Welcome To 'Outside In'

Author: Christian Bamber
Posted: Monday 8th August, 2011. 11:04:19

Welcome to a new addition to the Vetclick website and hopefully to something a little different for the veterinary profession.

Through writing this page, I wanted to look beyond the profession at some of the more interesting insights and ideas from the world of strategy, operations and management, and see how these could be applied in the context of the veterinary industry.

It’s possible, therefore, that some of what is discussed here may be quite alien to the average veterinary practice, for example, since it is likely to have originated and been developed in other industries or sectors. Even if you may be familiar with some of the concepts, it is unlikely that they have received widespread application, or been applied effectively, within our own industry.

Whether a traditional veterinary practice or another veterinary industry-related enterprise, the intention is not to tell you how you must definitively run your business, rather to share with you knowledge from all business spheres and for you to decide whether there could be a practical application for you. If you are seeking more mainstream advice, then I would refer you to the standard professional publications.

As for the veterinary profession itself, it has made quite a few leaps in terms of its business and management practices in recent years for a number of reasons including a general increase in veterinary staff business knowledge, the running of veterinary businesses by non-vets and/or more experienced managers, and development of organisations such as the Veterinary Practice Management Association.

However, we must continue to learn from both within and outside of our profession; the veterinary world has not traditionally been considered a nucleus of leading strategy, operations or management development (apologies if you disagree!) and so it is vital that we apply best practice from other organisations and industries that have lead the way in certain fields. As a vet, former practice owner, executive director of a large national charity and a management consultant, I hope I will bring some depth and breadth to introducing new insights and ideas.

It won’t necessarily centre around what we should be doing either; we can gain just as much valuable learning in what we shouldn’t be doing i.e. what’s gone on in other industries and sectors that has failed. Perhaps with some adjustment it might actually work in our profession.

And a final aim (more of a challenge for me) is to avoid too much jargon and management “buzzwording”, but forgive me if it creeps in. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum!

Can you tell me how to get to Perth?

So, what is the first area we should look at? Having become familiar with many businesses over the years, there is one thing that crops up time and time again as a root cause for many issues at large within them; there is no strategy!

Consider this: you are catching a flight from the UK to Perth, Australia. The captain makes the following announcement:

Hi folks. Welcome aboard. We’ll be flying to Perth today and we’ve lost the flight plan so we have absolutely no idea how we are going to get there. But we’ll give it a good shot.

Would you stay on this plane? Would you be happier knowing that the pilots had a flight plan to go by even if it required a bit of tweaking en route to accommodate the odd patch of bad weather?

If you don’t have a strategy, you are flying blind. This is why strategy is so important because it maps out how you are going to get from where you are now to where you want to go, through understanding the challenges and exploiting the opportunities that lie ahead. Even if you have no great aspirations and are content with the status quo, you should still have a strategy that defines how you will maintain it.

Next week

Next week we will look at strategy in more detail and what we can learn from the likes of Madonna, Toyota and Starbucks. In the meantime, if you have anything to add to this week's discussion, please drop me a line in the comments box. Healthy debate welcome!

Read the next article in Christian's 'Outside In' here

Christian Bamber is Principal Consultant and Director of Approach Strategy, a consulting firm specialising in strategy services to service industries and not-for-profit organisations. For more information, please contact Approach Strategy at christian@approachstrategy.co.uk. Tel: 01225 722 654 or visit their website www.approachstrategy.co.uk

This article has been viewed 761 times.

Comments

Your name *

Your email *

Comments

Email me when a new comment is posted

Enter the two words below

Please note: All comments are moderated before being published