A dentist I know well has recently had some staffing issues.
Sometimes a loss of staff, or change in personnel, can cause some concerns.
Concerns for both the doctors, and also concerns for other team members as well.
Sometimes the team and the doctor are concerned as to how the dental office will survive with the loss of a long-term team member.
After all, all of a sudden, a regular member of the staff is now gone. And the team have concerns as to whether an appropriate replacement can be found to fit into the role that has become vacant.
This is a concern that I see regularly across my visits to dental offices around the globe.
And frankly, to me this concern is just purely and simply, a ghost.
It’s a waste of time and energy.
It’s a concern that is never grounded.
Because time and time again, every Dental Office rises to new levels of achievement with the change of personnel.
Every single time.
Undoubtedly, I can say without fear, there is improvement with replacement.
Every single time.
Without fail.
Now the change may not bring about instant and immediate improvement.
But trust me, there is and always is improvement.
And although it may be required instantly, and it may take time, let me tell you, the improvement comes. It’s really never that far away.
So whether the change in personnel is a voluntary change, where someone chooses to move on, or it’s even a forced change, where a team member is asked to leave, what invariably happens is that the remaining team lifts their performance immediately to cover for the loss.
In so doing, this “rise” in performance of the other team members is maintained by them for a reasonable period of time following on from the loss of that person.
And this “rise” in performance carries on into the arrival period and introductory time for the replacement employee.
And that’s good for everybody!
Secondly, and often more importantly, the new or replacement employee often brings added skillsets and values to the position that benefit the dental office and benefit the other employees well.
And that in itself, is always a breath of fresh air.
It’s almost like the Jack Welch Vitality model…mandatory turnover of the bottom ten percent of staff.
In our case, the self selection of those moving on, and their replacement, results in a lifting effect on that role as well as a lifting effect across the team as a whole.
And that’s a good thing!
The dentist friend of mine is very nonchalant about this sort of situation.
To him, staff change is a cleansing process.
In fact in this case, for my friend, his clients and patients have welcomed the new personnel with open arms.
To my dentist friend, all changes are good.
To him, it’s like water off a duck’s back.
He loves to quote Gone With The Wind:
“After all, tomorrow is another day.”
So be like my friend. Don’t get hung up and worked up about a change of personnel.
Let it be. Things will always work out for the better.
Always.
Better personnel management is part of The Ultimate Patient Experience, a simple easy to implement system that I developed that allowed me to build an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me: david@theUPE.com
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I was reminded this week of a principle that is paramount in the delivery of World Class Customer Service.
It’s the principle to Under Promise and Over Deliver.
I’m not sure whether the employees of the firm that delivered this experience to me this time were aware of their use and execution of the principle.
I’m thinking maybe they just lucked in and got it right with me purely by accident.
Here’s what happened:
You see, I’m one of these people who likes to live on the edge, when it comes to deadlines and schedules.
I have an uncanny knack of leaving things, most things, to the very last minute, and then experiencing a mad, mad rush as the deadline rapidly approaches.
I do this often. Too often.
I’ve been known to regularly be still packing my suitcase as the taxi is waiting to take me to the airport.
Sometimes even, I’m still in the bathroom as the taxi arrives.
It’s a horrid affliction.
I dislike how I always do this to myself.
Despite the fact that when it comes to air travel, I am always at the airport with more than enough time to spare. Always.
I just can’t seem to transfer that prematurity and preparation for airports across to other key areas in my life.
For some reason…..
Anyway, in this recent incident, or event last week, as usual, I started again to stretch the boundaries of preparation.
My friends will be aware, that yesterday was my wife’s birthday.
And as far as Birthday’s go, this year’s Birthday was a big one.
And like all other years, the celebrations and lunches have stretched and spread across a number of days.
But this year it’s a significant Birthday.
A number ending in zero.
A multiple of ten…
Now, last Christmas, unlike most, I was well prepared with gifts. Great gifts. Well prepared in advance.
However, this Birthday, this year, I was not so well prepared.
You see, being a significant celebration, I wanted to find her something unique. Something that would surprise her, but also NOT be just one of those gifts, that blend into the multitude of “nice gifts”, that really don’t hit the mark.
Fortunately for me the thought, the idea, the notion of the correct gift came to me with just enough time to take quick and necessary action to meet the impending deadline.
But I needed the planets to line up.
I thought a great gift idea would be to present my wife with some canvasses of photos of her four boys.
Now these aren’t normal boys. These are her four pets.
These are cattle.
These are her four steers that she bought over a year ago in a very lean, undernourished state.
And who with time, have grown, both in girth and in personality, to their own betterment, because they now have names, and are destined to never ever go off to market….
So the collection of photos of the four boys was difficult enough.
I’m wondering if any of my readers have tried to download photos discretely from their spouse’s phone, without being caught or found out?
Let’s just say, to cut a long story short, it was a case of Mission Accomplished!
So I headed, with flash drive in hand, to our local office supply store to have my treasured photos converted to large canvasses.
And here’s where the Under Promise occurred.
Big time!!
And I’m not sure whether it was part of their technique, or whether the staff here were just really being difficult, but they succeeded in making me believe that I would be extremely lucky and very fortunate to be able to collect just one of my five canvasses before Jayne’s Birthday, so that I could have them wrapped and ready for her big day.
You know the drill at these places…you sit in front of a photo kiosk-style machine and work your way through the order process. And for me, with five canvasses, this took some time.
So it’s about forty-five minutes prior to closing time at 9:00p.m. Friday night.
And when I take my order slip up to the counter to pay, I lead with my bleeding heart story….
“Is there any way that you can have this order ready for me for Sunday morning? It’s a Birthday present…” I said.
“No way.”
“That’s a big order”
“Five pictures?”
“These can take an hour each to make”
“It really depends on how busy we are”
“Weekends are very busy here”
“We have other orders too”
“I can’t promise anything”
And I said:
“I’m willing to pay extra”
And they said:
“We might be lucky to have *SOME* canvasses ready by Monday morning”
[Monday morning is the actual Birthday!!!]
I’m thinking, I’ve lucked out here.
I’m planning damage control.
In my mind.
I’m trying to work out my contingency plans.
Plan B. Plan C. And beyond.
I’m into survival mode….
For a poor husband, I left that office supply store on that Friday night with no hope whatsoever that my gift canvasses would be ready for collection before Monday afternoon.
Way too late considering we were doing a family Birthday lunch, Monday lunchtime.
So as I’ve pre-empted earlier, there is a happy ending to this story. To my surprise, the office supplier SMS’d me Sunday afternoon that my order was ready for collection.
And so I was able to visit there and collect my valuable canvasses, take them home and wrap them.
And I did good.
For the birthday.
I’m not convinced that our office supply store was practicing the Under Promise and Over Deliver Principle on purpose….
I don’t believe at all that it’s an office Principle they try to live out and deliver.
I think for me, I lucked in for the same reason that my golf balls headed for the woods rebound back out onto the fairways.
I think it was just a case of “Good Clean Living” being rewarded.
From a higher power…..
Anyway, the upshot was, that the canvasses of the four boys were a total surprise to my wife, and were well received.
Good was seen to be done…
In business, in all business, we need to be looking for ways that we can under promise and over deliver.
Because when done correctly, it’s a win for our business, and a great feeling for our customers and clients as well.
It’s the opportunity to provide hope
It’s the opportunity to make them feel something special….
And though I didn’t really get that “feel special” feeling at the picture pick up, I did feel lucky.
Of sorts.
It’s something we can all look for. Something we can all work on, in our own businesses…
A way of Over Delivering.
A way of making someone feel lucky.
A way of helping them enjoy something special…
The Principle to Under Promise and Over Deliver is just one of the many protocols and procedures you will learn about in The Ultimate Patient Experience, a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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A dentist I know well has just recently been interviewing for Dental Office Team Members.
And so have I.
One of the key rules, or principles of hiring and employment is this:
Hire Slow and Fire Fast.
How many times do we see the opposite of this rule occur?
And we do….. and we keep seeing it.
And we keep doing it, don’t we?
We hire fast.
And we take *FOREVER* to dismiss someone who may not be right for our team.
And combined together, these two incongruences, keep occurring and occurring and occurring.
For some reason we as employers just don’t seem to learn.
We just don’t follow the rule.
And I guess, as dentists, we’re really not alone in hiring fast and firing slow. It’s not anything unique to dentistry as such.
It is, in fact, a very very common affliction of all small business.
Because when you’re a business of three or four or five or six employees, it’s very difficult to be without one.
Because that one person, just by the numbers, could be twenty five percent, twenty percent or sixteen percent of your workforce.
And taking time, going slow, to replace them, can be a burden.
A burden on the owner and a burden on the other employees in that small business.
In dentistry it can be a real burden.
Going without one person in your team, for even a short period of time, can be a real strain for your business and for your other team members.
Having no replacement, while you source and interview and source more and interview more, and more, and more…oh my goodness, it’s just a testimony to internal fortitude, isn’t it?
For the interviewer, for the small business owner, [read DENTIST here], for the other team members as well…
What do you do?
Do you try to soldier on without that front office person, without that dental assistant, without that steri person?
Or do you use an agency, where the person they send has different levels of ability and awareness.
Different from the person you want.
Different from the person who you are replacing.
Different from the person who came from the agency the day before…
It’s enough to drive a small business owner mad…
I mean crazy.
But also mad angry.
Angry mad.
Because as a dentist, all you really want to do is just go back to fixing teeth.
Not this H.R. stuff.
After all, you’re not trained in H.R..
And you’re not cut out for it either?
And you weren’t taught it at dental school.
You didn’t sign up for it.
You signed up for fixing teeth…..
And this is where it all starts to unravel….
This is where we start hiring fast.
Because we just aren’t cut out for all the sifting. And the sorting. And the time it takes.
And the weighing up. And the evaluating. And the comparing…..
“Well this one’s good at this, but that one can do that… But not this…. And then there’s this other one…”
The self-talk is just enough to send you crazy.
Because you’re just not cut out for it.
So you hire fast…
Now in my opinion, if hiring fast can work for you, then I’m OK with that.
But only, *ONLY* if you’re up for firing fast as well.
Because sometimes you just don’t know how good or how well or how poorly a potential employee will be without seeing them working the floor, in the shoes, doing what you want them to do…..
So give them a go, because sometimes a real pearl can be found, or appears, once in the work environment, rather than during the interview process.
But you must be ready to pull the lever if need be.
If they aren’t the right person.
And pull it quickly.
I mentioned a dentist I know at the top of the article?
Well it seems that my colleague was concerned about the loss of a long-term dental hygienist, and how patients might react to her departure.
And I guess he felt this way because it had been a few years since the last time he had a vacancy in his hygiene department.
Well my colleague was happy to report that the new hygienist was welcomed and very well received by all the patients who she treated…
And I knew that this would be the case…
Because I guess, for those patients, sometimes a change of hygienist is just as good as a holiday…
Which makes you wonder if a change of dentist would bring about a similar nonchalance in behaviour?
Would your own absence, or replacement, Doc, be just like water off a duck’s back to your trusty and loyal clients and customers?
That’s very difficult to say…
Indeed.
It’s a topic for another day.
But it gets you thinking….
Is anyone in dentistry, including you Doc, really *THAT* indispensible…..
Improved hiring techniques techniques are part of The Ultimate Patient Experience, a simple easy to implement system that I developed that allowed me to build an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me: david@theUPE.com
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This quote sits on my wall in my small office at my Dental Practice:
“I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.”
– Mikhail Baryshnikov, Russian ballet dancer
I’m not sure how long it’s been there. Four, maybe five years.
It’s on a photocopy
page, taken from my daughter Kate’s school dance programme a few years back.
The reason it’s there is the reason, or the essence of World Class Customer Service.
In the delivery of World Class Customer Service, there is no finish line.
There is no absolute.
No end to the journey.
It’s a life continuum.
It’s a daily striving for improvement or betterment.
Being better at what you do *EVERY* single day.
Better than you were yesterday.
I was reminded of Baryshnikov’s quote yesterday, as I zoomed past my television whilst doing other things.
The Academy Awards were on TV. Live. So it was Monday afternoon down here.
I paused, to watch, as the nominees for Best Actor were announced.
There’s a hiccup and slight delay in opening the envelope….
And the winner is Matthew McConaughey!!
I’m not a moviegoer, nor much of a movie watcher, but I stopped to watch his four minute acceptance speech.
And WOW!! What he said!
In just four minutes Matthew McConaughey said so much, so much, to inspire and motivate.
HOLLYWOOD, CA – MARCH 02: Actor Matthew McConaughey accepts the Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role award for ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ onstage during the Oscars at the Dolby Theatre on March 2, 2014 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
He said that every day he needs someone to look up to, something to look forward to and someone to chase.
In words of equal significance as those above by Baryshnikov, McConaughey said:
“My hero – that’s who I chase.”
“It’s me in ten years….”
“Every day. Every week. Every month. Every Year of my life. My hero is always ten years away.
I’m never going to be my hero. I’m not going to attain that. I know I’m not and that’s just fine with me and that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing….”
Who are you chasing?
Who do you want to be?
Are you striving for constant improvement?
Because you must be. You must be trying to improve.
Every hour. Every minute. Every second of the day. You must be trying to be better than you were.
To be better than you are…
That’s what World Class is.
That’s what being World Class is all about!
It’s about being your best. Delivering your best!
And your best is always better than it was yesterday…
In four small minutes McConaughey shared such great inspiration.
He thanked his mother, who “demanded that we respect ourselves and then we learned we are better able to respect others.”
And I guess that’s it. Or a big part of it.
Because when we see someone doing something that’s not in the best of interests, if they say something hurtful and harmful, well it’s obvious that they are behaving that way because of lack of respect to others. But it also reflects a lack of self respect. A lack of inner respect of one’s self.
Matthew McConaughey thanked his family as the “something to look forward to”.
“the courage and significance you give me every day”
“the four people in my life I want to make the most proud of me”
Who on this planet do you want to make proud of you?
Or maybe someone now not with us?
Because sometimes it’s just not enough to be doing it just for yourself.
Sometimes it isn’t…is it?
Finally, or firstly when McConaughey began the serious part of his speech, he said, with reference and thanks to God, that
“it’s a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates”
And it does. That’s for sure.
Give and you will receive.
Of that there is no doubt. No argument.
And I say this.
The more you give out, the more you get back.
The more you keep giving the more you’ll keep getting.
It’s the Law of Reciprocity.
It’s the Binding Principle of World Class Customer Service.
So go out there, and be your own hero! Make someone proud of you!! And be grateful…
“To that I say Amen. To that I say alright alright alright…”
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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