Picking up where we left off last week, we are going to talk about creating careers for your people and finding people for your careers. This is what any other business on the earth would be doing, if they are professional organizations doing worthy things, like your dental practice.
I have often stated again and again that the greatest problem with the dental industry today, when it comes to team members, employees and staff (which by the way are not the same), is that they are not able to have careers.
The difference between a career and a job should be obvious to a professional doctor and business owner such as yourself but perhaps it has been so long ago since you ever had a “paying job.”
When they have a career, they have a plan, a path, a commitment, something to look forward to and something to grow into.
When they have a job, they have a paycheck exchanged for hours that they work maybe at very best for the skills that they have.
No one who is a champion really wants to have a job. Everyone, who has any ambition at all to succeed at something, desires to have a career and to be part of a team where their contribution is significant and impactful. They want a place where they receive support, acknowledgement and appreciation for the value that they bring to the team.
You can walk in any office and tell immediately if the people working there have careers or jobs. You can tell by the number of days they miss, how early they arrive, whether they finish what they have started, take initiative beyond ‘what they are paid to do’ and whether they are taking ownership over their tasks and responsibilities.
Every Dentist is only as good as the people around them. Every Practice is only capable of the potential that its people bring it.
We are in the people business, and we usually mean that to refer to the patients and that would be true, but the patients can’t take care of themselves, nor can the doctor do it all. Really, the doctor should be doing the diagnosis, the dentistry, the discussion that goes with each and managing the direction of the practice.
That’s about it… Discussion, Diagnosis, Dentistry, Decision, Direction. These are the responsibilities of the Doctor Owner.
And then you have the greatest responsibility of all: building and leading a career-based team of committed professionals.
We are in the people business, but the first set of people we have to serve are those that work with us to accomplish the goals that we have. When these people are dialed in, fully engaged,and at their best, then taking care of the patient side of the practice happens naturally.
You can have an amazing team who does well, is ‘happy and nice’ to patients and they enjoy being a part of the practice; but they are bystanders and not participants. They are in the audience instead of playing the game on the field and making victories happen.
All Team Members must know how their direct effort and responsibility (patient by patient) contributes to the practice. There has to be performance based accountability.
I have talked to you about this many times and I will continue to do so because this is the Achilles heel of every practice. People always say to me ‘we need more patients’ or ‘our patients don’t have any money’ or ‘we have such a great team but…’ And then they make all of these excuses.
It is very simple you have a great team if you are winning. That’s it.
And if you are not winning as much or as often or as big as you should be then it is either the team’s fault or the doctor’s fault or both (probably both).
There is a solution to all of this, if you are willing to commit to it. No matter if you have one year left in your career or decades left, ensuring your practice has a team who can drive its growth, manage its systems and be the engine for dependable, predictable, sustainable success is the secret to all greatness in dentistry.
Here is the formula:
A+ Team Member attraction, screening and hiring approach
(sound familiar, you forgot about this A-Quality people)
A career path with positional ownership and performance based accountability
Cohesive Team engagement that breeds collaboration and initiative
Structured systems to cultivate and grow their individual abilities
Communication and training protocols
Finally, everyone must have clarity of the mission with a reliable and consistent feedback loop for tracking results and responsibilities individually, as a team and as a business.
Your leadership is what will make all of this possible but once you do it, it will last forever as you will have built a culture of positive productivity and prosperous dentistry.
Most practices are held back because they don’t pay enough attention to this, they think they can shortcut it, they don’t feel capable of it or because they are being held hostage by their team as they fear the consequences of rocking the boat.
If you are ready for the greatest breakthroughs of your life and the most fun of your career, its going to be because you have amazing people around you being the catalyst for your success and achievement of your goals. There is no limit to the potential of a practice other than the self-imposed (or team-imposed) ceiling of the human assets inside of the business.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll go on a journey together to developing career based A+ Quality Team Members by dissecting and creating your personal strategy for each of these components.
In the meantime, from last week and this week, you should be doing your own personal assessment of what you are doing well, what you could be doing better and the reality that exists in your team, employees, staff in your practice as it is right now.
Good luck, and get ready!
