I hate saying this because it makes me sound pompous, but practice owners struggle and do not reach optimum for one main reason.
They are great operators and lousy owners.
There. I said it. As a medical professional you will have two reactions. Agree or you are screaming at your screen in disgust.
But I am often blunt, so I say it as it is. Besides, I have a lot of evidence to back it up.
It’s true. I speak to practice owners every day. And successful ones leave traits behind their success.
You cannot succeed as a practice owner without business skills and tools.
If you were to house all the books written about leadership then it would be enough to cover Argentina. Actually, that may be untrue as I have no idea how many books have been written. But let’s leave it at ‘a lot.’
Most focus on the character traits, communication styles, or personality types of a successful CEO or business owner.
These are important. But there are some things a practice owner cannot delegate. If these jobs are not successfully executed, the practice owner and the business will be ineffective, regardless of how brilliant they are personally.
1. Clarity
Practice owners are good at describing the dream, the vision, and their passion.
But ask them to clarify reality and sometimes it seems that we are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Yeah, I know it sounds rude. But it’s fact. Let me give you an example.
If your desire is to go to Empire State Building in New York City (point A), it is important that you know if you are starting in Brisbane or Queens (point B).
You see if you are living in Queens you can jump in a car flick on the Sat Nav and get there in no time.
If in Brisbane you have get the government to sign off (Covid19), sell your children (because the airfare is astronomical right now), get tested (several times), get tested for drugs (airport security) get on a plane (more security), wait for the person in front of you to put the equivalent of a microwave oven in the overhead locker, find a seat, wait for the captain to tell you the weather in New York (why do they do that?) then go through immigration (and be called an alien) and then a taxi to the Empire State Building.
Different resources and timelines are required depending on where you start the journey.
And many underestimate what is required at the beginning of the journey.
Where are you and where do you really want to go? If you are not clear on it, you may get there eventually but the chances are you might not make it.
2. What’s the Gap
If you are not sure where Point A and Point B is, you don’t know what the gap is. The gap is the difference between your reality (what is the position right now) and your desired outcome (what you want the position to be).
Once you identify the gap, you can identify what needs to happen to overcome it.
3. Identify the obstacles
Once you know what is stopping you the practice owner must design a plan and the blueprint to overcome it with the help of their practice manager.
They then need to tell the team what they believe the obstacle is. And their vision of how to overcome it.
The practice owner then needs to build the process or machine that will overcome it.
Eg a practice owner believes they need to do more on social media to gain more patients and engagement.
Their idea is to allocate a person to do it.
They would tell the team this is what they are trying to do.
The machine that needs to be put in place.
– Identify who (someone already employed or a new employee)
– What kind of content needs to be put up. How often, when and to whom?
– A measuring system to see if new patients and engagement are being achieved.
4. Don’t negotiate when it comes to your Team
Practice owners think they are the business. Sorry, but you are not.
Your team is the single most important component of successfully and efficiently operating the machine you have designed and built.
And I find it surprising that despite this being one of the costliest parts to running a business, business owners tend to make exceptions and tolerate mediocrity operations of their team.
Mediocrity team = Poor profits = Stressed practice owner.
5. Create the Culture
How your team interacts and talk to each other is the essence of culture. This then builds into how they interact and talk to your patients.
Every practice no matter how small has a culture.
Sometimes intentions are great, but your culture will come down from the business owner and management and sometimes what we want to achieve and what we get are two different things.
For example, I recently read that a major company wanted their team to be healthier so organised fresh fruit, subsidised gym membership and yoga classes. This all sounds great until you find out that the team could not use these unless they finished their allocated work.
Apart from being a bit unfair, this then feeds into how the team interacts with business customers – To the team, it is OK to say one thing to the customer but deliver something else.
How many jelly beans, fresh fruit or swanky coffee machines are in the kitchen or even if you are allowed to bring your dog to work does not equate to culture. Jelly beans, the coffee machine and dogs are perks and have nothing to do with culture. A great culture is based on showing other people that you care, accountability, measuring, and a desire for excellence.
