Harold S. Geneen, the President and CEO of ITT from 1959 to
1971, said that the five essential entrepreneurial skills
for success are: Concentration, Discrimination,
Organization, Innovation, and Communication. In this
article, I will discuss each of these skills and give you
some tips for using them to make your practice more
successful.
Concentration: To concentrate is to focus. If you aren't
focused on starting your practice, to the exclusion of just
about everything else, it won't get done. It's easy to get
distracted, by a current job, or financial worries, or
fear, or just busyness. You must put all of your energy on
getting your practice started and keeping it going. Taking
your eyes off the ball causes you to waiver, and wavering
means failure. Each day plan the three most important
things you need to do that day. If a crisis comes up
(personal or business), deal with it only if you determine
it's more important than those three things. Concentrating
on getting your practice started or on keeping it moving
forward will pay big dividends in creating a wildly
successful business.
Discriminate. To discriminate, you must differentiate
between the important and the unimportant. This is the
80/20 principle: 20 percent of anything will bring 80
percent of the results. For example, 20 percent of your
clients will bring in 80 percent of your sales. By looking
at sales figures, you should be able to figure out which is
the 20% in any situation; by discriminating between the 20
and the 80, you can concentrate your energies on the
important, where they will be most productive. Here are
some ways to apply this principle: If you have an employee
who is in the 20 percent and causing problems, let the
person go. If you have a client or patient who is just not
productive and is draining your energy, let that person go.
If you have a patient who is bringing in lots of
referrals, focus on that person. In other words,
discriminate, by focusing on the standouts. If the
standout is positive, encourage this. If the standout is
negative, ignore or dispense with it. Once you can do
this, you will see a dramatic difference in your energy and
in your practice growth.
Organize. Organizing is keeping track of all the tasks
involved in managing your practice, and systematizing these
tasks for efficiency. Here's an example: Collecting money.
Set up an organized systematic process for assuring that
you collect the money owed to you by patients or clients.
Determine how often you will bill (every two weeks).
Determine how and when you will contact non-payers (by
phone? by letter?). Determine how and when you will take
someone to collections. To organize means to assure that
you have a system. Otherwise, you will let events take
control of you, instead of you taking control of them.
Innovate. Never stop thinking about how to make things
better. This relates to areas like marketing and
promotion. How can you promote your practice to gain new
clients? Some people call this "thinking outside the box."
I'd call it "new ideas for changing times." A wise doctor
I know said, "You have to re-invent yourself every six
months." Your patient or client base never stops changing;
you can't rest on your past successes. You must keep
changing and adapting. If you don't think you're clever,
find people who can help you with these new ideas. Call
an advertising agency and have them give you an hour to
toss around new ideas. Or go to your local Small Business
Development Center and see if they have a marketing person
who can help. Use your powers of creativity and innovation
to adapt to changing times.
Communicate. This one is most important of all. To be a
successful practitioner, you must be a great communicator -
with your patients or clients, with your staff, with
vendors, with everyone. This means you must be able to
connect immediately with people one-on-one and in groups.
If you don't think you're good at this, then you need to
learn how. Take a Dale Carnegie course. Practice looking
people in the eye. Go to Toastmasters to learn how to do
public speaking. Join a networking group, like BNI. In
other words, practice communicating and you'll become a
better communicator. So, to be successful in your
practice, you need to concentrate, discriminate, organize,
innovate, and communicate. That's all. Whoever said it
was easy? That's why they call it "practice."
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Copyright 2007 Jean Wilson Murray, MBA, PhD.
Dr. Jean Murray has been advising small business owners
since 1974. As the founder of Planning for Practice
Success, she specializes in assisting health care
professionals with business plan construction and startup
details. She can help you gain the knowledge to act and the
confidence to begin. Learn more at
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