Everyone has had dreams of really excelling at something in their lives. For instance, as a healthcare professional you probably envisioned an awesome practice with terrific patients or clients who went ahead with the ideal care you were presenting, and you and your fabulous team delivered the service with a care level that exceeded your patients’ or clients’ expectations.
And some of you have gone ahead and done just that and are continually striving to improve the service and care levels in your practice to even higher standards.
Others may have gotten mired down and settled for mediocre, and are living lives of dull monotony of getting up every day and doing the same routine over and over again. Their dreams have all but disappeared. They have become conventional and average.
The Watershed Point
There is usually a watershed point before going over the edge and downward … where there is still enough “fight back” in you to turn things around and make the changes that will pull it back up and get things going in the direction of “great” again.
Most of our 1,400 clients were at that watershed point of realizing they were not accomplishing their goals (or not as fast as they wanted to) and hired us to help them get on track for “great.” Some were already going down, others were stalled and stagnant, some needed a “butt-kicker” to get them to do things they already knew they needed to do, and finally, there were those who realized that there is more to know about running a top-end practice and wanted a coach so they could become an elite athlete in terms of the service and care delivered in their practice.
In-Depth Practice Assessment
If you do not feel you are at the top of your game and you still want to fight back and get there, the first thing to do is to decide to do so. It is the decision that starts the process. A good place to then begin is an assessment of exactly what you really WANT, i.e. location, staff, type of patients or clients, fees, net income, hours, systems and structure (as in job descriptions and policy manual and staff meetings, protocols), software and technology functionality, appearance of practice, etc..
Then, being brutally honest with yourself, assess where the practice really is at right now. In this way, you can really see exactly what aspects need to change in order to move from average to great. (We offer a free, in-depth practice analysis to help with this assessment which will go much deeper if you would like an outside opinion.)
Start the Changes
Next, you need to make a strategy which will lay out the sequence of changes and improvements and who will do each thing and by when. You could hold weekly staff meetings or “Focus on Great Sessions” to review progress so that everyone is accountable for accomplishing their assignments. You need to also watch the statistics of the practice to ensure that the “improvements” in the service really are improving the practice in the right direction.
If you would like help with any of this, we are available as a resource that has helped more than 1,400 practitioners reach for greatness. Just call for the free practice analysis and get to know us.
Contact us for more information!
Call us at 416-466-6217
for a FREE Practice Assessment!
Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to The Art of Management Inc. and a clickable link back to this page.