Dentistry is Dentistry.
It’s the drilling of teeth.
It’s the removal of decay.
It’s Dentistry….
Why does Dentistry need meetings?
Meetings are for business.
Meetings are committees…
Not for Dentistry…
Sometimes I receive strange looks when I ask Dentists about meetings…
You know those looks…
“Are you CRAZY!!!”
“What the heck for???”
“What do we need meetings for? There’s not enough of us?”
Sure, they’re not saying this in words, they’re just saying it with their facial expressions…
Why Does A Dental Office Need Meetings?
Firstly, what sort of meetings are there in Dental Offices?
• Weekly staff meetings
• Morning huddles
That’s about it?
“We don’t need morning huddles. We know what we’re doing!”
“Why do we need to huddle? Everything’s in the appointment book”
And of course:
“We don’t need a weekly meeting there’s only 4* of us here.”
[* Insert your number of choice here.]
Morning Huddles
I’ve written about morning huddles previously.
The purpose of the huddle is for each team member to know and understand fully how their day will pan out, who is in, and what needs to be done.
Each team member.
Because there’s going to be interaction required between team members for each and every patient, so we must be “game ready”.
We can’t just wing it.
The huddle prevents that “Now who’s next and what are we doing for them today?” look.
A well-huddled dental office works more efficiently. Period.
That’s a given.
This then reflects with:
• Happier patients who feel wanted, and respected. Patients will appreciate that you are prepared for them. Similarly, patients will also recognize when you are unprepared.
When we are prepared we have everything out.
When we are unprepared, we’re always having to get stuff. This is a really bad look…
• Happier team that knows in advance what’s going on. Nobody likes to have to “make it up” as we go along.
• A smoother day creating less stress for doctors and less stress for team.
• A more productive day. [meaning: happier doctor]
Morning huddles also allow us to celebrate our successes on a daily basis.
• What did we do well yesterday?
• How can we use that to do better today?
Morning huddles are easy to do.
They are also easy *NOT* to do.
The difference, to a dental office, in terms of profitability and efficiency and harmony, is staggering.
Weekly Staff Meetings
The reason Dental Offices don’t do weekly staff meetings is they don’t know what they’re trying to achieve with the meeting.
And because of this, the meetings often end up ending poorly.
Some team members don’t join in.
And wish they were elsewhere.
Other team members, doctors included, use the weekly meeting as a blame session.
A well-organised weekly meeting will be an uplifting experience.
Successes are celebrated.
• How did the practice perform last week?
• On a financial basis?
• On an efficiency basis?
• On a personal connection basis?
How can we celebrate these events?
How can we improve on these events?
How can we apply these lessons learned for future benefit?
• What’s coming up in the future?
o Who’s reporting on these?
o How can we help these future events?
The weekly staff meeting needs to be a meeting of purpose.
And it needs to be a meeting of anticipation.
Not dread.
Other Meetings
A good Dental Office will have regular meetings, with the appropriate team members to make sure that everything is going along smoothly.
These meetings might be monthly, weekly, or fortnightly.
Or they could be bi-monthly, or quarterly.
But they need to be regular.
Not ad-hoc.
They need not be long meetings.
These could include:
• Equipment update report meeting
• Stock control meeting
• Marketing meeting
• Advertising meeting
• Office equipment and supply meeting
• Figures and trends meeting
And then there are the Human Resources meetings.
• Team member reviews
• Team sub-group meetings
o Hygiene department
o Dental assistants
o Office staff
o Dentists
The length and frequencies of these meetings can be determined by each office.
But the meetings do need to be held.
There’s nothing worse than finding out something that could have been avoided if there’d been a protocol for monitoring it .
Similarly, meetings can be used for sharing wisdom, so those less experienced can learn from others.
Training Meetings
We can all learn something.
And meetings for education are imperative if we are to stay on top of our game, as a team, as a business.
You can’t just go to a gym one time and expect to be fit for life.
And it’s the same in business.
You can’t watch The Masters on TV and then go out and shoot sub par the next day.
Heck no!
You need to practice and learn, practice and learn, practice and learn.
Great performers practice, practice and practice.
As a Dental Office, we rarely practice.
We rarely, if at all, take time to rehearse and learn scenarios, so that we become Masters at Our Craft.
Sadly, most Dental Offices just plain old wing it.
An Office that knows its scripts, knows its stages and knows its scenes performs so much better than Office that just makes it up as it goes….
And *hopes* that things work out.
The differences in performance, the differences in team harmony, the differences in job satisfaction, these differences between those offices that train and those that do, are frankly, staggering.
Omer Reed told me that ninety five percent of Dentists reach age sixty-five and are unable to retire.
I’d suggest that ninety five percent of Dental Offices fail to have productive, efficient meetings…
******
My One-Day Workshop in May covers in greater depth how to address these two BIG areas of leakage. For more details on the Philadelphia workshop CLICK HERE.
For more details on my Australian workshops CLICK HERE.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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