The Three Principles of Right Technology – 1 Pareto’s Principle

Using the right technology in your practice gives you tremendous leverage to increase your success, save time and make life generally more fun… but only if it is the right technology. If it’s not, you can actually make your office less efficient as your team is strangled by PC woes.

The Three Principles of Right Technology govern what works and what doesn’t and they are well-studied in business circles. They are Pareto’s Principle, Pilzer’s wealth formula, and Moore’s law. They have a powerful synergy and you can easily use all three of the together in your practice to get greater results in less time with a lean and efficient team leaving you free to spend more time doing what you want.

Let’s talk about each of these principles in turn and then bring them all together at the end.

Pareto’s Principle

Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Pareto

Pareto’s Principle is also known as the 80-20 rule or the law of the vital few. Essentially it states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. It’s named after Vilfredo Pareto, a brilliant Italian economist from the turn of last century who noticed that 80% of the land of Italy was held by 20% of the population and that 20% of the pea pods he picked in his garden contained 80% of his peas!

Over the years in business this general principle has been found to be true for most business systems. What it means in practice is that 80% of your results come from 20% of the things you do – and it doesn’t matter if you are talking about clinical results or marketing results or practice organization – 80% of what you get at the end comes from just 20% of your actions.

The first thing you want to work out is just exactly what are the 20% of actions that are getting the most results? If you focus on improving those first, you will obviously have the biggest effect.

This doesn’t mean that you should necessarily discard the entire remaining 80%. After all, 20% of your results are coming from there. If you are talking clinical results, you want as much result as you can get. But if you are talking marketing results, you may be prepared to drop the entire 80% and focus on what gives the best results. For admin, it’s probably somewhere in between.

Even with clinical actions though, as you examine them, you will find that some of the things you and your team do don’t actually get any results at all. Those you definitely want to drop.

With those that are left over, you have the option of dropping them, automating them or delegating them.

Over time consider how Pareto’s Principle applies in your practice and pare away, delegate or automate unnecessary actions. Practice Experts in Spinalogic are a powerful tool for you and your team to be able to see exactly what who is doing what and consider if you need to keep or discard your actions.

Applying Pareto’s Principle In Your Office

I suggest you schedule time with your team to review each and every action in each and every process in your office. By not spending time on things that give no or little result, you can refocus on spending time on things that really count. The time it takes you to do this exercise you will make back in just one or two weeks.

Remember, once you have spent time, it can never be reclaimed so make sure you and your team are focused on getting results and not simply on being busy. Results only come when taking right action.

Until next time, have loads of fun in practice, make yours the healthiest community on the planet, and enjoy life fully – today.

Warmest Regards,

Richard Sawyer.

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