Signs that your practice's plan needs a reset

Stephen A. Dickens, JD, MAEd, FACMPE, vice president of medical practice services at SVMIC, shares key warning signs that a strategic plan may be losing momentum or missing the mark. In this clip, he outlines subtle shifts in attitude and communication that practice leaders should be watching for.

“If they’re not actively talking about the plan, then either we’ve not done a good job of communicating the why of it, or what it is that we need to do,” Dickens says. When team members become disengaged or start treating the plan as irrelevant, that’s a clear signal. “If people are just kind of like, ‘Oh, this isn’t going to make a difference,’ they become lackluster about it — that’s the time to push the reset button.”

He encourages leaders to look out for canceled meetings, strategic goals that never make it onto the agenda, or a general sense that “it really doesn’t make any difference anyway.” According to Dickens, these are all signs that a practice has lost connection with the strategy — and that it’s time to refocus. “If people no longer understand what we’re doing or why we’re doing it, then we’ve lost something there,” he says. “And those are really essential elements.”