I just had a great a great conversation with a client of mine who said,
“Russ, I see the value of quarterly objectives, really I do! I don’t want a rudderless ship! I have tried setting objectives in the past but felt pretty clueless and the truth is after we set them up we never looked at them again. I am really confused as to how to go about setting up reasonable objectives and then following through with them, can you help me?”
Below is the long and short of our discussion that I hope you will find valuable.
When setting quarterly objectives first you must make sure your team is on board. If you are in our program please take your entire team through “Get the Team to Grow the Practice”.
The first part of that module is all about getting the team on the same page philosophically and making sure they are all EXCITED to grow the practice.
Remember: seeing more people means more work so we MUST make sure they really get the big picture about what our Mission, Vision and Purpose is and they WANT to grow.
Since seeing more people means MORE WORK, you really want to have a great bonus system in place.
There are two categories:
Projects
KPI’s
In general, we recommend coming up with up to five quarterly objectives for the business. If this is your first time setting quarterly objectives, error on the side of too little versus too much. I want your team to feel successful with this system. The last thing we want to happen is that they feel dejected that they couldn’t get everything done. You have plenty of time to add more if you like and course correct in your next set of objectives.
It is said that most people OVERESTIMATE what they can do in a day or a week but UNDERESTIMATE what they can do in a month or a year. Imagine how much you could get done if each person on your team got done one thing every week for 52 weeks. It is astounding! In fact I dare you to have each person make a list of 52 different things they could do!
This is how we come up with personal quarterly objectives.
Here is an example:
One quarterly objective for the business is to bring in an extra two new patients per week. So the question is: what will each person commit to in order to make this happen?
You would then do this for each team member.
AND you would do it for each of the objectives.
How do we recommend each person figure out what they need to do to determine what their objectives should be? Get clear about the BUSINESS objective (i.e. increase new patients) and then:
Yes, in our module on this we have the entire goals program, how to set up SMART goals, how to DIVE deeper into goals etc. But this article is only meant as an overview.
THIS IS WHERE MOST DOCTORS BLOW IT! They set the objectives and don’t look at them again for 90 days if they ever look at them again at all!
In our meetings, the second step is to do a “Brag Session” where each person brags about the one thing they promised they would do last week and how well they got it done and then they get clear about what they promise they will get done next week.
Obviously if they were not able to get it done as a team you would need to figure out why and make sure it got done the following week. Two weeks in a row of not getting something done would require using the “Action plan for improvement form” as we will not go week after week not getting things done.
Again, imagine what would happen if every single week each person on your team not only knew the highest priority items to get done but they actually did them.
Classically, people never get ahead of the game and because they don’t they are always putting out yesterday’s fires.
The 10,000 foot view of growing any type of practice is simply this. Reorganize and make space then fill it. Reorganize and make space then fill it. Repeat!
Too many doctors never gain ground because they are always chasing their tails! Don’t be one of them. Implement the above procedures and you will create the practice and life of your dreams!
If you got some good energy from reading through this, you really should go grab a free program that I put together for some of my coaching clients. It’s literally called “Creating Time” and it helps a lot with setting goals!
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