Practice
The Monday morning review that takes ten minutes
Not a reporting pack. Five numbers, one question each, and a decision.
The short answer
Look at the same five numbers every Monday, in the same order, against a target. Ask one question of each: is it on track, and if not, what changes this week? Ten minutes, done before the first appointment.
Why weekly beats monthly
A month is too long to correct anything. By the time a monthly report lands, three of the four weeks are spent and whatever went wrong has already cost you. A week is short enough to act on and long enough to be more than noise.
It is also short enough that the review stays a habit rather than an event. Nobody blocks two hours for a monthly pack more than twice.
The order that works
- Cash first. What came in, and who owes you. Nothing else matters if this one is wrong.
- Demand. New enquiries or new patients. Your top of funnel, which sets everything four weeks out.
- Conversion. Did that demand turn into booked, paid work?
- Capacity. Utilisation, or whatever tells you whether you can take more.
- Leakage. Cancellations, no-shows, churn. Where the work you already won is quietly falling out.
Cash, in, through, capacity, out. Once the order is fixed you stop deciding what to look at and start looking.
One question per number
For each: is it on target, and if not, what am I changing this week?
Not “why is it down”, which invites a discussion. “What am I changing”, which requires a decision. If the answer is nothing, that is a legitimate answer, and you move on in fifteen seconds.
What makes it fast
- Every number has a target, so “on track” is visible rather than calculated.
- Every number has a direction, so a fall is not automatically alarming.
- The comparison is against the previous period, already done for you.
- Nothing needs exporting, and nobody prepares anything beforehand.
If your review needs someone to build a spreadsheet first, it will not survive a busy month. The point of a board is that the preparation is zero.
Making it stick
Same time, same five numbers, same order, every week. A weekly digest that arrives Monday morning does most of the work: it puts the numbers in front of you rather than waiting for you to remember to look.
See it on your own numbers.
Thirty days, no card. Start with your figures or a template for your trade.