As I write this today, Thursday the 13th, I'm getting ready for a day of work and then travelling to Manchester to do day 5 of the Extreme Business quarter 3 team meetings. As part of what is now The Campbell Academy Business Education portfolio, having classically been Chris Barrow's Extreme Business format.
It seems like this is contrived, as we bought the business in April and then Colin moved into the quarter 3 teaching slots, but actually this was planned way before we were buying the business because the speaker who was going to attend these 7 days around the country had a family illness, and I agreed to step in.
It’s been an extraordinary journey, a focus group so far.
The most extraordinary focus group at 4 venues out of 7 already completed (Dublin, London, Bristol, and Birmingham).
So far, I've spoken to over 220 colleagues and tried to take the temperature, as best I could, of where things are in independent dental practise and independent dental business in the United Kingdom.
I've met some extraordinary people, had some fantastic interactions, and heard some great stories. I hope I've been able to give something back to the people I've spoken to. These days are not particularly easy, but they're necessary, and what I wanted to do was use the consultation in independent dentistry as a metaphor for the service that we can provide, and the system that we can use to ‘win’ in the battle for market share against corporates and groups and all of those people.
Independent dental practice is where it's at; there are 8,500 of us. We are a powerhouse, a huge source of inspiration, of work, of commitment.
Just over halfway through the trip, though: Manchester tomorrow and then Leeds and Edinburgh to finish.
What I see is a huge gap in the potential ability to plan or follow strategy for dental business.
I understand that entirely and completely.
I've spent the last 15 years trying to solve that problem in my own business.
What I found and discovered was that 90% of businesses in the world (have a Business Review) either don't have a clear and coherent strategy or don't follow their strategy.
It stands to reason that if you are in the top 10%, you will win, and what you need to do to be in the top 10% is create a strategy and follow it.
The reason that this works so devastatingly well is that it means that you can block out some of the external distraction, which seems to continually derail us moving forward.
“It's not time to panic yet”.
It's time to take a minute with the people that you care about and to write a plan that's coherent and strategic, and sensible and credible.
One that you love and one that you can work towards over the next few years.
Once you have it, break it down, and just apply it into tasks that you'll do over quarters for the next 3 years (12 sections).
If you divide it up into the parts of your business in 3 months' time, you'll find you're in a much better place than where you started, and in a year's time, you will not believe where you are.
This is what we learned in 2010; this is what we started to apply.
It took us 16 years to get to somewhere as special as this, but The Campbell Clinic Group and all of us who work within it are in a super special place, and we want to share what we learned, the mistakes that we made, the triumphs that we created with as many people as possible so that they can head towards a position like the one that we have found.
Learn how to do this, and then do it; it's not complicated.
If you're interested, hit reply.
We can help, and we can help you focus and block out the noise; that's the most important thing we could do.
Blog Post Number - 4635
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