In the pinnacle contest of the Australian Rugby League season, Queensland have won the series for the eleventh time in twelve years.
That’s domination.
QLD team celebrate their win , State of Origin NSW Blues vs QLD Maroons Game 3 at ANZ Stadium, Homebush .
This year in particular has been interesting, as the Queensland selectors chose a new look team in game one because of the retirement of several long-term players.
And when that team lost the first game of the three game series, the Queensland selectors did not hesitate to make several changes in an effort to win both the remaining games of this series.
And win them they did.
How did they do this?
How did a side that looked so lost at sea after game one, how did they regroup and win game two and then dominate game three, against a New South Wales team that made no changes at all to its team for all three games.
What was the secret?
Well, I think the first thing was that there is an incredible State pride for Queenslanders when they are selected to represent their state in Rugby League, and this is a quality that New South Wales players and teams over the past twelve years have failed to be able to create or grasp.
It’s a culture.
It’s in their blood.
It’s in their DNA.
It is said that Queenslanders grow an extra leg when they slip on their maroon coloured state team jersey.
And I’d believe it.
During the match there were times when New South Wales were seen to be walking. This is something that Queenslanders would never do. Queenslanders bleed maroon blood for the state.
Queenslanders will bust their humps and play and dig deep until their lungs explode.
Because that’s Queensland state pride.
And that’s what it’s all about….
What can we learn from this?
Firstly, you can’t just flip a switch to create a team culture.
A team culture needs to be developed over time with traditions and with standards that will, and “have always” stood the test of time.
You just can’t create a culture by simply just “adding water”.
Culture is an internal thing. It comes from the inside.
Secondly, accession to the throne is not a given.
Accession needs to be earned and should never be taken for granted.
Just because the Queensland team was aging, doesn’t mean that it was “a matter of time” before New South Wales gained dominance.
If that was the intended script, then nobody told Queensland.
The Queensland team has not been in a “surrender” mood for many years.
There’s a pride that can’t be bottled that Queenslanders allow to permeate to the surface of their skins and of their beings.
And it is this state pride that makes the team such a force.
And this force is difficult to defeat.
How can you develop that Queensland state pride in your dental team?
Are your dental employees willing to bleed for your business?
Will they bleed for each other?
How is their passion for dental excellence, and for providing your patients with a world class customer experience each and every time?
Or are your team simply going through their own motions?
Are your team proud to be at work?
Are they proud to fly the banner for your office?
You must create a culture in your office that is so powerful that people simply *WANT* to come to work for you, and will turn up day in and day out, no matter what, because they believe in your cause.
With passion!!
Last night, in the deciding game of the series, it was obvious to all who watched that one team got it, and one team simply did not.
Interestingly, in life, and in business, there will always be people who get it, and those who never do.
You need to align yourself with the “get it” people and their businesses.
Life is a heck of a lot more satisfying when you’re working with those who get it, and those who want it, rather than those who expect it.
Culture is KING.
Can you create an environment of world class culture in your business?
Branson can. Hsieh can. Disney can. Southwest can.
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.
Did you like this blog article? If you did then hit the share buttons below and share it with your friends and colleagues. Share it via email, Facebook and twitter!!
We had a water leak from our dishwasher at home in 2013.
The water that leaked caused damage to the kitchen floorboards, and occurred at a time that my son was studying for his year 11 exams.
So I don’t know if you’ve ever had to do this, but what you need to do when this happens is you need to move out of your home for a period of time and go and live in an apartment while the flooring people repair your floor.
Like move out for a week or more.
From a big house, to a small apartment….
Part of the preparation before you leave is that you need to get everything off of your floor, because they need to strip back and re-stain the whole floor, which means kitchen, dining room, hallways and even two closets including one underneath the staircase.
Everything else inside of your house needs to be covered to protect it from the sawdust generated in the polishing process.
And there is always plenty of sawdust….
It is not a small job.
Now here’s the kicker….
The flooring company told us that in repairing the damaged area, if the damaged boards were replaced, the new boards might not match up with the rest of the floor. They suggested that as an alternative, they could sand the curved and cupped boards and re-stain, and all would match up and be good. They suggested that these curved boards had dried out and that sanding them would give a good result.
Now I’m not a floorboard expert, so I have to take my advice from those with more knowledge than me….
So I thought, if they recommend it to be appropriate, then it must be the way to go.
Well it was not….
The boards in question continued to curl and cup after the floor repair had been completed, indicating that the moisture problem that caused the initial damage had not been addressed fully.
And so now, three years later, we have the same boards with the same problem.
So, as we noticed this damage re-occurring, we called the floorboard guy, who never returned our calls.
In desperation, we contacted the insurer, who also failed to act with any speed.
After two years, finally an inspector from the flooring company comes, and takes a look and tells me we have elevated moisture levels in our floor, indicating a fresh incident.
But the dishwasher has never been used since the initial incident…
Because the dishwasher needs to be replaced.
So what’s the rub?
Well, the insurance company, and the floorer, say that if it was poor workmanship, then we should have contacted them sooner, and not left it two years.
But we did, and our calls were not immediately returned.
Now I contest, that sadly, other life events get in the way as well, and so the floor issue took a back seat.
My son’s final year of school, and exams, followed in 2014 straight after the floor being repaired. I wasn’t prepared to uproot him to an apartment during this crucial study year.
Also in that year, 2014, I experienced some significant workplace harassment from the new owners at my dental office, which needed me to seek treatment and make significant health related career decisions. A little bit more important than the flooring…
Along with those, my arthritic shoulder packed it in in 2013 and the replacement of that joint needed to be planned, and was planned, for June 2015.
So the floor kind of took second place for a number of reasons. But try telling that to the insurer….
But to the insurer and the builder, it was not their problem.
In dentistry, when patients seek my opinion, they want things fixed, and fixed once.
They want the best result, not the second best result.
I’m not a floorer, so when the floorer talks me out of one way of fixing and into another, then I’m thinking that the way that he recommends will give a lasting result.
It did not.
What we got from the floorer was poor diagnosis of the cause of the water problem, and over exaggeration of the result of their recommended course of action.
If I did that in dentistry then I’d have a question to answer to my board.
What gets me, is the insurer makes me feel like I’m the bad guy.
I’m just the schmuck who took the floor guy’s advice.
I don’t have a degree in flooring.
I rely on being given best advice.
But for both the insurer and the floor guy to tell me:
“Well you signed off on the work”
Well, I don’t know anything about flooring, just like most of my patients don’t know anything about dentistry.
What does this all mean?
It seems ridiculous to be giving uneducated people the decision making on things they know very little about.
I don’t do it in dentistry.
My feeling is that we have moisture left behind under the boards, or we have another source of moisture that the building company and the floorers failed to locate because they underdiagnosed and went for the quick fix.
The insurer keeps telling me that it’s my fault, for delaying reporting the new damage.
I don’t like the way the insurer is making me feel that I’m trying to make it all one original claim, as if I’m pulling a swifty on them.
To me the floor has never been right, so to be told that “You signed off on it” and that “you chose not to have the floorboards replaced”, is tantamount to bullying.
The behaviour of the representatives of the insurance company have yelled at my wife and hung up the phone on her, and have promised to return my calls and yet failed to do so.
The inspector for the flooring company never got back to us on his findings, either.
All the while I’ve been made to feel like I’m behaving like a lying criminal.
On the only claim I’ve ever made on building and contents with two houses over a thirty-five-year period.
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.
Did you like this blog article? If you did then hit the share buttons below and share it with your friends and colleagues. Share it via email, Facebook and twitter!!
How would you like to have your Dental Business shut down and your business name blacklisted in the media?
Don’t think it’s possible?
Well think about this….
I heard today that seventy three percent of private dental offices in Australia are failing to comply with the latest infection control guidelines required by regulatory authorities.
And I’m figuring the numbers would be similar across North America too…
This is because those standards that were OK back in the good old days are now simply not OK any more.
What that means is that if your dental office has not been recently updated and been made compliant, then there’s a big chance that the infection control police could come along and knock on your door and issue you with an infringement notice and a fine that would not be the best advertisement for your business.
And with the increasing number of dentists out there, there’s certainly an excess of dentists in the community that would be able to weather the storm of rigorous inspection heading our way.
Are you able to say with one hundred percent certainty that your dental office would pass an on the spot inspection if the infection control police turned up at your door?
The inconvenience of having to close down your business and make yourself compliant could be enough to put some dental offices out of business because the loss of business.
The loss of regular cash flow could be crippling.
Not to mention that prices for the services required to make your practice compliant will certainly rise as authorities start to roll out these on the spot inspections.
And of course, as we saw in the Insulation rorting and the School Education rorting that went on in Australia nine years ago, there will be a degree of pandemonium and “create your own price” mentality as the cowboys flock in to “service” an opportunistic market.
Wouldn’t it be better to do something before the proverbial hits the fan?
It makes good sense to replace worn tyres on your car before they fail rather than risk a blowout and risk any subsequent damage to your car and yourself by waiting until the last moment?
As I said, with the oversupply of dentists occurring in Australia, as well as in other parts of the world, this pre-anticipation of disaster could be just what the doctor ordered to ensure your dental practice does not get decorated with red and white hazard tape or receive free publicity in the media for all of the wrong reasons.
Wouldn’t you sleep easier knowing that your dental office was recently made compliant?
Wouldn’t you hate to be “red carded” by the infection control police and closed down because of something you were never really aware of?
Imagine the adverse effect of any media publicity of such an event?
In this day and age, it just makes good business sense to dot your “I’s” and cross your “T’s”.
Let me know if you are interested in bringing your dental office up to date compliance wise, so that you can roll out the welcome mat when the infection control police come knocking.
Email me david@theUPE.com and I’ll put you in touch with those who can help you.
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.
Did you like this blog article? If you did then hit the share buttons below and share it with your friends and colleagues. Share it via email, Facebook and twitter!!
I was listening to a radio story yesterday on the subject of the changing face of Dentistry in Australia.
The story raised the issue that consumers were going to suffer as a result of the increasing corporatisation of ownership of Dental Practices. The concern was raised that employed dentists working in these corporate owned offices would be remunerated on a bonus programme based on the more dentistry they drilled and billed, and that this would result in patients receiving more treatment than they should.
Well hello?
In general private practice, dentists are remunerated on what the patient pays for…. isn’t that the same playing field?
But I digress, because one interesting comment came from an employed dentist who worked two-part time jobs in two different corporate owned dental offices.
This dentist said that in one office he was required to work at a very exhaustive and hectic pace where he saw in excess of twenty-five patients each day. The dentist complained that at the end of each day there he struggled to remember who he saw and treated and what in fact he did for each patient, let alone have a conversation with a patient to find out who they were, what they did, and anything more about them.
In contrast, the dentist said that at the other corporate owned dental office he worked at a much more comfortable pace, with longer appointments and would see ten to twelve patients per day. The dentist commented that he earned less at the second dental office, but that he enjoyed it more there because he was able to spend time with each patient getting to know them and gaining their trust.
My opinion is this:
Giving it time, the second practice would end up being a far more profitable dental practice to be working in as the patients got to know the dentist better and gained some trust in him and some respect for him, because he was taking the time to get to know them.
In the first dental practice, the churn them and burn them approach does very little to produce customer loyalty and respect. It would be proven with time, that dental office number one would simply be a pickle factory with very little recognition of the practitioners by the customers. And as such, would be subject to the tidal effects of price consciousness and client dissatisfaction.
The problem is that when dentists get tricked into confusing activity and accomplishment, and they choose activity, then the simple things that create customer loyalty get sacrificed as being in the way and unnecessary.
The trouble with that mindset is that a significant number of customers will notice the less than favourable differences.
And those customers will choose to go elsewhere, where the fringe benefits are still apparent and the business takes its time…
Twenty to twenty five percent of the population still hate to feel rushed and still like the little extras, and it is this twenty percent of the population who will provide eighty percent of your income.
Your business cannot be everything to everybody.
But it can be everything to a significant number of somebodies, who will happily pay your prices to be treated well.
It can be done, and it can be done in every geographic location.
I hope for his sake that the young dentist interviewed learns the best part of his story is just in front of him, if he’s willing to “trust the force” and believe.
When you believe, things do happen. I’ve seen it time and time again.
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.
Did you like this blog article? If you did then hit the share buttons below and share it with your friends and colleagues. Share it via email, Facebook and twitter!!
