Definition of reboot (verb): Restart or revive, give fresh impetus to.
Do you ever wish life had a reboot button like a computer where you can shut it down and restart if something goes wrong? This could be in any area of your life – from personal interests, to family matters, your business or practice, your volunteer work, your community, politics, and so on. You could find yourself wishing to reboot in any or all of these.
However, rebooting your life does not necessarily mean getting a divorce or quitting a relationship; nor does it mean moving to a different city; nor quitting all your friendships and starting over – though many people have done these extreme reboots.
Rebooting your practice, similarly, does not mean closing the door on your practice or selling it and moving to a new town just to get a change. This thought may have crossed your mind from time to time, and some professionals have gone ahead and done just that.
Instead of a complete “restart” reboot, maybe what you are looking for is a “revive or give fresh impetus” type of reboot (per the definition at the beginning of this article). Here are a few ways you could accomplish this.
Find Fresh Impetus
Take a mini retreat. This could be a weekend away with your partner so you are out of your normal hectic life which can give you the time and space to take a fresh look at the area of your life that you want to revive or gain a fresh impetus for. Take your notebook computer or tablet with you and any material you may need for analysis and decisions. This could be at a cottage (though not with a lot of others around) or a hotel or bed and breakfast.
In this environment, you can distance yourself from being “stuck in the trees” to now being “outside the forest” so to speak. Ask yourself what you really want to accomplish with your practice. What did you envision when you started the practice? What wish list items do you have for it? What is not perfect that, if changed, would make you look forward to going to work every day and being extremely proud of your practice? What is stopping you from achieving that? What ideas do you have for that? When would you like to start changing it?
Now make firm decisions and write them down. Don’t leave the area unresolved. Positive action of any kind is much more empowering than doing nothing about it at all. Go back home with a Plan of Action or Strategy.
Here are some examples of rebooting your practice:
Hours of Practice
Perhaps the hours of your practice do not work for your life/work balance. Perhaps you are an early bird and should start at 6 or 7 a.m. and go home at 3 p.m. to be with your children, etc. Or maybe you are NOT an early morning person and you should change your hours to start later and run later – at least for a few days of the week. Perhaps working 4 longish days and having a 3 day weekend would work better for you. Patient or clients will come when you are available.
New Goals
You may have had an initial goal to get the practice solvent (more cash than bills). If you have achieved that, you may need to rethink your goals and what your NEXT level is for your practice. Do you want to be the biggest and the best in your area? Do you want to own more than one location? Do you want to have a boutique practice? Do you want associates?
Patient Base
Do you want to change up the type of patients you are treating? Marketing styles and methods directly influence what kinds of people are attracted to your practice. You may have had a goal to treat the kind of patients you enjoy treating. If so, change up your marketing strategies to find those people.
Staff Analysis
What about your staff? Assess what needs to be done in this aspect of the practice. There are different types of staff:
- The performers who know what to do and are really pushing in the right direction.
- There are highly effective doers who just need guidance and training to be a future performer.
- There are partial doers who are not making much of a difference to the overall production of the team.
- There is a troublesome staff member who alternates between helping and slowing things down. His influence makes work harder and less predictable for others.
- There is the “stopper” who is actively trying to harm your operation but is often trying to hide his or her deeds by the use of a “nice” social mask, or by pointing the finger at others for blame.
By using the above criteria, you may be able to make some positive decisions about your team and adjustments that may need to be made.
Get going!
The above are just some sample ideas to jump you off in the right direction. Start enjoying your life more by doing a reboot for a fresh start!
