My blog article last week titled “What Are Some People Thinking?” attracted a lot of comments and interest from business owners and also from people within the dental profession.
To me it just seems ludicrous that young dentists who are still wet behind the ears can turn up at an established dental practice and demand to be provided with [or be gifted] an endless supply of patients that these inexperienced dentists then believe they can do whatever they want to, because they now have a degree.
Without any considerations of the protocols and culture of the practice they are going to work in….
As if it is their birth right to be able to do as they please?
Well, the story get’s worse…
Just when you think that there’s no way there can be a worse story than this in dentistry, well let me tell you there is.
There are dental practices out there that are owned by experienced and educated dentists that are being held to ransom by belligerent office staff and dental assistants.
Purely because these staff can.
I’ve seen dental offices where front office staff have thrown tantrums because the dentist who owns the practice wants to implement coaching and training for the staff, and the staff don’t want it.
The staff don’t want the coaching so badly that they assume SABOTAGE MODE in an effort to have the dentist terminate the coaching and the practice return to its sub-par below average performances.
Again, how can that sort of staff attitude exist or be tolerated in a logical methodical world?
“I don’t know why we’re having coaching, we’re already doing all that…”
“I don’t want my phone conversations recorded. Sometimes I share personal information with the callers in an effort to gain their trust…”
Well welcome to the twenty-first century…
Could you imagine if the police force or the army just recruited people, but didn’t train them?
Initially?
And continually?
What about our hospitals? What if our hospitals just relied on the previous educations of its medical staff of doctors. And nurses, and never kept them up to date with the latest procedures and innovations?
And what about your favourite sporting team? What if they simply bought well, but never trained together?
After all, they’re elite athletes. They can simply do what they always do, can’t they?
The sad thing is….
The sad thing is there are mini-dictators out there throwing their weight around without justification purely to protect a status quo that they’ve decided is GOOD ENOUGH for their employers’ businesses, with flagrant regard for the reality that they really have no right to be doing so.
When in fact their employer needs to TAKE CONTROL and let the team know exactly who is in charge and exactly who makes the decisions.
I’ve seen some practices…
I remember 24 years ago when I met a dental coach who said to me:
“I can go into a dental practice and show you an employee costing that practice over $200K per year….”
And I thought immediately:
“That’s MY PRACTICE!!”
It was a light-bulb moment.
Indeed, it was truly a defining moment in my life as a dental practice owner.
I had had a long term employee who had been choking my practice and preventing it from growing.
And so after eight years we were able to move this employee on to a new position at someone else’s practice.
And things got better.
Immediately.
But I’ve seen worse…
I saw a practice where the dental receptionist was so despised by the dentist and also the dentist’s spouse, but had been in the practice for some fifteen or sixteen years!
And when this recalcitrant employee was finally shown the door, the visible relief that that dentist displayed, was dramatic.
But you’ve got to ask, why did that dentist wait so long to act, especially when he’d received the advice to take action from several people, for many years?
No one person….
No one person in your employ has the right to determine the financial destiny of your business without being invited and without having skin in the game.
But yet, time and time again I see practice after practice being dictated to by a so-called “trusted” long-term employee who has drawn a line in their sand for their employer’s practice.
There is no way that an under-educated employee with zero skin in the game should have any input or impact on any business decision of your practice that impacts upon the financial success of your business and the decisions that your business needs to make about growth and future growth.
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