The Five Essential Entrepreneurial Skills
Personal Business Skills Articles
Submit Articles Back to Articles
Harold S. Geneen, the President and CEO of ITT from 1959 to 1971, said that
the five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are: Concentration,
Discrimination, Organization, Innovation, and Communication. In this article, I
will discuss each of these skills and give you some tips for using them to make
your practice more successful.
Concentration: To concentrate is to focus. If you aren't focused on
starting your practice, to the exclusion of just about everything else, it won't
get done. It's easy to get distracted, by a current job, or financial worries,
or fear, or just busyness. You must put all of your energy on getting your
practice started and keeping it going. Taking your eyes off the ball causes you
to waiver, and wavering means failure. Each day plan the three most important
things you need to do that day. If a crisis comes up (personal or business),
deal with it only if you determine it's more important than those three things.
Concentrating on getting your practice started or on keeping it moving forward
will pay big dividends in creating a wildly successful business.
Discriminate. To discriminate, you must differentiate between the
important and the unimportant. This is the 80/20 principle: 20 percent of
anything will bring 80 percent of the results. For example, 20 percent of your
clients will bring in 80 percent of your sales. By looking at sales figures, you
should be able to figure out which is the 20% in any situation; by
discriminating between the 20 and the 80, you can concentrate your energies on
the important, where they will be most productive. Here are some ways to apply
this principle: If you have an employee who is in the 20 percent and causing
problems, let the person go. If you have a client or patient who is just not
productive and is draining your energy, let that person go. If you have a
patient who is bringing in lots of referrals, focus on that person. In other
words, discriminate, by focusing on the standouts. If the standout is positive,
encourage this. If the standout is negative, ignore or dispense with it. Once
you can do this, you will see a dramatic difference in your energy and in your
practice growth.
Organize. Organizing is keeping track of all the tasks involved in
managing your practice, and systematizing these tasks for efficiency. Here's an
example: Collecting money. Set up an organized systematic process for assuring
that you collect the money owed to you by patients or clients. Determine how
often you will bill (every two weeks). Determine how and when you will contact
non-payers (by phone? by letter?). Determine how and when you will take someone
to collections. To organize means to assure that you have a system. Otherwise,
you will let events take control of you, instead of you taking control of them.
Innovate. Never stop thinking about how to make things better. This
relates to areas like marketing and promotion. How can you promote your practice
to gain new clients? Some people call this "thinking outside the box." I'd call
it "new ideas for changing times." A wise doctor I know said, "You have to
re-invent yourself every six months." Your patient or client base never stops
changing; you can't rest on your past successes. You must keep changing and
adapting. If you don't think you're clever, find people who can help you with
these new ideas. Call an advertising agency and have them give you an hour to
toss around new ideas. Or go to your local Small Business Development Center and
see if they have a marketing person who can help. Use your powers of creativity
and innovation to adapt to changing times.
Communicate. This one is most important of all. To be a successful
practitioner, you must be a great communicator - with your patients or clients,
with your staff, with vendors, with everyone. This means you must be able to
connect immediately with people one-on-one and in groups. If you don't think
you're good at this, then you need to learn how. Take a Dale Carnegie course.
Practice looking people in the eye. Go to Toastmasters to learn how to do public
speaking. Join a networking group, like BNI. In other words, practice
communicating and you'll become a better communicator. So, to be successful in
your practice, you need to concentrate, discriminate, organize, innovate, and
communicate. That's all. Whoever said it was easy? That's why they call it
"practice."
About the Author
Copyright 2007-2008 Jean Wilson Murray, MBA, PhD. Dr. Jean Murray has been
advising small business owners since 1974. As the founder of Planning for
Practice Success, she specializes in assisting health care professionals with
business plan construction and startup details. She can help you gain the
knowledge to act and the confidence to begin.
Follow us @Scopulus_News
Article Published/Sorted/Amended on Scopulus 2008-06-12 09:25:45 in Personal Articles
