Exceptional Dental Practice Management

And So He Goes

    I just hugged my 24 year old son good-bye and sent him on to the next stage in his life.  He recently earned his Master's degree and is headed 10 hours away to start life and work in a new state.  Yes, I'm proud of him and happy for him to have a good opportunity in a good job, but there's also a sick, desperate feeling in watching the man who was my baby fade from sight. 
    Ironically, a friend is bringing his newborn son home from the hospital today.  I want to warn him about how fast it all goes.  It seems like yesterday that my young man was in his car seat on his way to his first new home.  I sat beside him in the backseat ready to protect him from every jolt on the way.  Now, I have to accept that I can't keep the bumps and pains of life from reaching him anymore. 
    I'm not writing this to make you sad.  I'm writing it to make you think.  We can all get so caught up in our work.  We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make our practices better and how to solve the problems that come with our work.  Just remember to keep it in perspective, and pay attention to the other things and people in your life. 
    As I watched my son get ready to go I wondered if I could have done more for him as he grew up.  I don't think so.  I'm sure I could have done some things better or differently, but I gave it all I have.  He knows he is loved and he knows we think he's the best, most wonderful person.  He knows that he can call on us for anything and that we will do anything for him.  So the only regret I have in watching him leave is the 10 hours that stretch between us.  I'm proud of him and want nothing more than for him to be happy and safe.  There is nothing to make up for, because we did it right. 

    That's why I'm writing this.  I don't want any of you to have regrets that an airline reservation can't soothe.  Look at your kids when you get home tonight and picture yourself patting the car door and making them promise to find a place in a safe neighborhood.  Then figure out what you need to do to make sure your regrets involve nothing more than distance.  Distance we can deal with.  You don't get a re-wind when it comes to kids and they don't keep, so get it right this time.

Successful Interviewing

  

  We've finally got our interview technique perfected, or at least we're getting really good at it.  We used to interview in a kind of rush.  Usually we'd be in a hurry because we were responding to a sudden need due to a poor decision made during a previous messy interview.  I used to feel like as long as the person had a good personality and seemed to have a good character, we could train the rest.  It's a popular thought right now.  It's wrong in some ways.
    Many times job candidates put their best foot forward in an interview and we are so happy to see how nice they look and how pleasant they are and we believe it on the spot.  We have to test them for depth.  Can the initial impression hold up when tested?
    As you know by now, I am blown away by the service at 131 Main, and the manager was nice enough to spend some time talking to me about how they develop such great staff.  The key is the interview process and the lock is the training process. 
    I took Jon's advice and used when I was interviewing for a new front desk assistant.  Recently I had two candidates for the position.  The first one was recommended to me by a dentist's wife.  She had been her husband's primary da for 15 years.  Something had happened that had caused her to leave and the wife still thought she was wonderful.  The other candidate was a woman who hand-delivered her resume.  She had no dental experience, but as I glanced at her resume I saw a strong letter of reference, so I decided I'd interview her.
    When the person arrives at the office I hand them a pad of paper and ask them to write 3 paragraphs; one telling me about themself, one telling me why they want to work in a dental office and one telling me what they'll bring to our practice if I hire them. 
    The person with experience laughed at me when I gave it to her.  Not a good start.  I started to imagine working with her and realized she was going to have to do something great to wipe away the initial cynicism.  The other person sat right down and started writing.  Once that task is finished I interview the person to try to understand their work ethic, attitude toward patients and other staff, and personality type.  The person with experience had no chance after a few sentences.  I predict she will have a very difficult time adjusting to any office she is hired in.  The other person, however, was starting to seem like a diamond in the rough.  She'd need some polishing, but she was going to shine.
    I brought her back for a second interview.  This interview is with my boss and myself.  It is a more in-depth interview and we ask a lot of questions.  The purpose is to see how the person handles themselves under pressure, to see if they are consistent, and to draw out information about past work experiences and expectations in this position.  Cathy, our new employee, handled all the questions with sincerity that you could sense was real and showed a calmness and warmth that we were looking for. 
    The third step in the process is a working interview.  This gives us a chance to see how the staff and some of the patients respond to her, and how quickly she learns basic tasks.  At the end of the day, we hired her, based not on emotion, but on information that we gathered throughout these three interviews. 
    We had to put our own work, time and effort into the hiring process to get what we wanted.  I will never hire on the spot because someone feels like they'd be great again.  Subjective impressions are just feelings.  To succeed in hiring, you needs the facts.

Sonicare's New Kid's Toothbrush

    So, it's official.  Sonicare's new kid's toothbrush has been kid tested by my very own special testers and they've given it 4 thumbs way up!  My boss's adorable little girls, ages 3 & 4 tried the new brush and giggled their way through brushing their teeth.
    It seems like a no-brainer.  Anything that will get kid's to stick with brushing their teeth properly, and that they enjoy doing, will not only keep those teeth healthy, but keep them feeling good about dentistry in general.  And that's the goal for all parents when it comes to their kid's teeth. 
    The brush retails for 69.99.  Not a bad investment when you think of the cost of a composite these days. 

About Respect

   

I've been following a discussion on Dentaltown about how to have a successful practice.  As a practice manager, I'm always listening for new ideas and I know you are, too.  There is a regular poster on DT from Australia who has a very enjoyable sense of humor. Most of his posts have some element of humor in them along with a lot of good information.  Often there is some self-deprecation or a hint of teasing in them.  Yesterday he made a post about respect that I found to be profound and undeniably true.  And he was dead serious about it, too, which gave the statement all that much more impact for me.

"We must always treat people with respect no matter how humble.  I love the scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's, where they tell the man they only have a few dollars to spend, and he graciously shows them a tiny brooch that they can afford.  I love the grace and deep respect he shows them.   You just know that if they ever had enough money to buy something expensive, they would go back to that man."

    If you begin every encounter with every patient keeping that principle in mind, you will have a successful practice.  Let people have their dignity.  When we make people feel small, they never forget you for it.  Likewise, when we honor their dignity, they always remember us for that.  Which would you rather be remembered for?

    Often patients come to us with a sense of shame.  They seem astonished that they've let their mouth deteriorate to such a condition.  It happens.  Time goes by while other challenges that seem, and honestly for them, may be, more important at the time. Let's face it, there are strollers to push, soccer cleats to buy and college tuition to pay.  And let's not forget about vaccinations, ortho, summer camp and the latest pair of sneakers that everyone else has.  When they finally have the time and resources to turn their attention to themselves and their own oral health, a lot of damage may have taken place and years of neglect may have taken their toll.

So now that they have the time and money, they have to summon up the courage to face not only the treatment they will need, but also, the judgment of the dental profession.  Or, they may still not have the resources to accept optimal treatment, but want to do something.  We have to know when to stop promoting what may be optimal, and listen to them so we can guide them to treatment they can afford.  When we offer them a less optimal treatment with "grace and deep respect", we allow them to feel good about, and proud of what they are doing. 

    How we treat people passively, through our attitudes and words, is just as important as how we treat them actively, during treatment.  If we mess it up passively, we may never get the chance to treat them actively.  The thing is, it's so easy to be kind and respectful.  You get back as much, or more, than you give them.  It feels good to do good.  Treat all your patients with respect and courtesy and you will be successful and happy with yourself, and they will love you for it.

The Patient Is Always Right?

   

The patient is always right.  Right?  Not so fast, the patient is always the patient and you can't win an argument with a patient, but that doesn't make them right all the time.  Did I just hear an army of dental professionals rise up and cheer?  Go ahead, you deserve it, but then get over it and listen.
  
     I'm reading a book titled Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service, which is put out by Amacom.  I'm loving it so much that I'm putting together a staff meeting built around it.  I'll be posting a PDF file that you can download if you'd like to use it with your staff, when I'm done.  There are a series of Knock You Socks Off books and, glutton that I am, I've bought three of them.

    Dental offices all offer the same basic thing.  The only things that will make you stand out from all the other offices in town are skill and service.  The only thing that will make your service stand out is really caring.  I'll get into that in another post, but right now I want to talk about the revelation that the patient is not always right.

    Before you get too excited, realize this, just because the patient can be wrong, it doesn't mean you get to say, "Ha!  You're wrong."  What you have to do is acknowledge that your patient may be misinformed and use education and information to steer them to being right.  That's correct, you have to use all your knowledge and professionalism to make the patient right. 

    One point that is made in the book is that by thinking that the patient is always right, we put ourselves in a one-down position.  When we force our staff to do whatever the patient says to do, even when we know they are dead wrong, we are telling our staff not to think or ask questions and this can make service feel like servitude.  This will quickly demotivate the staff and make them dissatisfied.

    When we insist that the staff must always consider the patient to be right, we cripple their ability to use their knowledge and empathy to educate the patient and help bring them to a position of actually understanding and making good decisions for themselves.  We can use what we know to help a patient become right without embarrassing or shaming them.  That's what will keep our patients coming back again and again, and what will make them refer their friends and family to us.

What Kind of Leader Are You?

    You may have the title of office manager, practice administrator, boss, whatever, the title doesn't really matter.  The only thing that matters is the way you lead, the way you encourage and the way you think about the rest of the staff. 
    A lot of people find themselves looking for identity, validation or self-esteem in a title.  This is a mistake because without the right attitudes and characteristics in the person behind the title, it's just a bunch of letters strung together.  It doesn't matter who you say you are, who you show you are is what counts.
    I was talking to someone today who is looking for a job as a dental assistant and she kept saying that she had been a lead assistant.  She referred to the other assistants she had worked with as being "under" her, and herself as being "over" them.  Whether she knows it or not, they must have felt that.  I felt it just listening to her.  I've never thought of myself as over any member of our team, rather I think of us all working beside each other.
    When you think of yourself and your team, I think it's best to think of yourselves as partners in care.  It's a respect thing.  You have to respect the efforts and abilities of everyone on the team in order to be the best you can be.  The best leaders encourage others to accept responsibility and give them opportunities to grow and lead as well.  Building a team that can function whether you are there or not does not make you less needed.  It makes you a successful leader.  Helping others grow in ability, confidence and self-esteem earns you influence with them.  That allows you to keep positive momentum growing in your practice and that ensures that the practice will thrive and your patients will receive the benefit of that.
    This is something that I constantly have to remember to work on.  It's easy to fall into unproductive thought patterns.  It happens.  We all feel insecure or threatened sometimes.  The key is having the ability to recognize it and the desire to avoid or correct that thinking. 
    So, if someone asked you what kind of leader you are, what would you say?

Still Thinking About Service

   

I can't get the subject of service out of my mind.  Chris Creamer from the Mastery Program remarked that he  had read my article about 131 Main, the restaurant whose service I've been so impressed with and said that he'd just read a book titled Setting The Table by Danny Myer, a NYC restaurant owner.  If restaurant managers realize how important service is, shouldn't we?  Let's face it, the one thing we have in common is the fact that we all offer something that is useless unless someone else wants it.  Lot's of other people offer basically the same service.  The two factors that make some decide to come to you and stay loyal to you are quality and service.  Thankfully, both are completely within our control.
    It's not as easy as it sounds, though.  You can't wave a magic wand over your staff and make them great technically and give them a desire to provide outstanding service.  You, and they, have to work at it consistently.  People tend to like to get to a certain point and say, "Enough, this is as good as I get."  People get tired, I know that.  It's ok to rest and look back over how far you've come and even enjoy a plateau now and then.  That rest should be short though, you should always be looking ahead to see where you want to go next and checking that you haven't lost any of the ground you've gained.
    Yesterday I went to buy some tomatoes at a local farmer's market.  The place is always busy and the stand I wanted to buy tomatoes from was being manned by a nice gentleman and his 8 year old granddaughter.  When I walked up she jumped up and said, "We're getting busy!" and asked me what she could get for me.  I asked her to pick out 2 lbs. of nice tomatoes and she very seriously picked out the best tomatoes and weighed them.  She took the task seriously and thanked me very sincerely.  You could see that she wanted to do a great job and was proud of helping me.  When do we lose that enthusiasm and desire to serve?  When does service change from something we're excited to be trusted with, to something that we avoid or resent?  Trust is the thing that made what she was doing so important to that little girl.  Her grandfather had decided she was trustworthy enough to handle the responsibility and she knew that and valued it. 
    Do we realize that our dentists are trusting us with an important responsibility?  As a manager, I am sometimes awed by the amount of trust Dr. Morgan places in me.  He trusts me with his livelihood and that of the staff.  He and I trust the staff to deliver not only excellent care, but also fantastic service to our patients.  The key is keeping that enthusiasm alive.  It's instilling pride in performance.  It means we have to constantly and consistently notice and acknowledge our staff's efforts and achievements.  Don't take anything for granted on either end.  Uphold standards, do not accept less than required and be very verbal about acknowledging great performance.  It's also fun and appreciated to surprise the staff with special treats now and then, too.  Soon enough, that desire to serve well will return and the childhood thrill of living up to the trust that is placed will return.  Don't we all experience that inner "Yes!" when we know we've done well?  Imagine what having your staff experience the "Yes!" on a daily basis will do for the culture of your practice. 
    Maybe the title of this post should really be, Always Thinking About Service, because that's how it is for me.  How about you?