Getting down to business

02 May 2012
Volume 28 · Issue 5

Chris Barrow explains the importance of professional coaching.

There are 10,000 independent practice owners in the UK right now. I've been a consultant to the dental profession for 17 years and during that time I've managed to work my way round approximately 15 per cent of that market, so I have a lot of experience of what people are going through, as well as what works and what doesn't.

One of the first things I've noticed is that people will only hire a coach when there is a problem which has become so great, that the pain of doing something about it has become less than the pain of not doing something about it. It's a bit like people who only go to the dentist when they've got toothache.

Compliance consultants have got absolutely no trouble getting work at the moment because the pain is the fear of getting closed down by the CQC. Whereas if a business coach were to say, 'I can show you how to improve your profitability by 20 per cent', they are much more likely to be given the brush-off. People are far more motivated by the fear of loss than they are by the anticipation of gain. When in actual fact, the best time to hire a coach is when you're having your best ever year.

I've worked with all sorts of practices over the years (NHS, mixed, private and specialist) and they all benefit from business advice, they simply benefit in different ways because they're fundamentally different business models. It's the same whether you've got a two-surgery practice, a 10-surgery practice, or whether you have one building or 20. Each unique set of circumstances requires a completely separate approach to business. You cannot come up with a 'one size fits all' solution and that's where some dental corporates have come a little bit unstuck.

Some people may decide to cut their business coach budget during a recession, but the reality is that your need will be greater than ever. In order to run a business well in a recessionary economy, you've got to do things differently. You can't ignore economic circumstances. This applies during the good times, too. Practices can also go bust in a boom economy because they haven't revised their systems in order to adapt to the new economic cycle.

The banks collapsed in August of 2008. We're now moving into the end of the third year of recession, and we could easily have another three years to go. I am still dealing with clients that are having their best ever year and that's because they adapted to circumstances. To quote the best business coach who ever lived, Charles Darwin, 'a species evolves through a process of continuous adaptation.'

For those who say they can't afford business coaching, you could say the same about motor insurance, the warranty on electronic goods, or life insurance. Those are choices you make, but you take the risk upon yourself of success or failure. For me, a business coach is an insurance policy that says 'when I run out of ideas, I've always got somebody there who spends his or her life travelling the UK, looking at successful practices and can bring me good ideas'. It also means you won't get into a difficult situation you need to be rescued from and, believe me, I get that kind of email every single week.