The Campbell Academy Business Blog (3)

P.E.S.T.

Last week, on our Dental Entrepreneurial Bootcamp course, which is our 5-day, kick the sh*t out of people and get them to a business plan by the end of the week, I presented on Thursday and Friday strategy and strategy planning for small dental business.

Arrogantly, This was the best presentation on strategy that I've ever done, not because, for some reason or other, I've suddenly become brilliant at doing that or because I've suddenly consumed more material around this (I'm consuming all the time) but mostly because I'm practised at it, and I've done it, and I've thought about it more and more.

We have a suggested format that we use now after investigating many formats for our own consumption at the practice, and we use this format annually to reexamine our strategic plans.

This year, in January, we had a senior leadership team meeting with a non-executive director, too, which was all day, and I spent much of January planning that meeting as a kick-off for our year.

It was by far the best strategy and planning meeting we've ever had as a group - I think everyone agreed, and that then filtered into the Bootcamp course.

At the top of this planning process is understanding that you need to have a vision and that doesn't have to change at all, year on year; in fact, it probably shouldn't, but after that, traditional strategic planning will tell you that you have to do a PEST analysis and it's right, and you do and that's the first thing that you should do.

PEST stands for…

P – Political
E - Economic
S – Social
T – Technological

A PEST analysis is where you deeply consider both external and local political factors that might affect your business going forward for the next year or 2 or 3, thinking really deeply about how that might work, government actions or a change in government or policy that comes in or just different things that happen.

There's plenty of that going on at the moment, plenty for you to consider in your role as a business leader, even of the smallest organisations.

The next thing to consider is the economic situation. It is hard not to look at the UK economic situation and be depressed and upset, but look at it we must and consider the implications of it we must if we are to take any responsibility for our businesses moving forward. It frames your decisions massively about how to move forward in the medium to long term.

Social factors are fascinating, and if you think about social factors that have affected our world of dentistry over the past few years, this has been huge.

The demand for different types of treatment, the demand for different appearances of teeth, the demand for healthcare that goes around the oral cavity, massive, massive changes, massive changes in people's attitudes to health also. That impacts on the thoughts of your business.

Finally, T for technological.

If you're not convinced that there is a huge technological shift in dentistry, then please just go back to my blog from Thursday night on 'Change is the price of survival'.

The change technologically in dentistry over the next 6 months alone will be huge.

For this reason, if you want to be a business owner, if you want to be a business person, if you want to consider yourself a leader of your business you have to start with PEST.

If you don't know how to do that, then get someone to come and help you to do it or learn how to do it.

We're way, way past the stage of accepting the fact that just because you can cut a crown prep doesn't mean you've got any chance of running a business.