More vs Better

By Robyn Reis

If you’re not familiar with marketing guru and visionary Seth Godin, let me be the first to introduce you to a remarkable human (and yes, I have a crush on him!).  Google any of his TED talks or subscribe to his blog and perhaps you’ll become as inspired as I am with his wit, wisdom and thought-provoking prose.

A blog post from awhile back by Mr. Godin was titled Unlimited Scale and it read:

Nothing grows to infinity. Certainly no project or business or idea.

And saying, “as many as possible,” implies a series of trade-offs that you’re probably not actually interested in making.

One of the most important decisions we make is almost always made without thought, without discussion:

“How big do you want this to be?”

It’s a question that always gets in the way of,

“How good do you want this to be?”

I was struck by how often I encounter this form of “unlimited scale” question with dentists who say “I just need more new patients (or a bigger building or more technology)” for my practice/my life/my income to get where it needs to be.  But is that really what they want?  Quantity over quality?  Busy over productive?  Maybe, maybe not.  They’re getting in their own way. What about current patients who have unscheduled treatment plans that aren’t feeling very cared for?  Or the overdue hygiene patients that have disappeared over the last 12 months?  Who is taking care of them? (Probably the competition down the street.)

What if your thinking around ‘more’ was replaced with ‘better’ … I wonder what kind of different results would you get?