Lifestyle

Best Practices for Strengthening Your Professional Weaknesses

Published

5 years ago

July 11, 2021

It doesn’t matter how skilled you are in your career – or how far you’ve advanced – you’re always going to have weaknesses. And if you want to continue improving, you have to deal with these weaknesses sooner rather than later.

The Backwards Approach to Professional Development

Have you ever noticed that most of the workforce (and most people in general) have a backward approach to professional development?

As humans, we have this desire to feel important. And one of the ways we feel important and fulfilled is by leveraging our strengths and skills. When we’re good at something, we typically enjoy doing it (and want to do more of it). When we’re bad at something, it makes us feel inadequate – so we avoid it.

But if we only do the things we’re naturally good at and avoid the things we’re not skilled at, we don’t actually improve. We end up staying the same. Worse yet, we often get burned out and see a decline in the areas where we were once proficient.

The real purpose of professional development is to lean into weaknesses and refine the areas where we’re inadequate. And though it’s not comfortable to do this, it provides far more growth.

5 Tips for Strengthening Your Weaknesses

If you want to develop as a professional, it starts with identifying your weaknesses and being willing to address them. Here are some tips to help you strengthen your shortcomings:

Set Specific Goals

If you’re going to go through the discomfort of strengthening your weaknesses, you need a plan. Setting very specific goals will give you a target to reach for. As you get closer to this goal, you’ll feel yourself making progress. This will provide further energy and motivation.

If your weakness is public speaking, for example, having a goal of giving a 10-minute presentation at a company event by the end of the year will give you something tangible to strive for.

Spend Time With the Right People

You become the combination of the people you spend the most time with. Make sure you’re spending time with people who help you grow, rather than people who make you comfortable.

Find two or three people who are already skilled in the area where you’re weak. Take them out to lunches and dinners. Ask questions, gather feedback, and solicit advice. It’ll be awkward and painful at times. But it’ll spur on growth.

Invest in Continuing Education

If you’re in an industry where continuing education is required in order to remain actively licensed, you know the shortcuts. Most of your peers have figured out how to take the easiest classes and courses so they can skate by. (You’ve probably done it yourself in the past.) But if you want to grow, use continuing education as an opportunity to strengthen your weaknesses.

If you’re a respiratory therapist, for example, don’t take respiratory therapy CEU’s on ethics and professional boundaries if that’s something you’re already familiar with. If you know you’re lacking in knowledge on chronic progressive lung disease, that’s the course you need to take.

Leverage Strengths to Tackle Weaknesses

One of the best things you can do is leverage a strength to tackle a weakness. Take a weakness in public speaking as an example. While you might be totally lacking in this area, you know you have a strength in woodworking. Rather than giving a speech on something that you know nothing about, you could give a presentation on woodworking. If nothing else, your knowledge of this topic will give you more confidence.

Take it Step by Step

You don’t have to eat the whole enchilada at once. The best way to tackle a weakness is by addressing it one bite at a time. A step-by-step approach allows you to slowly improve your skills and build confidence.

Start by giving a one-minute speech in the mirror with nobody watching. Then challenge yourself to record yourself giving a presentation and upload it on YouTube. Next, do a Facebook Live where you present on a topic for five minutes. Then do it in person with a small audience. Then a larger audience, etc.

When you take this step-by-step approach, your weakness of public speaking (or whatever it is) becomes much more manageable. Try this strategy and see what you think.

Get Ready to Grow

Growth is rarely easy or painless. It requires effort, energy, time, and confrontation. But when it’s all said and done, professional development has a refining impact. It could take months or years, but your willingness to tackle your weaknesses head-on will produce positive results. Stay with it!

Lifestyle

Kat Marie Alvarez: Where Innovation Meets Regulation

Published

2 days ago

January 23, 2026

Michelle Langton

Regulation is often thought of as a limitation, yet in healthcare, it also serves as a foundation for building models that endure. For Kat Marie Alvarez, Founder and CEO of KATALYST & CO, the framework of rules established by agencies like CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) and the OIG ( office of the Inspector General) create opportunities to design systems that are compliant, ethical, and transformative. Her approach demonstrates that regulation can be a platform for innovation when it is interpreted with both technical rigor and vision.

Kat’s 25-year career reflects this philosophy. A former nurse who advanced into executive leadership and strategy, she has led $2.7B+ P&L operations, advised on over $5B in healthcare transactions, and guided value based organizations including Innovacare, Cano Health, WellMed, Centene, and Humana through periods of exponential scaling. Her perspective combines clinical, financial, and regulatory experience, giving her a unique ability to design structures that support integrity and accountability while driving measurable outcomes.

Turning Statutes into Strategy

For Kat, regulation serves as a framework for building smarter and more ethical models. She interprets CMS guidance and OIG rules as levers for innovation, using them to advance integrity and accountability. With the CMS V28 risk adjustment model, Alvarez refined coding practices, strengthened clinical documentation, and structured risk frameworks that reward accuracy and elevate standards of care. In addressing RADV audits, she crafted strategies that protect stakeholders while keeping patient outcomes at the forefront. She aligns compliance, cost, and care in equal measure. Her current work as a contributor to the CMS IDea Challenge, an initiative focused on strengthening the foundation of trust in our system, further echoes her commitment to advancing regulations in ways that unlock innovation while safeguarding the integrity of care.

Her interpretive approach brings discipline and vision to every challenge. She engages stakeholders to redesign workflows that meet regulatory requirements and enhance the patient experience. Each policy becomes a mechanism to strengthen accountability and operational precision, shaping a system that is both compliant and humane.

Innovation Built Within Boundaries

At KATALYST & CO, this interpretive approach is carried into every project. Kat has integrated predictive analytics and AI-driven tools into care models, with safeguards that ensure interventions remain clinician-led and ethically sound. For example, AI flags in chronic disease management are connected to human-led actions that improve patient care. The result is a model that benefits from technology while preserving accountability and clinical integrity.

Staffing and infrastructure provide another example of her philosophy in action. By leveraging offshore BPO operations in Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, KATALYST & CO extends capacity for health plans and providers. These expansions are carefully designed to meet data security, licensure, and jurisdictional requirements, ensuring that global reach is paired with local compliance. It is a system that balances scale with responsibility.

The Art of Influence Through Alignment

Kat often describes her role as translating complexity into clarity. Whether she is working with payers, providers, or investors, she builds consensus by grounding ambitious strategies in the language of statute. Value-based care models, utilization management programs, and clinical frameworks are designed to prove compliant ROI for stakeholders while maintaining patient focus.

Her approach begins with people. In integrations, partnerships, and platform builds, she respects legacy strengths, listens to frontline voices, and creates systems that are not only efficient but also trusted. This ensures that compliance does not feel like restriction, but like a structure that supports innovation and adoption.

Redefining the Future of Compliance and Care

KATALYST & CO is scaling with $10M in initial funding, expanded international operations, and a growing advisory portfolio. Under Kat’s leadership, the firm is showing how regulation can be a foundation for both innovation and durability. She demonstrates that lasting progress in healthcare is achieved by leaders who know how to design systems that are bold, ethical, and deeply human.

By approaching regulation as a guide rather than a limitation, Kat Alvarez is building models that prove compliance and innovation can move forward together. Her formula ensures that the future of healthcare is shaped not only by ambition, but also by trust and responsibility.