How to Move Your Practice Forward as a Big-Picture Thinker

 
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You understand your team members are faced with a myriad of decisions every day. With all this decision making, is it any wonder that your team can get bogged down with day-to-day decisions, and this can really stall progress for your practice long term.

If you are a Visionary Leader <link>, you know the power of big-picture thinking. It is what has brought you to where you are as a leader today – if you were caught up in the nitty-gritty the practice could never move forward!  But understanding how you make the decisions that propel your business forward can be just as important as the act of making them. Especially if you would like your team to take ownership of the Practice’s goals.

Emotional Vs Logical Decisions

Two of the most common types of decisions our team members make are logical decisions and emotional decisions. Depending on your team member’s situation and personality, they may choose to reach a decision based on facts such as due date or cost, however, they may reach a decision based on an emotional motivation. For instance, they may choose to work on a task they enjoy more, or they work on something because they fear the consequences of incompletion.

When Your Team Makes Poor Decisions

When our team makes decisions in the best interest of their present self, they can neglect the interests of their future self. Without confirming detail or follow up a poor decision is easily made.
They zero in on the most urgent and important tasks while they forget about the non-urgent but equally important tasks – until the non-urgent tasks inevitably become urgent! Can you see how repeatedly deciding to focus on the urgent and important could lead to a stressful and short-sighted Practice?

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How to Prevent Poor Decision-Making

You may have heard of the SMART goal-setting formula. This type of goal setting requires each goal to meet five criteria. 

A SMART goal must be:

  • Specific

  • Measurable

  • Attainable

  • Relevant

  • Time-Specific


Let’s apply this formula to a scenario that we think your team may face.  For example, say your medical receptionist oversees the onboarding of new patients, but perhaps the new patients are failing to opt into SMS appointment reminders. Maybe it is hard to know whether they were even asked? A SMART goal in this instance could be: All new patients will be opted in or out of SMS appointment reminders from April 1st, 2021. 

First of all, this goal is specific, the patient must opt in OR out, so doing this should eliminate any uncertainty. Secondly, it’s measurable because you’ll have the data on who has taken up or turned down the option. Thirdly, it’s attainable – it should be fairly simple to add another checkbox to the system for the purpose of collecting this information and you’ve also allowed ample time for the details to be worked through. Fourthly it’s relevant, this small change could mean less missed appointments! And lastly it’s time specific, which means you can set at reminder to check in on the progress, and make time to review later on.

The SMART goal we have worked through is much more effective than a team member simply saying “I’ll try to remember to ask people to opt in to appointment reminders.”

It may seem like quite a simple thing to do, but by going back to the goal and ensuring it reaches each of these criteria, your team member is going to have higher confidence levels and they will feel inspired, enthusiastic, and empowered to make smart decisions. 

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