How To Build A Successful Team
Being a chairside dentist was never the end game for me. Sure, my main passion is to help patients, as it is for all of us, but we also must fulfill our life goals.
My life goals are to help improve the lives of patients, have the financial means to live comfortably and travel the world, and have great health. To achieve these goals, I needed to invest in multiple businesses. I have been able to invest and help support over 80 practices around the country and the only way to achieve that mass, and keep it sustainable, is to invest in building successful teams.
Efficient Systems
Once I grew beyond owning three offices, it became clear that I cannot be everywhere or with every patient at one time, so I had to develop clear and repeatable systems that can be used in each office I am a partner in so that I can track measure and correct missteps. If every office has a different process, it would be very difficult and time-consuming to uncover and correct where the miss was.
Clinical System An example of a clinical system is having a documented clinical culture for my associates to follow. I have written clinical standards for the diagnosis of periodontal disease and treatment and diagnosis of indirect restorations versus direct restorations, among others.
Operational System An example of an operational system is my managers must work and turn in a report of the accounts receivable report on set days of the month. Systems like these ensure I can hold my teams accountable, minimize my time and effort in managing every clinic individually, and ensures the success of all of your offices and employees.
Clear Employee Roles and Responsibilities
Employees must know their expectations for which they will be accountable! It is our job, as owners, to ensure our employees’ success, and solid systems are how to do that. Once you have systems in place, you need to find the right people to put on the ‘bus’ (From the Energy Bus book).
In my experience, it is much better to hire for attitude and grit than for aptitude and experience. Again, experienced employees come with engrained habits and perceptions that sometimes can not be altered. If you hire for the right attitude and work ethic, you can train almost any skill. I would rather have an inexperienced, hard-working, positive, customer-service-oriented team member than an unmotivated, pessimistic, know it all!
For example, when I am hiring for the office manager person, I tend to hire someone from sales and customer service over someone who has been in dental management prior. I find they bring a new viewpoint to the role. I also received some great advice from my mentor, Dr. Minh Pham several years ago. I was going through the pros and cons of an associate I was interviewing, and after rambling on, he cut in and said “yeah, that’s all good, but do you actually LIKE the person? Would you see yourself hanging out with them?”. That concept had never occurred to me before! We must genuinely LIKE the people on our team if we are going to want to invest and work with them. After all, we spend more time with our coworkers, than our family. So, hire people you genuinely like!
These are just two surface examples of how to build a successful team. If you would benefit from learning more about how to build a successful team, don’t hesitate to reach out!
