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Focus

12 April, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

If you want to be good at something you need to focus, that is obvious.  But how much of a difference does it make?  Take the Aravind eye hospital in India.

It was founded in 1976 by Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy.  He had one aim, “to eradicate needless blindness”.

In 2009 it treated 2.75 million patients (half of them for free) and exceeded the care benchmark of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists.  It did all this and turned a profit.

How?  There are lots of technological reasons:
1.  Economies of scale
2.  Technology transfer
3.  Industry leading productivity
4.  Value analysis

But how did they achieve all of that?  Simply by making sure that every action they took contributed towards their aim.

Photo by Jeremy Lishner on Unsplash

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: Aravind Eye Hospital, clarity, good service, purpose

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

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