I once read in some advice column that you should show up late to a party as if you’ve just come from another one, and that you should leave the party early as if you’re headed out to the next.
Maybe that’s good advice for your social life, I’m not really sure.
But it’s terrible advice for physicians, whether in the context of individual employment or in the collective sense of medical groups. Because if you want to succeed, you have to show up and then do far more.
You know this already, at least intellectually. Lots of people say that just showing up is not enough. I don’t need to repeat it, although I just did.
The problem is that many medical groups don’t even do that. They don’t really show up. At least not in the context of doing anything other than delivering medical services.
They don’t develop lasting relationships with referral sources. They don’t ask what more can they do for their customers. They don’t understand that if they don’t delight, someone else will. They don’t plan to seize other opportunities and to create ones that don’t yet exist.
Some argue that as medicine becomes more commoditized, creating delight and revolutionizing your practice will no longer matter. For them, no explanation will suffice.
But for those who do understand, no explanation is needed.
