I frequently refer to the mastery of the various aspects of running a business, but I should clarify — there is no such thing as true mastery; there’s just CONSTANTLY GETTING BETTER. For example, you never truly master your Human Capital. You develop a great team… then you constantly build on it to make it even better.
The idea that you can establish something with your human capital — or any piece of your business, for that matter — and then just leave it alone and expect it to maintain itself at a high level is a false construct. Incentives are a great example: the doctor puts something in place and leaves it dormant for years on end, and then wonders why it doesn’t work anymore!
Just because you hire a person — even a really talented person — and put them into a role, you can’t expect them to be highly productive and live up to their capabilities if you don’t manage them. That’s being a lazy leader. You have to sufficiently train them, set very clear expectations for what you want them to do, provide constructive feedback, then continue to develop their knowledge and skills over time. That’s called managing people. As the owner of a business with employees on the payroll, it’s your role to be an effective manager as well as the visionary business leader.
People left to their own devices will take the Practice down, not up. Not because they’re bad people, but because they won’t know any better — they won’t know the vision or what you want and expect of them, and won’t have been trained to perform their jobs well. Good, solid, consistent management is required to produce the results you want.
And speaking of the results you want, your ultimate goal must be OVER-DELIVERY to your patients or clients. That’s how you build and sustain a viable, profitable business. Recognize that much of what happens in your office is more about the EXPERIENCE… and less about the treatment. Quality treatment is a “given” from the patient’s perspective; over-delivery comes through putting on an amazing experience.
The chief cause of under-delivery is the lack of competence by the business owner in overseeing and managing human capital. If you’re one of the few who is doing this well, congratulations! Now work on fine-tuning. You’ll find that a great team is hyper-responsive to fine-tuning, so keep going with the good work!
— Jay
Awesome “kick-in-the-pants” statement Jay. Constant never ending improvement. My Office Mgr just hired a new Dental Assistant. In addition, a new Hygienist as long as the $ work out for her. She did a working interview with me last week and we both “clicked” working with each other. The other 2 Hygienists said they really liked her too. That was a surprise as I was hoping they did not take it as a “threat” to there jobs. However I’ve been telling them that the office expansion will have new staff now for a year or more-no surprises.
Next is a Mktg Dir/Personal Asst. I believe this is the right sequence & I’m psyched to get the marketing “flying” & see the benefits of a Personal Assistant. I’m sure I’ll never look back on this hire.
Seems like we have a lot of conversations about human capital and hiring great people only to ‘atrophy’ them by not continually challanging them. We have committed to spend more time on the back end training and challanging them to grow than on the front end hiring then just assuming growth is part of the process and it doesn’t take a great deal of engagement and commitment on our part to grow the team.