Take time to work on your practice, not just in it

At Fetch Long Beach, practice-management expert Peter Weinstein, DVM, MBA, challenges owners to step out of the daily grind and intentionally WONJI—work on their practices, not just in them. He makes the case that blocking regular, uninterrupted time to think about vision, mission, core values, and standards of care is how teams gain direction, reduce firefighting, and ultimately deliver better care for patients.

Transcript

Peter Weinstein, DVM, MBA: Hi, I'm Dr Peter Weinstein. I'm honored to be on the faculty here at Fetch Long Beach, and I've been on the faculty at several Fetch conferences, speaking on practice management. I've also done talks with my business partner, Kelly Detweiler, on controlled substance compliance and diversion aversion. I'm here in Long Beach to talk about a variety of things to make your practice bottom line more fun.

I do a lot of different things in the profession. I like to think the last third of my career will be focused on education—improving the profession, making it better for the next generation of veterinarians, veterinary team members, and the profession as a whole, which ultimately means we'll do a better job caring for the four-legged, two-winged, and slithering patients that we get to see.

WONJI is an acronym for "Work On, Not Just In." Veterinarians, managers, and all staff get so embedded in the day-to-day operations that we don't take time away to think about the bigger picture. We're so tightly wound into the molecular level that we don't look at things from a global level. We have to start finding time to work on the various parts of our businesses that provide direction. We need to make sure we have a vision, a mission, core values, and even standards of care that are inspirational and aspirational, and less focused on the tactics we tend to fixate on.

One suggestion I have when I talk about this is: you've got to get away from your practice. Schedule time away to think about where you want to go. If you don't program your GPS, you can't get there. I can't emphasize enough that one thing you can do to practice WONJI is to schedule time to work on your business, not just in it. Schedule that time away from the practice, whether it's sitting at the beach, on a mountain, or in your car in a parking lot. Book yourself that time. Get away from the team, get away from the clients, and start to think about planning. Where you want to go and how you're going to get there.

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