Sometimes being entrepreneurial is simply a matter of figuring out how to do things more effectively, or how to get better results than your competition.

A recent Science Daily article titled "Patient compliance improves through 'motivational interviewing'" attracted my attention, mainly because I recall how challenging it was in clinical practice to have patients comply with my treatment plans.  Anyone have that same experience?

What was striking about the report was how a simple intervention, called motivational interviewing, produced dramatically increased results in patient adherence to recommended treatments

Some background here -- One of the cornerstones of health behavior change is a model developed by James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente called the Transtheoretical Model of Change. It's a wordy name for a remarkably effective approach to helping people alter behavior.  Perhaps its other name describes it better -- the "Readiness to Change" model.

Simply put, individuals move through a series of five stages in the adoption of healthy behaviors or cessation of unhealthy ones:

• precontemplation - I'm not even aware of this yet
• contemplation  - I'm thinking about it
• preparation - I have a start date selected
• action - I'm actually doing it
• maintenance - I'm in it for the long haul

Your job as the professional prompting behavior change is to understand in which stage your patient is, and to match your recommendations or suggested treatments to the patient's stage.

And if you are a manager of people or attempting to be an "influencer", this information applies equally well to producing behavior change at work, or with clients!

So what is this "motivational interviewing"?

Dr's. Stephen Rollnick and William Miller, the authors of this intervention, describe motivational interviewing as .... a directive, client-centered counseling style for eliciting behavior change by helping clients to explore and resolve ambivalence.

In other words, the  motivation to change comes from inside the patient and is not imposed from the outside, the patient takes responsibility for resolving his or her ambivalence, and the physician or clinician works in partnership with the patient.

In spirit, it is a form of health coaching - as I described several years ago in an article called "From Healer to Coach—Physicians Face Dramatic Role Change for the 21st Century"

Perhaps you're wondering what the connection here is to being entrepreneurial.

To be skilled at motivational interviewing, you do not need years of training.  You merely need a couple of good books and a willingness to practice your skills.

The two books I recommend are "Motivational Interviewing" by Rollnick and Miller and "Health Behavior Change - A Guide for Practitioners" by Rollnick, Mason and Butler. Both books are filled with "how-to's" and examples.

By learning this method, you'll have up your sleeve a new approach to working with your patients that not only produces better clinical outcomes but also generates tremendous goodwill in those patients that enjoy being treated as equals.

And those are vital ingredients in the recipe for a successful practice!