I’m known for using a lot of sports analogies. I gravitate towards them because we should take business and practice ownership as seriously as athletes do a competition. If everyone did exactly that, outcomes would be far different.
There is just too much room for error, built-in excuses, ‘live to fight another day’ mentality, and complacency with outcomes.
Obviously, no team (even the losers) have that kind of attitude. That’s certainly true for the championship teams and the most elite players. They execute every play as though their lives and careers depended on it… because every game matters.
The finality of what goes on the stat sheet and how everyone is judged by their last ‘at bat’ is real. Therefore, there is no choice but to deliver and to do your very best every single time.
What we want to ensure is established in your practice culture and modus operandi is that everything we do is important, every day is a game we must win, and every visit counts because patient matters.
Sadly, most practices – and you do have to understand you are a high performer with a more evolved mentality than others just by being here, reading this, so you aren’t most practices – go through the motions as though everything is “just another patient” with a transactional mentality. They just check it off the list.
Bluntly, their goal is to get through the day.
Contrast this with your goal (and let the significance sink in) being to…
WIN THE DAY
That visceral feeling, it’s night and day. The objective drives the outcome. That’s what makes results possible and potential come to life.
In addition to that, instead of just another patient visit, we say treat every patient like a new patient every single time. That’s a short sentence with a big life changing shift in meaning.
We can adopt the mentality of an athlete but the fact of the matter is this is far more important than any sports example could ever be. You aren’t just winning the game of dentistry, you are helping your patients win back their lives.
I want you to win the month, win the week, win the day, and most importantly win the visit… for their sake. Commit to winning because that’s the only way you help your patients on their pathway to health.
As you know, I’ve provided you with powerful tools and strategies to help facilitate your winning and to keep you focused in order to achieve all that is possible.
Over the next several weeks, we are going to create the most comprehensive winning playbook you’ve ever held in your hands.
First, before we dive into the new series, there are a few important action steps to prepare to win.
You must have clearly defined what winning is and looks like. How it measures up to your current performance.
What does winning look like for you specifically? You should know the answer for the year, for the half year, for the quarter, for the month, for the week, and so on.
If you don’t define it, how do you know if you are ahead or behind, on track or off track, making progress or just spinning your wheels? By the way, it doesn’t have to be numbers and dollars but I can’t imagine those not being part of it.
Your first mission is this and that means how you define winning with your patients, winning with every type of visit you have, winning inside of every role within your practice, and of course winning as an entire practice.
Either way you go at, it forward or reverse, you and your team will only be as successful and only win as often as you are laser focused on and committed to not just the definition of winning but the actuality of it.
From your morning huddles to your end of the day, from the thoroughness of treatment plans to your patience experience as a whole, from your leadership to your monthly goals – the only way to have success is to have a game plan that brings all of this to life for you.
There’s a lot just right there so far in this Weekly Report and worth a day of dissection on revisiting what winning is in every way with every part of your practice. Good news, I’m here to help…
You can join me for the Small Practice Revolution 2.0 – a 1-day virtual workshop that will enable you to fully capitalize on post-2020 trends.
You’ll discover how the pandemic redefined dentistry by driving patients away from corporate big box clinics and into focused, high-value practices… providing Independent Dentists their greatest opportunity in a generation.
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Together, we’ll customize your game plan for success by your own definition.
Today, we are going to go through what it really takes to win using my four traits for you and your team to become championship caliber. Then we’ll be doing a deep dive on each in a very unique and extraordinary way, like we’ve never done before.
First and foremost is our core principle of being…
FUTURE FOCUSED
Future focused is the only way to create what you want instead of taking what you get. It is by definition looking ahead instead behind – where you are going instead of where you have been.
Wherever you put the greater percentage of your time, energy, focus, and investment is what will determine your results. You decide either the future or the past.
Being Future Focused is what gives you direction for the present moment because it determines the actions and priorities to get out ahead and to win. You can’t change what has already happened (for example: your collections last week) but you can change what is about to happen (for example: your presented treatment values next week).
Next, this is more than an attitude, it’s the commitment that you are always going to look for ways to make things happen and you are going to take responsibility for not just finding but producing ways to win. That means being…
CREATION MINDED
What can you do to create wins for your practice – no matter the situation, the patient, the time of year, the day of week. Nothing gets in your way from being a creator.
Often times, practices hit plateaus because they lack this perspective. They sit back and wait for something to change. They place their fate in the hands of others instead of owning the outcomes and being determined to create what they want.
A large component of being Creation Minded is about being on alert for a chance to score points. I call it…
OPPORTUNITY AWARENESS
I consider this the act of being resourceful and having a higher level of perspective. This means seeing what others don’t, seeing what isn’t there yet.
You get what you expect and what you expect is what you become aware of. Know that opportunities will always present themselves if you believe and then do something about it.
Finally, the pillar that changes the game and moves it from losing to winning is…
PROACTIVE or PRO-ACTION
It is about shifting away from reaction (which is what causes most teams to miss their goals and remain stuck on defense), and instead become skilled at Pro-Action.
This means everyone in the practice must stop being an audience member by simply reacting to situations. Become an active participate by being a driver of change, of outcomes, of growth, of winning by controlling situations before they occur.
Pro-Action means you spend time facilitating, orchestrating, and engineering the environment you need in order to create the outcomes you want.
You can have confidence in the actions you take because you can trust your playbook for success. Each principle supports the next and allows for sustained momentum compounding to extraordinary results.
There are the four traits for championship teams… Future Focused, Creation Minded, Opportunity Awareness, and Pro-Action.
Now, let’s not just talk about them but do something with them. We are going to break down the tactics of how each of these winning principles come to life in responsibilities for each team member in your practice.
Applying these four principles will put your team on offense in every way, and as a result you will win in bigger ways than ever before.
Here’s what I can promise you: the most certain way to win is only if winning is the only option and losing isn’t in your mind or part of your practice in the first place.
Stretch out, get warmed up, be ready because it’s time to take the field, but we are not here to “play,” we are here to do far more than just that, we are here to win. And that’s exactly what we are going to do.
