Building and sustaining a dental practice is a major accomplishment for any professional. Growth is an important part of our mission for the future. But like any surge of growth in a professional practice, the ripple effect of poor direction and management structure can often bleed terrible repercussions into our personal lives.
It is important to understand first that your business is a living and breathing entity. It has a pulse, and it has an appetite. It needs to be fed. Your vision, and how well you implement it, determines whether or not it has a massive appetite or reasonable one. If you are not careful, you can create a monster with an insatiable appetite that will undoubtedly force you to compromise the important values you originally wanted for your life. Before you know it, you look around wonder why you haven’t taken that much time off. When asked, you have to stop and think about how many people work for you.
“My machine was so big that I felt like I was going to work just so other people could have jobs!” says Charley Varipapa of Alexandria, Virginia. “That is when I knew I had to make a change. I was getting exhausted keeping that thing going.”
The energy component to dentistry is an important one, especially as you age. You either have a practice schedule that gives you energy when you think about it, or you have a schedule that requires you to muster up a few deep breaths before contemplating its nuances. A lot of dentists forget one important thing to plan into their future: GETTING TIRED.
Let’s face it; you will get tired. Maybe the kryptonite hasn’t set in yet, but you can rest assured that it’s coming.
And while you might have been able to handle a challenging schedule of 40-plus clinical hours per week, working evenings and Saturdays throughout your youthful years in practice, you forget that everything has a lifespan, and that includes you. If you’re not careful, you may get too busy getting busy and find that the inertia of breaking away from a massive practice monster to be home more is much too difficult a task.
Reversing or stopping this trend is an important component to staying sane.
But, if you set up a structure in your practice to energize your team and meet their personal visions, you can’t possibly measure its effect on the intangible assets of attitude during your days. Keeping yourself and your staff happy and motivated increases the quality of life not only at the office, but at home as well.
This year, we have seen a growing trend in practices that are changing their traditional hours to a more energizing and efficient life schedule. Instead of working 8 am to 5 pm, dentists are seeing patients from 7 am until 2:30 pm or 3 pm with a flex lunch (which means they find time during the day to have a quick break).
Dr. Stephen Malone in Knoxville, Tennessee, has adopted an earlier schedule to better accommodate his practice and his life. He and his staff work 7 am – 3 pm with staggered lunches instead of closing shop for a noon lunch hour. Not only has the change energized the entire office, leaving them time to live their lives outside of work, but the change has also been made seamlessly without upsetting patients.
“We have received almost no flak from the patients. They have been very supportive,” says office manager Kim in Dr. Malone’s office.
“For me, it was a no-brainer,” says Dr. Malone of implementing the schedule change. He adds that working fewer hours means that while his hygienists see seven people instead of eight each day, they get to spend fifteen minutes longer with each patient and they now have three prime appointments (7 am, 8 am, and noon), as opposed to two (8 am and 4 pm).
By eliminating the hour-long lunch break. Dr. Malone has seen an improvement in the quality of performance in the office while allowing him to go to his children’s karate practice after work.
“If you don’t have to take the break, everybody stays focused,” he says.
Dr. Thomas W. Dawson of Arlington, Texas, changed his office hours over 15 years ago in an effort to support young parents who wanted to spend time with their children after school. Instead of working 8 am – 5 pm Monday through Thursday, he works 7 am – 3 pm four days a week, and his team couldn’t be more thrilled.
“If you work smarter, you can actually increase production,” he says, adding that this type of schedule isn’t for every practice.
For dentists who practice single-tooth, emergency dentistry, they may find it difficult to work less hours because they cut a day out of their schedule that is vital to their practice.
“When you are running around room to room, you don’t have time to finish the details, and you’ll have those kinds of problems,” Dr. Dawson says. He suggests that this schedule works best in practices where the focus is on comprehensive, life-long dentistry, and where the concern is centered on the quality of the patient, and not the quantity.
Dr. Sean Sinclair of Maryville, Tennessee, in response to suggestions from his staff, changed his weekly clinical hours to from 36 hours a week to 27 several months ago, and he says it’s been a fantastic decision.
“We are working less, we have more energy, production is going up; it’s a win-win. I’ll never go back,” says Dr. Sinclair, who now has more time to spend with his family.
So, how do we avoid this trend of the arduous practice monster and its responsibilities?
And how do we change our hours to energize our life? It all starts with a few straight-forward decisions followed by a visual plan of attack.
- You can’t do anything without a great team. If you don’t have this, stop here and complete #1 before going onto #2. Invest time and money into improving yourself as an attractive leader so that you can attract quality team members. I have a mentor who says, “In order to attract attractive people, you must first become attractive.” We live in a very savvy marketplace now. We are also engaged in the “Great War for Talent.” The most talented auxiliaries in dentistry are not dumb; they know their value in the marketplace and have little tolerance for wasting time in the wrong practice. Perspective talented team members are often doing more homework on you than you are on them. It is no accident if you haven’t been able to sustain a great team. Change this before moving onto #2.
- Fill out this form CLICK HERE. Do this as a gift to yourself. Ask yourself the question, “If I were able to make the vision for my life come true, what would a typical week of it LOOK LIKE?” Don’t tell me about your vision. Show it to me. That is often the problem. We are doing way too much talking, explaining, and writing and not enough listening and showing. Have your team members complete the same exercise.
- Have a team meeting about the exercise you just completed. Ask yourself and your team how important it is to your life to make these things happen. Examine why you haven’t done these things in the past. Chances are, you will only come up with one answer….FEAR. My good friend and mentor, Dr. Greg Tarantola, says that, “Dentists are famous for hallucinating when it comes to fears in their practices!” Ask the question, “Is it truly a legitimate limitation of our practice not to make our vision happen, or are we hallucinating about our perspective?” If you have too many limitations, take a bunch of courses or change your limitations or work with a coach to change your perspective before moving onto #4. Remember, your perspective determines your reality.
- Post this completed VISUAL VERSION OF YOUR VISION in the break room of your practice. Make it the fulcrum for all of the decisions you make as a practice.
- Start training your patients and team to fit into this vision. The greatest implementers I have ever worked with in dentistry have all designed their lives and then lived into them. Dr. Frank Spear quotes Dr. Phil by saying, “We teach people how to treat us.” I believe this to be absolutely true. Make sure you are first creating enough value for the people you serve, and then make sure they are behaving properly in the practice. Systems influence behavior. Teach them how to treat you. Tell them what time to come in for appointments. Tell them how things work in your practice. Tell them what to expect financially and how everyone pays for their dentistry. Make sure that you are not trying to fit into their schedule; fit them into your schedule. Don’t say things like “When is a good time for you?” Instead, say things like, “The best time to do this particular procedure is at 8 am next Tuesday.” Your patients and your team are dying for you to lead them in the right direction once the trust has been established. If you don’t lead them to behave properly in your practice, patients and team members will drag you into a black hole and leave you there.
- Engage in the disciplines that will make this happen. If you need to, get a mentor or coach to hold you accountable to making sure you take little steps in the right direction each day. You don’t have to do everything right away, but make a firm commitment to change your practice and your life over the next year or two. It is all a matter of discipline. Those who get this make their vision a reality. Those who don’t only wonder about what should have been and deal with the pain that comes with that.
Jim Rohn says that, “We must suffer from one of two pains: either the pain of discipline, or the pain of regret. The difference is that pain of discipline weighs OUNCES while the pain of regret weighs TONS. You see, success is nothing more than just a few simple disciplines practiced every day. Failure, on the other hand, is just a few errors in judgment practiced every day.”
Your hours and schedule tell me everything about you. I can see what you believe about dentistry. I can see what you believe and value about life. I can see how healthy you are. I can see what is important to you. I can see how optimistic you are about the future of dentistry. It doesn’t lie.
If you find yourself seeing patients after hours and working on weekends when you could be home with your family, you send out the message loud and clear that you don’t value your time. And if you don’t respect your time, you can’t expect your patients to give you that courtesy. If your practice has become a seemingly untamable monster, don’t be discouraged. Grab it by the horns by reevaluating your practice’s values, and align your daily activities to attain your goals. Get everyone involved in the process.
Make sure you are currently engaged in the disciplines that help you end up with the life and practice you’ve always dreamed about. Make sure they show me a well-designed life. It just makes the journey that much more enjoyable.
Stop TRYING….and start TRAINING.
-Kirk
