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There is nothing new about strategic planning and most of us use the system to one extent or another whether we call it strategic planning or not.  We could write volumes about the topic as well as the myriad of ways to use this helpful tool but my goal, here is to bring the idea home in a practical way.

It is fair to say most Strategic Planning meetings are held annually. Strategic planning determines where your practice is going in the future, how it will get there and how the practice owner and management team will know when you have arrived.

First, I hope we are all evaluating our hospital performance at least monthly using various Key Performance Indicators and that we all have a fairly accurate idea of what our practice is doing well and what we need to invest more resources into for improvement. Ideally, we also set some future goals at the same time such as increase dental revenue by 2% within the next four months. These are all excellent and necessary monthly evaluation tactics; but they do not take the place of your annual Strategic Planning meeting.

The annual Strategic Planning meeting is a little different than what you are doing throughout the year and more about the future than the past. There are multiple reasons to hold one of these meetings, such as to clearly define the purpose of the practice; to build a sense of trust and combined vision among the practice leadership and to become thoroughly familiar with every aspect of your practice. You will create a plan for the future while at the same time agreeing if a roadblock appears in the progress of that plan your team will be prepared to jump in with a solution and never lose their enthusiasm or momentum.

Plan the meeting with some intention; I strongly suggest an off- site location that is quiet and uninterrupted for the day. Some larger practices may benefit from a several day retreat with the leadership of the practice.  A diverse group of leaders from your practice is a very valuable asset at these meetings. In my practice, the owner and I meet in her home for a good portion of one day. Once she and I have a thorough understanding of how our practice was performing and a cohesive and strong vision and series of goals for the future, we hold a similar abbreviated meeting with our four team leaders. The goal was to come alongside those team leaders, share the main overall vision and goals for the practice and empower them to develop a strategic plan for their department and be able to deliver that plan to their team in a way that also empowered and ignited the team for action.

So where do you begin? Before the actual meeting, you will want to collect all the business data on your practice that you intend to discuss at the meeting. Examples of those specifics are below. If you are a very new practice or a practice that needs to restructure from the ground up for any reason then you begin with the basics of your Mission Statement and your Core Values and short-term goals of 6 to 12 months with a sprinkling of long-term goals of 2-5 years ready on the back burner for when the time is right. For now, I will assume the majority of us are not brand new or restructuring and so therefore a perfect place to start is with a S.W.O.T. analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This is a classic exercise to help our focus to be specific and attempt to avoid too many time wasting tangents.

Be aware that the S.W.O.T. is simply a format to organize data, thoughts, ideas and possible goals. In and of itself, it is not an action plan (see example below).

The above example is very simplistic, but you get the idea and hopefully see some great potential goals to aim for within it. You may want to perform a S.W.O.T. of every category and/or department you will be evaluating in order to stay focused.

Some categories that are worth evaluating are;

Financial numbers – do you want to restructure your fees; add or drop a service; how are the internal controls working? You will need to have P&L, Cash Flow, Benchmark, Vertical Analysis, KPI’s and sales reports at the ready for the meeting.

Marketing – Prepare to evaluate internal and external marketing, evaluate the website, face book page, Twitter, Blog, etc (have your website insights/stats at hand). Is it time to drop the Yellow Pages and go with Angie’s List? How is your referral program doing?

Client Satisfaction – is perceived value on track? How do you increase it? Be prepared with survey results (if you do not survey your clients consider doing so in 2012). How can you improve it?

Community – how can you help, where do your passion and resources place you and how do you get the word out there, yet keep boundaries healthy.

Medical systems- bring income numbers from specific revenue centers such as ultrasound or laser therapy, are you on track for our projected break even? Do you need to reorganize your marketing efforts or training or is it time to add that new piece of equipment?

Team members – job satisfaction levels, efficiency, what does the team need to make their tasks easier? (We use a job satisfaction survey with every team member and those results are in front of us at this meeting). Do you need to invest in more training?

Building and grounds – does the facility still meet your needs? Will it meet your needs in five years? If not, what should change? Is it time to remodel or move to a better location?

Business – are monthly service goals and fees on target? Are the recommendations consistent from DVM to DVM? Is it time to institute a consultation fee for significant time with specialist or some other service you have considered but not implemented yet?

Departments – Boarding evaluation, grooming evaluation. Are all services successful or is it time to add or drop some? Kennel and equipment maintenance issues or ideas.

The complete list is significantly longer and more detailed. Remember when you walk away from this meeting you will know your business and your team insideout, you will have set goals, know who is assigned to bring those goals to fruition and what the deadlines are to do so. Goal setting and action steps to achieve them are also a critical element to strategic planning.

This is an exciting and empowering meeting, think outside the box, dream big, where do you want to be in five years; watch your numbers closely and learn from them and then take that enthusiasm, vision and excitement for the future back to your team and get started.