I’m so happy you found a lot to celebrate last week. The secret is to keep this going every single day – at the beginning, throughout, and at the end of the day. Celebrate because what you pay attention to you get more of and what you acknowledge you repeat. The bottom line is your attitude will stay positive when you are looking for things that went well.
Please remember this: anyone can complain, it actually takes more discipline to pause and celebrate the victories and appreciate the successes you are having.
Now, the same awareness and acknowledgement is also critical about the areas of improvement you need to make.
The title of this series is “constant and never-ending improvement.” Yet, I started with celebrating because so often we do things well, we get on a roll, and then some one bad thing happens or we get distracted or have a down day or week or month or an upset patients – and we lose sight of every going so well and all the things that led to success. Bring your minds and focus back to these things.
Now, let me tell you something, the same goes for most people’s obliviousness as to the things that aren’t going well or are in the way of your success. Most people just ignore these obstacles.
I can even go so far as to say that most doctors bring me complaints about things that are easily fixed; they just haven’t taken the time to actually commit to overcoming them, making them better, or fixing them in the first place.
Sometimes these could be team member skills that need to be developed, very often it is just a conversation that has not been had, or an expectation that was never made clear with someone who thinks they are doing everything right.
On the flip side, there might be people who are resistant to change or they are just having a hard time breaking bad habits.
If you adopt a culture of constant and never-ending improvement, it is NOT a negative to identify aspects of the practice that should be focused on to enhance.
It is a vital part of your culture and your environment of success. It is a part of your values and your principles of performance.
Just like I said you should have a list, a board, a poster, whatever showing all the great things happening each week – the same should go for areas of improvement.
In an ideal world every team member (including the doctor), would have a theme, an action, a sentence, a priority that they are focused on and working to master every single week or month. This narrows it down to an area that each person is making progress with so that we can move the practice forward by advancing each person’s skills and abilities.
This has to do with not only actual skills and abilities, but confidence, focus, motivation, and performance.
To start, what is your Improvement List for your overall Practice. This should be a fun brainstorming session that includes everyone’s input.
The big thing though is not just the normal stuff… cancellations, no-shows, insurance, patients not accepting treatment, schedule, communication, etc.
Yes, all of those are possible areas of constant and never-ending improvement – and they always will be. The point is to identify what specifically does your practice need to improve on and then what are the specific things each person can do to make it better?
Remember this: we have to break things down from topics to actions.
Once you have that, you will have an area of focus that you can adopt and work on to close the gaps and achieve greater results on a more consistent basis.
This month, for our advanced practices in their Practice Focus Session with me, I will be doing a deep dive of this very thing to help you transform your practice dynamics so that you can kick complacency and create winning momentum.
For now, make a practice list overall and have everyone commit to an area of improvement. Let’s use these to keep everyone accountable.
Oh yes, accountability. What we expect we must inspect. What we want to get increase we must focus on. And we’ll go there next week and address the whole idea of accountability and turn it into a positive action.
In the meantime, you’ve got a list to make. Unlike the Celebrating Daily and Weekly Victories, this list should be a hard set and revisited until you can move an item off the list – hopefully for good – and then add another.
It’s a team and an individual commitment that starts the journey towards a new ‘way of practicing’ with constant and never-ending improvement!
