The Devil Is In The Detail

Last week I wrote in detail about the Daily Morning Huddle in dental practices.

I can’t overemphasise the importance of having a regular daily morning huddle at the start of each dental practice day.

The purpose of having a daily morning huddle is to frame up the upcoming day and to ensure that the upcoming day runs smoothly and is successful.

Successful for the practice.
Successful for the team members.
Successful for all patients.

For a huddle to be truly effective and successful we need to understand that the devil is in the detail.

As important as what we put into the composition of the huddle is the relevance of what we need to be leaving out of the huddle agenda.

The huddle in American football is typically used to strategise before each play, and work out the best way of advancing the football down the field, in order to score points.

In dental practice, I believe the purpose of the huddle is to strategise the visits of each and every patient, with the goal being that each patient feels WOWED by the levels of service and attention that they receive when they visit our dental practice.

One of the things I noticed in reviewing what other dental practices were doing with regards to their daily huddle was that the composition of their daily huddles was a total mish-mash of information that lacked relevance and purpose, and did not allow the huddle to effectively achieve its desired outcome.

Here are some things that don’t need to be included in a daily morning huddle:

“Are there any slots for emergencies?”
This question should never be asked at a huddle, because great dental practices always have pre-blocked “Same Day Emergency Appointments” that are always left unfilled until that day.

Each and every day.

Everybody in the practice knows that these Emergency Appointments are always left vacant until the day of.

And everybody in the practice knows that at the start of each day, EVERY OTHER APPOINTMENT in the schedule needs to have a patient’s name booked and confirmed.

This is a practice NON-NEGOTIABLE.
“Is the book filled for tomorrow?”
The answer to this question is that the book for the next day should already be filled and this should not be a topic of huddle discussion.

A good practice always has the next day covered.

This is another practice NON-NEGOTIABLE.
“Are we going to reach production goal for today?”
Again, the template for each day, when followed, means that the production goal for the day will be achieved.
Arriving at the huddle and trying to work out whether we are going to achieve production goal, is like arriving at the airport for a vacation and asking:

“Who has the passports and the tickets?

“Are there any problem areas in the schedule and what actions can we take?”
Again, asking this question at the start of your day is like setting out on a long road trip and saying:

“Oh by the way, we need some petrol because the gauge is on empty.”

We should never arrive at a huddle with problems. Problems need to be addressed and attended to well in advance of the “same day fix”.
“Identify which patients require lab work today and has it arrived?”
Not a huddle agenda comment.

We need to have all lab work back at least a week in advance of the patients’ appointments so that lab work does not mess with our schedule.

Similarly, the sending of lab work from appointments of each day are part of the appointment process and do not need to clutter up the huddle agenda.
Yesterday’s numbers.
There’s no reason to discuss the previous day’s numbers in the huddle.

Number discussions need to be held separately of the huddle and in most cases need to be discussed on a weekly basis.

Discussions of numbers at huddles distracts from the purpose of the daily morning huddle, and that is to strategise the visits of each and every patient, with the goal being that each patient feels WOWED by the levels of service and attention that they receive.

Remember: the purpose of the daily morning huddle is for the team to share personal information [F.O.R.D.] about each patient so that each patient will feel that they are being treated like they are a real live human being, and not feel as though they are just being treated like a tooth attached to a credit card.

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