Wayfinder Reads: The Long Game by Dorie Clark
Why Sustainable Growth Is Harder (and Wiser) Than It Looks
In healthcare, urgency is baked into the work. There’s always someone waiting, something delayed, a fire to put out. And for private practice owners, especially those who deeply care, it’s easy to mistake the pace of the urgent for the path to success.
Dorie Clark’s The Long Game offers a rare kind of medicine: a reminder that just because everything feels urgent, doesn’t mean we should build our strategy around urgency. The subtitle says it best: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World.
That’s not just a nice idea. It’s a discipline.
And for many of the practice owners we serve, it’s also the challenge of their current season: How do I grow this practice without losing myself in the process?
Clark doesn't offer quick wins. She offers a worldview. One rooted in strategy, intentionality, and the deeply uncomfortable truth that lasting impact often looks like slow progress… until it doesn’t.
Here are four core ideas from the book that stayed with us, along with a few questions we’re learning to live with:
White Space Isn’t a Luxury - It’s a Leadership Practice
Clark opens with a bold claim: most people don’t have a strategy problem. They have a bandwidth problem. We want to play the long game, but our calendars are booked solid with short-game demands.
The challenge: Can you protect space to think? To plan? To step back?
For many practice leaders, time to think feels indulgent. But it’s exactly the space where vision, creativity, and sustainable strategy are born. Without it, we default to reacting instead of leading.
Try this: Block off one hour each week to do nothing “productive.” Use it to reflect, think ahead, or ask yourself hard questions:
What am I building?
What am I tolerating?
What do I keep postponing because I don’t have time to deal with it?
Stop Treating Busy as a Badge of Honor
In one chapter, Clark talks about how we glorify busyness but confuse activity for progress. Especially in medical practices, the systems are complex and the workloads are heavy. But more work doesn’t always equal more value.
The challenge: What does meaningful progress actually look like in your role? In your practice?
Busy can be addictive. It gives the illusion of control. But as leaders, we have to discern the difference between being in motion and being in alignment.
Try this: Take inventory of the recurring tasks or meetings in your week. What’s there because it’s useful? What’s there because it’s habit? And what’s there because you’re afraid of what would happen if you stopped?
Play the Game That’s Yours to Win
This is one of Clark’s core themes: long-term thinkers know which game they’re playing. And they don’t get distracted by games that aren’t theirs.
In healthcare especially, comparison is a trap. Another practice adds a service line, hires a consultant, builds a second location, and suddenly you’re questioning your path.
But growth that doesn’t align with your values isn’t growth. It’s erosion.
The challenge: What kind of business are you building and why?
Try this: Write your “why not.” Not why you started your practice but why you didn’t choose other paths. What you’ve said no to. What you’re unwilling to compromise. This creates a filter that helps you stay focused when opportunities (and FOMO) show up.
Trust the Season You’re In
This one may be the hardest. Clark reminds us that long-term success is rarely linear. It’s filled with seasons of preparation, visibility, traction, and quiet. But we often mistake the quiet seasons: the waiting, the foundation-building, the unseen grind for failure.
The challenge: Can you trust that what you're doing now matters, even if no one else can see it yet?
At Wayfinder, we’ve watched practice owners double down on their values in times of uncertainty and come out stronger for it. We've also seen what happens when people scale too fast, compromise too much, or chase growth without infrastructure.
Try this: At your next team meeting, name the season you’re in. Say it out loud. Invite others into that framing. Are you in a season of stabilizing? Stretching? Learning? Healing? Naming it helps you lead with clarity and gives your team language for their own expectations.
We read The Long Game as a reminder, not a roadmap. It won’t tell you which decision to make but it will challenge the speed and stories that drive your decisions.
This is a book for the ones who are building something that matters.
For the ones playing the game no one sees.
For the ones who are tired, but not done.
Because the long game is about more than strategy.
It’s about becoming the kind of leader whose impact outlasts the urgency.
