Are You the MacGyver in Your Veterinary Practice?

MacGyver was the television character who could escape almost any situation with ingenuity, a Swiss Army knife, a paper clip, or whatever happened to be lying around. He was remarkably resourceful, and veterinary medicine creates plenty of MacGyvers of its own.

For much of my veterinary career, I was a MacGyver, and I was pretty good at it. Give me a difficult case, a broken piece of equipment, a staffing issue, an unhappy client, or something that just was not working properly, and I wanted to figure it out. There was something deeply satisfying about being the person who could fix things.

Many veterinarians will recognize this feeling. We are trained to solve problems. A patient walks into the hospital and cannot tell us what is wrong. We collect clues, make decisions, improvise when necessary, and eventually come up with a plan. Problem solving is part of the job, but for some of us, it becomes more than that. It becomes part of who we are.

The MacGyver Effect

Something goes wrong, and everyone knows who to call. The computer isn't working. The vacuum is clogged. Someone can't get the catheter in. The schedule is overbooked. A client is furious. The autoclave is making a strange noise. Two staff members aren't getting along. In my practice, the response was often, "Get Bill."

I liked being that person. There was a little dopamine hit every time I solved something, and it became quite addictive. Sometimes it came from the intellectual challenge, and sometimes it was the relief of making a problem disappear. As an owner, there was satisfaction in fixing something myself. And sometimes, if I am being truthful, it just felt good to be needed.

What Is the Cost?

Looking back, I can see something I didn't appreciate nearly enough at the time. Every

problem I personally solved had a cost. While I was fixing one thing, I wasn't doing something else. Perhaps I wasn't mentoring a young veterinarian or thinking about where the practice needed to go next. Maybe I wasn't having lunch with someone who needed to talk, or getting home to my family when I had planned.

And sometimes I was solving a problem that someone else was perfectly capable of learning to solve. That matters, because when you become the person who always has the answer, people naturally start bringing you more questions. Without realizing it, you may begin training the people around you to rely on you rather than developing confidence in themselves.

You become more capable while they become more dependent.

The Competence Trap

There is an odd trap that catches capable people. The better we become at solving problems, the more problems people give us. We interpret that as evidence of our value, and sometimes it is.

But usefulness and leadership are not always the same thing.

There are certainly times when experience matters and someone needs to step in. Veterinary practice can be messy, unpredictable, and occasionally chaotic. Sometimes the problem really does need a MacGyver. But there are also moments when the most useful thing we can do is resist the urge to fix it.

In his book The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier calls this habit the Advice Monster - the deeply ingrained habit of jumping straight to advice and solutions the moment someone brings us a problem. We see the issue, we know we can help, and before we have even fully listened, we are already telling someone what to do. It feels helpful. It often isn't.

Instead of immediately giving the answer, we might ask, "What do you think?" or "What have you tried?" or even, "What would you do if I wasn't here?" Those questions may take longer in the beginning, but over time something important begins to change. People start trusting their own judgment. They develop confidence and capability, and suddenly MacGyver isn't required quite as often.

Why Is It So Hard to Stop?

I don't think this is only about workload. There is an identity underneath it. For many veterinarians, competence has been rewarded for most of our lives. We were good students. We got into veterinary school. We learned difficult things. People trusted us with important decisions, and knowing what to do became part of how we measured ourselves.

So when we become practice owners, practice managers, medical directors, or experienced associates, letting somebody else figure something out can feel strangely uncomfortable. What if they do it differently? What if they make a mistake? What if I could have done it faster myself? And perhaps underneath all those questions is a more uncomfortable one:

What if they don't need me?

That can be harder to admit. Part of becoming an experienced veterinarian or leader may be recognizing that our greatest contribution isn't always solving the problem ourselves. Sometimes it is developing someone else who can solve it, and creating new leaders at the same time.

A Different Kind of MacGyver

I don't regret being resourceful. That quality served me well throughout my career - it still does. Veterinary medicine requires creativity, persistence, and the ability to think when the perfect solution isn't available. I would never want to lose that. But if I could go back, I might be more selective about where I used it.

Not every problem needs our touch. Not every question needs our answer. And not every fire requires us to grab the extinguisher. The challenge is recognizing that familiar urge to jump in and asking ourselves:

"Does this problem really need me, or does someone else need the opportunity to solve it?"

For those of us who have spent a career becoming very good MacGyvers, that can be surprisingly difficult. It can also be surprisingly freeing. The next time someone brings you a problem, and you feel that familiar pull to jump in, notice what happens. Could you pause a little longer, leave the Swiss Army knife in your pocket, and ask,

"What do you think you should do?"

You may discover that one of the most valuable problems you ever solve is figuring out which problem no longer needs you.

-Dr. Bill