In the day-to-day of running your healthcare practice, it’s understandable that thinking about where you’re looking for the business to be in 5 or 10 years might get pushed to the bottom of your to-do list…
In the same vein, it’s likely you haven’t considered what you’re striving for in 20 and 30 years or your exit plans!
With these timelines seeming a long way off and the potential implications if you neglect other aspects of your practice and business now, it can be hard to see why you would commit time looking so far down the track… Well, more often than not, the decisions you’re making now will impact your 10, 20, 30-year outcomes and your exit strategy.
Further, if you’re making decisions now that don’t take into account your 10, 20, and 30-year goals and exit strategy, you’ll miss opportunities to steer the ship toward long-term goal achievement and potentially undermine your future success. For example, a fundamental such as how you structure your organisation can significantly impact how/when you bring in additional clinicians, how/when you offer director positions or an equity share, and if/when you look at expanding into multiple sites, amongst many, many other things!
Where to start? Identify your goals!
It can seem a little strange when you first consider it, but considering your exit strategy is an excellent place to start. What, ideally, will your process be toward no longer working in or owning the practice? Working back from here, you’ll be able to get a start on identifying some specific goals for those longer-term intervals between now and then – 10, 20, 30+ years.
Examples of potential goals you might be looking to achieve at different points in your timeline are to:
Expand your service offering to include practitioners from different medical or allied health modalities.
Open additional practices in different locations.
Expand how you see patients, such as outreach clinics backed by telehealth.
Sell the business to a specific person, perhaps a family member, a colleague, or an external entity.
Adjust/reduce your working hours at different periods to allow you to focus on other priorities or projects.
Alter the balance of your private versus public work or see a different demographic of patients.
Undertake further study or perhaps teach and share your knowledge.
Whatever your goals are and at what point in the future, identifying them now will help you to develop the actions needed to achieve them. The sooner you do it, the quicker you can get started! Also, if you’ve ever felt a little lost and unsure whether the decisions you’re making now are right, identifying your long-term goals and keeping these clearly in mind will help you have certainty about the decisions you’re making right now.
You’ve identified your goals - what now?
Strategy development tends to fail when the next step of planning the actions needed to achieve your goals doesn’t happen. Very quickly, the day-to-day kicks into gear, and before you know it, you’re 6/12/24 months down the track, and no progress has been made.
Regardless of the specifics of your goals, you’ll need an ‘Action Plan’. In your plan, details to cover for each goal include the following:
Work out by when you want to achieve the goal.
Identify every task required to help you achieve it.
List the tasks in order of priority and action.
Work out who can assist with which tasks.
Allocate dates to each step, working backwards based on your goal completion date and allowing an appropriate amount of time to complete each.
Allocate regular time in your schedule to complete the steps by the due dates and to catch up with the progress made by others involved.
Then, get started!!
For example, if your goal is to expand your service offering, one early task will be to gain an understanding of the services currently offered in your area. This might include searching online or visiting the locations – perhaps even introducing yourself to the business owners/practice managers. You’ll also need to ensure you have the space/resources/facilities to expand your service offering. Will your current team be able to service the needs of a new clinician, or will you need to recruit additional admin team members?
Dedicating time and energy to identifying your goals and planning for the future can also help you free up time for things you love. This might result from you identifying goals like more time focused on providing high-quality patient care, spending time with family, or taking up a hobby.
If you’re struggling with gaining the perspective needed for planning or to find the time to work on the business side of your practice, you might find it helpful to enlist someone to assist – a colleague or family member or perhaps a healthcare business consultant.
However you approach goal identification and action planning, keep at it - regularly reviewing progress, adjusting tasks and timelines as needed and recognising the progress made. You’ll steadily build momentum, and while you might start with a long list of things to do, you’ll begin to see progress toward the goals you want to achieve long-term 😊
If you’d like more information about strategic planning for your practice, check out “Kicking Off Your Strategic Planning’’.
The Augmentum team provides a broad range of consultancy and management services, supporting healthcare business owners and decision-makers in key areas, such as strategy development and action planning, building effective foundations and teams, keeping your finger on the pulse, and driving growth and success.
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