What Problem are You Trying to Solve?

The other day, I met a young entrepreneur who is just starting his company with a product that he has a great passion for and thinks will perform very well in the market (due to confidentiality, I won’t mention its name).  He was telling me all about how great it was, how he already had a sales channel set up through a friend, so on and so on….

Understanding Your Value

What value do you really provide?

What value do you really provide to your customers, organization, or whomever you are providing a product or service?  Do you know or do you just think you know?  You may provide a product (or service) that is very unique, or you deliver it in such a unique way that it provides value to those who purchase the product; but do you truly understand why they buy?

Fundamental Assumptions

A rich man wants to build an elaborate house some new property he just purchased on the beach.  He contacts a builder, shows him the design, and wants it done post haste.  The builder agrees, collaborates with the owner over several meetings, and together they develop a timeline to get the job done and meet the owners time demands. 

Process Improvement and Kitchen Nightmares – A recipe for success?

A friend of mine was telling me about a show he thought I would like – Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, which is now being broadcast in the U.S. as Kitchen Nightmares on Fox.  I’m not a big reality show guy but decided to give it a look the other day when I stumbled across it on BBC America while channel surfing.  He was right – I do like the show.  But I think there is something missing – continuous improvement.

How to Handle a Mistake

A colleague of mine recently had to make that most unpleasant phone call.  He had to call a client just before a board meeting and tell them there was an error in a calculation, that the information provided was wrong, and it would take some time to correct.  Needless to say, the client was not happy.  He delayed the presentation to the board until next month.

Physician Practice Consolidation, Patients, and Process

Healthcare systems appear to be on a late night binge lately, gobbling up Physician practices as fast as they can.  It all seems to be part of their “Physician Growth Strategy” – otherwise known as “rather than entice physicians to practice at my system by providing exceptional service and patient care, I’ll just buy them out, make them employees, and structure their contracts so it is to their benefit to send the patients to me.”  Well, whatever the reason it’s happening a lot.

Mark Carter recently wrote about his experience with his newly acquired physician on his Healthcare Strategy blog.  His physician stated the usual reasons for being bought out – increased back office efficiency, electronic medical records, help with contracting, etc.  Not mentioned, but probably a major driving factor was income stability – a salary not dependent upon patient mix (that was now the Healthcare Systems problem).  [Click here for the entire article]

While this was all good for the physician, what about for the patient?

Two Tales of Customer Service

In the past couple of weeks I have had the distinct pleasure of driving nearly 3,000 miles through 8 states in the U.S.A. using two different cars.  When one puts that many miles on vehicles in a week, something is bound to go wrong – and it did.