And so, most of this week I've been thinking about product life cycles, not just in relation to individual products, for example, a tin of beans and how different it is now than it was 15 or 20 years ago (if it is different at all), but also in terms of a business itself as a product.
If you consider how different dentistry is overall now than it was 10 years ago in 2015 and then 20 years ago in 2005, and then 30 years ago, all the way back to just after I qualified, there is a huge shift and change in what a successful dental business looks like. So that suggests that what you're interested in is a successful dental business, other than a dental business which is ‘just managing’ or just making it, eking it out towards the end of your career.
It's still possible to run a 1995-style dental practice to some degree or another (compliance and regulations aside), but you will not be particularly successful or profitable with that model.
Back in the day, when I was reading The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, what I was really keen to do was to create a system that ran almost on its own, like a McDonald's, so that you could sit back and watch the practice make money, tinker at the edges of that and relax.
This is, of course, some ridiculous twisted fantasy, but it is the situation that I find myself in where people discuss the concept of ‘associate-led’ practices.
Every time I have a serious conversation with someone about what constitutes an associate-led practice, they seem to be discussing the prospect where associates turn up and do the work, and they go off on a permanent holiday and take their rewards. That is never how that situation works.
But as we consider product life cycle, and as I consider product life cycle, one of the difficulties is that you almost have to disrupt the system that you have while it is in full flow and working well to begin to create the edge of the new system, which will be better going forward.
This requires a lot of effort, a lot of emotion and a lot of vision, and so for me, and this week, at the moment, I'm considering models and additions to our business, which won't make any money now, but might make us more successful, more secure, more solid and more influential later. It's just which opportunity to take, which punt to take, which chance to invest in that may not work, and these choices take bravery, but not reckless bravery; they take bravery that is considered based on information, and then they take hard, hard work to implement.
Considering when to change your product in the product life cycle and what to change it with is a huge consideration in dentistry and any business, and something worth discussing.
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