor? Interactions between patients and Optometry staff in the waiting room can sometimes be challenging. Some situations render the interaction not optimal either for the patient or for the staff. Those situations are not very common but when they happen, especially in a crowded practice, it may cause a frustrating and uncomfortable experience. In those situations where the interaction may become paralyzed, communication and listening skills play a major role to get things done in a smooth and efficient way.

There are many ways that staff employ to inform patients about the office guidelines some are pleasant and some are unpleasant tactics trying to get patients to comply using a manipulative request or sometimes a bullying way. A creative way to communicate straight-to-the-point and personalized messages without letting anyone around notice consists of a few words written on a sticky note.

Attaching a sticky note is a tiny nuance that adds a personal touch to communicating a message but it also turned out to be one of the best ways to get someone to comply with your request. This has been demonstrated by a set of experiments by Professor Randy Garner at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville that revealed the effect of sticky notes bring about impressive results when they are employed to add a personal touch and make someone feel like you’re asking a favor of them (and not just anyone).

It appeared to Garner that a sticky note represents many powerful behavioral triggers all in one little object. A sticky note is a one-to-one message that gets the person’s attention first, is hard to ignore, is personalized, and does not match the environment where it is placed and the brain wants to accomplish it n order to take it out of its place.

A sticky note can be employed if you want to ask a patient to fill out a survey. In fact, Garner’s experiment was to find out what was necessary to make fellow university professors at the university comply with completing often lengthy and tedious surveys, using only interoffice mail as the conduit of communication.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

27 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

Optometrists Need To Wear Many Hats To Succeed As Entrepreneurs

After publishing a post entitled “The Double-edged Sword Of Technology in Eye Care and The Increased Reliance On Skilled Staff”, I received an email from a friend who follows my blog and often sends me comments. He read the post and wanted to add a comment. We later had a great time chatting and exchanging experiences and lessons that the pandemic has taught us as well as ideas and insights on how to build resilient teams that can deliver great services and ways to relaunch after a crisis. Being both aviation enthusiasts we spent some time talking about the TOP GUN movie sequel and he even reminded me of a great leadership quote from the first movie by Tom (Viper) Skerritt: “A good pilot is compelled to always evaluate what’s happened, so he can apply what he’s learned.”

What happened in the pandemic taught us a lot of things that we can apply for years to come. Among the salient things we’ve learned is that as eye care professionals we need to wear many hats to succeed in business as entrepreneurs and practice owners. The Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) is one of those hats that my friend liked in my post. However, he added and emphasized another important hat that we should be wearing during and after the pandemic which is the Chief Project Officer (CPO).

The CPO has a lot in common with the CSO but his role is even more critical in eye care as a result of the pandemic and the digital divide that has been revealed. Just like the CSO, the CPO reports directly to the CEO however he has hands-on achieving strategic business objectives through projects, ensures meeting business goals, balances risk with rewards, linking projects with the business strategy, drives efficiencies and linkages between projects, oversees and control all changes to project scope, strives toward achieving execution excellence.

The role of the CPO is particularly effective in midsized and large companies. As practice owners, we may not need to hire a CPO but we should acknowledge that every organization needs projects to generate value and keep its business alive. We may not have five or more projects going on at any given time but learning a few skills that a CPO has can help us in many situations. Like the pandemic for example and the need to launch telemedicine.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

26 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

The Double-edged Sword Of Technology in Eye Care and The Increased Reliance On Skilled Staff

In a previous post, we emphasized the importance of upskilling and reskilling over hiring new people. The World Economic Forum estimates that in response to the changing nature of jobs, more than half of all employees around the world need to upskill or reskill by 2025. As a result of the pandemic, new research revealed that among the top companies managers, upskilling and reskilling are at 59% priority, leadership and management at 53%, and virtual onboarding at 33%. Two-thirds of the research participants agreed that learning new skills makes them more adaptable. Among the most noted skills, resilience landed the number one slot, and digital fluency came in second. Despite the fact that many optometrists have shifted to digital and been using telehealth and telemedicine before the pandemic, for the majority having to embrace telehealth and telemedicine during the pandemic was a challenge not to create a business opportunity but to prevent a skill gap from happening.

In healthcare and eye care, in particular, the skill gap resulting from the advancement of technology is not restricted to the pandemic. We’ve always been challenged by new technologies storming the market and putting our practice at the challenge of creating a competitive edge or preventing others from having a competitive advantage over our practice. Besides telehealth and telemedicine, remote working and the role of automation and Artificial Intelligence have put forward how leaders can reskill and upskill the workforce to deliver new business models in the post-pandemic era. A McKinsey research during the pandemic revealed that companies should reskill their workforces to emerge stronger from the COVID-19 crisis. Yet a 2020 global Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study showed that “talent and skills” was the second-most underinvested area in the corporate transformation efforts. BCG study showed that to be successful, leaders of agile and digital transformations adhere to six behaviors:

Aligning and Empowering. Set the vision, explain the why, and then let go.
Continuously Learning. Seek and act on feedback.
Acting as One Team. Prioritize the goals of the organization over the objectives of individuals or business units.
Always Helping. Help teams with what they need to succeed (no request is too small).
A Bias to Action. Start by doing rather than planning or discussing.
Outcome Oriented. Talk to customers to understand what matters to them.

The World Economic Forum’s latest Future of Jobs Report outlines that half of all employees around the world will need reskilling by 2025, which means that we have a pressing societal problem to train people with the right skills to participate and take part in the current and future economy. Based on Mckinsey and BCG research there are six practical insights that can be used to upskill employees and reduce the cost of having to hire new employees:

1- Driving real business impact by Treating skilling as a business investment, not an expense;

2- Creating a blend of different skills in a specific context delivered in a single program rather than creating a module for each topic and skill;

3- Bringing the joy and curiosity of learning that children experience to adult learners;

4- Powering up reskilling by employing data to inform decision-making in every step of the learning journey;

5- Assemble your own skilling stack and identify which skills can be found and acquired in the market and which skills will need to be taught using personalized programs;

6- Empower employees to learn by providing them with the right tools, flexible resources, and supportive context to own their personal reskilling journeys.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

25 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

You Will Never Become A Successful Optometry Practice CEO Unless You Are a Good CSO

Many Optometrists go to business school to improve their business skills. They pursue and earn a Master of Business Administration (MBA) and end up learning tons of business theories that they rarely or never use. Some complain that their MBA degree was a waste of money and time and many become happy with the MBA acronyms that they add after their name following OD or other fellowships and affiliations. Even though many refer to an MBA as “Mediocre But Arrogant”, there is nothing wrong with getting one! It’s interesting and you meet a lot of people with whom you constitute an amazing cohort. I personally encourage every Optometrist to pursue an MBA, however more than that I recommend starting studying business and developing entrepreneurship knowledge as early as possible starting the first year in college. Every Optometry student should be able to make a business plan by the end of his first year in college so that by the time he finishes his optometry degree he enters the market with enough knowledge and experience to make his impact in the market and later when he decides on an MBA he will contribute both personal experience and knowledge to the cohort he makes part of. In four words every optometrist is required to “do the right thing”.

Doing the right thing is not only being a forward thinker towards becoming the CEO of your own practice. Doing the right thing is becoming your own strategist from day one. More than that: it is being your own Chief Strategy Officer or CSO. In big corporations, a CSO is an executive who reports to the CEO and his primary duty is to formulate, implement, and evaluate the strategy. He is the foremost deal maker and breaker. In the top strategist role, his responsibility includes developing his personal and the practice vision, strategic planning, and leading strategic initiatives, including mergers and acquisitions (M&A), transformation, partnerships, and cost reduction. A CSO is referred to as “The CSO needs to challenge longheld views and also get our fellow executives to think about a market environment that is different from the existing one.” Every Optometrist, practice owner, and manager needs to be an executive with a strong strategy orientation who has worn many operations hats before becoming a CEO. Therefore there are six faces of the CSO:
1- The advisor—helping shape the strategy;
2- The sentinel—sensing and interpreting market shifts;
3- The banker—driving deals and partnerships;
4- The engineer—designing and running the strategic planning process;
5- The aide de camp—the CEO’s unofficial chief of staff;
6- The special projects leader—tackling miscellaneous high-impact initiatives.

In answering why Optometrists should aim at becoming CSO before becoming CEO: a CSO is great at developing and increasing commitment to strategic plans, drives immediate change, drives decision-making that sustains organizational change, and balances strategy formulation, execution, and evaluation.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

22 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

What’s Preventing You From Building Effective Teams?

Even if you are not a Basketball fan you may have learned about Michael Jordan’s best leadership quote which is “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships”. A team brings a lot of energy to the organization moreover it is the greatest driver of long-lasting success. As an African proverb goes by “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Very few can be accomplished by working alone when compared to what a great team can deliver. A successful business has a huge capacity for merging diverse talents into a diverse team where every teammate trusts himself and his peers, brings up the best in him, and commits to what he’s doing delivering great results. Without shared commitment, gathering the best talents in a team renders them into a group of talents, enthusiasts, highly energetic, but without a common goal thus ineffective.

Patrick Lencioni, the author of famous management books among them The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, emphasizes that in order to have your team members aligned towards a common goal you need to have five elements put together in a mandatory sequence. The absence of any of these elements prevents you from getting to the next level and thus becomes a dysfunction of the whole process of reaching a successful team. Putting together talented employees, experienced executives, renowned experts, great processes, and the latest technology does not guarantee great results.

The Lencioni model consists of 5 elements that build cohesion in a team and makes it functional. Those five elements include in order of priority Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and Results. Each element is a necessary condition for the existence of the next element. Any missing element will affect the consecutive ones and makes the team dysfunctional.

Trust is the most essential element of building a team and therefore should not be absent. Teammates must be open to each other, understand each other, and each other’s weaknesses in order to stand for each other. The fear of conflict should be overcome when we have trust and it shifts into becoming a passion for the pursuit of truth and bringing up the best possible answer in every situation. Without becoming able to break the fear of conflict teams cannot have commitment and teammates become passive in every situation where a conflict arises. When you have commitment everybody buys in and tackling accountability becomes common practice where everybody has the courage to confront others when they are performing badly or behaving in a way that is not aligned with the common interest. Finally, when teammates hold each other accountable they have greater attention to the results that collectively improve the team’s ability to achieve and deliver.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

19 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

Hiring New Skills More Effectively Upskill or Reskill

When I started my practice I put all my efforts into differentiation from day one and at every level. When you have a differentiation mindset you’re driven by culture and not by finance. Even though sometimes you know that your financial interests dictate specific actions to be done, you simply ignore them because your culture and your values do not simply allow this. This culture-driven mindset of the founder goes down to the deepest roots of the practice and quite reflects its values in hiring processes. If your strategy is based on differentiation you can never hire employees from the system or the marketplace which you are differentiating yourself from. So you forego the thought of hiring based on seniority, experience, and expertise. Moreover, you avoid wasting your time recruiting and interviewing from the existing pool, but rather you will prefer a skill-based approach to hiring new employees.

As a result of the pandemic, new research revealed that the top of mind priorities in rank order among managers are upskilling and reskilling (59%), leadership and management (53%), and virtual onboarding (33%). Two-thirds of the study respondents agreed that learning new skills makes them more adaptable. Among the most noted skills, resilience landed the number one slot, and digital fluency came in second. Very few employees and employers realize that the skills they have for one job can be easily transferred to another. In an event like the pandemic or if you are simply starting a new practice, you have to hire based on skillset and not work history. Moreover, instead of hiring based on finance hire based on your company’s culture and instill learning new skills spirit into your existing employees. Besides shifting to a skill-based approach when hiring, companies should support new career paths for their employees and give employees learning time and rewards.

The pandemic has left us with a lot of lessons all related to the fact that no one can predict what the future will bring. If we focus on developing the right emerging skills, we will be ready to respond easily to future challenges with a resilient workforce that can move freely and adapt to different projects, teams, and work. Forward-thinking companies are emphasizing employee learning as they continuously uncover and cultivate emerging skills. Many argue that a significant part of today’s workforce does not have the prerequisite skills to perform a job. The only differentiator that takes an employee’s career path to the next level is skill development offered by employers.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

18 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

Reconceiving Team Accountability in Eye Care When You are Working Remotely

In a previous post, we emphasized the importance for remote teams to increase connectivity and communication by using more than one online tool with the goal to respect the project timelines and designate how accountability will need to be defined. The team’s success will be directly related to how teammates overcome the virtual distance between remote team members relying on the creation of trustworthy relationships and being accountable for every task. Accountability for an effective team is its willingness to accept personal responsibility for the task being performed. Successful teams can’t thrive without properly setting roles, controls, and accountability. Effective teams cannot miss deadlines, deliver what they promise, and always have clear expectations. The lack of team accountability can be the root cause of micromanagement and lack of trust that employees can work independently and still deliver great work.

When it comes to accountability, managers look at five key factors to get where they want to be. Those five key factors, also known as the 5 Cs of accountability include:

1- Common Purpose that has to be aligned with the vision and goal of the team;

2- Clear Expectations that provide a clear definition of success for the whole team and each individual member. Goals must be clearly defined and shared with everyone delineating everyone’s interest and the common interest;

3- Communication and Alignment defining the short term and long term tactics and strategies to achieve success and reach the desired goals;

4- Coaching and Collaboration to provide ample information and plans on how to cope with changes and what paths to follow when new situations emerge and cause their strategy to shift;

5- Consequences will have the main role in learning and gaining experiences. Positive outcomes are rewarded and negative outcomes will hold responsible employees accountable;

In sum, remote teams need to overcome three challenges to maintain a culture of accountability and become more effective:

1- Define clear expectations around roles, projects, and ways of working. Determine ownership for each task as well as roles of every teammate measured by predefined and clear objectives and key results;

2- Build habits around daily planning and long-term goal setting. Start by setting simple daily tasks, continuously follow up on progress, and assess performance based on preset objectives and key results.

3- Create a practice of sharing progress and checking in on commitments. Require daily updates about the progress of the task, engage other teammates by giving feedback on the progress, and advance by giving a structure to sharing updates helping others follow through and engage.

Building accountability helps your team become more effective, helps managers stay away from micromanagement, and instills trust and independence while remaining responsible towards patients, other teammates, and the practice.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

17 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

Building Effective And Reliable Online Optometry Teams

Telemedicine has significantly increased as a result of the pandemic. With the increase in telemedicine adoption, building effective telemedicine teams became very important. Building great teams does not come easily. Moreover, we are witnessing the “digital divide” after the pandemic and it includes division between those who have access to and can use digital technology and those who do not have access or are apprehensive about using digital technology in the workplace. Data show that 74% of employees now consider working remotely as the next normal. The two biggest challenges of remote work are being able to maintain and improve meaningful relationships among employees without seeing each other face-to-face and adhering everyone to the company’s mission.

Normally effective teams in traditional eye care engage in transparent discussion of challenging cases, reviewing new clinical evidence, and building an organizational culture of cohesion based on the relationship they have in the practice, and the ability to meet outside the workplace to become more friendly. Effective Telemedicine teams are required to do the same however they know that not because the world has increasingly become reliant on remote work, we have to forget the basis of successful traditional teams. In the virtual world, as it is in the workplace, it is very important to ensure that team members are on the same page. Teammates have chosen to work remotely however that does not mean they have to work in isolation. They need to increase connectivity and communication using more than one online tool and phone app. The goal is to respect the project timelines and delivery and designate how accountability will need to be defined. The team’s success will be directly related to how teammates overcome the virtual distance between remote team members relying on the creation of trustworthy relationships.

Trust, communication, and cooperation are not the only things to build and maintain relationships among teammates. One very important tool employed in building traditional teams and can be employed in building virtual teams is using consensus and creating an online method to reach it. Many mobile apps and social media platforms allow you to reach a consensus using polls and forms. Encourage teammates to share information and provide ideas. Set objectives and use the consensus to solve problems and plan for action. Teammates will have a commitment to do the work when they take part in deciding through consensus.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

16 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

Two Opinions On How To Effectively Manage Up Your Relationship With Your Boss

In a previous post, we emphasized the importance of learning and being prepared to manage up at any moment independent of whether you are a manager, an employer, or an employee. Lauren Mackler, Renowned coach and author of the international bestseller, Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness & Transform Your Life, asserts that the first thing everyone should learn about when managing up is the personality of their boss, how they operate, what they like, and what are their preferences. Knowing your boss’s personality informs you on how you would want to communicate with him: face to face, by phone, by email, or by text messages. Your boss might be one of those bosses who like to work autonomously and prefer you to meet occasionally. Find out if your boss is an introvert and prefers you solicit them with updates and information or is he an extrovert and would reach out every minute to get updates and provide instructions. Mackler also recommends that every employee “toot his own horn” as an excellent way to start managing up. Every employee is in fact required to have a list of accomplishments always ready to show performance and share it with their boss every month in a form of a completion list.

Lynn Taylor, Workplace Expert, Coach, CEO of Lynn Taylor Consulting, and author of the highly acclaimed career book, Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant; How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior & Thrive in Your Job, uses the acronym C.A.L.M (Communicate, Anticipate, Laugh, and Manage) to better manage up. Communication should be performed frequently, openly, and honestly with your boss. Anticipate when is a good time to talk and communicate with your boss. Seize every moment and occasion to bring up Laughter or use jokes from time to time to break the ice and reduce stress in the workplace. Help solve problems with your boss but also effectively Manage and set mutual expectations with your boss on how tasks should be distributed and things should be accomplished.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

14 Apr, 2022

Blog Posts

Everything You Wanted to Know About Managing Up and Were Too Embarrassed to Ask

We live in a business environment where we’re only preoccupied with learning management and how to manage subordinates and staff below us in the company. However, we rarely think about managing up our bosses, our managers, or even our teammates above us. Many think that the process of managing up only applies to big corporations and concerns only employees who want to understand how to deal with their managers who micromanage everything. Just like employees, managers are equally concerned about managing up and about learning different ways to avoid it. Whether you are an Optometrist a practice owner or an employee you will certainly find yourself in need to know about managing up to become a better manager, a better leader, or any individual performer who wants to increase his performance and get better chances to getting promoted.

When managing up employees do everything possible to make their managers’ management jobs easy. For employees, this is an important step to help their managers as well as their first step to start learning how to manage a team. The first thing that comes to mind in this concept is that employees have to facilitate communicating their problems and priorities reporting to their managers in order to get accurate feedback. They want to be coachable and ready to capture every advice their manager would deliver. They should not wait for their managers to teach them how to do things, however, they should know in advance what their manager expects to be done and pave the path to achieve and accomplish what’s needed to be done.

Employees need to show extreme ownership and extreme accountability when performing jobs in a way that exceeds their manager’s expectations. Moreover, they need to come up with the right metrics and KPIs for the job they are performing as well as create controls and checks to help their manager achieve their goals and not worry about following up on every little detail.

Employees who are excellent at managing up have integrity, are responsible, and instead of being reactive to their manager’s instructions and controls they are super proactive and go forward with what needs to be done. Knowing their manager’s personality and limits, they expect things to happen before happening and are ready to achieve goals and clear the path to achieve and reach those goals not only for their managers but their teammates too. Therefore the first step they make before their managers put controls and check is to align their goals with their manager, team, and company’s goals.

Great managers who learn about managing up, provide the right environment that allows employees to hold responsibility and be accountable for most of the tasks they do and gives them the total freedom to control and check their progress and performance without the need for micromanaging.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

11 Apr, 2022

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How Optometrists Provide Patients With Support and Information Using Dialogue and Conversational Cooperativeness

The polarization in the workplace and the digital divide that has been brought about by the pandemic have made the teams intensely interconnected and driven by individual effectiveness. Today’s employees can generate productive work independent of where they are or what they are doing. They can accomplish most of the practice’s tasks like scheduling, communicating with patients, suppliers, and coworkers while they are at home, driving, or in the corridor drinking coffee with a teammate.

It is true that the advancement of telecommunication has been the greatest enabler for remote tasks and conversations. However, there is an equal enabler that is related to the linguistic and dialogue that we use to present products, services, and ideas to customers, patients, and coworkers. This enabler is the cooperative conversation that we employ in a conversation normally to attempt to be informative, truthful, relevant, and clear. The concept of conversational cooperativeness is not new: it was introduced by philosopher H. Paul Grice in his 1975 article “Logic and Conversation”. Grice argued that “a conversation is more than a series of disconnected remarks because it is conducted against a background presumption of cooperation.” He also highlighted four maxims that make it reasonable to presume that one is engaged in a conversation as well as presume cooperation. So a meaningful dialogue is characterized by cooperation. “Each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction.” Grice’s four suggested maxims to anyone wishing to engage in a meaningful and convincing conversation include:

Quantity: Give the right amount of information that conveys the needed message. Say no less and no more than the conversation requires.
Quality: Give the right words and information. Don’t say what you believe to be not right. Only say things for which you have the evidence. When words are written people presume that they are true because the writer had the time to think about words and write them down.
Manner: Stay away from ambiguity and don’t be unclear and obscure. Be orderly and clear, and when writing, be concise and avoid too many examples.
Relevance: Be relevant by starting to understand what the other person is asking and try to connect the dialogue with what you want to be explaining and smoothly take the conversation to where you want it.

Grice’s four maxims can be applied to every conversation that eye care professionals enter. It could be communicating new products to customers, new services to patients, presenting new products with new prices, changing office policies, shaping online meetings with colleagues, taking telemedicine and telehealth to a new level, etc. Breaking any of these maxims may result in more than failing to communicate a certain message. Someone who breaks the quality maxim for example lies. Not giving enough information through breaking the quantity maxim means that the person is “being economical with the truth” which can have significant consequences in different situations.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

9 Apr, 2022

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Watch Others Completely Ignoring Selling And Learn The Lesson

Marketing should not be confounded with sales, however, sales should not be underestimated and ignored as digital marketing hit its stride. Moreover, selling is not restricted to talented salespersons, anyone can learn and understand effective retail selling tips that generate leads and close deals. It is true that sales is becoming more and more delicate and salespeople have to build enough experience and knowledge about the product and the market they are selling in, however, every eye care professional should start from somewhere and then build enough experience to become able to close complex deals.

Some of the mistakes that many make or tips that many often ignore include:

Greeting customers and patients: there is no reason why you should not greet your patients using their names. Greeting your patients using their names in the exam rooms shortens distances and conveys the message to the patients that you already know the reason for their visit.

Talk about the product you are prescribing as well as give them the opportunity to try it or compare it to other products. Escort your patients to the optical showroom and provide a few minutes with them advising them and then hand them over to the optician to present them with details.

Product testing should be followed by a feedback session. Listen actively to your patients and hear what they got to say about their experience and if the product you suggested met their expectations.

Don’t stop at selling but continue upselling. Have your staff and patients prepared by transmitting to them early on during the exam the notion of package deals. For example, specifically designated to a patient about yearly contact lens supply rather than just mentioning contact lenses. Present them with multiple pairs early on during the exam. Talk about those packages. For example, you might explain to patients that the prescription includes all information for eyeglasses, contact lenses, and sunglasses.

Cross-selling is another way to tell the patients about the products they can get included with the eye exam test or other products you sell.

Always employ value-based selling instead of just basing your arguments on price. Always emphasize the important value patients can get by making certain buying decisions.

Selling should not stop in the digital world. Popup messages and forms should be passed on to patients when browsing your website for products or scheduling an appointment. Selling by questioning is very important, especially in digital sales. The more information you can convey to your patients and customers through online questioning the more likely the patient comes to your office with an idea of buying multiple products and totally benefiting from his visit.

Preparing for a Child’s Eye Exam: Tips and Resources for Parents

Editor

7 Apr, 2022

Preparing for a Child’s Eye Exam: Tips and Resources for Parents

by Derek Goodman

Image via Pexels

Whether your little one is having eye or vision problems or you’re simply getting ready to schedule a routine screening with your child’s pediatrician or ophthalmologist, there are some things you should know to prepare yourself and your child for an upcoming eye examination.

The tips and resources below will provide you with all the information you need to schedule an eye exam, prepare your little one for the visit, and treat your child’s vision problems with glasses, age-appropriate activities, and a few modifications to your home.

Vision Exam Basics

Before scheduling your child’s eye exam, it helps to get schooled up on what to expect. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

What to Know About Child Eye Exams, Doctors, and Common Vision Problems

When Should Your Child Have a First Eye Exam?

Ensure You Have a Health Insurance Plan That Includes Vision

How to Prepare Your Little One for an Eye Exam

7 Questions to Ask During Your Child’s Eye Exam

After the Exam, Back at Home

Once your child has been fitted with the correct eyewear, considerations should be made concerning ongoing eye care and activities at home:

Reading Together: Tips for Parents of Children with Low Vision or Blindness

A Guide to Getting Your Kid to Wear Glasses

What To Know If Your Child Wants Contact Lenses

5 Tips for Giving Your Kid Eye Drops

What Parents Can Do to Support Their Child’s Vision Development

How to Optimize Your Home for Healthy, Stress-free Living

The sooner an eye problem can be detected in a child, the easier and more likely it’ll be to correct the issue and prevent it from becoming permanent. As such, it’s important to schedule routine screenings with your child’s pediatrician or ophthalmologist — and be on the lookout for any concerning signs such as chronic eye redness, tearing, light sensitivity, and squinting. With these resources to guide you, you’ll have all the information you need to schedule an eye exam, prepare for the appointment, and support healthy vision development in your child.

“Derek Goodman is an entrepreneur. He’d always wanted to make his own future, and he knew growing his own business was the only way to do that. He created his site Inbizability, to offer you tips, tricks, and resources so that you realize your business ability and potential now, not later.”

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

5 Apr, 2022

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Does Networking Sometimes Make You Feel Stupid? Get Better in Networking By Following These Simple Steps

It is not enough to have more than five hundred friends on Facebook or connections on LinkedIn. A long email list does not mean that you are great at building relationships and leveraging your network. In a previous post, we emphasized the importance of networking for eye care professionals and we highlighted the essential role of trust. We also pointed to networking as different than social media and the two of them should not be confounded. A way to look at trust when you have a lot of social media friends and connections is to start by asking yourself how many among your friends and connections ask you for a favor or advice on a given day? How many of your friends would you ask for help? How many of them would you help if they asked you to? When was the last time someone updated you with his latest work other than what you saw them share? when was the last time you reached out to your contacts on LinkedIn and told them about your latest work or offered help?

When you start asking those questions you will discover how well you are employing your relationships on social media and how would you network to leverage your network instead. Truth be told networking is one of the hardest skills to master because it needs time and good evaluation of what happened in order to apply learned experience. A few tips to getting you into networking in the first place and improve your professional networking skills at a later stage include:

Start by determining your professional goals and more importantly have a well-defined purpose. You should be genuine and original in bringing about what help you can be for others. Only by genuinely discovering what you can help others with that you will expect others to come forward and decide to help you;

Having well-defined goals and genuine purpose is not enough, you have to decide who’s going to be onboard the same ship and how they can add value to what you are offering. To have to figure out how they can influence their connections too;

You should become able to convey a message about who you are, what you do, what your professional goals are, and how you can affect or change others’ lives in less than 30 seconds;

Join professional organizations in your area and internationally in order to regularly attend meetings, participate in chapters, and present and talk about what you do whenever possible. Let your social media network and your connections of forums, discussion rooms, and chat sessions know that you are attending in-person meetings and events local and international, and make every moment an opportunity to reach out to somebody and have a coffee with him;

Follow up with new contacts after you meet up at events and conferences. Give time to write and update them about what you have been working on since the last time you’ve met and how you can help each other out. When networking during an event, or when you are following up, avoid seeking data collection. Don’t press on getting answers to your questions when you meet up with a more knowledgeable person. Instead, try to always be casual and lead the conversation flow in a friendly and familiar way and not too professional. Don’t stop at what you can only contribute but focus on others’ perspectives and listen to their opinions in order to give the opportunity for a network effect to occur and provide more value to each one as more individuals join the network.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

4 Apr, 2022

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Networking For Optometrists: Who Said Doctors Don’t Need Networking?

Many people confound social media with networking. On the last day of Vision Expo East, one of the largest networking events in eye care, all attendees who came from every part of the world are now on their way home. They probably came by car, train, or traveled in. They all learned something, acquired a new skill, or discovered, new technology by attending a conference, taking a continuing education course, or visiting the exhibition. However, no doubly, the most important and valuable takeaway is the people they met, the relationships they started cultivating, and their networking that has been leveraged in an exceptional way that they cannot do every day.

We’ve all been taught early on in our careers that good leadership starts with trust. Good Optometrists and great leaders hold the responsibility to foster an environment of trust. If your patients do not trust they would not come to get your advice. If you don’t trust your team or your staff doesn’t trust you, getting things done becomes very difficult and sometimes impossible. Again good optometrists and great leaders learn early on how they ought to create a trust that is the bond with the vehicle of success. Trust glues the optometrist to his patients, the leader to his followers, and provides the capacity to succeed as a practice owner and leader.

Whether it is family members, workplace, teammates, patients, or customers trust is equally and basically at the origin of every successful relationship. For this to occur each individual in a relationship should serve as a source of trust and help to others. The trust and help that members of a community provide to each other make everyone better off and networking becomes the catalyst of success and growth. Networking is our only opportunity to connect with new people and stay in contact with existing contacts, build and develop new relationships and empower or increase the potential of your network.

In a nutshell, the objective of networking is to become able to create relations that ultimately generate leads and referrals, switch those relationships to revenue, and increase to extent of your network to grow your business by including the referrals, the right suppliers, partners, staff, distribution channels, and friends. A key takeaway is not to confuse networking with social media and the key importance of networking for eye care professionals besides staying relevant and building prosperous relationships is to stay current but also to shape the modern world of eye care we operate in. By coming to eye care networking events we gain new insights and perspectives from colleagues that help us address previously unsolved problems or learn to address common problems in new ways.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

1 Apr, 2022

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What Can You Expect At An Optometry University Open Day?

Apart from shadowing an eye doctor for a few weeks, attending an open day is a great way to find out what the optometry profession is all about, and especially what studying optometry at a given institution is like. A university open day is when a university invites prospective students to come to their campus and spend a day or two looking around and discovering the campus as well as life on campus including having a look at student accommodation, checking out the library, sitting in the university’s cafe facilities, and visit its labs and lecture rooms. On an open day, students have the opportunity to meet staff and current students and find out more about different study programs, exit plans, career development, and extra-curricular activities.

When it comes to Optometry colleges, many are incorporated into a large campus where other study programs are offered. High schools usually organize trips to such universities and all students have to do is subscribe to any of those trips. However, if a student plans to attend an open day at a college where Optometry is the only study program. He might be very lucky to find that his high school is organizing a trip to this college. But most of the time, he will have to do the research, exploration, trip, and questioning all by himself. Some key insights and questions students must be able to collect and find answers to include:

Talk to staff and faculty members and discover in advance why they teach in this specific college, what internship opportunities are available for students, who to speak with if a student is struggling with a class, what is the average class size, what are the most difficult courses, how’re security in the campus, what activities are available on campus, who and how can you get financial aid, and what about application deadline and fees.

Talk to students and find out what do they like most about this university, why did they choose it, how was the transition from high school, how was the first semester, how they spend their weekends, how’s life in dorms, how’s food in the cafeteria, how difficult are transportation and commuting around the campus and the city, is car parking offered for free on campus, is laundry free, and what classes and courses are the most difficult if you want to schedule two courses simultaneously.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

31 Mar, 2022

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What Every Eye Care Professional Must Know About Pricing

Pricing is one of the most important decisions that an eye care professional or a practice manager has to make, yet more than half of businesses still underestimate the importance of having a pricing strategy. Less than 12% of businesses identify price as the biggest driver for future growth. The potential of strategic pricing directly affects the practice’s profitability and competitiveness. Setting prices too high will make you lose customers and business and setting prices too low will make your overheads greater than your profit and you may end up running a business that cannot afford to pay its costs.

Unfortunately, most companies are still not investing in pricing expertise, decreasing their strategic pricing potential, and getting involved in price wars and low and dramatic bad price increases. One of the pricing strategies that practices mistakingly think they are doing right is not talking to the customer about the price but rather using a set of tricks to reduce a potential obstacle to directly deciding on a purchase. Some of these tricks include tweaking price endings to distort perceptions or to signal a bargain. Using $9.99 pushes the customer to perceive the price as 9 and not approximately 10. Communicating prices with customers and explaining all the details in it is very essential in today’s increasing inflation.

Partitioned pricing consists of when a product’s price is divided into a base price and one or more mandatory surcharges like taxes, delivery charge, packaging price, and so on. As partitioned pricing has become more pervasive, customers started complaining about not being able to fully grasp or process all price information, and therefore they were led to underestimate total prices, which in turn influences their purchasing behavior. Recent research revealed that low pricing tactic persuasion knowledge subjects prefer the partitioned pricing offer over combined pricing.

Post COVID-19 inflation is caused by a shortage of supply and a high demand leading companies under pressure to avoid communicating raised prices. In all cases companies need to raise their prices; some strategies they can follow to increase prices intelligently include bringing about new and different customer experiences, bundling valuable features to their existing offerings, considering indirect increases, and adjusting their product mix. In all cases communicating price increases with customers is way better than using tricks to hide prices; It is also very important to consider other competitors before raising prices. Continue reading by subscribing for free.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

30 Mar, 2022

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You Don’t Have To Be a Big Corporation To Start A Presale: How Presales Makes You a Better Salesperson

You may think that Presale is for big corporations that launch their products with massive marketing campaigns that move buyers into making orders in huge quantities. Presale is not a difficult thing that practice owners and managers will struggle with. As spring starts rolling the first thing that comes to your mind is finding a way to tell our patients and customers about our spring branded sunglasses collection. A way to do that is by inviting them to a two days event where you show the new designer sunglasses collection and you perform presale operations at an encouraging price.

Another way is to invite a celebrity during the two days event and distribute discount codes, special price codes, coupons, and groupons for the event. You may want to send a message to your patients that states: “you signed up to receive special offers from Optical Forum vis email” and you continue by outlining all the details. You may approach them as valuable customers and members of a social group that you are both part of or a group that you manage.

So presales is an activity that you will have to perform before selling the product or service to a customer. Presales always start with identifying prospects and qualifying leads and follow through with product research, market research, data analysis, customer analysis, making unique selling propositions, managing deal qualifications and proposals. Subscribe to read more…

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

29 Mar, 2022

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More Than Twelve Sales Techniques That Will Make You Influential Among Other Eye Care Professionals

Trust and Loyalty are the main reasons customers chose to visit your practice among others and recommend it by writing excellent reviews and talking about the exceptional experience he gets every time he visits you. Sales is a key player in building trust and loyalty between the practice and the patient. The following are more than twenty sales techniques and tips to make you and your practice more trusted and bring more loyal patients and customers:

Avoid providing the highest price right from the beginning, discuss options without being cumbersome, and once you know exactly what best suits the customer recommend the right and the best product to them.

Use a positive approach to selling that consists of addressing your patients and persuading them to buy when they are highly appreciative of a service you’ve just provided. Like adjusting their frame for example. Rather than asking them if they want to buy sunglasses ask them how they feel when they know they can not just protect their eyes from the sun but they can prevent many eye diseases from happening by simply wearing sunglasses.

Focus on customer service and bringing excellent experiences. It is easier persuading existing and recurring patients to buy more than to acquire new ones.

Embrace technology in your practice and employ every tool to make product demos and simulations that help convey certain messages and bring about great experiences. Virtual try-on technology is one of the most trendy ways to help patients virtually try eyeglasses, sunglasses, and cosmetic lenses.

Promote personal autonomy among your staff and salespeople. Your salespeople need to be intrinsically motivated to generate more sales while feeling comfortable progressing in their careers.

Sometimes employing a product-centric approach to marketing, especially when selling to baby boomers. A product-centric approach is all about promotions, discounts, referral programs, etc. This approach works most with baby boomers and specific products.

Tracking your sales performance might be one of the best ways to reach your optical sales potential by monitoring sales, collecting and gaining insights, and constantly improving upon results.

Sales begin with what the doctor recommends inside the testing room. Many doctors accompany the patient to the optical showroom to give their recommendations and opinion on selecting the right frame.

Train staff to effectively use time management and optimize downtime in order to create more time to sell the biggest number of patients possible.

Accept walk-in appointments and same-day test and frame mounting service. Opening on weekends and for extended hours in the evening.

Use social media to keep your brand alive and growing. Communicate with your audience through various social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Tumblr, etc.

Improve your showroom lighting and mirrors, and suggest that your patients try eyeglasses before getting dilated in order to see all the details in every frame they try.

Understand your customer’s needs and the purpose of their visit and Introduce unconsidered needs. Never forget to offer solutions to the customer and not just a value-added product that is need’s based.

Avoid one size fits all solutions and always be ready to sell the customer multiple pieces of equipment and pairs of eyeglasses.

Always include a call-for-action after each offer you provide or product you present.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

28 Mar, 2022

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TURTLES And STRATEGY Have More In Common Than You Think

Harvard Business School, Professor Michael Porter, the world’s best thinker on strategy defines strategy as a competitive position, “deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.” In other words, you need to understand your competitors and the market you’ve chosen to determine how your business should react. In the words of Andy Grove, former chairman, and chief executive officer of Intel: “To understand a company’s strategy, look at what they actually do rather than what they say they will do.” Real strategy—in companies and in our lives—is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about where we spend our resources. Canadian Academic and Management Professor at Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University in Montreal, Henry Mintzberg, emphasizes that deliberate and emergent strategies may be conceived as two ends of a continuum along which real-world strategies lie.

When I am asked by my colleagues to give an easy-to-understand explanation of what strategy is to me, I often compare it to a turtle’s shell, and more precisely I compare what strategy is to the company as to what carapace is to the turtle. Among those common things between turtles and strategy we find:

Most turtles can hide their head in their shells but some species, like the sea turtle, can’t. Strategy is not always made to protect the company, but rather companies need to protect and grow their strategy. Strategy is not made to hide behind, moreover not all companies can hide behind their strategy.

A turtle’s carapace, or upper shell, is flatter to help them swim while a tortoises’ carapace is higher and dome-shaped. A strategy determines what companies can and cannot do. It is the result of the company’s resources, processes, and profit formula.

A turtle’s shell is attached to its body. Turtles do not look for a bigger shell as they get bigger, instead, the shell grows with the turtle. A company’s strategy is born with the company and grows with it. Companies don’t replace their strategies but make them grow. Even how small or big it is, a company cannot survive without a strategy, just like a turtle cannot survive without its shell.

By looking at the turtle’s shell we gain a lot of insights about the age of the turtle, seasons of great nutrition, and fasting seasons. The company’s strategy is clear and relevant to everyone, it shows how it has evolved over time, what emergent events changed deliberate ones, as well as how the strategy was shaped by good times and bad times.

The color of a turtle’s shell varies; common colors are brown, black, and olive green. Some species also have markings that are red, orange, yellow, or gray. You’ll never find two companies with exactly the same strategy. The strategy will differ according to the circumstances each company has been through.

A turtle’s shell will not grow overnight. It needs time and many seasons. The strategy can never be completed overnight. It needs time and many years and events that shape slowly shape it. The process is somehow neverending.

Turtles are some of the oldest animals around. Strategy is also very old. The term “strategy” is derived indirectly from the Classic and Byzantine (330 A.D.) Greek “strategos,” which means “general.” While the term is credited to the Greeks, no Greek ever used the word. The Greek equivalent for the modern word “strategy” would have been “strategike episteme” or (general’s knowledge) “strategon sophia” (general’s wisdom).

The largest turtles weigh more than a thousand pounds. Great strategies weigh tons of gold and value.

A turtle’s shell is not an exoskeleton. Some people mistake a turtle’s hard outer shell for an exoskeleton, but it’s actually a modified rib cage that’s part of the vertebral column. Strategy is not a deliberate business plan it is what the company plans along with how the competitive forces shape strategy.

Turtles lose their first “baby tooth” within an hour. Baby turtles, called hatchlings, have an “egg tooth” on their beak to help them hatch out of their shell. This tooth disappears approximately an hour after hatching. Companies make wrong investments and decisions and can fail anytime even as they launch. However, companies that have enough remaining capital to invest in new ventures and projects survive and thrive.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

27 Mar, 2022

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High Achievers Have Clear Vision, Conviction, And Avoid Irrational Predictions

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Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

26 Mar, 2022

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How To Improve Employee Well-being Without Breaking The Bank

Even before the pandemic, employee well-being has always been an essential business metric to track. If your employees do not have the energy to be creative and resilient in front of business challenges, you are running a business that cannot ensure key strategies will be executed. Once you start measuring and tracking employee well-being improving it becomes possible. Many organizations spend tons of money on the process of improving well-being when research shows that improving employee well-being should not break the bank. By doing so, any organization can succeed by providing the autonomy, control, social connections, and support that foster physical and mental well-being.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and the author of 15 books, emphasized job control and social support as two critical contributors to employee engagement that also improve employee health, and potentially reduce healthcare costs and strengthen the case for them as a top management priority.

Job control consists of the amount of discretion employees have to determine what they do and how they do it. Studies revealed that job control has a major impact on employees’ physical health. Limited job control has negative effects that go beyond the physical damage to impose pressure on employees’ mental health, too. The only way organizations can guard against these dangers is by creating roles that grant employees more flexibility and autonomy. Increasing flexibility and autonomy as well as reducing micromanagement have become very essential in preventing employee burnout during the pandemic and after the introduction of remote offices.

A study of 8,500 white-collar workers in Sweden examined changes in stress- and health-related psychosocial exposures and sickness absence during more than 20 years in Swedish working life. Findings proved that employees with a passive work profile (low job demands and low job control) had the lowest rate and the lowest increase in sickness absence. Individuals with active work profiles, where high jobs demands are supposed to be balanced by high job control, had a rather high increase in sickness days. The same study revealed increased and more prevalent sickness absence among care workers who had low social support. Employees’ autonomy allows them to control what happens to them at work, increases their motivation to learn, and attain a certain degree of mastery over their environment allowing them to achieve desired results. On the other hand, low job control undermines employees’ feelings of competence and accomplishment and ultimately contributes to stress, anxiety, and depression.

Social support is another important aspect of a healthy workplace. Research going back to the 1970s consistently demonstrates a connection between social support and health. A 2015 study with 319 respondents in Taiwan revealed that social support at the workplace directly contributes to subjective well-being and indirectly via self-efficacy.

Job control and Social support are two concepts that employers can use to increase employees’ well-being without incurring significant costs on the organization.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

25 Mar, 2022

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What Makes Strong Performers And How Do You Reward Them

Your practice may be doing very well and the simplest question you can answer is to identify your practice’s strong performers. It might sometimes be hard to recruit strong performers. But you know them when you see them. Moreover, it gets very complicated when someone tries to identify what qualities set strong performers apart from others. This is probably because strong performers have significantly distinct qualities that ordinary employees don’t have.

Strong performers have an excellent internal compass that directs them to their goals and objectives and alerts them when they deviate or make a bad choice that may push them away from the right path. They constantly seek opportunities to grow but are defined by their hard work and willingness to stop and start over at any moment when they realize that they deviated from their work ethics norms. Strong performers have self-awareness and are emotionally intelligent, they know what they can accomplish and may step back and let others do the job when they feel that they are not better positioned to accomplish it. With self-awareness, which is a personal competence, strong performers have social competence that allows them to effectively communicate with others. They can recognize one’s emotions and the emotions of others to behave and adopt best practices that help them reach their goals.

Emotional intelligence is a trait that every eye care provider should possess to a certain degree to be able to provide effective care to patients in the first place. Practitioners can improve their emotional intelligence levels by focusing on recognizing others’ and own emotions, understanding these emotions by classifying and categorizing them, and managing emotions by learning to respond rather than reacting. Strong performers have strong emotional intelligence and when it comes to rewarding them for their exceptional work, financial rewards may not always be the right compensation. Work flexibility can be a great reward, especially for employees to spend valuable time with their families. However, strong performers may look for other personal satisfactions that make them progress towards a specific goal.

Strong performers are motivated by stretching assignments, setting higher goals, and regularly providing feedback. By stretching performers’ assignments, they are being given autonomy to produce more, perform better, and achieve greater tasks.

Setting higher goals and achieving them, develops strong performers into masters of a high skill level of knowledge who understand and execute tasks with great confidence.

Strong performers get noticed by the level of expertise they contribute and progress as a result of the feedback they get and that motivates them to constantly change, improve, and progress.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

21 Mar, 2022

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Seven Common Eye Problems Of Children With Down Syndrome

World Down Syndrome Day is March 21. Participating and celebrating Down Syndrome Day means advocating for inclusion and equality. Down syndrome, also called trisomy 21, is caused by a duplication of part or all of chromosome 21, resulting in three copies of this chromosome instead of two copies. This added copy of the chromosome alters the genetic sequence of the person with Down syndrome and translates into certain physical changes. Some of those changes affect the eyes and lead to common eye problems that can generally be diagnosed and treated when doing a comprehensive eye exam by an eye doctor. Those problems include:

Nystagmus: may occur in individuals with Down syndrome affecting their vision from a mild to a severe degree.

Refractive problems: people with down syndrome may have refractive errors including myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism, as a result of changes in the form of the eye. More than fifty percent of down syndrome patients need to wear eyeglasses.

Strabismus: the frequency of strabismus among D0wn Syndrome individuals is between 20% and 60%.

Keratoconus: occurs in up to 30% of individuals with Down syndrome. Close follow-up is needed from puberty going forward.

Cataracts: incidence of congenital cataracts among Down Syndrome individuals is significantly higher than other individuals.

Glaucoma: The risk of infantile glaucoma for down syndrome individuals is significantly high.

Blepharitis: is one of the lid inflammations that can be treated with antibiotics placed on the lid and the bacterial infection can be prevented by proper hygiene. Tearing may also occur as a result of nasolacrimal tear duct obstruction.

The frequency of Down syndrome is one in eight hundred births, with an increased rate among older mothers. A comprehensive eye exam is recommended very early after birth by a pediatric ophthalmologist and follow-up tests to ensure that the eyes are in good health and vision develops in the right way.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

18 Mar, 2022

Blog Posts

Will a Career Break be a Wonderful Choice Or a Confusing Limbo?

From the day we are born we are programmed to live like we are climbing a ladder one step at a time and every step is in continuity with the step before and the step after. We graduate from high school and resume our studies in college then into the chosen career. We think of transitions as part of building and developing a career and a solution for not wanting a career break. In a previous post, we related to career transition and what it takes to make big career changes whether by choice or necessity to escape the terrible mistake and trap of being stuck in the wrong job. We also listed four career transitions that every person encounters during life and the corresponding resources required to survive those transitions. Today’s workplaces are not just dynamic but they are highly collaborative. For this reason, they require highly-collaborative employees and promote fast movers who build their network and scale it by showing value in what they do. Career transition is one game that you must master after you have mastered a completely different game that is: career break.

A career break is any timeout from employment from 2 to 24 months. I’ve had friends and colleagues get into career breaks that include volunteering for an abroad church mission, volunteering as a consultant for social work in Africa, Yachtmastering and sailing across seas, training and racing Paris Dakar. No matter the purpose of the career break, the dilemma starts the moment you decide to return especially if you have been on a break for over 12 months. Among the worst things that can happen because of a career break are that you may halt your career progress, lose touch with your field, experience significant financial loss, lose touch with your colleague, have to adjust back to work, and need to explain your career break to future employers.

You will have to decide on the level to return to after the career break; your apprentice may very well become your superior after you return. While career level is an issue in corporate Optometry it is less of a concern if the reentry is in private practice. The main issue in private practice would be the patients. If the returning practitioner’s role is well defined as a specialist. He will have to go through a fast internship-like program that will help him regain confidence and refresh his experience and then start seeing patients within his specialty. If he is a general practitioner it is preferred he starts seeing new patients and builds his customer base all over again. Since he has the required experience and he has had a great amount of health boost during the career break, he will build an important customer base in no time.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

16 Mar, 2022

Blog Posts

Now That The Pandemic Is Winding-Up, Should We Go Back To Work? Or Forward?

Now that the pandemic has done its worst to the workplace environment, we are all gradually getting back but we’re still thinking if it’s better not to. To Keith Ferrazzi, coauthor of the new book Competing in the New World of Work: How Radical Adaptability Separates the Best from the Rest, the pandemic and work disruption is an inflection point to push to learn a bit further and step in to “go forward to work, not back”. We’re going back to work with nothing much changed in terms of collaboration and inclusion than before 2019. In fact, according to Ferrazzi, what really happened during the pandemic is that leaders stepped off their podium and became humble enough to say, “I don’t know.” That willingness to say “I don’t know” has left an open invitation to collaboration and co-creation with people. Leaders’ limits were somehow exposed during the pandemic revealing humble personalities. Based on these facts one should think of the post-pandemic era as an era of exploration rather than resignation. Companies should acknowledge the potency of asynchronous and non-meeting-based collaboration.

According to recent Mckinsey research, returning from the pandemic emphasizes hybrid models of remote work to likely persist, mostly for a highly educated, well-paid minority of the workforce. Agriculture, transportation and warehousing, accommodation and food, construction, and manufacturing are the most industries to include tasks that can not be performed remotely. Whereas, finance, insurance, management, professional, scientific, technical services, IT, telecommunication, and education include more tasks that can be performed remotely.

To succeed in hybrid culture, companies can start acting on five fronts that include embracing asynchronous communication, setting clear communication boundaries minimizing interruptions and maximizing concentration on work, championing documentation and artifacts by setting well-organized archives and online references that the whole company links to, finding ways to broadcasting communication like newsletters, blogs, and group posts, and finally providing the right tools like software and hardware that enable employees to have access to work from home.

Adam Ozimek, the Chief economist at Upwork, asserts that companies and employees have gained practice with remote work during the pandemic and rather than going back to work like before 2019, they are discovering new possibilities for leveraging flexible or open talent. For those companies that are succeeding in flexible and open talent, their models are driving exceptional results, but they require purposeful management.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

14 Mar, 2022

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How Old Effective And Deceptive Is “Buy One Get One Free”?

If you have watched the American drama television series Mad Men episode one boardroom scene, Don Draper and Roger Sterling meeting with Mr. and Ms. Menken; you should remember that Mr. Menken satirically commented on the board proposal using humor and exaggeration to criticize Sterling Cooper executives proposal saying “let us assume that this is the most amazing idea in retail since “Buy One Get One Free” and account executive Pete Campbell laughed. Mad Men‘s fictional time frame runs from March 1960 to November 1970. So the boardroom scene is around 1960-61. If Mr. Menken is satirically throwing in Buy One Get One Free as a description of an old promotion method, How Old is Buy One Get One Free?

“Buy one, get one free” or “two for the price of one” is a common form of sales promotion known in the marketing industry by the acronym BOGOF or simply BOGO. BOGO is believed to have existed since the 18th century when English potter Josiah Wedgwood invented the phrase “Buy One Get One Free.” Economist Alex Tabarrok has argued that the success of BOGO lies in the fact that since you’re selling two times the sales volume price should be reduced, however what actually happens is that the price of “one” is somewhat nominal and merchants typically raise the price when used as part of a BOGO deal. which lead to conclude that the price is not actually half the original price. BOGO offers customers extra value and may motivate them to buy more, choose to buy from one retailer over another, and decide on one product and not another. This raises the question: How effective is BOGO?

In few words: BOGO doubles the store’s office! Grocery stores employ BOGO all of the time as a way to lower inventory or simply boost average order value. If you can sell a product at half price and still make profit, selling two items of this products would double your profit. Moreover, BOGO help retailers clear out inventory and still make profit, help get better responses from customers, and share profits with customers. With that in mind effective BOGO strategies consider the best time of the year when the retailer wants to reduce inventory, the audience that BOGO will target to get higher conversion rate, and the channels that will be employed to share the promotion. This raises the question: How deceptive is BOGO?

BOGO is most effective in selling commodities, because customers already know the price of the commodity and they are assured that they are getting two items at the original price of one. However, for some products when the price of goods sold is not universally known, customers may not trust BOGO offers and may not respond to their promotion. Moreover, people perceive a 50% off a better deal than BOGO. People know that every promotion companies do is for the good of business and to make more profit.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

13 Mar, 2022

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Is Your Optometry Practice Protected By An Umbreachable “Moat”?

Two quotes by American business magnate, Warren Buffet summarize what Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, Professor Michael Porter teaches about strategy.

The first quote is: “A good business is like a strong castle with a deep moat around it. I want sharks in the moat. I want it untouchable.“

The second quote is: “No formula in finance tells you that the moat is 28 feet wide and 16 feet deep. That’s what drives the academics crazy. They can compute standard deviations and betas, but they can’t understand moats.”

In 1979, Michael Porter introduced and explained the Five Competetive Forces that shape strategy. His model stood the test of time and is taught in every Master of Business Administration MBA program, every business school, and board rooms all over the world. The model provides an understanding of the overall industry you are working in, your business, and the interplay between both of them and their influence on your business position in the industry. According to Porter, the five forces that shape your business are the number and power of a company’s competitive rivals, potential new market entrants, suppliers, customers, and substitute products influencing a company’s profitability.

Both Buffet’s quotes emphasize and point to Porter’s competitive advantage, in general, relating to all five forces illustrated or described as a castle “moat”. Moreover, Potential new market entrants or the barrier of entry is in particular what first catches your eye or comes to your mind. If the barrier of entry is low it consists of a serious competitive threat and puts your business in a challenging position characterized by reduced profitability. On the other hand, if the barrier of entry is high, you save your business from potential new entrants, you put your business in a strong and competitive position, and you protect your profitability.

It all boils down to how good you are at creating “moats” that allow your company to fend off new businesses to come into your market and take your existing market share. keep yourself updated about the market insights and trends happening around your business. As soon as the barrier of entry lowers expect a new entrant to reach out to your market. Therefore you should construct a new “moat” to position your business in the protected area keeping the threat at bay. In your practice “Moats” include promoting differentiation, developing and strengthening your business brand equity, mastering economies of scale and economies of scope and identifying markets where each one works, switching costs, maintaining strong distribution channels, utilizing the network effect by increasing the subscribers to your products, and learn to capitalize on the first-mover advantage even in the absence of network effect. In other words, you need to be entering businesses that have a long-lasting competitive advantage (Moat) that does not require you to invest back in the business to keep its competitive advantage.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

12 Mar, 2022

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How Important Is Business Synergy To Your Optometry Practice?

When we talk about business synergy we think about big corporations and mergers and acquisitions of considerably huge departments. When we looked in the literature, we found that fifteen years ago synergy was the concept employed to describe how corporations collaborate. However, now with the event of the pandemic, many eye care professionals and practice managers are already implementing synergy into their small practice and small business. Synergy even appears to be the fuel that is allowing small businesses to survive and sustain growth.

By definition, “synergy” is a state of cooperation where different individuals contribute to a common end result and where the combined effect would be greater than the combined effort. In business words, synergy means the mergers of different companies and departments to create a unit whose effect is greater than the sum of individual effort made by those companies and departments. The word “synergy” originates from the Greek “sunergiā,” which means “cooperation,” and “sunergos” (sometimes spelled “synergos”), which means “working together.”

Robert Kreitner is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Arizona State University. He is a popular speaker who has addressed a diverse array of audiences worldwide on topics including the 21st-century workplace. He emphasizes that in order to gain a competitive advantage, your business synergy can be created in four manners: market, cost, technology, and management.

By looking at the concept of synergy and understanding that collaboration allows the creation of something greater than you can do alone, you will recognize that synergy will not just amplify your business but helps you become more efficient and improve your business performance. The search and struggle for improvement are continuous in the eye care profession; Optometrists and practice owners strive to learn the best management practices, reduce costs, improve finance, implement the latest technologies, and enlarge their markets. Their strategy for long-term success involves mastering all of those practices, however, to succeed in business synergy it is suggested that businesses implement only one of the business synergy manners. They are required to pick one synergy type that will have the most impact with the least resources available to them. Each type of synergy requires a significant amount of effort and resources therefore no one can work on improving all types of synergy at one time. As most Optometrists and practice managers focus on finding what the business needs to succeed they should identify any potential opportunity to create synergy. This opportunity to create business synergy could be of various forms among them:

Shared know-how: look at the next opportunity to share your knowledge and skills with a potential partner or by collaborating with another unit. If you are a scleral lens specialist don’t hesitate to share your knowledge and skills and provide insights into this particular field of practice.

Shared tangible resources:: look at the next opportunities to gain synergies by sharing your practice – when you are on vacation or traveling for continuing education – for example with other specialists and combining efforts to gain economy of scale in utilizing your assets.

Pooled Negotiating Power: look at the next opportunity to combine your purchasing power with another practitioner to gain better leverage over suppliers, reduce costs, and dramatically gain from pooled negotiation. The same synergies can be created with other stakeholders like customers, government,…

Coordinated Strategies: look at the next opportunity to counter competitive threats by trying to coordinate responses to shared competitors.

Vertical Integration: look at the next opportunity to coordinate the vertical integration of the flow of products to reduce inventory costs, speed product development, increase capacity utilization, and improve market access.

Combined Business Creation: look at the next opportunity to create a new business that helps facilitate the employment and combination of additional synergies.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

10 Mar, 2022

Blog Posts

What Set Resilient Teams Apart During The Pandemic?

New research showed that resilient teams know how to perform work and they put more importance on collaboration than the number of meetings. The number of online meetings has skyrocketed during the pandemic however, resilience has increased in team who know how to collaborate using asynchronous meetings and not just synchronous meetings. Unproductive meetings overload the team’s schedule reducing its performance and end up costing the company unnecessary expenses.

Resilience is stronger in teams that build caring and supportive relationships with each other. Team members should be connected and should ask about what others are struggling with personally as well as professionally. This way they build caring, trusting, and supportive relationships both personal and professional. Resilience is stronger with teams who feel a collaborative responsibility to boost each other’s motivation and well-being. Team members in resilient teams identify commonalities among each other’s and appreciate any difference between members.

Forming relationships is promising in good times, even better having a whole network of friends and colleagues helps you build strong resilience that you may need in bad times or help others in those disastrous times. Humans by nature like to bond with one another, share solutions to problems and gain expertise and experience from one another. Without genuine support from friends and teammates, everyone would burnout.

Strong resilience is also based on individuals inside the team who never give up positive thinking. The book The Power of Positive Thinking by minister Norman Vincent Peale contains recommendations that positive thinking does not come naturally to everyone. It must be practiced and people must work at it. Among the most notable recommendations he provides is to avoid relationships with toxic people, avoid “worry conversations”, and cultivate friendship with hopeful positive people. Optimism and Pessimism are both contagious and your well-being will quickly improve as you start spending time with optimist people.

Resilient teams during the pandemic revealed their strong collaborative nature, trust and care among teammates, and formed caring and supportive relationships. Resilient teams are those who identify negative and positive emotions, however, they eliminated negative ones and allowed new positive emotions to replace them.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

9 Mar, 2022

Blog Posts

Try This Social Media Strategy For Your Optometry Marketing

Perhaps Walt Disney and the company he founded were among the first to sell experiences to customers. However, over time, the progression of economic value has evolved from the production and selling of products to delivering services and staging experiences. The more immersive and differentiated are the experiences businesses provide the higher is the premium paid by customers. One way to think about customer experiences in social media is either through customer participation or his connection and how he relates to his environment. His participation could be either passive or active and his connection could be either immersive or lies solely on absorption.

If you look at your optometry practice social media followers you should be able to identify followers on both participation and connection dimensions. Patients who receive your shared posts and are passive score low on the participation dimension and patients who follow your practice social media and don’t visit your practice to immerse in your eye care experience score low in the connection dimension. The question is how to score high on both participation and connection? in other words how to make your social media followers engage in likes, comments, and share as well as come visit your practice and become your practice ambassadors. To me, if I see a Disney post on social media I would certainly participate, would ache to go back again, and would immerse in the experience.

How can we apply these dimensions of experience in the practice social media strategy in a way that helps us build a patient base, build trust, and get our practice known?

The first step is to post social media content on daily basis. The second step is to complete the experience by choosing the right quality of the content. Gilly Woodhouse, founder and marketer at osteobiz.com proposes a daily social media framework that starts from Monday to Friday and consists of posting content Emotional, Educational, Engagement, Excellence, and Examples.

For example you start the week with an Emotinal post on Monday that instills motivation, reliability, uplifting words, lovely views, etc. On Tuesday you post an Educational post that is informative, instructional, or propagating awareness. On Wednesday you post Engagement posts like polls, did you know questions, or preference based questions. Thursday is for Excellence and your latest achievements or one of your team members latest awards. Highlight latest office additions, showcase state of the art work, course, or training accomplishment. And last, provide Examples on Friday, like testimonials, stories, reviews, …

If we take Woodhouse’s five E’s model, try to put it as a set of lenses, and see right through it, we realize in terms of the experiences we will indulge the patient in:

Monday Emotional posts invite to entertaining passive participation with absorption experiences;

Tuesday Educational posts invite educated active participation with absorption experiences. Showing interest in your content.

Wednesday Engagement posts invite escapist active participation and immersion experiences. Taking action experiences calling the office, inquiring, scheduling.

Thursday Excellence posts invite esthetic passive participation and immersion experiences. The kind of office experiences, having their eyes checked and trying frames.

Friday Examples posts are reports and sort of debriefing sessions about the experiences.

Next time you post on your practice social media keep those notes in mind.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

8 Mar, 2022

Blog Posts

Why Is Business Process Reengineering Easy To Employ In Optometry Practices

The process of monitoring and examining the value created or added by ongoing business processes is called work-flow analysis. Once we collect effective insights from the patients we can build our chain of value processes based on the job to be done that the patient would hire our practice for. The first step in every value process is to co-create value using the patients insights and the practice’s resources to develop a product offering. The second step would be to share that value created using all the tools and techniques employed by the practice. The third step would be to capture value measured in numbers and ratios that align with the practice profit formula.

Work-flow analysis then consists of analyzing how the job to be done moves from the patient through the series of processes in the practice to the point where the patient leaves the practice more perfect with the products and services that the practice provided to him in return for a given fee. As the job or the patient moves from one employee to another in the eye care process, work-flow analysis usually reveals that some steps can be combined, simplified, or sometimes eliminated. Those steps are either performed by individual staff members or sometimes by teamwork. In this case, the source of value creation is the whole team.

For example, a patient who scheduled a comprehensive eye exam for eyeglasses replacement will involve a whole team of receptionist, a refractionist, an optometrist, a dispensing optician, and the ophthalmic lenses lab staff. Therefore, the value created for the patient whose work is to make eyeglasses is a whole teamwork interplay. Work-flow analysis in this circumstance can be used to align the practices effort of value creation and the patient’s need for eyeglasses. Work-flow analysis equally allows the practice to improve its performance through the use of business process reengineering (BPR).

BPR as described in the book Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy consists of a fundamental rethinking and redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic cost improvements, quality, service, and speed of delivery. Therefore, BPR should not be confused with practice restructuring or laying off staff members to reduce or eliminate management levels. The majority of optometry practices don’t have too many levels of management, making BPR easier to conduct than with large organizations with many management layers and where it is hard to look at every all steps within all processes.

Effectively using BPR identifies which jobs being completed by many staff members can be eliminated or recombined to improve the performance of the whole practice. BPR can help in implementing patient-focused care making patients’ care processes more efficient. To be able to accomplish an effective BPR the first step is to map all the current practice processes and identify gaps, delays, and disconnects that are preventing a free flow of the work process. The second step is to improve or radically create a new process that eliminates those gaps and is monitored, measured, and controlled through measurable key performance indicators.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

4 Mar, 2022

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Why Most Employee Recognition-Programs Make The Majority Feel Left Out?

Last weekend we were dining with friends and celebrating one of our friend’s birthday that happened to be on Monday and it shook me when I heard her say “the last thing I want to see on my desk this Monday morning is a sticky note from my boss with a Happy Birthday message; I mean this is my birthday and I can’t imagine even thinking about her”. She has a terrible boss and she is seriously thinking of quitting soon. Very few managers are capable of making employees appreciated. The most important thing is to be lovable before projecting any feelings on employees. If employees don’t love their boss they will gradually hate everything about work and reject everything coming from their boss. Moreover, they will consider their boss’s appreciation as fake and as inauthentic as it can be. What is worst is that those employers develop the illusion of transparency tricking themselves into believing that their employees are meant to know how their bosses appreciate them.

Managers should not wait for the right occasion to appreciate an employee. There is no right moment! Every moment is the right moment to make them know that you are appreciating the good work they are doing and most importantly you are appreciating them for accepting to review, redo, or improve the work they are doing. Employees need to know when they receive feedback and when they receive advice. They both are very important for their recognition and development. When they are doing good they’re great, and when they are not doing good and they don’t know what they are doing or they are doing things for the first time, it means they are improving. Many managers fear sending mixed messages, they just don’t know how to do it. When you can’t express to your employee your appreciation make an announcement in front of everybody in the practice, make sure you are not making everybody else look bad, and let this employee be appreciated by other employees.

If you only appreciate your best employees with great results you will certainly make other employees feel left out. However, if you also appreciate others by giving them the advice to improve their outcomes you will enforce the team spirit, make each employee inspired by others’ performance, increase performance, and work engagement.

Recognizing your employee’s efforts is great, however, sometimes giving them the advice to improve can be the best recognition they will ever need. Remember “happy birthday notes” are great appreciation methods but be sure that it is authentic, sincere, and that your employee receives them that way too.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

3 Mar, 2022

Blog Posts

How To Set An Optometry Pricing Products And Services Strategy

The conventional way to pricing products and services consists of determining the costs of goods sold then adding up all fixed costs, variable costs, overheads, and the desired profit margin to obtain the final price. This method is called the cost-based pricing method. It is important to note that more than 60% of all pricing decisions in companies across all industries are cost-based. The advantages of cost-based pricing methods include the desired profit margin is guaranteed, with known costs and overheads it is easy to calculate the price, customers perceive it as fair and transparent, and eliminates differences in pricing between sales force as every price is set and controlled by the administration. However, there are many disadvantages to cost-based pricing among them are limited pricing capability to customized jobs, patients value perception and competition are disregarded in pricing policy, and the biggest disadvantage is that your practice will miss the opportunity of making money and profit on two occasions: when demand is high you cannot increase your prices and when demand is low you cannot reduce your margin.

The best way of pricing in Optometry is to be able to understand the value created to the patient and employ it as the unit of measure to add up profit margin rather than employing the cost as a unit of reference. This is called value-based pricing and mainly consists of trying to understand the value created to the patient with every option presented or offered to him. Basically, you should be able to provide patients and customers with options, be it bundled products or unique services and set a price for each option. You want to be able to answer the question what is the value of each option to the patient? Once the value is determined try to figure out the answer to How much the patient is willing to pay for this option? Once you estimate how much the patient is willing to pay for the value you are proposing you set the price accordingly without being largely dependent on the costs.

While cost-based pricing is easy to determine value-based pricing is a little bit more complex because it requires understanding the patient’s needs and perspective about the product and services, moreover it requires your practice to possess some capabilities that allow you to measure value in an accurate and profitable way. This will be the main topic of a coming post about value-based pricing and the organization’s pricing capabilities that identify what the patient value, what benefits he is seeking, what products will benefit him, and what segments of value will he pay for.

Editor

2 Mar, 2022

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Acuvue Theravision: The First Contact Lens for Drug Delivery

Acuvue Theravision gets approved just in time with the beginning of spring. March marks the beginning of spring. Trees start pollinating and the allergy season launches. Acuvue Theravision was first approved by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) as being the first combination contact lens that provides vision correction and an antihistamine drug to help relieve symptoms for people experiencing itchy allergy eyes. It has been approved one month later in Canada and today in the United States.

Today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Johnson&Johnson Vision Care approval for its ACUVUE Theravision with Ketotifen (etafilcon A drug-eluting contact lens with ketotifen). The contact lens provides vision correction and relief from eye itching. Each lens contains 19 micrograms of ketotifen, a well-established antihistamine, that is meant to be released onto the surface of the eye while the allergic patient is enjoying a perfectly corrected vision a not worrying about carrying his eyedrops with him. The drug effect starts three minutes after wearing the contact lens and lasts for up to 12 hours while the Etafilcon A material allows wearers to wear Acuvue Theravision for more than 12 hours. The lenses are available with spherical powers ranging from -12 to +6 and no toric powers.

“At Johnson & Johnson Vision, we are committed to bringing forward new technologies and innovations that can improve vision and overall eye health,” Johnson & Johnson Vision North America President Thomas Swinnen said in the release. He adds “This approval marks another significant milestone in Johnson & Johnson Vision’s legacy of rethinking what’s possible with contact lenses to meet the visual and eye health needs of people around the world.” Acuvue Theravision is meant to help the 40% of contact lens wearers who suffer from itchy eyes due to allergies. More information on the product are available at Johnson & Johnson Vision website: https://www.jnjvisionpro.ca/products/acuvue-theravision

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

1 Mar, 2022

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Should You Follow A Defender Practice Strategy Now That The Pandemic Is Ending?

Successful businesses adopting either a defender or a prospector strategy is a concept that has been developed in the seventies stating that Defenders are businesses that tend to maintain a stable position and avoid expanding in untapped ventures and territories whereas Prospectors are businesses that are driven through growth and innovation to constantly produce new products and services that lead to hiring risk-takers and innovators. Now, many businesses have been affected by the pandemic and their first reaction was to adopt a defender strategy. Even though I am a great opponent of a defender strategy, I came along one myself in my practice. It was not a complete defender strategy but I can assure you it was not a prospector one. But how long after the pandemic, should we maintain a defender strategy?

A defender strategy is a strategy where managers emphasize efficiently serving stable markets with stable efficient production, explicit job descriptions, internal or no recruitment, voluntary inducements to leave, job-based pay, etc. The practice maintains a secure position employing the same products and services as well as policies to encourage long-term employee attachment to the practice.

A prospector strategy emphasizes growth and innovation strengthened by the development and introduction of new products and services that are prompt to a high risk of failure in changing environments. The prospector strategy reflects the flexibility of the business structure and processes that can adapt to changing markets and environments. We have seen those practices that proactively dealt with the pandemic either by launching telemedicine, telehealth, online selling, or home delivery services. We have also seen those practices that were able to recruit even amidst the pandemic, adopting decentralized compensation systems that rewarded innovation and risk-taking.

To answer the question, How long after the pandemic, should we maintain a defender strategy? A business strategy should be able to constantly provide an explanation of the current environmental opportunities as well as of the forces that affect those opportunities in order to develop and maintain a viable business strategy. The major dimensions in the practice environment that need to be studied and examined include the degree of uncertainty, volatility, the magnitude of change, and complexity.

Examining the degree of uncertainty should provide us with accurate and valuable information to make the right decisions. You don’t want to implement a telemedicine platform if you are not certain that your patients will use it or prefer another eye care provider who provides phone consultations.

Examining volatility answers if you will be able to pay the lease for the new practice or lab equipment or move to a new bigger property. Long-term plans are easy when things are doing great in a stable environment, however, it takes real decision-makers to sustain growth in volatile and unpredictable environments.

Examining the magnitude of change ahead of time facilitates formulating the right strategy to cope with change. Disposable contact lenses and the disruption caused by online sellers drove many optometrists to believe that the magnitude of change will cause them to lose all contact lens markets.

Examining the complexity resulting from the multitude of new products and services provides us with information about what products and services will be out of the market in three years and what products will replace them down the road.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

28 Feb, 2022

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The 4 A’s Of Marketing Your Eye Care Practice

In a previous post, we emphasized the use of the marketing mix that comprises the 4Ps product, price, place, and promotion. The model of the 4 Ps was popularized by Philip Kotler who is the father of modern marketing, however many healthcare marketers considered the model too hard to fit in healthcare calling the four Ps concept “anachronisms in healthcare marketing”. They announced the death of the four Ps and have argued for their replacement with the four Rs that consist of Relevance, Response, Relationships, and Results.

In the early days of marketing, marketers had a single “P”: the product. They put all their efforts and strategies into advertising this single P. By the time marketers realized there is much more involved beyond the single “P”, the 4 Ps framework emerged that was then followed by the 4 Rs which, along with the 4 Ps, both address the production side. Another framework emerged by adding another “P” to the 4 Ps model and making it a 5 Ps framework. The fifth “P” is about prompting the patients to adopt changes in behavior as they make contacts with healthcare providers that lead to better health and quality outcomes and better relationships. The fifth “P” is also linked to People who are friendly staff and like to make themselves loved by providing exceptional services.

While the 4 Ps and the 4 Rs are on the product and production side of the marketing equation, the fifth “P” is more related to the consumer and patient side. When we think about the consumer side we think of the 4 A’s framework that pertains to co-creating value by both the organization and the patient and consists of Acceptability, Affordability, Accessibility, and Awareness. This concept has been gaining popularity as a result of the disruption of supply chains and the turbulent markets that have been caused during the pandemic and afterward.

Marketers have to understand the dynamics driving the new customer behavior based on the online world composed of teleconferencing, social media, and the metaverse. The new divide caused by the pandemic has forced us to consider how patients and consumers have changed their way of accepting new products and new services. It has led to increased polarization and the middle class that has been shrinking as well as many consumers amended income caused by the pandemic. Each and every one of the 4 A’s has been altered by the new digital environment we live in.

The next time you have to offer a new product or present a new service in your eye care practice think about the 4 A’s, how they changed during the past couple of years, and how they help you look differently at those products. Take for example telemedicine and try to figure out to which patients it increased accessibility to eye care, brought affordability, and spread awareness. Social media and weblog posts are excellent tools for spreading awareness of interruption of service, the introduction of new products, and making announcements as well as driving traffic to your website where the online shopping experience is equally affected by the customer’s 4 A’s.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

26 Feb, 2022

Blog Posts

The Effect of Eating Pistachio On The Retina Health

Today is National Pistachio Day! Recently Pistachio has earned “Superfood” status after it has been proved by many studies to have significant health benefits. One study and a national survey in the U.S. suggest a snack of pistachios might boost brain power and concentration levels at work. Another study conducted at Loma Linda University (LLU), revealed that eating nuts on a regular basis enhances brainwave frequencies associated with cognition, learning, memory, recall, and other key brain functions. The study found that, among many types of nuts, eating Pistachio was associated with the greatest effect. Another study conducted by the Institut Paul Bocuse in the foodie capital of Lyon, France uncovered positive results about pistachio. The group that was eating Pistachio presented with a reduction in waist size after four weeks.

Besides the significant health benefits of pistachio and its great taste, it has been revealed that Pistachio has Eye health benefits too. Pistachios are a good source of protein, fiber, monounsaturated fatty acids, minerals, and vitamins, as well as carotenoids, phenolic acids, flavonoids, and anthocyanins. Among the pistachio’s nutrients are lutein and zeaxanthin, two antioxidants essential for eye health. Pistachio contains Lutein and zeaxanthin that have been shown to reduce the chances of developing cataracts and protect against age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Despite the absence of treatment for AMD, Numerous observational studies have revealed the potential role of micronutrient supplementation in lowering the risk of progression of the early stages of AMD. There are always efforts to develop new models of personalized care of AMD based on the promotion of healthy nutritional habits and adequate micronutrient intake.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

25 Feb, 2022

Blog Posts

How to Fix Your Online Sales Slump With Content Marketing Did you know? 65% to 90% of the buyer’s process is complete by the time they actually want to talk to a salesperson! If you provide valuable, engaging and informative content during your prospects pivotal research stage, you will develop trust and credibility as a […]
How To Get More Google Traffic In 2022 [New SEO Tool]

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

24 Feb, 2022

Blog Posts

Communication In the Real Optometry World

Our biggest concern in the exam room, showroom, waiting room, and during phone and online interaction is to understand what strengthens and weakens the argument shared with the patient. In a previous post, we emphasized -with the help of critical thinking- the importance of identifying logical fallacies that patients come up with and the logic we use in persuading the patient without having recourse to logical fallacies ourselves. The logic we use in the real world of Optometry reflects our powerful voice that is meant to make an impact but most importantly makes a change. Moreover, it is through effective communication that we can persuade the patient and make a change.

It is very important to know the patient’s purpose of visit the earliest possible. Whether he has taken an online appointment or called the office, the first thing that should be identified is the visit purpose. For example, if the patient is coming to buy eyeglasses, the focus will be on finding the patient’s preferences and what brands suit his demand. If the patient is visiting but does not want to have his eyeglasses replaced, the focus of persuasion will be to make him change his mind a get new eyeglasses. The basis of persuasion depends on every claim you make about the product backed with a piece of evidence and a justification that connects the claim and the evidence. First, whatever claim you are doing, it should be clear, impactful, not controversial, and current.

An example of a clear claim is: Vision loss caused by glaucoma is irreversible and should be strictly monitored through a regular comprehensive eye exam. An unclear claim could be: vision loss due to glaucoma is very common in the world.

An example of a controversial claim is: a comprehensive eye exam should be mandatory by law. A non-controversial claim could be: in the absence of any notable eye case, people should have their eyes checked at least every two years.

An example of an impactful claim is: to improve your quality of life you should not miss your scheduled appointment. An example of a non-impactful claim is we’re the best eye care provider in the area.

An example of a current claim is: patients should wear blue light protective ophthalmic lenses in front of their tablets and computers screens. A not current claim is: patients should wear protective ophthalmic lenses in front of the television.

Persuasion should not be coercive, instead, it should be invitational and consist of a model of reaching consensus through dialogue. The ultimate aim is to create the setting to let the patient interact, engage in the discussion, and adopt the logic you shared with him in order to share it with other potential buyers.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

23 Feb, 2022

Blog Posts

What Is It Like To Be Marketing To Generation Z

An estimate of 17% of contact lens wearers is between ages 18-24. Generation Z consists of everyone born between 1996 and 2010. Suppose you want to market contact lenses to Gen Zers, what would your considerations about this generation be? What value proposition to offer? How would you communicate your value proposition?

Like baby boomers, Gen X, and Millennials, Gen Z individuals have their own world, taste, and view that influence their decision of buying things. They expect to be treated in a very distinct way as it is hard to capture and maintain their attention. Gen Zers bounce quickly between tech devices, therefore marketers must be able to attract their attention, transmit the message to them, make a call of action, and finalize the deal in a quick way. From personal computers to tablets, smartphones, and wearables, Gen Z is the first generation who has never experienced the world before the digital environment existed.

There are a few things that should be kept in mind when marketing to Gen Z besides their characteristic of quickly bouncing between digital devices (personal computer, tablet, smartphone, wearables,…). For Gen Zers, brand loyalty is not important. They value quality more than loyalty. They are extremely influenced by their family members and friends and they post a lot of things on social media, especially Instagram, facebook, and TikTok. Their creativity demonstrated in the bold and creative social media posts that they share shows that they are value-conscious and don’t accept any brand unless it is of real value. They have their own celebrities on YouTube and like Millennials they support brands that are socially and environmentally right. For these reasons marketing to Gen Zers is preferably done by Gen Zers who know their celebrities, how they think, and what influences their decision: they need to be influenced in under 8 seconds!

With the propagation of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC), Gen Zers appeared to value formal education paths less than previous generations. They are digital natives and they developed practicality like no generation before. Communicating your offers to them should be based on practicality and logic that suits their lifestyle. Marketers preferred channels of communication for Gen Z are Instagram ads and YouTube videos and ads. They are attracted by original content, they value short videos and presentations by their YouTube influencers. They look for the best experience therefore marketers prioritize optimizing mobile experiences. With their specificities in connecting with the world, Gen Zers are currently changing the way business is made.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

21 Feb, 2022

Blog Posts

New Advancement In Age-Related Macular Degeneration Treatment

Despite the absence of treatment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), there are always continuous efforts to come out with new solutions. Vision rehabilitation programs and advancements in devices for low-vision are used to build visual skills, develop new tools to help perform daily living activities, and help them live with AMD. Currently, the main form of treating AMD patients is through injection of anti-vascular endothelial growth factors (anti-VEGF) agents. The high levels of VEGF in the eye are linked to the formation of abnormal blood vessels that cause much of the damage in wet AMD. Anti-VEGF agents are employed to brake the disease process and reduce the damaging effects of these leaky abnormal blood vessels. The use of Anti-VEGF stabilizes vision in many patients and can sometimes improve visual acuity.

On October 22, 2021, the FDA approved Susvimo^™(ranibizumab injection) 100 mg/mL for intravitreal application via ocular implant for the treatment of people with wet, or neovascular, AMD who have previously responded to at least two anti-vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF) injections. Anti-VEGF medications are administered by injecting them directly into the affected eye. Even though the Anti-VEGF injection procedure is very comfortable due to the use of anesthetic eye drops, it has to be done regularly and requires multiple injections to obtain effective results. Eye doctors set the best treatment schedule for every patient which can sometimes be on a monthly interval. Patients may miss their scheduled injection which can alter the effectiveness of the treatment.

A team of researchers at John Hopkins worked on a simple test that aims to identify patients who can stop anti-VEGF injection treatment. The preliminary study was conducted on 106 people with “wet” age-related macular degeneration. The researchers reported that as many as a third of those with the blinding AMD may someday be able to safely stop eye injection therapy without further vision loss. Even though the researchers, fall short of predicting precisely which patients can stop injections and when they can end the treatment, they say the research outcomes add to growing evidence that many people with AMD may not be required to undergo monthly Anti-VEGF injections. The researchers also pointed to specific proteins that those who stopped the treatment produced at different levels, which may help in developing a test that accurately identifies patients who may be weaned off anti-VEGF treatment.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

19 Feb, 2022

Blog Posts

Who Do You Value Most? Energetic Leaders, Experts, or Integrous Leaders?

When asked about the traits he looks at in employees, Warren Buffet, the American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway replied “We look for three things when we hire people. We look for intelligence, we look for initiative or energy, and we look for integrity. And if they don’t have the latter, the first two will kill you because if you’re going to get someone without integrity, you want them lazy and dumb.” An article published in the Journal of Business Ethics in 2008 entitled “Impostors Masquerading as Leaders: Can the Contagion Be Contained?” profiles a genuine leader as someone who has three essential, necessary, and sufficient traits: energy, expertise, and integrity.

A real and authentic leader must have the initiative and sufficient “energy” to be able to energize and drive his team and the whole organization as well as all stakeholders to move and attain their purpose. Driven leaders have the initiative to lead, be successful, and play a major role in the organization’s sustainable growth. Energetic leaders know how to close deals and meet deadlines. they are passionate, great communicators, and excellent at motivating and selling their idea in a quiet, smooth, and orderly way. Energy generates energy, drives performance, and elevates the whole team’s morale to move at the same frequency and sustain growth and success.

A real leader must have the required “expertise” and professional competence to transform the energy of the organization into purposeful action. Thomas Stewart, Editor of Harvard Business emphasizes four domains of expertise when it comes to the stuff managers must know. Those include specific subject-matter knowledge, broad and deep knowledge of a field that confers the right to coordinate the work of others, knowledge of the outside world, and political expertise or people skill. Expertise is required in harnessing energy for the good of the organization’s stakeholders otherwise it would be wasteful and sometimes destructive.

The most important a real leader must have is “integrity”. Integrity steers and manages the organization in the right direction protecting the interests of all stakeholders. Integrity is a non-negotiable trait; it is about constant compliance with the organization’s values and the leader’s values pertaining to honesty, trustworthiness, and reliability. Leaders with integrity are trusted by their colleagues because they walk the talk, are transparent and not afraid to say the truth, and they own their mistakes because they hold themselves accountable and do not blame their teammates.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

18 Feb, 2022

Blog Posts

Weed Out Toxic Employees Before They Join Your Practice

We are focused on attracting and retaining top talents by employing every possible way to improve our employer brand and stand out in the talent marketplace. Very often we fall into the trap of hiring toxic people under the pretext that they have a tremendous resume or their college grades were outstanding. Not being able to filter toxic people right from the first interview stages may cost the practice a lot more than not hiring anyone. In fact, in a 2015 Harvard Business Review (HBR) article entitled “It’s Better to Avoid a Toxic Employee than Hire a Superstar”, Nicole Torres a former senior editor at HBR points to those talents or “superstars” -as she called them- can generate 80% of the practice’s profit and will attract other superstars to join the business. However, by avoiding toxic employees, who are talented and productive employees but engage in behaviors that are harmful to the organization for not respecting its rules and violating its policy, the company can be better off and can generate even more money than finding and retaining superstars.

There is a lot that can be learned from job interviewers in large companies when it comes to identifying toxic people. Interviewers ask toxic questions and require the candidate to provide more than one example (usually 3 to five) of a situation and how he was able to handle each situation. They always require more than two references with whom they speak about their experience with the candidate. Interviewers ask a lot of behavioral questions and they repeat the same process at different interview stages employing different interviewers. The hardest part is to be able to understand what impressions does the workplace environment leave on the employee and if this affects his interaction with other team members. It is very common that the employee is unconscious of the fact that he is transmitting bad behavior.

One way to spot a toxic employee is to ask him to describe past situations where he was confronted with coworkers and how he behaved. Another way is to actually get your team involved and ask him to go out together for lunch, dinner, or another event. Christine Porath, a professor of management at Georgetown University and the author of “Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace” emphasizes rudeness and its contagious effect in the workplace. She recommends and insists on the importance of interviewing for civility, getting your team involved, and asking their references about civility. Being civil in fact should be mutual, the employer should be mindful and respectful with the employee if he is expecting to hire civil people. Employers should be role models when it comes to civility moreover they should invite employees to speak up when issues arise so that they can contain them and prevent them from spreading into the whole organization.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

17 Feb, 2022

Blog Posts

Low Vision Rehabilitation Can Help People With Low Vision To Make The Best Of Their Eyesight

February is Low Vision Awareness Month and a time to talk about vision rehabilitation and its importance in improving low vision patients’ quality of life. Millions of people are affected by vision impairment -including low vision- among them are many older adults. Vision impaired people have difficulty reading, shopping, or cooking. Patients may think that low vision can be corrected by standard treatments (reading glasses, eyeglasses, contact lenses, or surgery) and people can have a normal life. However, the truth is that patients with low vision may not have sufficient eyesight to conduct daily activities. Vision rehabilitation can help low-vision patients to stay independent and make most of their sight.

Vision rehabilitation allows rebuilding and reinforcement of the visual foundation. Vision rehabilitation increases both physical and psychological health as well as improvement of patients’ functional abilities, quality of life, adaptation with greater continued use of low vision devices, and improvement of distance and near vision. Vision rehabilitation consists of the identification of goals, introduction to assistive devices, and training.

During vision rehabilitation session s , patients learn how to manage daily activities such as:

adapting the home for safety and navigation
improving lighting conditions
preparing meals
labeling medications, clothing, and appliances
writing
keeping financial records
personal grooming
using magnifiers for easier reading

Vision rehabilitation specialists work closely with the patient and take him through a series of steps that begin with evaluating the patient’s current eyesight and what they are trying to accomplish with the patient. A complete comprehensive exam is conducted to obtain a visual assessment. Patients then follow a scheduled rehabilitation training throughout a period of time. Environmental modifications will be required especially for People with moderate to severe visual loss along with additional experience with low vision devices and technology to help maximize their vision. The client will learn that magnification of both near and distant images can improve visual function in nearly everyone with central vision loss.

Prior to selecting the most appropriate low vision device for the patient, the vision rehabilitation specialists will:

Identify exactly what daily activities the client wants to accomplish.
Analyze the client’s fine and gross motor skills to confirm his or her ability to operate the low vision devices.
Determine which eye is dominant.
Determine whether monocular or binocular vision would be better.
Determine whether the client would benefit from practicing eccentric (off-center) viewing.
Determine if illuminated magnifiers are necessary.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

16 Feb, 2022

Blog Posts

See What I See: National Eye Institute Virtual Reality Eye Disease Experience

National Eye Institue “See What I See” is an app that virtually shows what people with age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma see. It is available for download at App Store and Google Play.

Visit NEI website to know more about “See What I See” as well as to contribute to low vision awareness month.

Dr. Gilbert Nacouzi

15 Feb, 2022

Blog Posts

Marketing Your Optometry Practice to Millennials

The generation of millennials comprises of those born between 1981 and 1996, whose age is between 26 and 41 years old. This generational cohort spans almost two decades making it larger than generation X and includes people who are at graduate school and early career as well as older ones who fill executive positions like senior managers, established startup entrepreneurs, and executives. Managers and marketers need to take into account the large extent of this generation and its nonhomogeneous nature to come up with the appropriate marketing strategy to target each subcohort.

There are important key points to consider when marketing to millennials. This is the first cohort to experience the emergence of the internet, emails, smart mobile phones, google search, and social media. The optimal marketing strategy should include a strong digital marketing strategy. The Online footprint should include a search engine optimized website as well as social media accounts and pages. Millennials respond to emails however they are extremely attracted to messaging. The website should be optimized for mobile and tablets. Concentrate your social media effort on announcements, launching new products, providing instructions and recommendations. All social media posts and content should end with a clear call-to-action that takes the user to schedule an appointment or land on a webpage to purchase a product or a service.

Millennials are attracted to loyalty programs, rewards, and discount deals, however, they are also very brand aware that they question, compare, and review every offer on the internet. Word of mouth is very strong among millennials, it can help you grow just like it can destroy your reputation if you make mistakes. The younger millennials will engage in your social media campaigns and can be your practice ambassador and relate to the content you share through the use of hashtags.

Millennials subscribe to social media groups like Facebook and LinkedIn groups they like to visit brick and mortar for shopping and they possess a very strong BS detector. Therefore, with millennials selling begins with social media and continues all the ways to contact your practice and visit you. Your phone communication strategy must be compelling to capture new patients and support existing ones too. Transparency plays a huge role in marketing your products to millennials and they are more likely to purchase products committed to a social and environmental cause. Millennials are attracted to the purpose and values of your practice not just its products.

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