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APPLYING JIM COLLINS’ FLYWHEEL TO YOUR PT BUSINESS
Let’s start at the top of the flywheel - New Patients. Why start there? This is truly a chicken-or-egg-first idea. Tough to have a viable practice and business without a consistent flow of New Patients coming in. Plus I’m biased to marketing. To start, we do some marketing action to at least get a trickle of New Patients in the door… Once new patients are coming in, hopefully they’re signing up for full plans of care. That results in visits. Once we have visits, whether we’re cash pay or billing insurance companies, we receive income. What do we do with income? We invest it in making sure we have the capacity to serve more people - purchase additional equipment, treatment tables, additional space, etc. (Yes, you have to pay your bills too). What else should we invest in? We can steadily buy more market share - layering our media, investing in systems that attract more New Patients. And the cycle repeats. The flywheel keeps spinning, faster and faster…In simple terms, a flywheel is a series of coordinated initiatives, one causing an effect, which itself becomes causative of another effect and so on until we’re back to the beginning.
Hello Breakthrough Owner,
JimCollins’ Good to Great is widely accepted as an iconic study in the vital components of business success. One of the key concepts in Good to Great is “The Flywheel Concept.” (See Chapter 8). There is a lesser known and read monograph, also written by Collins, called, “Turning the Flywheel: AMonograph to Accompany Good to Great - Why Some Companies Build Momentum and Others Don’t.” It’s worthy of your time - 40 valuable pages. What is a flywheel? And how does it apply to business success? A flywheel is a huge, heavy wheel that is nearly impossible to move in the beginning. But inch by inch, such a wheel can begin spinning. Eventually, as the flywheel picks up momentum and speed - a point is reach where the inertia of the flywheel itself keeps the entire wheel going. Jim’s main point in applying this to business is that most people look at business success as one big push - one initiative - one innovation. But most “overnight success stories” are 20 years in the making… It’s not one push that gets the flywheel moving - or makes the business successful. It’s the accumulated effort applied in a consistent direction. Or as Jimwrites: “The good-to-great companies understood a simple truth: tremendous power exists in the fact of continued improvement and the delivery of results.”
Now that you have some grasp of the concept, here’s the follow-up question:
Where is Your Flywheel Stuck? This is the differential diagnosis portion of your life as a business owner - working on your business. Is every step in your flywheel rolling along smoothly, gradually picking up speed and force? Or do you have a hiccup? A speed bump? Something messing up your flywheel’s inertia? That’s the key to implementing the flywheel. Otherwise it’s full speed ahead - hiring more clinicians, selecting more space, investing in greater market share. Focus on picking up speed in the flywheel - when I first started - it took me 3 years to hire the third clinician. To-day, we’re on track to hire 4 new DPTs in the next two quarters. The pitfall is to look at today’s result. The better approach is to look at how the flywheel gradually gainedmomentumover time. Application Apply the flywheel concept with your leadership team - officemanagers, clinic directors, center managers. Get them a copy of the Flywheel Monograph. Have them help you create your version of the flywheel (or you can shortcut and just use the one we do). Talk about where your flywheel is stuck, and what you can do to get it moving again. Hope this helps you on your Private Practice journey, Chad PS - One more time - the title: Turning the Flywheel: AMonograph to Accompany Good to Great - Why Some Companies Build Momentum and Others Don’t.
Here’s How the Flywheel Version We’ve Adopted at Madden & Gilbert PT:
First, I could be wrong about this - this was not approved by Jim Collins. But I think we’re close - it’s at least workable and applicable for aligning our team.
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