The Chicken or the Egg of Dental Practice Management

We've all heard the age old question "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Well... what does this mean when it comes to running your dental practice?

In dentistry you might say, "What came first, the dentist or the dental practice?" When we put things in this perspective, it becomes clear when looking at it from the practice management perspective, that we must start at the beginning - with the dentist - before we try to more effectively manage the dental practice.

What would this look like for practice management? Let's take a practice that is not meeting expectation or goals in any particular area whether in production, revenues, expenses, recare, new patients, etc. The first question to ask and answer is "What have I done as the leader here that has helped create these conditions?" Another perspective is "What have I NOT done that has allowed this to occur?" Often we find that just as with professional sports, when things are not correct, we must go back to fundamentals.

Social Networking Netiquette

Invite friends, co-workers, and other professionals — and friends of friends, co-workers and professionals to join your network. Don’t invite anyone and everyone. Be selective.

You can say, “no, thank you.” No one can force you to join a network. If you can’t say no (maybe because it’s a client), you can always accept the invitation and then go back to the network a day or two later and remove yourself.

Consider their answer to be “No, thank you.” If you invite someone and they ignore your invitation, consider their answer to be no, thank you.

Build it and they will come. Don’t be pushy and try to sell your goods. Establish relationships first.

SOCIAL NETWORKING TIPS:
Do your Homework. Don’t accept every offer to join a social networking group. Do some research. Find out which one is best for you.

Understand the Site Culture and Rules. Each site has them. So be sure to adhere.

Use Caution. Make sure your profile doesn’t include anything you wouldn’t want a prospective client or boss to see. Be careful as to what information you give out.

Toot your own Horn. It’s important to keep your profile updated, along with what you are working on and the successes you are having. Also, it isn’t mandatory to include your photo.

Your Reputation is “On the Line”. Keep your promises. Do what you say you will do. If you say that you will make a make recommendation or introduction, do it.

Prepare to Meet Face-to-Face. Online relationships don’t have to stay there. If you think that a face-to-face meeting will be beneficial, you should plan one. Be courteous with someone’s time and know beforehand what you want from the meeting

FAVORITE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES:
www.youtube.com
www.myspace.com (the largest membership of any social networking site on the Internet)
www.digg.com (discover and share content, by submitting links and stories. Vote and comment on submitted links and stories)
www.facebook.com (initially intended for college students – has now branched out to everyone including corporate America)
Meetup.com (a great way to find out about offline group meetings around the world)
www.justin.tv (live streaming video)
www.flickr.com (not only a great storage place for photos, but it is a social network)
www.linkedin.com (powerful business networking tool based on 6 degrees of separation)
www.twitter.com (microblogging. You choose who is allowed to follow you and who you follow. Up-to-date information)
wwwactiverain.com (one of the most popular real estate networks)

Marketing maven Angela Rutzick was one of Boston's 2008 top ten Marketing Agencies by Boston Women's Business Journal and received a Quest Excellence Award for community involvement in 2009. She has over 20 years making her business to understand your business. You can reach her @ Angela@e-dds.com

Renovating or Building is a Matter of ROI - Assembling the Right Team

Can you picture a work environment where you feel very productive, energized, and creative? Is it possible that you can also get up every morning and look forward to going to work, because you really feel at your best, because you enjoy working with your co-workers, look forward to meeting your patients and feel a general sense of well-being just by using the space? Can you believe that patients look forward to a root canal in your office, that clients really trust your recommendations and that your action plans seem to move in a smoother fashion? And can you believe that this could happen after a construction or renovation project?

The need for renovating an office environment to refurbish, add more space, or move and build is anxiety ridden. The myriad of decisions required to carry out the project to conclusion is daunting. How business owners manage this process will determine if in the end, the office feels renovated or devastated. The best way to ensure a great project is to assign the best qualified people to manage it. This will in turn spawn not only financial, but emotional savings as well. If we look at the four most important steps involved in a construction project and its intended outcome at each level, we can identify who are the optimal individuals or groups best suited to help the business owner reach an informed decision. It is a question of ROI.

Step 1. Readiness

The root of the problem may be the need for additional space, outdated décor, staffing issues, or legal compliance. It may simply be a gut feeling originating from the doctor or staff. All these reasons have value, because they all reflect a need. How this need is fulfilled depends on the business’ readiness factor.

Readiness is based on a clear business vision and a coherent and fully articulated growth plan. It is the business owner who articulates the problem and the desired outcome, then engages and directs the appropriate staff to move through the project.

Step 2. Ownership

Ownership of the project establishes trust and cooperation and it is a crucial step in its overall success. It is important to acknowledge the need and reward staff members originating the concern by inviting staff representatives to become involved in the decision-making steps. If the business owner originates the need, the entire staff must be engaged through sharing the doctor’s readiness level and selecting a staff representative to participate in the renovation team. This is part of step 3, the human investment factor.

Step 3. Investments-Financial & Human

All space design projects must be considered investments, and as already discussed, they must be planned according to clear and realistic growth goals.

The accountant/financial consultant provide financial investment parameters. Attempts to renovate a space without a clear financial picture spell trouble. Whether the need for renovation is motivated by legal compliances or lack of space, knowing the financial limits is a must. Nobody can invest without knowing how long it will take to pay it and begin to collect dividends. A financial advisor must be part of the team.

Depending on the scope of the project, the business owner often initially considers whether to manage it within the office, or hire professionals. If a doctor and staff don’t have a clear understanding of what their target market wants, how to retain and attract the right employees and what makes an optimal office environment that will support those needs, they must seek expert advice. The initial team must be able to effectively answer these questions, because these factors affect the human investment.

Managing the project with existing personnel—the doctor or the office manager, may imply costs savings. Hiring professionals may imply access to innovative ideas, but increased costs. Yet, like a dentist is uniquely qualified to recommend whether a patient needs a root canal, a tooth removal or an implant, qualified experts ensure that both financial and human factors are effectively and efficiently addressed. In fact, the cost of not hiring qualified personnel begins to escalate even before the project starts. The in-house design renovation route does not really reflect the actual costs, because they are not disbursed as tangible expenses. There is no dollar sign allocated to a hygienist-turned untrained marketing researcher. No value identified in creating a floor plan by a doctor-turned part-time interior designer. Yet if quantified, these expenses may actually be higher as a return on the investment (ROI) than anticipated, not only in financial terms, but in human terms as well.

Step 4. Assembling the Right Team

A marketing consultant will assist in obtaining a clear understanding of the target market needs and wants; assess the value of existing marketing tools and suggest high powered substitutes.

A specialized interior designer will look at the best possibilities given the existing layout, review conditions and recommend an action plan, which may mean adding team members such as architects, engineers, real estate agents and dental equipment specialists to arrive at the best solution that can then be presented for bids to contractors. The right individual is an invaluable team member who collects all information gathered through the previous steps and assists the team in successfully creating an optimal office environment. A smart business owner will add a marketing consultant and a specialized interior designer to the team.

Assembling the right team will provide a high ROI. The doctor and the designated staff representative, furnished with accurate financial information are the initial quality “seeds” for the project. Marketing and design experts provide the best nourishing for the original seeds so that the “plant” will grow healthy and beautiful. Once the right people are in place, it is important to trust their recommendations. Their decisions are based on their area of expertise.

Next time we will discuss who qualifies for the title of specialized interior designer and how to create the optimal office environment where everyone feels productive, energized and creative, all look forward to working there day after day and patients love to come, trust treatment plans and are happy to pay for the services provided.

Lidia Scher is an interior designer, Feng Shui master and visual artist with 23 years of experience in designing successful office environments.

email - lidia@e-dds.com

Leadership - 'Affect or Infect'

by Liz Lord CEO Virtual Dental Solutions

After a particularly challenging meeting with a client that I have been trying to help focus on their leadership style and its effect on the outcome of the business, a friend sent me a thought that is appropriate for the entire leadership discussion; ‘every day we either affect others or we infect them. ‘

We all have heard and read many authorities speak of leadership but how do we begin the journey toward becoming good leaders and affecting the change we wish to see in our organizations? Also, if many of us do read and study leadership at varying degrees, why then do so many of us go into auto-pilot when we return to our leadership roles in our organizations?
First, what does it mean to be a good leader? Though the answers to this question are numerous, I think that being a good leader is like being a good coach. If we think of organized teams we may have participated in, our children participate in, or those we love to watch (let me just put out my disclaimer that I am a huge New England Patriots fan) what separates the consistently winning teams from the struggling teams is usually NOT the talent of their players. Coaching is the deciding factor. Coaching is the process of challenging, encouraging, and correcting your team and most importantly trusting them enough to let them take independent action and even to fail. Coaching is the process of letting your people know that what they do matters to you according to The Practical Coach by Media Partners Corporation. What I love about well organized teams (business and athletic) is that when high levels of trust are in place, coaching comes from every part of the team, not just the officially titled leaders – in fact, the job of the leader becomes much easier the more they choose to entrust others to coach. Bottom line…Coaching is trusting.

Trust? How do we get from Leadership to Trust? How can trust grow our businesses and our bottom lines? Well, where does trust start? Within ourselves. As a business coach, I’ve had situations where owners would work out an issue with a team member but before they made a final decision, they would instruct the staff person to check with me first. Why wasn’t the owner willing to make the decision without my final ok? What’s the worst that would happen if they made the wrong decision? It may seem small but if a leader is regularly second guessing their ability to make decisions, their team will never become empowered to act independently because for that to happen, the leader has to trust that he/she can handle any mistake. If the team cannot act independently, they are always looking to the leader for answers because they don’t trust that it is safe to make mistakes. When the leader has to make all the decisions, much bigger and costlier mistakes will happen. Let’s take the football team as an example. A coach must train his players to make split second decisions independently in the heat of the game. Imagine if the quarterback drops back to throw a pass and as he’s reading the field he observes that his first, second, and third strategized plays are not possible. That quarterback then has to make a leadership decision in a split second to possibly run himself, throw the ball away, try to squeeze in a different pass option, or possibly another play. If the quarterback were to look to the coach on the sidelines and say “what should I do, we don’t have a plan for this” or “is it okay if I try this play instead”, two things would happen. First, he would likely be sacked for a loss of yards, and second he would be benched and watch someone else take his place on the field. Additionally, if the coach trained him to check with him before making decisions by regularly questioning or criticizing independent decisions the quarterback made, he would be fired. Why – because performance like that costs the entire organization. It costs the ability to achieve their outcome – winning games. Lost games cause fans to go away, which causes loss of revenues to the ball club which causes more firings and the downward spiral begins. The coach must notice and acknowledge good work, positively and privately correct poor performance, and keep everybody’s eye on the desired outcome by making clear observations and asking for solutions.

When a leader demonstrates that he trusts his people to make good decisions, he asks questions to identify challenges, decision making processes, and solutions. The leader listens thoughtfully and asks clarifying questions to understand better and gain insights – nothing is assumed. The leader is open to wherever the conversation may go and has no attachments to a particular outcome or decision. The leader’s job is to facilitate the conversation to its natural outcome, not to lead everybody to a pre-determined destination. A leader can guide though asking questions but must remain open to differing perspectives and not judge another, not defend an idea, and not justify decisions. Unattachment is key to perspective. When these skills are exercised, the staff feels safe to be open and honest and not threatened by where the conversation may lead. When the same football coach studies video of the games, he is looking for training opportunities for his team. If he observes an action that needs correction, he will show the player the video and ask for his insights. A good coach will not simply point out “you did this, and this and that and you should have done this and that” because that is simply judgmental – it does not teach it criticizes. By opening a discussion based upon observation with the desired outcome on our radar screen, the player is able to correct the behavior and learn from the experience and use that knowledge in the future to perform at a higher level and even possibly coach others.

1. Use ‘Open-ended’ questions to gain insights instead of ‘Closed’ or yes/no questions.
a. “What do you think of that…” instead of “Do you understand that?”
2. Begin questions with ‘How’ instead of ‘Why’ because how is a process and why is a reason (that needs defending).
a. “How did you make that decision” instead of “Why did you make that decision”
3. Use phrases like “Help me understand your process…” instead of “What were you thinking…”
4. Focus on the future instead of living in the past.
a. “What can you do to get (the desired outcome)” instead of “You keep doing (behavior that needs correction)….”

If you want to grow your business, begin with your leadership first. When leaders coach, trust grows. Where there is trust, people grow and performance follows. Results show up and organizations consistently perform regardless of economic conditions, who the individual players are, or even if they have the highest individual skill level. Through leadership, systems and staff all achieve higher levels of results. Without leadership, you will only infect your business and your team with the very flaws you see and wish to cure.