Would You Like Some RICE? Here’s a Method for Turning Ideas Into Action

IT’S MONDAY MORNING, post VEW (or replace with any recent conference you’ve attended), and you think, “Oh yes, please let me implement all of that right now …” said no doctor or owner ever.

Yes, you’re hungover… from adrenaline, of course, and ready to get back to it.

You walk into your practice with a bag full of pamphlets and rubber balls, hopes for your practice, knowledge to share, a can-do attitude, ready to improve some processes, implement something you learned or tell your team you bought a new piece of equipment… But, when you get there two people have called out, one of your important instruments went down and you have 25 patients to see… All that excitement instantly gets put on the backburner. Sound familiar?

In our information overload age, and with more to do than we have time for, no wonder we’re overwhelmed. We consume on average 74GB of data per day — the equivalent of watching 18 movies. So how do we break through all of the noise and focus?

Introducing the RICE method, a framework I learned from building a tech company. (This is a great exercise to do with your team.)

Begin by setting aside two hours on your schedule. Start by getting all of your ideas out. From marketing to patient care, new equipment or new tech to anything else that comes up; write them down and do this for at least 30-45 minutes. The last time my team and I did this we had a list of over 76 items.

Now comes the fun part… RICE:

Revenue. How is this going to impact our revenue?

Impact. What impact will this have on my team, my patients, my practice?

Confidence. How confident are we that we can see this idea all the way through to implementation?

Ease. How easily can we implement this? Do we depend on anything else to get it done?

Now score each idea on a scale of 1-10 for each category. And no sevens!
(Sevens are the enemy of progress and don’t lead you in one way or another.)

Add the categories up and start with the top three things on the list. This now becomes your roadmap for how to continually improve your practice, your communication, your patient care, and for implementing new equipment or processes.

Did you know the average number of ideas we take back from a conference is…three? Using this method, you can see those three ideas take shape and get implemented.

RICE them. Before you know it you will actually be implementing things that solve your problems.

Want a copy of my RICE Sheet? Scan the QR code.