At the beginning of this year, we see optimism everywhere. Experts generally see the economy improving this year, unemployment is down (although wages are too), most pundits expect stock prices to increase this year and we still haven’t seen additional spending power unleashed as the result of falling oil prices.
You, too, probably have similarly high expectations for your practice. So, let’s review some of the big picture ways you can make sure that happens:
Set concrete, meaningful, controllable goals
So many times, practices will simply indicate that they want to grow when compared to the prior year. That begs the obvious questions: what do you want to grow? By how much? And so on. A lot of practices will choose production numbers and/or profitability. But decide on exactly what you want to improve upon and by how much. Then, post that number in bright red (or your favorite stark color) and then…
Monitor results constantly
Obviously, you cannot expect to reach your goal without knowing exactly where you stand in relation to that goal. Looking at results should become part of your regularly routine throughout the year. As an example, we look at results every morning with morning coffee. Some practices use text message alerts to update results, some have online reporting and some simply log into to the practice management or financial accounting system on a regular basis, but whatever your system, make it part of the regular routine and keep up.
Now, this does not mean that if you review results daily and have a bad day, you should change course. You don’t just dump all of your stocks because the Dow was off 200 points one day. Some days, a bad day is just a bad day which will probably (hopefully) be offset by a good day someday soon. But if you see a bad day and it just doesn’t make sense, you’ll want to know why.
Please note that this differs a bit from our advice to analyze results in monthly or quarterly chunks. That is looking at the past. When you are in the day-to-day and trying to meet goals, be focused on knowing where you stand. Then, go back and make decisions based on that monthly or quarterly data.
Have a plan
In rare circumstances do results simply improve without anything being done to change the intertia of the past. Maybe the competing practice next door just decides to shut the doors and turn into a Jamba Juice or a major celebrity just happens to wander into your office and tweet the virtues of it to his or her 3 million followers. Barring something bizarre like that, you need to have a plan as to how you are going to reach the goals you’ve set. Not only that, but you need to execute the plan and stay on top of it. Folks go into new ventures with the best of intentions, but after a couple of weeks, that plan either gets subsumed by higher priorities or simply proves to be too difficult to sustain. So when I say “have a plan,” the phrase implies actually executing said plan.
Now, just because you have an executed plan does not mean that everything will worked as hoped or that the plan will not have to be revised at some point during the year. That happens all of the time, but if you lurch into the year without any well-thought out method of lurching, you will almost certainly fail to meet expectations. Also, once you do execute a plan, please do not give up on it after just two days because you have concluded that your plan was worthless. Give things a chance to prove successful or unsuccessful.
Involve everyone
Achieving goals is so much easier when you have a group of interested, motivated people assisting you in reaching that goal. So, if you are a manager looking to improve results, a practice owner or clinical supervisor, get your entire time involved. Share goals, updated results and involve them in the planning and execution of the plan. We’ve posted previously about sharing information vs. not sharing it and we come down on the sharing side.
Of course, simply sharing information is usually not enough. People usually work harder when they are motivated by some reward for achieving a goal (duh). The top reward is money (double duh). If you’ve read our last post, you know something about the power of a quality incentive program. The beginning of the year and a new incentive program go together like chocolate and peanut butter. And we all know how well that goes together.
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