Exceptional Dental Practice Management

Happy Father's Day Mark!

Happy Father's Day to all Father's, but especially to the one who's helped me raise the 3 most wonderful children in the world.  (That's my opinion anyway, and you know I always have one.  You may think you have the most wonderful children, and that's as it should be.)  Being a father isn't easy.  It's like learning your lines on stage on opening night.  Hopefully the audience doesn't walk out and you get to perfect your act. 

    My kids couldn't have asked for a kinder, more loving father.  If he was any better, he'd be a mother. (Just a little joke).  So, enjoy your day Mark, and all you other dads out there.  You make a big impact on your children's lives forever.  That's why they're the most wonderful children in the world.  The following are a few quotes that seem to fit my husband.

Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.  ~Elizabeth Stone

There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.  ~John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994

It kills you to see them grow up.  But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.  ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.  ~Dinah Craik

"We require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of duty."    ~John Ruskin~

 

 

A Few Of My Favorite Leadership Quotes

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

 Dwight D. Eisenhower

Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.

Steven Covey

       
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.

            Issac Newton

       

A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice.

            James Callahan

       

A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be.

            Rosalynn Carter

Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them. 
            Robert Jarvik

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

            Theodore Roosevelt

Leadership is the  art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

            Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

 Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

 

 

What Are You Talking About?

Here is a quote I just love:

"There is so much good in the worst of us,

And so much bad in the best of us,

That it hardly behooves any of us,

To talk about the rest of us."

Edward Wallis Hoch

    Who among us can say they never talk about anyone else?  I can't.  But, it's not something I like about myself and I try to catch myself and ask myself what I hope to accomplish with gossiping. When the answer is "Nothing, I just want to say it.", I make it a point to stop myself.  I've had a lot of luck with that challenge lately and have found that when I just pass up the inclination to gossip, nothing happens because nothing happened.  I feel good about my self control, but I didn't affect anyone else.  Now, if I had given in to the urge, something would have happened.  Either the person I gossiped to would have gone on to spread the tale to anyone who would listen, or...they would have wondered what was lacking in me that made me feel good by saying something unkind about someone else.  Either way, it would have been better if I'd said nothing and nothing happened.  The person I gossiped about would have suffered,and even if she never realized that I had betrayed her, I would have known I'd been unkind. 

     I remember something I learned in first grade.  I went to Catholic school and the nuns had great parables.  My teacher said that gossip was like a feather pillow.  When you gossip it is like opening a feather pillow and letting all the feathers be blown away by the wind.  Your chance of retracting the gossip from all the people it was repeated to would be like your chance of gathering all the feathers that had scattered in the wind.  You could never hope to get it all back.  It would have blown out of your control.

    A big issue among teams at work is trust.  You have to trust each other to speak in a way that you would not mind them overhearing.  Otherwise there may be an illusion of trust, but you know it's not real.  There is no more satisfying atmosphere to work in than one of trust.  It takes work, committment and constant re-committment.  It requires self-monitoring and self-control.  It's well worth it.

"Gossip is nothing more than halitosis of the mind."  -Unknown-

Pray A Little Prayer

     This was posted on the Dentaltown website yesterday and I liked it so I wanted to share it with you:

     The fruit of silence is PRAYER.

     The fruit of prayer is FAITH.

     The fruit of faith is LOVE.

     The fruit of love is SERVICE.

     The fruit of service is PEACE.

     Prayer was at the root and beginning of Mother Theresa's approach to life.  She said, "Without prayer I could not work for even half an hour."

     I started thinking about this.  Often when my mind is swirling with problems and stresses, prayer is the last thing on my mind.  Unless it's something like, "Good Lord, look what's happening now!"  But when I get quiet, that's when the thoughts that matter enter.  I think that's God giving me some good ideas.  I do know that everything that's ever gone right for me has done so because I got quiet and let the divine information get through.  When things don't go so well, it's usually because I've pushed aside that whisper that says, "Hey, do you really think this is a good idea?"  and plowed ahead.  God shouts, too. That's what you hear right before you really mess up.  Some people call it conscience, I call it God saying, "Yo, Linda, what are you, kidding?  Knock it off!"  Hey, I'm from Brooklyn, my God has an NY accent.  He likes the Mets, too, but apparently he's busy with other things quite often.

     I realized what faith was and how much of it I have when my mother died.  Only faith and God could have brought me through that misery and back to strength and happiness.  Love is in every good thing we do.  Everything.  We are made to love each other and it is only when we stop listening to the whispers from God that we stop doing good.  When we love and do good we are of service to others.  When we see what our service brings it is only natural that we feel peace because we know we did what God wanted us to do and put us here to do. 

     If we come to work and demonstrate faith, love and service toward our patients and each other what else could there be but peace?  Petty jealousies and rivalries can't exist in that atmosphere.  Angry hearts would be soothed and the lonely, frightened or hurt would find serenity.  Now, I don't want to make it sound like you should turn your practice into a convent, nobody looks good in that outfit and I don't think all that solemnity would last long in our office anyway.  Now if nuns start wearing scrubs and telling slightly off color jokes...nah, it'll never happen.  Saints we ain't.  But...we have faith, we love each other and our patients, we are dedicated to serving our patients and we have come to find peace through all that.  I think God's probably pretty happy with us.

After I posted this I noticed what article was posted under it.  I hope God has a sense of humor or at least irony or I may be in trouble.

Job Security

   

"All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."           -Martin Luther King, Jr.

    All managers recognize the truth in these words.  Aren't you relieved?  It's not just you.  Just when you solve one dilemma, you barely have time to relax and enjoy the peace when another problem child is born.  Don't worry, be happy, it's job security. 

    Maybe it's all in how you look at it.  If you see problems as useless stresses and solutions as end-all answers, you may be missing some opportunities.  Problems can lead to new awareness and new and better ways of doing things.  Problems can help you discover new products and materials or force you to research and learn new information.  So, the problem gave you something you didn't have before.  And I don't mean a headache.  I mean new intelligence.  Solutions to problems don't keep new problems from happening or even necessarily end the original problem forever.  It may just give you a breather.  Which gives you time to regroup and re-energize to solve the next problem.
    It's all in how you face what comes your way.  Progress may be precarious, but hey, at least it's progress.  Lack of progress, now that'll get you.  It's not precarious, it's disastrous.  I can handle precarious.  You just have to know how to balance and bounce back.

"Whenever you make a decision, whenever you act, you are never just doing, you are always becoming."   Tom Morris

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young,  compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the  weak and the strong. Because some day in life, you will have been all of these."

                                                                               George Washington Carver

                               "The first and best victory is to conquer self."
                                                                                                  — Plato

"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself."
                                                                                -Josh Billings_

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

Mark Twain
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910)

Ain't That The Truth!

. “God don’t create no junk. He just creates people with behavior problems”.

                                                                                    -Ethel Waters-    

“By procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally ‘nicely’ regardless of their contributions, you’ll simply ensure that the only persons you’ll wind up angering are the most creative  and productive people in the organization”.

 

Colin

Powell

You Better Believe It

“Anyone wanting to be a leader among you must first be the servant…if you choose to lead you must serve.

                                                   

Jesus

YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN!

“Anybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love”.
                                                               -   Martin Luther King, Jr.  -