For Growth-minded, independent, specialist physician-owners.
Why Pro and Con Lists Are Holding Your Practice Back
Decision-Making Series for Practice Owners, Part 2 of 7.
DECISION-MAKING
Pam Thompson
2 min read
At some point, nearly every practice owner pulls out a "pro and con" list. It feels analytical. Responsible. Structured. It is also one of the weakest tools you can use for a high-stakes growth decision.
Pros and Cons Don’t Create Insight
A pro and con list doesn’t help you think better. It doesn’t provide insight. Pro and con lists only organize what you already believe.
That’s fine for small decisions. It’s dangerous for strategic ones.
If you don’t realize an option exists, it won’t show up on the list. If you misunderstand a risk, it gets under-weighted. If you’re emotionally invested, the list reflects that.
In other words, the list looks objective, but it’s just your current thinking wearing a spreadsheet costume.
The Real Problem: Binary Thinking
When practice owners struggle with growth decisions, it’s rarely because they can’t weigh tradeoffs. It’s because they’ve reduced a complex, multi-path problem into a binary question:
* Should I add an associate or not - Pro and con
* Should I open another location, or not - Pro and con
* Should I sell, merge or stay independent - lots of pros, lots of cons, mild panic
Binary questions force false choices. And false choices lead to mediocre outcomes.
Growth decisions are rarely binary. They’re comparative. High-performing practices don’t ask “whether” to grow. They ask “how”.
The better question is almost always, “Which approach gives us the best outcome with the least avoidable risk?”
Better questions sound like:
* What are three different ways to increase capacity without burning out the owner?
* Could growth come from better utilization instead of more providers?
* Is expansion a staffing problem or a workflow and training problem?
When leaders consider multiple viable paths instead of one default option, decision quality improves dramatically. More importantly, regret drops.
Why Binary Decisions Create Regret
When owners frame decisions as “do it or don’t,” they artificially limit their options. They choose between two extremes and then live with trade-offs they never should have accepted in the first place.
If pro and con lists worked for complex growth decisions, medical school would have taught them somewhere between pharmacology and pathology.
They didn’t, for good reason.
I wrote an in-depth, step-by-step “how-to” guide to help practice owners find and solve the right problem to achieve their goals. You can download it for free HERE.