No: your SLP private practice improvement project isn’t unique 

The big picture:

In these uncertain times, speech pathology managers are under pressure to innovate. Most of us are doing our best to launch and deliver new projects under lots of constraints to:

• improve services and outcomes for clients;
• create safer and better workplaces for teams; and/or
• improve models and systems for financial performance so we can stay in business.  

The problem:

Sitting inside a private practice, managers are at risk of thinking their projects are ‘one of a kind’. This is a form of uniqueness bias: the tendency of individuals to think they – and their projects – are more unusual than they actually are. 

Why it matters:

Uniqueness bias is a big problem for speech pathology managers. It makes us prone to think, incorrectly, that we have little to learn about our special projects from:

• our team mates;
• other private practices;
• other members of the profession, including academics; 
• professionals in other allied health fields, like occupational pathologists, physiotherapists and psychologists; and
• other professionals in ostensibly dissimilar fields, like lawyers or engineers.  

Real-world costs:

Uniqueness bias leads managers to make poor decisions and to:

• underestimate risks;
• overestimate opportunities;
• reinvent wheels (making similar mistakes along the way); and 
• overrun budgets.

Reality checks:

Nothing is new under the sun. Before launching into (what you think is) a unique project for your practice:

• ask your team if they have seen anything like it before;
• break down the project into components and check whether any parts of the project are comparable to what you and and your team have seen before;
• seek input from a business mentor or coach; 
• speak with your professional networks (without revealing ‘trade secrets’ or other confidential information); and
• research what professionals and businesses have done to solve similar or analogous problems, and look at project and business management literature.

Read more:

Flyvbjerg, Budzier, Christodoulou and Zottoli. (2025) The Uniqueness Trap, Harvard Business Review, March-April.

Unsure about a project?

Book a free and confidential 30-minute Discovery Call with me today.

This article also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists, speech pathology students and others.

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