It’s a new year, which means new hopes, new opportunities, and new goals and plans to achieve your goals. Since the good goals lead to good planning, let’s think about why we set goals and how we achieve them.
Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing
Goals help shape your personal growth and your practice’s growth by setting measurable achievements against which you can judge yourselves. Goals create accountability and shape your ability to plan and coach your team.
Choose goals carefully. Steven Covey once said, “the main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.” In my view, all goals should tie back to a goal in gross collected revenue growth. Revenue is the main thing.
A wrong goal creates confusion, distorted behavior, and owner frustration. I once worked with an owner who was frustrated that an associate in the practice just wouldn’t focus on recommending premium eyewear and multiple pairs to his patients.
It turned out the only incentive he had for his performance was tied to how many patients he saw each day. Because the goal was ONLY tied to patient volume, that was his only focus. Side note: incentives AMPLIFY a goal, but incentives are only as effective as the goal to which they’re linked.
A total revenue goal ties together both patient volume and revenue per patient encounter. Remind your staff that revenue per exam is the output of providing the most comprehensive care and the best ophthalmic devices – it’s not about talking patients into things they don’t need.
Map the Path
Once you set your revenue goal, sub goals (like patients per day or eyewear capture rate) become the plan of HOW you’re going to achieve your revenue goal. Do not assume your staff know the right activities to focus on. A leader’s role is to make sure your team know what they should be doing.
If your staff aren’t focused on the right things start by asking: do they KNOW what those are? Questioning whether you need a different person in a particular role is a secondary question at best.
Stretch Yourself!
Finally, make sure your goals are challenging enough that you and your team HAVE TO CHANGE in order to achieve them. And note that I’m saying YOU need to change too. A good goal is one you maybe only have a 50/50 chance of achieving.
So, start with an ambitious revenue goal, create a plan for what activities you’re going to do differently this year, and go thrive!
Happy New Year!
After graduating, he spent a year working abroad. During that time, he worked for two firms in San Jose, Costa Rica. He interned with Grupo Juridico de San Jose, working in environmental policy to protect a threatened parcel of land, then he worked as a project manager for a US-owned precision machining shop. Nathan then spent 6 months working with street children and orphans in Mexico.
Before getting into the healthcare industry, he was an Assistant Store Manager and completed the Corporate Training Program with Haverty’s Furniture Company in Atlanta, GA. Nathan and his wife Heather have a son, Daniel, and a daughter, Hannah. In his spare time, Nathan enjoys reading and outdoors activities - especially cycling and hiking.
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