Episode Transcript
Key Takeaways
- Business systems are in a constant state of entropy and require consistent attention.
- Consistency and sustainability are crucial for maintaining effective business processes.
- Regular feedback and meetings can drive business improvement and innovation.
- Embrace change and chaos as opportunities for growth and innovation.
- A leader’s role is to design systems that thrive on change and solve problems effectively.
Introduction
Welcome to another episode of Practice Perfect, the title of today’s show is your practice is falling apart every day. What are you going to do about it? Now, medical professionals tend to like order and a state of healing.
Business vs. Medicine
But unfortunately, business isn’t medicine. The state of business isn’t one where it is constantly getting better by itself. If you create an incision in a body, generally in a healthy person, that incision will heal. The correction that you’ve made will get better.
Understanding Entropy
And in time, that patient will fully recover and continue to be robust and make improvements. But I want you to start thinking of your business a little bit differently. The first concept we’re going to talk about is entropy. Now, entropy, I’m sure you’ve studied science, you are probably familiar with the term, I’m going to define it in a way that’s easy for everybody else to sort of understand, so that we have some common ground.
The tendency of all things in the universe to fall apart, or more accurately, to fall into disorder from order.
Business Systems in Entropy
Now, business systems are no different. They’re in a constant state of entropy. I’m talking about things like your customer service, your web content, your website structure, your technology infrastructure, and your marketing.
Organizational Half-Life
So the question I have for you is, what is your organizational half-life? Now, to define half-life, it’s the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. Now, I want to use that analogy here because I want you to start thinking of it that way.
Ensuring Consistency and Sustainability
Now, there are two things that you need to ensure for this to happen. So in order to have a robust infrastructure, you need to ensure consistency and sustainability. If something isn’t being done consistently, then your half-life is short. In some practices, that’s as soon as you walk out the door.
If your staff can’t sustain it and be consistent with it, then there’s no point to doing it.
Feedback and Meetings
So I deal with this situation in two ways. The first way is to create a feedback loop. The second way is to schedule regular monthly meetings.
Embracing Change and Chaos
Now, what I want you to also understand is that you should not expect your business to run smoothly. No successful growing business runs smoothly. Businesses that are in a stable state, everything’s smooth, they’re usually in the process of dying. At the start, we discussed entropy a little bit. Energy in a system means higher entropy.
Your job is to accept and manage the chaos.
Conclusion
All right, I’m going to get off my soapbox here. I think I’ve made the point. I want you to go out there and start taking action.