I’m sure you are familiar with the saying about problems that goes something like…
The Way You See The Problem Is The Problem
The point of this phrase is describing the power of perception. Most people spend so much time dwelling on the problems they face or the challenges they have, they tend to magnify and worsen the problem. This actually detracts from their abilities to solve the problem.
This is why having outside perspective is so important because you get someone else’s vantage point. Often, this leads to the biggest breakthroughs. And many times without changing anything other than very slight adjustments or even just aligning things differently.
Because – the answers are always there.
People looking for external forces to make things easier or find shortcuts are always disappointed. The resources they have are usually all they need, they just need more consistent and leveraged execution.
You can take a patient and see two different hygienists in the same office or even two different dentists in the same office (let alone in the same town) and have completely different outcomes – same patient.
You can have patients coming in on a discount coupon to get a cleaning and then have the same patients go into a practice there were referred to and, through a high end concierge style relationships based experience, what the patients will buy from one they wouldn’t even consider buying from the other. Even though all of things were exactly the same – except the reason they ended up in the practice – discount coupon or referral recommendation.
All of these things have to do with perception, experience, culture. It’s the same objectives, problems and people, yet different perception and expectations.
You can have a team member who thrives in one office and fails in another – different application of skill, different environment around them.
So much comes down to this: your perception and expectation.
Today’s huddle topic is so simple, but should be revisited every single day by resetting your focus each morning, going into your day expectations for success and keeping your perception of your reality clearly defined.
Never let yourself, your thinking, your viewpoint get in the way of your own opportunity and success … and especially those of your patients.
Last week, I talked about making sure your experience, patient flow, communication, education and everything in between is deliberately structured to move patients forward. Have you assessed this yet? Have you discussed it? What can be better in your practice for this goal?
Not only do you need to manage your own perception, but you must manage your patients … more on that next week.
Today, realize this: we all want the same thing – to help patients get healthy, to have a profitable, growing, happy, productive practice and to have a loyal and committed team.
So you can’t get caught up in ‘production’ and make this your reality because the problem is never ‘production.’ Production is a result, not a cause.
You have to dig deeper to change your perspective in order to find the source of the problem.
Take each of your team members biggest challenges and let’s question them to work backwards until we find the real root cause; exactly the way you should be doing your treatment planning, case building and in helping your patients get healthy. Change your perception of the problem to find out really how to best solve it and most importantly to prevent it from happening over and over and over again.
