The Five Stages of Practice Development in Chiropractic and Healthcare Practices

Why you can't get to Stage 5?

I've seen it so many times.

"Best months in years!"

And then… to see it all slip away.

What happened, and why?

Stages of Growth in a Chiropractic and Healthcare Practice

An essential component of the Goal Driven System(sm) is the five stages of development.

"To better understand these stages, it is helpful to recognize how organic a business truly is. It is a kind of bio-machine and growing it can be compared to the development of any living organism." (The Goal Driven Business by Edward Petty)

Every plant, for example, goes through certain stages of growth: A plant starts as a seed, sprouts, grows leaves, flowers, and finally bears fruit.

Similarly, every practice or business goes through stages of growth.

Most offices that do well settle at Stage 3.

But could they do better? And if so, how?

Stage 4: The Ghosts Come Out

Something strange happens when you hit Stage 4. Ghosts come out of the closet. Old enemies drop by. Past invoices you forgot arrive in the mail. Staff starts to stray.

The practice has outgrown what one person can manage.

Stage 4 has a hidden barrier that prevents most capable, well-intentioned practice owners from achieving Stage 5.

The Sound Barrier

Stage 4 is like the sound barrier. In the 1940s, planes approaching the speed of sound shook violently, and pilots who pushed harder lost control. Chuck Yeager broke through in 1947, in a plane designed for it.

The fix wasn't more gas. It was better design.

The same is true for your practice. You can't push through Stage 4 with more effort. You break through with a practice designed to run on goals, not on you.

That design starts at Stage 3, with management.

What Elon Musk Figured Out

I will admit it – I am a fan of Elon Musk. On a different scale, of course, but he is an entrepreneur with a mission -- like you.

SpaceX hit its own kind of barrier with rockets blowing up. Musk's answer wasn't to work harder. He improved SpaceX's organization. In 2008, he made Gwynne Shotwell president.

Musk focuses on goals, technical work, and outcomes, while Shotwell focuses on people, processes, and the organization.

Your practice needs the same split. The doctor leads with purpose and clinical outcomes. A trained manager improves people and procedures.

Build It Before You Need It

Because organization is the barrier to a full-capacity practice, we work closely with managers and the practice team -- and created the mini-MBA program for practice managers.

Getting through Stage 4 requires developing strong management and an expert team in Stage 3 before you hit Stage 4. When the practice grows at an accelerated pace, the organization needs to tighten down and keep the winning procedures and people in place. This lets chiropractic and other doctors focus more on patient care.

Stage 5 is operating at full capacity, comfortably and very profitably, with the choice to stay there or scale.

The five stages and their strategies are laid out in my book, The Goal Driven Business, beginning on page 61.

Get it, read it, and apply it.

Contact me any time if you want to move your practice to the next stage. Just reply to this email, or call me at (414) 332-4511.

And as always,

Stay Goal Driven.

Ed and all of us at PM&A