Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

Fard Johnmar my colleague here at Knowmoremedia, wrote about a post concerning a doctor and a blogger that I want to point out some truths about. Here is what he says:

Last week, Toby Bloomberg posted an interesting story about her experience with a cardiologist traveling to the American College of Cardiology annual meeting on her blog, Diva Marketing Blog.  The physician was curious about what Bloomberg did for a living and she told him that she is a blogging consultant.  The cardiologist was not pleased.  He told her that blogs “were a waste of time” and filled with inaccurate information.  Bloomberg “schooled” him on the wonderful work of  healthcare bloggers like Dr. Kevin Pho (Kevin M.D.) and Nick Jacobs of Windber Medical Center.

The doctor goes on to say what he thinks about doctors blogging on the Internet "don't want to give them that information. There's too much on the internet already," the doc declared. Great opportunity to make sure they have correct information, I replied. "But they don't need to know all that, he proclaimed. It would only confuse them. Besides there are not too many physicians, in fact there are not enough. And I'm too busy now. I don't need any more patients."

His statements gives us some insights, from a business viewpoint, on how not to run a business. Doctors are a running business, they are in it to make a living.

The Doctor actually understands the real issues, but I think makes the wrong decisions. The first issue I'll talk about is his last statement that there are not too many physicians. This shows that he does understand and has knowledge about the market he serves. I would assume, because he is a cardiologist, that he is aware of the baby boomers aging and that he will have more patients than he may be able to handle for the rest of his life. Assuming this is part of what he draws from, he actually has a point.

The conclusion he makes is that because he serves a market that is potentially going to be there for a long time and is underserved, thus there is no need to do anything extra, such as blogging, to separate himself from his competitors in the minds of his patients.

From one way of thinking he is right, but he is not taking in the whole picture. Look at it from another view, he is in a market that has the potential for a large amount of lawsuits. What if he developed a great repoire with his patients and communicted effectively through a blog, in a way that made them feel like he was not only their doctor, but a friend? Would that help diffuse potential situations for litigation? What do you think?

Now on the first point, this is the classic case of a priesthood protecting their territory. I talked about that on another post recently.

I'll quote what Alvin Toffler said "Change the way wealth is made and you immediately collide with all the entrenched interests whose power arose from the prior wealth-system. Bitter conflicts erupt as each side fights for control of the future."

Here's another thing said on that same post:

Warren Buffett talked about something similar years ago when he was asked the question of why "If higher math is not important in selecting stocks, why are academic and professional journals dense with quantitative analysis?"

Buffett replied:

"Every priesthood does it. How could you be on top if there is no one on the bottom?"

This part of the doctors response is related to that. He doesn't want to give people this information. In his opinion there is too much on the Internet already. He also says that it would only confuse them. This is priesthood talk. The poor ignorant couldn't possibly understand what I do, so it's best that they aren't told.

Toffler and Buffett are right on. We all know when the doctor speaks into a tape recorder after talking and working with us medically, that half the words that are said we don't really know what they mean.

This is the equivalent of "quantitative analysis" spoken of by the one questioning Buffett. That's the whole point in blogging in the first place. Speak in the common language in words that can be understood so that regular people can understand what it is that's being communicated.

If they did that though, to some it challenges their status as a "priest" above others. Unfortunately, the overall population suffers as a result of this type of thinking.

The truth is that we are moving to mass-customization, and that will involve the empowerment of people who can do their own preparation and research. Blogs by professionals can add that power to the individual who really needs some answers they can trust.

All priesthoods resist this and are slow to respond, if at all, but it seems that it is coming slowly, and that is good for all of us.