I spend a lot of time with pharmacy owners, and one of the most common ways they describe their businesses is simply, “We’re busy.”
Usually, I can see exactly what they mean. The dispensary is moving constantly, the phones are ringing, patients are waiting, clinical services are being squeezed into the day, and there always seems to be someone who needs something from the owner. There are staffing issues to deal with, emails waiting for answers, invoices to review, projects that need attention and a list of things everyone agrees they will get to when things settle down.
Except things rarely settle down. For a long time, I think we have associated that kind of busyness with success in pharmacy. A busy dispensary feels like a healthy dispensary. A full appointment calendar feels like growth. An owner who is needed everywhere feels important to the business. There is also a certain pride that comes from being able to handle an enormous amount, particularly in a profession where people are extraordinarily good at adapting and finding a way to make things work.
But the more businesses I work with, the more interested I have become in what all that activity is actually producing. Because activity, productivity, progress and impact are not the same thing. A team can be incredibly productive at completing the work in front of them without necessarily making progress on the things that would make the pharmacy stronger. An owner can make a hundred decisions in a day and still not have time to make the few decisions that could materially change the business. A pharmacy can increase prescription volume and clinical services and still find that profitability, team capacity or quality of life haven't improved along with them.
That is when I start to question whether we are looking at a busy business or a business that has become unnecessarily difficult to operate.
Pharmacy teams are incredibly good at compensating
One of the things I admire most about pharmacy teams is also something I think can hide operational problems for a very long time. Pharmacy people figure things out.
When a process doesn't work particularly well, someone creates a workaround. When the pharmacist is interrupted constantly, they learn to switch between tasks remarkably quickly. When there isn't enough capacity, people stay later or skip a break. When roles aren't entirely clear, the most capable person often quietly picks up whatever isn't getting done. And over time, those adaptations become part of how the pharmacy operates. Nobody necessarily thinks of them as problems anymore because the team has learned how to function around them. This is where being busy can become deceptive. If good people are working extremely hard, they can make an inefficient operation look functional for years.
Eventually, though, there is a cost. It might show up as turnover, overtime, frustration, missed opportunities or an owner who feels as though they can never really step away. Sometimes it only becomes obvious when the business grows, someone leaves, a new service is added or the team simply reaches the point where they cannot absorb anything else. Often, the problem isn't that people suddenly stopped performing. The operation had been relying on their extra effort all along.
I pay a lot of attention to what the owner is doing
When I am trying to understand a pharmacy business, one of the things I find most revealing is how the owner spends their time.
If an owner wants to grow the business, develop new services, build partnerships, understand the financials, develop their people and think strategically about the future, but most of their week is consumed by routine decisions, operational problems and work that could reasonably be done by someone else, there is an obvious disconnect. It is very difficult to lead the next stage of a business when all your capacity is being used to maintain the current one.
This often happens gradually. Many successful independent pharmacies were built precisely because the owner was willing to do everything. They knew the patients, made the decisions, solved the problems and stepped into whatever role was needed. That involvement was a strength and may have been essential to building the business.
But businesses evolve, and the way we lead them has to evolve too. There comes a point where being involved in everything no longer gives the owner greater control. It actually is the opposite... it limits what the business can do without them.
I see owners reach this point and assume the answer is that they need to become more efficient personally. They need a better calendar, an earlier morning, more protein or cottage cheese and another productivity tool or a few more hours on Sunday.
Sometimes what they really need is a business that requires less unnecessary involvement from them.
What could your business do if it wasn't quite so busy?
I think this is the question I want owners to sit with. Not how you can squeeze more into the day, but what could become possible if the business gave some time back.
Perhaps your pharmacists could spend more time practising at the top of their scope. Maybe a clinical program that has been talked about for a year could finally become real. Perhaps you could spend more time developing your team, understanding your numbers or building relationships in the community. Maybe you could finally work on the parts of the business that will matter three years from now instead of continuously responding to what matters in the next three hours. Or perhaps you could simply leave the pharmacy at a reasonable time more often and have a business that continues to function exceptionally well without your constant involvement. I think that counts too.
So if your answer to “How are things going?” has been “busy” for as long as you can remember, I might ask one more question:
What is all that busy building?
If the answer isn't immediately clear, it may be time to have someone help you look at the business differently.
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