A Successful Journey Requires a Destination AND a Good Map!

Take a moment and imagine your business as a journey. You start off on a journey with a clear mind of the direction you intend to head in, and your likely destination, you prepare, gather what you’ll need, decide the best course and do what it takes to arrive there. Running your optometry practice is exactly the same.

The opposite is also true. Except in rare instances, you wouldn’t leave on a journey without knowing your destination or direction, you wouldn’t ignore preparation till you were on the road, and usually you stay true to the path you’re walking. You shouldn’t run your optometry practice without goals, or knowing where you want to end up, or what each leg of the journey will most likely look like. Goals are an essential part of every business.

Firm, realistic, known goals act like a compass, always drawing you back to a certain path that you, at some point long ago or even recently, determined you should pursue. They act as a mountain in the distance for you to work toward. But not only do they serve to keep you on-track and working, they also work to focus the attention and direction of your team.

For a practice to truly thrive, each member of the organization must acknowledge the goal of the group and realize their part in achieving that goal. If you think the practice’s goal is “A”, your receptionist thinks it’s “B”, your bookkeeper thinks it’s “C” and your vendors think it’s “D”, you can be sure you won’t arrive at ANY of those destinations!

Goals for the organization must be made known to all members of the group. They must be achievable, realistic and concrete.That way you can be sure the group will act as one unit towards success for everyone. This is not some abstract idea, it’s a real, concrete aspect of running a successful business: everyone in the business having the same, concrete goals for the practice.

Can you say that your practice, and everyone in it, is pursuing the same goal? And no, “profit” is not concrete enough. Goals are an essential element of running a practice. There are ways to clearly define your goals and to go about achieving them. At Vision Practice Management, we know them all and how to teach them. We are ready to get your business to the place it needs to be, setting and achieving goals for your practice.

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