July 2005

There have been three challenges that I have been working on during July: Managerial, Sales and Entrepreneurial. Most of my time in July was spent growing and grooming the staff; that's been the managerial challenge. Not only did our structure change, so did the personalities. In a small business, that is a lot of change in a short period of time. I stuck to my guns and hired “slow” – carefully. I improved training. I immediately created boundaries and quantitative expectations. I think the result is the beginning of a good, strong team that knows what to do. At the suggestion of my coach, Ginny, I used a different approach with them than I have used before. I have spent more unstructured time with key team-members learning about what motivates them. I had two unique meetings with the entire staff, one of which was a “biography meeting”: Each person had 12 minutes to give his or her place of birth, general career background, family birth order, and favorite foods. It was really a good meeting, and seemed to get everyone on a different level of familiarity. We laughed a lot in that meeting. (And, by the way, chocolate and cheese scored high as favorite foods! Now I know what to bring to the office for rewards!) Finally, I have been sharing my dream of the company with them, both in writing (mostly email) and verbally. My motto has been “Staff retention promotes patient retention.” That came from Daphne at Action Coaching, and it puts me in the right place with respect to the staff.

The other big deal in July was dealing with cash flow. Building an expanded staff and replacing old staff members is expensive. I had lost services with the staff change-over, but still had the same overhead. When I met with Ginny, my coach, we talked about the cold, hard facts of the cash flow issue, but there was something else important that came out of our meeting. She reminded me to listen to my intuition. It reminded me that everything is not simply linear. When I listen to my intuition, I know that everything is working right, and on a good course, if difficult or challenging. I have come to think that my intuition is one of my finest resources, and to respect it as such. On the other hand, she gave me some practical advice, like “get new patient numbers up and keeping current patients happy and on their schedules”. I put a lot of attention on that, and we did have new patient growth, though not as much as I'd like. This month, however, our new part-time “new patient guy” did start. (It's nice to pay someone to think about and act on new patient ideas for 25 hours per week.) I know that new patient numbers will grow just because there is someone dedicated to that effort.

The company seems to have a stronger presence in my own mind, just because I am paying more attention to it as a company. In other words, I am thinking about it as its' own entity. All of the things I am doing are creating an organization that works with or without me. I guess that is the entrepreneurial challenge of creating a company that is independent of the creator – at least to some degree. My biggest challenge, emotionally, is keeping my self-talk positive. The doubts I have about my ability to achieve success sometimes roll in at a frantic pace. It is uncomfortable to take on new challenges and to grow. Philosophically, I am following a particular leadership model that is keeping me on track, and practically, I am reading the signs that I have hung up around my office. I keep reminding myself that if others can do it, so can I. Finally, I am reading about business people who are notable in business. I get their names and stories from a book called Business: The Ultimate Resource. I am using their stories as a guide for understanding this path.

Talk to you next month!