Don’t Jump Straight Back In: What Is Your Care Business Telling You?

By: Chris Briggs

Coming back from a holiday can give you something valuable – it can give you distance.

For a week or two, you haven't been dealing with the rota, answering emails, solving staffing problems, responding to the latest issue or trying to get through an ever-growing to-do list.

Instead, you’ve relaxed and enjoyed time away from your business. And somewhere in that space, you may have thought about your business.

Perhaps an idea occurred to you while you were sitting by the pool, walking along a beach or simply enjoying a quiet morning with a coffee.
Perhaps you found yourself thinking about something in the business that isn't working as well as it should.
Or perhaps you realised just how much of the business still depends on you.

Where are you right now?

Returning from a relaxing holiday, refreshed and hopefully full of ideas, it’s natural to think about where you want to take your business – to think about the future.

And it’s vital that you do this, so your business doesn’t stagnate.

But before deciding where you want to go next, you need an honest picture of where you are starting from.

What’s working well in your business? What isn’t working well?
This matters because the weaknesses you leave unresolved today could prevent you from achieving what you want from the business tomorrow.

To help you step back and look at your business today, think about what happened while you were away. Was there anything that concerned you? Did you receive emails or calls asking you to fix a problem or make a decision? Was there a theme or pattern that highlighted a weakness in your business?

Did little concerns niggle away at you — things you found yourself hoping would be contained until you got back?

These can all be clues that something needs strengthening.

Also, ask yourself some key questions like:

How financially healthy is the business?
Do you really know what it costs you to deliver your care? Are your current fees sustainable? Are you monitoring your costs closely enough? Are some placements or care packages performing better financially than others?

Where are you repeatedly firefighting?
What problems keep coming back?

If you are dealing with the same issue again and again, there is a good chance an underlying system or a leadership issue — rather than the immediate problem — needs attention.

What don't you have enough visibility of?
Are there parts of your business where you depend heavily on someone telling you what’s going on and informing you that everything is okay?

Would you know early enough if it wasn't?

Where are you vulnerable?
Perhaps you rely too heavily on one person.

Perhaps an important process exists mainly in someone's head. Perhaps you don't have the management information you need. Perhaps training compliance, costs, occupancy, care hours or performance aren't as visible as they should be.

These aren't particularly comfortable questions.

But they are useful ones.

Lack of clarity is itself a business risk

One of the biggest risks in any business isn't necessarily knowing that you have a problem – that’s a good first step. It is not knowing that you have one.

A problem you can see can be investigated and addressed. A problem hidden beneath the surface can continue growing.

Don’t assume you know everything that is going on in your business – make sure you do.

Trusting your managers and having visibility are not opposites.
You may implicitly trust a manager who tells you that the quality of care being delivered is good, that departmental spend is within budget, that staff are compliant with mandatory training, that quality audits are keeping the service inspection-ready or that late payments are being chased and collected.

But good systems should allow you to see that for yourself.
This isn't about mistrust or micromanagement. It's about having the visibility you need to lead the business properly.

Trust isn't the problem; trust without visibility is the vulnerability.
That is why good businesses create visibility.

You shouldn't need to wait until something goes badly wrong to discover that a process is weak, performance has slipped or costs are moving in the wrong direction.

The right systems, measures and management information should tell you earlier and give you time to act.

Find your three weak spots

Reviewing and knowing where your business is today may sound overwhelming. You could spend ages analysing every aspect of your business.

Don't. Start much more simply. Take a blank sheet of paper and ask:

What are the three areas of my business that concern me most right now?

Don't overthink it. Your first answers are probably the right ones.

They might be:

financial performance
fees that haven't kept pace with costs
recruitment or retention
staff training
management performance
occupancy
home care capacity
compliance
inconsistent processes
too much dependency on particular individuals
poor management information
lack of accountability
too much of your own time being spent firefighting

Then ask a second question:

Why does this concern me?

Don't rush past this question. You may instinctively know that something doesn't feel right but try to identify why it is worrying you.

Is it because:

performance is getting worse?
you don't have enough information to know whether things are working properly?
the same problems keep appearing?
too much depends on one person?
you are spending increasing amounts of your own time dealing with it?
it is costing the business money?
it could affect the quality of care?

Or simply because, if you are completely honest with yourself, you know you have been putting off dealing with it?

Then look for evidence.

What have you seen, heard or experienced that is creating the concern?

Perhaps costs have been creeping upwards. A manager's reports have become less reliable. Staff turnover has increased. Training compliance is slipping. Complaints are becoming more frequent. A particular care package never seems profitable. Or you find yourself repeatedly stepping in to resolve the same type of problem.

Sometimes you may discover something else:

The reason you are concerned is that you simply don't know enough.

You don't have the information, measures or visibility to confidently say whether that part of the business is performing well.

And that lack of clarity is itself something worth addressing.

Sometimes the weakness you uncover isn't poor performance — it's that you don't have enough visibility to know whether performance is good or bad.

Once you understand why an area concerns you, it becomes much easier to decide what needs to change.

And then the most important question:

What would need to change for me to feel confident about this area six months from now?

You have just started turning a concern into an improvement priority.

Look at the business through four lenses

If you are struggling to identify your three areas, look at your business through four different lenses.

Financial Health
Start here - do you understand your costs, fees, margins and financial performance well enough to make confident decisions?

Strategy
Are you clear about where the business is going and what needs to happen next?

Systems
Do your systems give you consistency, visibility and control — or are too many things dependent on individuals remembering to do them?

Leadership
Are expectations clear? Is there accountability? Do your managers have the information and authority they need? And do you have sufficient visibility to know how different parts of the business are performing?

You will probably find that your three weak areas sit somewhere within these four.

And they may be connected.

A weak system creates poor information.

Poor information creates a lack of clarity.

A lack of clarity makes good leadership harder.

And weak leadership can allow the system to deteriorate further.

Don't start by adding more

This is where I think many of us go wrong after a break. Recall, I said that understandably we return from a holiday energised and thinking about everything we want to do.

New initiatives.
New services.
New targets.
New projects.

But before that, the most valuable thing you can do is not add something new. It is to strengthen what you already have.

Fix something that is vulnerable.
Improve something that isn't visible enough.
Systemise something that depends too heavily on one person.
Understand an area of your finances that isn't clear enough.
Resolve one of those recurring problems that keeps stealing your time.
Strengthen the foundation of your business so it will support your future ambitions.

Don't waste this opportunity

There will always be something demanding your immediate attention - that's the nature of running a business.

But the opportunity to step outside all that noise and look at your care business with fresh eyes doesn't come along nearly as often.

So if you've just returned from a break, try not to waste it. Before you get completely drawn back into the day-to-day, give yourself an hour.

Turn off the phone. Close the inbox. Put up a “Do Not Disturb” sign if necessary.

Take a blank sheet of paper. If you're struggling to get started, read through this post again and ask yourself:

What three areas concern me most?
Why do they concern me?
What needs to be different six months from now?

Don't worry yet about creating a detailed action plan. We'll come to that.

For now, get clarity.

Because once you can see clearly where you are, you can start deciding what needs to change.

Next time, we'll move from clarity to action. We'll take you through a practical review of your Financial Health, Strategy, Systems and Leadership to help you identify what needs strengthening before you start setting new goals.