Have you embraced the three necessary shifts in valuing, and therefore elevating, your time? Did you think through your views of dollars and hours? How contemplating the highest leverage and most productive ways to make your time worth more to you?
I hope so. The conscious awareness over your time leads to more purposeful action and more fulfilling results.
You won’t wake up ten years from now and wish you would have ‘spent’ more time inside of your practice. You might wish you would have dedicated more time ‘to’ your practice – that is where the value and leverage of your time comes into play because it’s not about the amount, it’s about the impact.
This is all so important because this is what builds the culture of your practice from the inside out and the way you make the most of your time is exactly the way your team will learn to as well. Never forget that.
Here’s another thing that matters… speed. However, it’s not about rushing through that which is most important; it is about expediting the in-betweens, the transitions, the pivot points, the down time, the waste, the things that matter less. Then you can be present, aware, at peace with the time that requires you to be very much in the zone and doing your most meaningful work.
That’s why, as we did last week, you must first identify, write down, build out, and organize the most meaningful and significant work. All while being very clear that not all tasks, efforts, actions, people fall into that category and therefore some must be minimized, mitigated, or even eliminated.
When you cut waste and you move faster. Just as in business when you simultaneously save money and also make more money. You win on both sides of the equation.
You can’t ‘make’ more time but you can allocate more time for the most important tasks by allowing less time for all others.
Now, we are moving to your clinical schedule. Let’s talk inside the game, the heat of the battle, the playing field of the clinical hours from start to finish.
Yes, that is by the way the playing field, that is the bell going off to start the game and buzzer at the end to finish the game. When you take it that seriously you will force yourself to be laser focused and completely clear minded on what you are there to do, as will your team.
This is essential to perform at the highest level, to capitalize on every opportunity, and to reap the rewards of the time that will be invested. Remember, you can’t get this day back, so game on, fully focused, it’s go time.
This is why we practice my “every patient is a new patient” because you must stop thinking there will always be tomorrow to do today’s work, when can have today’s conversations next time. What if there is no next time? What if the patient doesn’t return, what if they move away, what if a pandemic strikes – the what-ifs are endless.
Get it done today – whatever ‘it’ is – and your results will compound. When your team has that mentality, you will be astonished of what you are capable of.
So, today I promised a deep dive on schedule. We are going to do it in two parts.
Question number one…
What are all the ways you and your team make mistakes in your schedule and how you utilize time in your practice right now?
Think wasted minutes, inefficient processes, redo’s administratively or clinically, miscommunication, missed opportunity, no-shows, cancellations, etc.
Remember, it’s not just where do you lose minutes, it’s where do you lose opportunity – always think of time and value together.
Scheduling of wrong appointments. Putting procedures and appointments in the wrong place in the columns and/or in the day. Patients, charts, rooms, trays, equipment, treatment plans, labs, insurance, team members not being prepared – which means ready in advanced to stay ahead of the day not behind.
Then you have scheduling the wrong time allocation affecting the doctor and assistant flow – too much or too little is all wasteful. Not being aggressive to refill holes to make up for missing patients or the inevitable cancellations and no-shows.
The lists go and when you brainstorm together you will find at least a few things from every single team member’s perspective that they could do themselves to tighten up having more integrity with their time and with their value.
Of course, we could go back through last week’s Report for every team member as well about how they tend to do what’s easy not what’s most valuable and how they are consumed with the ‘busiest’ work not the most productive and meaningful work.
When you commit to changing this reality within your practice by elevating the thinking, mindset, actions, and priorities, you raise the entire practice’s ability to grow and to break free from the limit of hours and production.
It’s all right here. You just have to remain on offense and stay creation-minded by owning how you use your time.
The next topic of time is one I’ve been alluding too for a while now and it is the most important part of creating a more valuable schedule in a very real clinical sense and it is the ultimate breakthrough from the production collection trap which is dollars for hours in dentistry.
That is having a practice that is built to create, built for opportunity, built for education, built for patient engagement, and built for the ultimate experience.
This requires you to be diagnostically focused at all times – I call it a journey of discovery – with every single patient about how you can help them today.
When you, or anyone on your team, is falling victim to anything from the previous question, then you must understand that you are losing diagnostic opportunity; you are suppressing your ability to create; and you are ‘costing’ yourself patients, treatment, money – not just time.
The more you are able to be – choose to be – on offense and thinking creation with your diagnosing, communicating, and engaging with patients about their health and their vision of dentistry for their lives, the more they will value what you do and the more they will do what you value.
This means: you must master your flow within the time on the playing field of the day – beginning first and foremost by being prepared, knowing the patients, having a strategy for the day, and owning the morning huddle.
If you take the start to the day (or even your ability to win the day) casually, you will get an average result. If you are a true professional, you will have won the day before it ever started and you sure aren’t going to leave winning up to the mercy of anyone else.
To help you improve in this manner, it’s important to assess throughout the day to see how you performing compared to the day’s objectives. And, of course, at the end of the day you must reflect back so you can course correct for tomorrow. The bottom line is: it’s not that difficult to win the day if you start the day with a winning game plan.
Next week, we’ll get into great details about building a dynamic schedule that maximizes your time. For now, here is the second question…
What takes away from your ability to more comprehensively diagnosis, engage patients, communicate effectively, and have treatment planning that patients actually want?
We’ll pick up here next week. By the way, don’t just answer questions and make lists – take action, commit to change, and get your team involved. You elevate the level of your play first by what you expect and then by what you actually do with the time you’ve got!
