The start of a New Year brings an opportunity to make your dental practice and team even stronger. As you consider what you would like to accomplish this year, remember you need more than just goals. As Antoine De Saint-Exupery once said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” If you want this coming year to be better than the last, you need more than just wishes, you need actionable steps.
Start with your goals and be sure to involve the whole team. What would you like to fine tune with the patient experience, how you schedule, and overall teamwork? How can you make your leadership more effective? What is something that would make the patient experience even better? What is a goal that really energizes everyone? As Joe Vitale once said, “A goal should scare you a little and excite you a lot.”
After you have discussed potential goals and discovered ideas that really peak your interest, you can move toward creating your plan. What is the first step you need to take? For example, if you are tired of running behind and you want to commit to staying on schedule, the first step may be to review how much time you are allotting for each procedure. If you want to become a stronger leader, the first step may involve scheduling quarterly meetings with members of your team.
Planning also involves breaking down the biggest challenges into easy-to-implement steps. If, for example, you want to get 50 new Google reviews over the next 12 months, your biggest challenge may involve asking enough patients to reach that goal. How can you keep the team motivated? Maybe your break 50 total reviews into five groups of ten, and each time the practice gets ten new reviews, you buy the team lunch.
As you consider what you would like to do to make your practice even stronger, make sure you come up with more than just wishes. Take the necessary steps to turn those wishes into a New Year Plan of Action.