Do You Have The Wrong People?

One of my old clients, when asked how many people he had working for him would think for a moment and then quip, “Oh, about half.”

Yes, there are some staff who are not trainable. In fact, they are actually not employable! Yet you may have some of them “working” for you, or at least taking your money.

In the system of management we use, personnel are divided into 3 categories: The WILLING, the DEFIANT NEGATIVE and the WHOLLY SHIFTLESS. How do you identify these?

Starting with the defiant negative, this is a person who says or acts out “NO.” In some cases they seem very nice and say, “yes, yes, yes.” But you can’t get them to do the task you are asking them to do. Whatever the mouth says doesn’t connect with the real world.

In some cases they have lots of reasons why whatever you want done can’t be done or shouldn’t be done. They give you all the reasons they can’t make recall calls or send out insurance forms, and then when you go in with your next patient, they go back to watching their YouTube video.

Some people are completely shiftless. They just don’t want to work. They waste your time, in some cases they use up all their sick time and are very unreliable. Some practices are stuck with this kind of personnel. And they tend to spoil the morale and production of the rest of your staff.

I have seen an extreme example of this in two practices recently. In one practice, they were stealing about $7,000 worth of frames a month. In another, they embezzled over $39,000 in the last year.

You know the lifestyle that you’ve worked so hard to earn with all that investment of time, effort and risk. Want to know where it’s going? Maybe you have hired the wrong people.

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How to Create the Ideal Practice

Do you want to have and maintain an ideal, high-profit optometric practice with lots of happy patients and staff? If so, your first step is to have a clear vision of EXACTLY how that looks.

Why? Consider this. Just like with a patient’s vision, when something goes wrong, it may or may not be simple to fix. The longer it’s been going wrong the more difficult it can be to correct.

Just like having patients do an annual exam, there is a best way to get early warning that something is going wrong – and that is to know how it SHOULD be. How else could you spot when something is NOT right except that you already know what “right” is.

Imagine you’d never seen a percolator coffee pot before, and someone set one down in front of you and asked if it was broken – if you don’t know what the proper functioning of that coffee pot is, you might think it’s broken because of the strange noises and sights it makes while working. Or if you don’t know what good coffee tastes like, you might think it is working fine despite terrible coffee coming out.

So you need to know how your practice SHOULD look if it were perfect, so that you can tell when it’s not perfect, and fix it so that it will be perfect. This applies on a large scale and a small one. To run a successful practice, you and everyone in your business must know how clean your bathrooms should be, how your reception area’s seating should look, etc. You must know how the entire practice should operate.

This is simple but terribly important! It has three simple steps: 1) Know how your practice SHOULD look or WOULD look in the most ideal conditions. 2) Find those things that do not coincide with #1 (called “outpoints”). 3) Figure out how to handle them so that they look like #1.

Try it! I think you’ll find it works like a charm.

Of course on a professional level we use a more detailed series of steps which involve categorizing the outpoints, assigning them to particular people or areas and figuring out WHY they are that way. Then we address them in the correct manner. In the interest of keeping this newsletter brief, we’re only dealing with the basic idea, which you can apply to remarkable results in your practice.

We have methods for visualizing the ideal scene of your practice, spotting which elements are not meeting that vision and working out proper ways to handle any aspect of the practice. At Vision Practice Management, we take great pride in helping optometrists find a way to have a really ideal practice.

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Obamacare — Good or Bad for Optometry?

Debate on national health care legislation has raged for the last several years and there are some critically important points that effect optometrists. Let’s skip Fox News, CNBC or wherever you turn for your daily dose of bad news and look closer to home. Setting aside political views, how would the implementation of national health care affect your patients and your ability to make a living? Continue Reading…

How Do You Motivate Staff, Anyway?

Many practices have lost their sparkle and are caught in the grind because no one is motivating the team. In surveys done of optometrists who have used outside consulting firms, one of the consistently recognized benefits mentioned is “my staff were more motivated,” and of course that meant “more productive.” Continue Reading…

How to Win in 2010

Continue Reading…

Michael D’Alesio Story - Fast Results Right Now

My career is probably not that different from yours. I got my license in 1985. By 1990 I opened my own practice. However, eleven months later, I was not doing that great and needed help.

I realize getting help does not always mean from a practice management firm, but that’s what I did.  I found one that gave me outstanding results.  In one month, I went from $8000 to $21,000 in revenue. I went from $64,000 first year to $315,000 my second year in practice. I was pleased.

I only briefly met the senior consultant of the firm, David Sanders, when we lunched together. I liked him very much. I knew it was his job to take on the roughest cases and I knew he turned them around one for one. Mine was not in that category, so he was not my consultant. Continue Reading…

ARE YOU TODAY’S OPTOMETRIST?

Are you a forward-looking optometrist operating your practice today with your sites firmly set on what you could be building for tomorrow? Does that define Today’s Optometrist?

There was a period in our history when you could hang out your shingle, gradually gain a foothold in the community and peacefully watch your practice grow before selling it for a healthy chunk to a younger colleague. If this has been your plan, we want to suggest an updated plan that we believe is more appropriate today.

Here is a formula that guarantees success for an optometry office today: practice management + clinical skill = more, happier patients = increased revenue & referrals = prosperous practice. Continue Reading…

Today’s Optometrist™ - PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Since this may be my first chance to get to know you, I want to take the opportunity to give you a sense of my own background and the purpose of Vision Practice Management.

I have been building my five successful practices in Columbia, South Carolina, for more than 20 years. Prior to that I started first as an associate, had my own private practice and several other arrangements. Whatever your style of practice is, I’ve probably done it.

During the first 10 years I found myself struggling with challenges I didn’t like - staff issues, marketing failures, turn-over, patient retention, training weakness, financial shortfalls and more. When I began mastering the skills of management, I found that I could successfully overcome these challenges and grow my practice with far less effort than I had imagined. At this stage of my career, while I still see patients when I’m in town, I have built a strong team so that I have not been involved in the day-to-day running of the practice for several years.

This offers me the freedom to see patients when I wish, as I enjoy that. But I can travel, spend time with family and pursue my other goals while enjoying a good income whether I work or not. Continue Reading…

Your Eyes, Vital Practice Management Tool

Here is an interesting practice management concept that optometrists can use that was once taught to engineers. Look, don’t think. Continue Reading…

Since Good Staff Are Often Hard to Find . . .

Maybe you have noticed there is not an abundance of certain vital resources - like competent staff.  So what are you, the owner or manager, to do when you can’t seem to find the personnel you are looking for?  If you are smart, if you want your practice to grow, you will train your personnel to be as good as you need them to be. Continue Reading…