Are you playing

with yourself?

. . . business is

a team sport!

     Don’t you just love it when a word older than the Civil War makes a comeback and ends up on top of the heap? Collaboration. It’s the hot new buzz word in business. Who knew? It’s strategic alliance, cooperation, shared interests, communication, interaction, productivity, and teamwork all rolled into one.

     Whoa! And it’s not a legal, structured entity so there are no lawyers involved. What could offer greater promise for success?

     Did you think that just because you run your own business, you no longer need to worry about or deal with anyone else? Did you think “Solopreneuring” would or should render you independent? Did you think when you hung out your solo practitioner shingle, you could function completely on your own?

     No more. Maybe small business hasn’t yet caught up with the giant union-based companies feeding on bailout tax dollars, or the Silicon Valley techies housed in converted warehouses with coed bathrooms, and elevated bunkbeds hovering over their computer workstations. But small businesses ARE collaborative.

     Successful small business owners recognize they cannot withstand today’s economic forces with their incessant coastal flooding and gale warnings simply by hunkering down and having an inflatable lifeboat ready.

     Doctors (including those who directly compete) can no longer exist without other doctors’ referrals. Downtown business membership organizations (including many directly competitive retailers) work together to stimulate customer foot traffic. Online and offline services are sharing services with other online and offline services.

     Many compatible and/or competitive businesses are partnering up for centralized buying services in order to exercise greater clout in winning product and service quantity and shipping discounts. Many others share creative development talents. There are even collaboration website resources like http://www.collaboratingentrepreneur.com for small business owners (which is well worth a visit).

     Business employee alumni associations are cropping up with collaborative applications designed to capitalize on the life and career paths of former (retired or moved on) employees who have maintained loyalty and/or contact since leaving. New revenue streams and solidified client sales have evolved from these collaborations.

A FREE, do-it-yourself, 2-page Business Employee Alumni Association

How-To Guide is available via email to me at the address below.  

     The point is that if you’re playing with yourself (pardon the double entendre), you are living in the dark ages, and you need to come up for air, look around, and see how you can help yourself (and others) by combining forces, interests, and financial pursuits. No contracts, no lawyers, and no money required. Go for it!

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

U.S. Hospitals and healthcare

proposals waaaaay past 

the point of 1st Aid!

A SHORT STORY THAT’S ANCHORED IN TWO DECADES

OF INDEPENDENT MANAGEMENT CONSULTING SERVICES

RENDERED TO HOSPITALS AND HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS:

     At some obscure moment in recent history, about 30-40 years ago, it seems to me, someone had the bright idea to start advertising hospital services. And it was contagious. Pretty soon, ripples began to surface amid the vast sea of shallow-mindedness and business incompetency (that many physicians and business professionals still consider a) breeding ground for hospital executives, administrators, and boards of trustees.

     Hey, marketing works for other kinds of services, these do-good-Boy-Scout-type doctor-wannabes were running around proclaiming, why not hospitals?  Sure, agreed the medical professionals who knew even less about business, why not? they said; nothing else you’ve done has worked. And so it came to pass that hospitals then began to compete with hot dogs, beer, cigarettes, cosmetics and car dealers.

     Well, sure, alcohol and tobacco advertising have since taken a big hit (thankfully), but guess what? Hospital marketing has just continued to get worse. With very rare exception, today’s hospital advertising and marketing programs are ineffectual, misdirected, and unnecessarily expensive. The job is simply not getting done, and they keep spending more to make it not work!

     Present federal government administrative healthcare overtures are equally misdirected and will cost taxpayers a fortune, not to mention the staggering losses in professional healthcare skills that will certainly accompany socialized medicine.

     The problem with what the government proposes is the same one that hospitals have struggled with all these years. It’s that the ideas behind it all are being manipulated to appear creative and the public is being sold on the creativity.

    Unfortunately, creativity does not sell. Everyone on Earth can be creative. Very few are innovative. Innovation gets things done. http://halalpiar.com/2009/06/creative-ideas-vs-innovative-ideas/

     The bottom line is that hospitals need to shape up and start to get their messages straight; the public isn’t as stupid as hospital executives think.

     Similarly, the federal government needs to shape up and get its thinking straight, start being innovative, start thinking these empty, ill-suited proposals all the way through in the context of reality, not fantasy.

     The uninformed, incompetent socialistically-manipulative people being relied on may be well-intentioned, but they haven’t a clue about the business of healthcare, or any business for that matter.

     In the end, communities, citizens, healthcare professionals, and taxpayers will suffer. The time to step back and reassess is NOW. Remember that in the end, after all is said and done, it’s YOUR body and your family’s bodies that will be, so to speak, on the line.

     Do you really want hospital business administrators and government representatives with zero or inadequate healthcare knowledge and experience dictating to you what doctor you need to see and when and where? And do you really think socialized medicine will reward you with quality care? Think again. 

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Hal@TheWriterWorks.com or comment below.

Thanks for visiting. 

Go for your goals, good night and God bless you!

The Business of Healthcare

Reality is that doctors are no longer” just” examiners, diagnosticians, and healers. In fact, the way things have been going, odds are that something about the healthcare profession will be vastly different by the time we wake up tomorrow morning.

And today, doctors are routinely expected to be insurance experts; banking, investment and financial wizards; administrative hot-shots; marketing, patient relations and community relations gurus; human resource management directors; professional buyers; government compliance champions; shrinks (even if they’re not psychiatrists or psychologists); oh, yes, and family icons.

Does this all add up to patients not getting as much quality care and attention? Of course. How can ANY human being whose existence is devoted to providing professional healthcare be expected to give patients full attention with so many other commitments and expectations tugging at her or his stethoscope? There is a way. Read on.

Thankfully, doctors share many of the same hallmark characteristics as entrepreneurs — from managing diverse cases, juggling breakneck schedules, being able and willing to work long hours and turn on the proverbial dime (if FDR ever knew!), to being self-empowering, quick decision makers with fairly strong delegation skills…and commanding (commandeering?) egos.

     Both–doctors and entrepreneurs–are motivated by the desire for personal achievement and financial gain, as well as a deep sense of things spiritual. Both take reasonable risks. Hence the name I created many years ago: “Doctorpreneurs.”

The differences of course are equally important. Human (and animal) healing, relief, care, wellness, and hope are certainly not software, electronics, transportation…or beer, hot dogs, tobacco, and french fries!

Two telling characteristics common to savvy doctors and true-blooded entrepreneurs is that both will only take reasonable risks, and both are smart enough to recognize that:

A) They don’t know and don’t want to know everything outside their realm of expertise, nor do they want to sacrifice the time it takes to learn because it detracts from their specialized skills and interests, and

B) They need to find and surround themselves with people who are experts in their own fields because in the long run it’s easier and less expensive to pay professional fees than to waste time and energy learning by trial and error.

     These are not traits of government or corporate leaders.

In the end, they are the traits that will hold our embattled healthcare programs and services together in much the same fashion that entrepreneurs (ala Jobs and Gates) will be the true agents of change as captains of small business that will turn the economy’s tide to productivity, prosperity, and growth.

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Input welcome anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

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Assuming it’s 2009

wherever you are…

     “Somethings never change,” we’ve heard, but they DO! Assuming it’s 2009 wherever you are, and  you’re at least vaguely interested in surviving– your business or professional practice development efforts must start to reach out for and embrace UNusual approaches to winning and keeping customers, clients and patients.  

     “Great!” you say, “but what ARE they?” Brrrrraaaaaaaat! Wrong question!

     What you need to know –because every doctor, lawyer and business owner is different from every other doctor, lawyer and business owner– is how to get started figuring out what UNusual approaches will work for YOU.

     The first step is to evaluate what has and hasn’t worked for you in the past. [Even if the business or practice is a new one, you still know what qualities, characteristics, methodologies, approaches and behaviors have worked for you in your life to help you get to where you are; go with those to start!]

     Once you’ve isolated the strengths of your best past messages, make a brainstorm list of new and different ways you can apply those messages. Do not edit or critique your initial list; don’t talk yourself out of putting an idea down, even if it involves using carrier pigeons! Why? Because dumb ideas that you don’t eliminate along the way will lead to sensible worthwhile ones. Take a break. Then return with your critical red ink and eliminate, combine and consolidate thoughts.

     Online social networks like Twitter www.Twitter.com are quickly providing (for FREE) a massive referral base for those willing to invest some budgeted time and energy. www.BizBrag.com allows you (for FREE) to post a free news release about some newsworthy aspect of your business or professional practice every day if you choose.

     BizBrag even lets you set these up so they are emailed to prime customers or clients or patients. Or you can send your own personalized emails out urging your contacts to tune you in (to your releases, or your videos that you can put on www.YouTube.com and other sites). With a webcam, you can produce (for FREE) your own mini-series of lectures or seminars and email them out or post them.

     If you have a website, you probably also have (a FREE) blog capability built into it. And even if you don’t, blog sites are basically free or close to free anyway. No time to write blogs? Hire a professional blog writer who can capture your style and “voice” and represent topics you choose, for you! 

     And blogs need not be great literary works. I know an eye surgeon who’s a wizbang photographer and uses his blog site to show off his photos, along with one-line captions urging check-ups, etc. Another fills blog entries with great motivational quotes and appointment reminders.

     Professionals dependent on referrals from other professionals can develop blog posts (and ultimately deliver bound together printouts) on areas involving their specialties and special interests. An orthopedic surgeon with a special interest in sports medicine can generate referrals with booklets made of blog posts on rotator cuff or tennis elbow treatments and exercises for coaches, trainers and physical therapists. 

     Positive impressions of being an accepted authority can also be made with mailings to personal injury lawyers. All of the above become potential referrers to the surgeon. And there’s not a business alive that can’t stand to do more catering to past and present customers –the best source of business– with UNusual approaches.    halalpiar

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A doctor is a doctor is a doctor. 

So why should you expect the doctor to be a lawyer? 

     There are some who are both, of course (like from personal experience, I think there are probably also dentists who moonlight as plumbers!), but training and experience usually dictate expertise.  You’re not likely to find a physician handling tort reform, class action suits, or wills, real estate and corporate law. 

     With the same reasoning then, why should a doctor be expected to understand and practice sound customer service principles?  Because physicians are not simply technicians working on car engines.  They are, as we who have been patients know all too well, dealing with human beings. 

     And there is, though some doctors have yet to notice, a difference between machines and bodies.

     Okay, so medical school doesn’t much emphasize the importance of bedside manners, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of living life (even IF it’s been mostly in a medical closet) to appreciate that physicians are rightfully expected to be compassionate and understanding and empathetic enough to help their patients cope and rise above difficult physical and emotional pain and ailments. 

     Don’t you think?  So what makes it okay for any of us to sell or market products and services to others without taking enough interest in the buyers to check back with them?  Why is it not important for us to make sure our customers are STILL pleased with their purchases? 

     Why do we think doctors shouldn’t get away with ignoring our humanness, but it’s not a problem to sell someone something and then push them out the door or over the cliff and dismiss them from our lives?  Do we think there’s no chance they’ll ever return?  That they won’t tell anyone else to visit us? (or not?!) 

     When I was a college teacher on the Jersey Shore, I referred to this way of thinking as “boardwalk mentality” because tourists could be sucked into anything on the boardwalk while they were there vacationing and treating themselves and their families to some good times . . . and they’d be gone in a week and never return anyway . . . or if they did, they’d never remember getting ripped off, so screw’em!

     Well, besides the fact that those days have gone, that even boardwalk concessions are more customer-conscious, and that doctors and lawyers (well, okay, not lawyers) have become more patient satisfaction savvy, many sales and marketing people still avoid customer service followup calls. 

     They do so at their peril, and naively thinking it’s not costing them repeat sales.  It is.  And will eventually (sooner rather than later) cost them a job.  A word to the wise . . .                       halalpiar 

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This isn’t the movies and

you’re not in Hollywood! 

     What?  You thought you would be finding more hard core “sales-and-business” stuff here?  Well, working on your authenticity is the most genuine and arguably most important sales-and-business stuff you could ever set your sights on. 

     Businesses (and salespeople) succeed or fail based on how authentically they come across to their internal and external markets. 

     What your employees and suppliers think –for example– of the approaches you take to managing your business, or piece of the business you’re charged with, will positively impact your reputation, sales, and of course customer relations, even R&D projects!

     So, don’t be bashful; let’s take a little inventory.  How much of every day do you waste time and energy “playing the boss role” (making power plays, flexing your internal politics muscle, acting controlling, acting like a know-it-all, exaggerating your accomplishments, glossing over your errors) instead of just “being” the leader? 

     How much, in other words, do you try to influence others by attempting to impress them vs. simply gaining their respect by relating to them at their individual levels? 

     This isn’t the movies and you’re not in Hollywood. 

     Regardless of their stations in life, everyone in your daily path brings a certain energy to bear on each issue.  I grew up in an obscure, dilapidated, 3-room, third floor walk-up apartment next to the railroad tracks in one of America’s richest communities. 

     And if that sounds paradoxical, consider that my father was a mailman, whose advice was sought after daily by mayors, police chiefs, doctors, and Congressmen.  He was confided in by top “Fortune 500” corporate executives, and trusted by well-known authors, columnists, and artists. 

     He was a “closet confidant” to many big-name radio and TV personalities who lived in our low-profile, waterfront village north of New York City.

     How was this possible?  Harry escaped the ravages of genocide and came to America as a six year-old waif with a handful of rice.  He had no formal education, but he considered every encounter everyday as genuine and meaningful. 

     Harry listened carefully, spoke and laughed and cried from his heart, and never pretended to be someone he wasn’t.  He was quick to admit he didn’t have all the answers.  He was a character, all right.  He was the Norman Rockwell style   www.nrm.org/ personification of humility.

     He would have been a smash success at any business venture, but he liked who he was, he liked what he did, and he respected his “customers.”  In spite of his faults, and too much whiskey, he was nonetheless a success at being himself!  And he made sure his two sons grew up to appreciate the values of authenticity.

     In my thirty years of business coaching, consulting, and training, I can attest to this single quality as that which separates successful people and businesses from the wannabees, hasbeens and alsorans: authenticity.  It needn’t be perfect; but it does need to be vigilently practiced and consistently pursued.  How’s yours?  Halalpiar  

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