The way that we have the Dentally practice management software system set up in the clinic now, we have a really, really accurate vision of what will happen financially in the next 6 weeks.
This is an extremely complicated thing to get right but once it’s right it’s two clicks to see the six-week forecast and over time you get a real sense of how accurate that is and what the actual six-week numbers will be six weeks from now.
Obviously, things can change this including people being booked in and people cancelling out, but we’ve been looking at this really carefully now for 18 months and it becomes a fantastic tool (mostly for reassurance that things are still heading in the right direction).
The biggest problem is when you look. The six-week forecast refreshes every Monday so, first thing on a Monday morning is the time to look at it to get the most accurate picture of the following six weeks.
If you look at it on a Friday it will be a low number because the previous weeks takings will be wiped out of the total.
But what happens if you ‘don’t feel like it’ on a Monday morning.
Sure, you have a responsibility to be on top of the numbers in your own business but depending upon how you feel, and your state of your mind depends upon your analysis and interpretation of the number.
That’s quite an insight because it applies to everything else.
The narrative you tell yourself about anything you measure massively impacts upon the actions that you take in the light of the measurement.
Waiting until you feel like it or you’re in a position to positively write your narrative might be the best time.
As I was travelling home last week on the train from London at 7pm in the middle of a 1 hour 20-minute delay after a really long day, I felt exhausted. I thought I’d check the six-weekly figure.
That would have been on a Friday night with a loss of a week’s takings off the number and a sadness and depression which would have meant that any number that came up on the screen I would be able to write the narrative about how bad it was and how we were all going to die.
So, I didn’t which might have been the most important thing I did last week.
Blog Post Number - 3056