Leadership: Successful alchemy

“ would prefer to spend... time discussing briefly our greatest need in hospital pharmacy— leadership.”1 This is a quote from Gloria Niemeyer Francke’s1 1955 Whitney address, which is still ap-propriate. Leadership is just as criti-cal today to our future success as it was in 1955. As a profession we need to thrive in order to continue to pro-tect patients from medication harm and ensure the desired therapeutic outcome so they can resume their lives. Recent survey data indicate that in the next decade we will need 4000– 5000 new directors of pharmacy and middle managers, primarily because current leaders will be retiring.2 These numbers do not take into ac-count the expected expansion of health care needs as the baby boomers age. These same survey data indicate that only 44 % of the phar-macy directors who will be leaving their position have a staff member who they would recommend to re-place their position when they leave. It is unclear if these pharmacists would accept the position. Only 30% of current practitioners indicated any interest in seeking a leadershi