Here’s a tension most practice owners know well: the moment you walk through the door, the demands begin. Patients need you. Staff need you. Problems need you. And because those demands are immediate, they win the battle for your attention.
That’s how practice owners end up spending the majority of their time delivering care, solving problems, and keeping the schedule moving, with little left over to actually lead the business.
But owning a practice means you hold two distinct roles. One is surgeon. The other is chief executive. And that second role is responsible for growth, profitability, team structure, positioning, and long-term strategy, which requires a fundamentally different kind of time and thinking.
Clinical work is scheduled and protected. Owner work is neither, so it gets squeezed into whatever is left, which is usually fragmented, reactive, and incomplete.
You can’t effectively make decisions about the business during 4- minute break between seeing patients, or after a 9-hour surgery, when you’re both physically and mentally spent. Research on task switching confirms what most of us already feel: moving rapidly between different types of work degrades focus and performance.
When owner time disappears, the practice starts running on urgency instead of intention. Decisions become reactive, opportunities go unexplored, inefficiencies persist, and growth stalls. Not because you aren’t capable, but because you were never given the space to think.
Your practice needs a surgeon in the OR. It also needs an owner in the boardroom, which means protected owner time isn’t a luxury. It’s part of the job. It’s the time when you step back from the day-to-day and ask the questions that actually move the business forward:
These aren’t questions you can answer between cases or in the margins of a busy afternoon.
Start by building what I call the Leadership Cadence – three protected blocks of time that keep you connected to your business at every level.
Weekly Operations Review: 1 hour
This one is operational by design, and that’s okay. Use it to stay ahead of issues before they become fires. Run it as a manager meeting or a focused staff huddle. Review what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs a decision this week. It won’t always feel strategic, but it keeps the practice from running on autopilot.
Monthly Performance and Planning Meeting: 2 hours
This is where you shift into owner mode. Review your numbers, assess progress toward your goals, identify what’s stalling, and make intentional decisions about the month ahead. No inbox. No interruptions.
Quarterly Strategic Planning: 4-6 hours (offsite preferred)
Step fully out of the building and out of the day-to-day. Evaluate your positioning, your team structure, your growth trajectory, and whether your current direction still reflects your North Star. This is the meeting where you really work on the business, not in it.
Together, these three blocks give you a rhythm. Weekly keeps operations tight. Monthly keeps performance on track. Quarterly keeps strategy alive.
If none of these exist on your calendar yet, start with the weekly. Build the habit first, then expand.
In your corner,
Amy
Let’s start with a conversation.
We’ll learn about your practice, your goals, and your challenges.
Then, we’ll design a proposal tailored to you.
No commitment required. Just a real conversation about your practice.
