Job One of the Leader: Developing Your Business

As I work with clients I have observed that many of them are very adept at “managing” the business. That is working on tasks, tracking budgets and moving at speed to get lots of things done.

There is another set of clients that seem to get different results; sometime greatly different results. These leaders are “developing” their business.  Much like elite athletes of performers in any field they develop their skills, talents and “moves”. These leaders are stepping back and looking to the future and investing in training for the team so that they are ready for the next level of leader/manager/talent.

They are coaching the players they have, to move towards peak performance. Instead of just managing how many calls, how many claims or how many accounts they touched. They also (They did not exclude productivity) observed and asked questions. “I see your number of claims has been trending down. You were able to manage 65 claims a day and you are now trending low 50’s.” “What do you think is happening?”  “What can we do to support you?” They work to help the player find their own way to peak performance.

They also step back and look at the arena they play in. For many of my clients, in the healthcare field, this is either a very exciting time or it is terrifying.  There is a lot of change. And the old ways are going to change. Those that are stuck doing things the way they have always been done will not survive in the long term. So the developers are stepping back to say how do I change my model so that I can, not just survive but thrive in this new world.  As a result we see new models of delivery like:

–    Physicians building their practices around house calls
–    Hospitals moving what used to be in hospital care into the home
–    Telemedicine being deployed to far flung reaches
–    Mobile Health

Your business is changing and regardless of if it is changing like healthcare or you are in retail under assault by the likes of Amazon, and the internet. If you are managing your business let me suggest a step back to consider how you can develop your business.