What gets you up in the morning with a smile on your face? As a practice owner, what worthwhile goals do you have for the practice that make you look forward to the future?

Having a future to look forward to and work towards can motivate you and excite you and motivate you. In the reverse, if you don’t set goals for the practice, then you may just find yourself reacting to situations in the office and you won’t make much, if any, progress.

Taking some time to sit down an work out some worthwhile goals for the practice that give everyone something positive to work towards will put you at cause rather than just reacting to daily aggravating situations. You may have to cope at first, but if you keep organizing bit by bit, you will get more and more in control of the practice.

A few examples of organizing would be:

1.  Setting goals.
2.  Working out a set of weekly statistics to keep and graph them each week to see how you are progressing. Knowing that production is being monitored visually (in a back room where patients can’t see) can act as a motivation to work hard to increase the care and service week by week.
3.  Writing up policy for the practice can definitely help you put in more order and reduce stress. When job descriptions and overall policy are in writing, it can be your stable point of agreement.
4.  Training your team so they can operate as cause over their own area of the practice and move it forward themselves instead of waiting for the boss to push them to do things. Good staff like to be self-motivated and if you give them the direction you want them to go in, they will be much more causative and productive which means the practice morale will go up.
5.  Putting in a good bonus system based on increased productivity.

Pick one thing you would really, really like to handle (an easy one), and work out a plan to achieve it, offer yourself a reward suitable to the achievement of that plan and then carry it out. Once successfully completed, pick a slightly more difficult goal or objective and do the same. Build up strength and steam.

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