Having clear strategic direction and leadership is crucial to sustain profitability, not to mention your sanity, says business consultant Suzie Hoitink, RN.
Our industry is unique. It’s made up of medical professionals, doctors and nurses who, having started their own practices, are now by default businessmen and women. Initially it’s possible to stay in your lane and remain largely in the treatment room but as time goes on, you find yourself having to dedicate more and more time to ‘managing’ the business, a role that sits uncomfortably for most.
Your solution: hire a practice manager. Yes, this will solve some operational issues for you, but it adds another layer for you to manage. Without clear strategic direction or the right systems and processes your business – and you, as a leader – will invariably stall.
It’s at this point, I usually jump in as a ‘secret CEO’. Like most practices, my husband Alex and I grew the Clear Complexions Clinics organically, starting in 2005 with a 60m2 clinic to selling in 2017 to an ASX-listed company, Vita Group Pty Ltd, with 6 clinics and over 70 staff. we learned over time that injecting corporate disciplines into our growing company was crucial to sustainable profitability, not to mention maintaining our sanity.
Unless you are a multisite chain, you aren’t big enough for a CEO position in your organisation, but you do need the expertise, albeit temporarily, to set you on the right course.
Most clients come to me not really knowing what help they need, just that they are drowning in the minutia and drama of daily clinic life. Invariably, we go back to the start. It’s then that they truly start to soar.
Who, Why & How?
‘Start as you mean to continue’ would be great advice to heed when first starting a practice, but who would have really understood what that means anyway? Most of us had humble beginnings in business and then became a victim of our own success, too busy dealing with a volume of clients to address the structural weaknesses that can quickly undermine a rapidly growing business.
The biggest gift you can give your business (or in recent times the gift that lockdowns have given us) is time to stop and reassess the business identity and strategic direction – the who, why and how.
This means setting, or resetting, your practice’s Vision, Mission, Goals, Strategies and Values. Sounds like a lot of business mumbo jumbo but, trust me, once you can articulate your Vision Statement to your team, you will galvanise them behind you and that is powerful.
Your Mission is a statement that enables your clients to understand why they should come to you, articulating what you do, how you do it and for whom. One clear sentence that sums up what makes you special and why. That is clarity for you, your team, clients, marketing/branding, etc. In this hypercompetitive industry, I’m sure you can see why this is so crucial to standing out from the crowd.
Now we know why you exist and what makes you diffe ent, next we set the goals. Seems unnecessary as who would run a business without having clear goals, right? …Yep, crickets – that’s what I usually hear when I ask principals what their short- and long-term goals are.
Ask yourself where do you want to be in 12 months, 3 years, 5 years from today? If you started the business, kudos to you. It is by no means the easy path and requires courage and commitment, not to mention financial and reputational risk. So set goals to achieve what you really want; a 3-day working week, to hit a million in revenue, to open a second practice…
Once we understand your goals, we set the strategies required to achieve each one, then prioritise the strategies, delegate tasks and hold all to account to execute.
Knowing what needs to be achieved is one part of the equation, the other is how you want it achieved. These are your 4-6 value statements that can make or break your organisation. Most practices I see have a set of values which are well meaning but essentially useless statements. Your practice values are what you hire and fi e staff on; they sit on all position descriptions and form part of every team member’s performance improvement program. Given they drive a culture of success, it’s worth spending time on them.
Be Intelligent
Alarmingly, one of the first questions my clients ask after I have reviewed their business is “am I doing ok?”, meaning is the business performing well? Not a good start – you should know what shape your business is in. Not many of us happen to be financial analysts, but if you run a business you need to know your numbers, starting with monthly Profit & Loss statements.
Secondly, measure what matters. The central nervous system of every business regardless of industry is the data. If your current CRM system isn’t reporting on what you need to know to understand exactly what makes your practice tick, then make the move to one that does.
Set an operating rhythm around your reporting: what reports are reviewed daily, weekly, monthly and so on. Who reviews each report and most importantly why? What is the data telling you and what action needs to be taken?
The business intelligence in your reporting shows you what levers you can pull to improve staff and business performance. It can indicate if you have ‘skill’ or ‘will’ issues with particular team members and can guide you to maximise your database.
What can be monitored and measured can be managed to allow for adaptation and growth
in your business. If ‘reading’ your business like this isn’t your strength, get some external help. It’s invaluable intelligence, especially in disruptive times.
Systems That Sell
Organically grown businesses tend to be either encumbered by complicated, inefficient systems worse, be sadly lacking altogether. Embedding the right systems and processes, supported by robust policies and procedures, will obviously enable training and ensure safety and compliance, but the real gold lies in developing a system that supports your team to sell. I realise this is a controversial statement in the healthcare industry but make no mistake: you have a client who is buying what you are selling.
It’s relatively easy to develop the administrative, compliance and clinical policies and procedures that are essential for every practice. Building a system that supports and develops your team into high performers clinically and commercially takes a strategic “CEO” type approach. This is the ‘it factor’ that truly successful practices have.
What I’m referring to is building a framework for a collaborative consultative system encompassing consultation, treatment planning and reviews that increases patient
frequency, spend and satisfaction as well as delivering consistent treatment results. Powerful stuff.
Learn to Lead
It often comes as a surprise to most practice owners when I tell them that the people who work for them decided to do so because they were inspired by them. We have a highly skilled workforce in our industry who have multiple options for employment but have chosen you for a reason. They believe in you. Don’t disappoint them. You don’t have to be an MBA-qualified CEO but you do have to be a leader.
Don’t hide in your treatment room or surgery, defaulting leadership to your managers. Stay present, positive and powerful. Leadership is a skill that can be learned and developed.
Challenging times like the ones we find ourselves in give us opportunity to pause, re-evaluate and redefine direction. If the business aspect of your practice isn’t your strength, help is out there as they say, so stay in your lane and do what you do best but bring in the expertise. It will be our secret. AMP
For more information, Contact Suzie at e.suzie@htnk.com.au or call 0477 577 233.
