Learn why and how to incorporate strategic business plans into your practice.
By Caitlin Lukacs
Most business experts agree that strategic planning can be a useful tool for growing and managing a small business. However, the concept has yet to take roots in chiropractic practices. “Unfortunately, very few chiropractors plan for their practices,” says Michael Wiles, DC, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Northwestern Health Sciences University and author of Strategic Planning for the Chiropractic Practice. “They just get into their practice, and all of a sudden years have gone by and they haven’t accomplished what they set out to…because they never planned for it.”
Those DCs who do plan for their practices often do so by adopting the business plans of others, explains Dr. Wiles. “They either take a plan from a colleague or use a cookie-cutter plan from a practice management group,” he says. So, even with a plan in place, these DCs can end up in the same boat—after several years into their practice, they haven’t met their goals yet. “Each individual should have his or her own unique strategic plan,” he continues.
Dr. Wiles explains why it is necessary for all practices to develop a strategic plan. Not only does strategic planning enable your practice to cope with change, but it assists you with day-to-day decision making. It also forces you to define your specific goals, as well as the specific action steps necessary to move toward your goals. Last, strategic planning enables you to delegate responsibility for each action step and creates a system of accountability.
Scott Harris, owner and president of Mustang Marketing, a full-service marketing, advertising and communications firm, likes to describe strategic planning in terms of construction. “If you were building a new house, you would hire a general contractor to begin construction, but you wouldn’t start without architectural plans,” he says. “Strategic planning is the architectural plan.”
No matter how you look at it, strategic planning is unique to each individual situation. DCs opening a new practice will experience the process differently from those looking to expand an existing practice. Here are two approaches that experts suggest when embarking on strategic planning.
The Pyramid
As explained by Dr. Wiles, the strategic planning process should be viewed as a pyramid. At the very tip of the pyramid is your mission or vision statement. “Your mission statement should be composed of why you are in practice in the first place,” says Bob Phillips, co-founder and managing partner of the Indianapolis-based Spectrum Management Group of Raymond James & Associates. “It should include your personal values, such as being motivated by patient care,” he continues. By creating a personal statement about what you hope to get out of your practice, you’ll be able to see exactly what you need to do in order to align your work with your personal vision.
Just below your mission statement are your goals or the broad actions that will help you reach your mission. While every situation is different, Dr. Wiles suggests limiting the goals to three to five to make your plan more manageable. Each goal is then divided into three to five objectives, or the steps needed to accomplish each goal. The bottom of the pyramid is made up of operations or the specific tasks necessary within each objective. For this level, Dr. Wiles advises four to six operations per objective.
If, for example, your personal vision is to create a sports-based practice, your goals may consist of treating athletes in your private practice and working with local sports teams. Your objectives might then include items such as completing the necessary education to specialize in sports, setting up your office space in a way that is conducive to treating athletes and building relationships with local high school athletic directors or professional sports teams’ medical staff. Finally, your operations would be made up of specific tasks such as studying for your diplomate exam, contacting local coaches and advertising your practice as the place for athletes to receive the best possible care. As you work through these steps and build relationships within this niche, you will see your practice moving in the direction of your vision.
The Path
Simma Lieberman, founder of Simma Lieberman Associates, a consultant company focused on improving business performance, explains strategic planning as a path leading to your ultimate goal. “You look at where you are now and where you want to go: Strategic planning is how you’re going to get there.”
To start down the path, determine what you want your final destination to be, whether it’s increasing profitability, improving operations or specializing in treating certain conditions or patient populations.
Next, gather information about where you’ve been and about the conditions of the road. As Linda Pophal, owner and CEO of Strategic Communications LLC and co-author of Writing a Convincing Business Plan, explains, “In addition to understanding the desired outcome, strategic planning participants need to have a clear understanding of the situation and background that has led the [practice] to its current state, knowledge of internal and external factors that impact the team, and a clear sense of the stakeholders and their preferences and potential biases.”
For example, if you’re interested in working with the senior citizens population, you should determine the need for such a specialized office in your area. Are there lots of seniors living in your town? Are there other DCs close-by who work with seniors? Would you be able to offer something different in terms of care? You should also gather data on where you can reach people over the age of 60—find a local senior center or place an ad in the newspapers and magazines they read, for example. Additionally, if you’ve had success with such patients in the past, ask them to refer their friends to your office.
Once you have identified your mission statement and gathered background information, determine a series of actions required to help you reach your desired destination. These steps should be laid out in a document and, according to Pophal, should include the following elements:
- priorities (based on your strategies, objectives and tactics)
- timeframes (what will be done and when)
- measurable outcomes
- required resources (time, money, staff)
- assigning responsibilities
- establishing methods of communication and follow-up.
In focusing your practice on senior-citizen care, your priorities may include bringing in more patients over the age of 60. You would then set a timeframe and measurable outcome for yourself, such as eight new senior patients in three months. As for your resources, you may need some funding for advertisements and outreach to the local senior centers. Additionally, you may need to bring in an associate to help with the increased patient base.
As you go about assigning responsibilities, one option may be to write up the advertisement yourself, have your office manager reach out to the local media to get your ad placed and have your associate handle the new patients. It is important that you determine up-front the means of communication within your team and how often it will occur. You may find that weekly staff meetings work best for following up on your responsibilities and tracking progress.
Regardless of the method you choose to follow, experts agree that strategic planning can, and should, be used for any major business decisions. It simply puts you in control of your business, says Dr. Wiles.
“Don’t be afraid of it or avoid it because it seems academic or never-ending,” says Pophal. “It doesn’t require months of meetings—it can take place over a few hours, as long as you continue to revisit your goals and action steps down the road.”
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