Five Minute Fix

High – Medium – Low

By Paul Martin, PT, MPT, CBI, M&AMI

If your company is like most rehabilitation businesses, you as the owner and manager spend the majority of your time talking about your low performers. It is human nature, because these people tend to cause problems, and you need to solve problems, so you end up spending hours managing around these low performers. In reality, the focus should be on your high performers, as these are individuals who are performing so well in their positions that you could see them in leadership positions someday within the company. Let us suggest a strategy to get you focusing on your high performers and stimulating internal and external growth by creating this focus.

Focus Up

Get your high level owners/leaders together and create a list of all staff. Create a column next to each staff member and rate each staff person either 1 (low performer), 2 (medium performer), or 3 (high performer). Once you have gone through this exercise, go back to each high performer and talk about what role they could play in the company to better utilize their talents and how to implement such a program, or new clinic, or new group within your organization. And finally, schedule time to talk to these high performers one-on-one to discuss their future objectives and where they could see themselves in the future with the company. After all that work, you won’t have time to be talking about the low performers anymore!

Paul Martin, PT, MPT, CBI, M&AMI president of Martin Healthcare Advisors, is a nationally recognized expert on health care business development and succession planning. As a consultant, mentor, and speaker, Paul assists business owners with building value in their companies. He has authored “The Ultimate Success Guide,” numerous industry articles and weekly Friday Morning Moments. He can be reached at pmartin@martinhealthcareadvisors.com.