Archive for Symptoms for Change Intervention

You Are A Success – What’s Next?

October 15, 2008 at 2:04 am · Filed under People, Selling A Practice, Symptoms for Change Intervention, leadership ·Tagged , , , , ,

My Office!

My Office!

You opened your doors several years ago, you have the latest equipment, a great staff, your patients refer their families and their friends - and everything has gone according to plan.  You have achieved the numbers you wanted to reach, you have dental students and associates working and you work only the days and hours you want  – your ideal is complete – what’s next for you? 

In my conversations with dental brokers and dental practice builders I have learned that the art of running the business isn’t always the strength of the owner of the practice.  Exit strategies and financial long term goals with investment strategies are often non-existent.  If you are one of the ones who has achieved success and has all this in place – congratulations!  You deserve high praise. 

If you find yourself a great success and don’t know your next steps and don’t have these things in place, it is not too late to sit down and create a strategy for the next few years and have an investment advisor help you prepare for your next steps.  It could be retirement.  It could be that you want to own a few more practices, but not work in them.  It could be that you want to do something you have never done before.  Maybe you want to make some major contributions to the industry from the political side. Perhaps you want a major change in your life and you don’t know where to begin to discover what that might be or how to go about exploring the possibilities.  How do you begin?  How do you prepare before you enter a state of stasis and the success you once enjoyed begins to fall because you didn’t plan for this? One resource is a coach, another is an investment counselor and another is your intuition. 

And for the dentists who are just beginning – make sure you include these things in your business plan and know and understand that it is a dynamic plan – one that you use continually to measure your goals, targets and results. You do this so you can change it as you flex and change and to keep up with the challenges and changes in the economy and your specialty.  Post your Vision and you Goals and get buy in from your team.  See how achieving your vision helps them achieve their goals and watch what happens to your success plan – and how quickly you begin to accomplish every goal!

Now back to you who have it all – what’s next?  What if you knew?

If you want to know more, let me know!

Best of Success,

Kathy

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Your Practice, Your Vision, Making It Happen During Uncertainty

October 8, 2008 at 6:43 pm · Filed under People, Symptoms for Change Intervention, Vision, leadership ·Tagged , , , ,

Leading Your Team!

Leading Your Team!

Making It Happen During Uncertainty -

How you think about and talk about things is how things will happen in your business, your practice.  Where is your current focus?  What actions are you taking to keep yourself as a leader in a mindset that speaks success?  Change happens – and how you communicate what is happening affects the outcome.  Have you joined the ranks of millions talking about the “devastating affects” of the recent economic news?  Or have you as leader of your organization, your business, your practice begun to create a plan that will keep you level and growing during this time of uncertainty?  What are the key issues facing you that without constant vigilance and support could result in loss of revenues?  Having someone on your team to guide you through the most critical aspects of your strategy to grow your business NOW will keep you ahead of your competition.

DON’T PROCRASTINATE- If you would like an accountability partner to help you create and execute a strategy for success that includes keeping your team inspired and motivated to do their best, don’t procrastinate, call your coach, consultant, practice manager, or financial advisor and see what solutions they can offer for you to stay ahead at this time.

How coaching helps -

Coaching has proven to be one of the most effective methods for RAPIDLY advancing an organization, medical or dental practice through individual and collective effort.  A coach can help you clearly see the gaps and help you identify the solutions needed to bridge or close them.  If you are baffled by how to handle change, are confused about how to communicate critical changes or need leadership help for yourself or people on your team, coaching is one way to stay ahead and make progress.  You get to choose what is right for now – coaching, consulting, management services?

Make it happen -

Who do you have to be during this time?  What do you have to do to make things continue to flow and grow?  Have you thought about the resources you have, how to use them, re-task them, or stimulate and influence outcomes from a different perspective?  Would you like to?  It’s your business, your vision and it’s up to you to keep your team motivated, your patients returning and referring and yourself mentally “dressed” for success.

Now is the time to focus.  Prepare, communicate well, and execute on the success tactics that have worked and will keep on working.

As I’ve been saying, Change Happens, and this is what the change program helps with; it contains everything you need to prepare, implement and execute!

Best of Success,

Kathy

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What’s Your Mindset? A bit of introspection…

September 18, 2008 at 5:40 pm · Filed under People, Symptoms for Change Intervention, leadership ·Tagged , , , ,

I had the wonderful opportunity to coach over 100 business owners for OneCoach, a John Assaraf company and one of the first things we focused on was how thinking affects a business.  Thinking revolves around your beliefs, your habits of thought and communication, and how you respond to situations.

All success begins by how you beleive and the intentions that you set for your practice.  If you believe and think that you will be successful, you will!  Years of conditioning, influences from society, education, friends and family affect how we think and how we project what we want to have happen.  The good news is that if we don’t like the results we are currently experiencing we can begin to change them at any time by changing our thought patterns, setting different intentions, and creating new stories.  What helps is having a process for that kind of change and sticking with it until the change we seek becomes the new habit.

As the leader of your practice, how do you think?  What kinds of thoughts run through your mind throughout your day?  Do you have “stinking thinking” – a phrase a friend of mine in Florida used to use that always stimulated me to look at my thoughts.  Many people go through their entire lives without knowing that how they think creates the reality that they live. 

There is a great little book available that I have passed on to many clients and to my nieces and nephews as graduation gifts because I think it has great wisdom – you can get your own copy – “As A Man Thinketh” by James Allen.

The first step to changing how you think is to become aware of your thoughts and notice what triggers those particualr thoughts.  Awareness is the tool to use today.  If you want to know more, let me know!  This might be the first step in understanding that a process for introducing other kinds of changes in your practice to get the results you desire is exactly what you need.  The point is to begin somewhere!

Look at your level of success and if you are doing great – congratulations!  If you believe you could be achieving more and you can’t quite put your finger on what it is, begin to become aware of your thoughts and conversation and send in a comment or question to take a deeper dive!

Remember – how you think and what you think can make all the difference in your day and in getting the results you seek!

Have a great day!

Kathy

Need a change process for your practice?

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Quarterly Performance Reviews – Why?

August 25, 2008 at 4:11 pm · Filed under People, Symptoms for Change Intervention, leadership ·Tagged , , ,

Why Review Quarterly?

 

In a prior blog I said I would address the benefits of a quarterly employee review instead of the traditional annual review – so here goes!

 

Annual reviews are the most frequently used tools to establish performance standards for the coming year, to review what was done well, what wasn’t done well and to reward performance with an annual increase. 

 

In sales organization quarterly performance reviews are conducted to stay ahead of any negative trends and to apply correctional activities if performance is below standard or if the person is not meeting territory expectations.  Another reason for the quarterly review is to determine readiness for additional training and upward mobility, to reward performance and to solicit employee feedback on the how the company is performing in relation to supporting them in doing their job.  I found it extremely beneficial in building winning teams and keeping them in their game.

 

How can you apply this in your dental practice?  Top performance of your team insures happy and satisfied patients, encourages referrals, and keeps the practice on target with goals and objectives.  A quarterly review allows each team member to offer insight into difficulties they may be having with their jobs.  Sometimes the weekly or monthly staff meetings are not appropriate places to learn of significant challenges a team member may be experiencing with an aspect of their job.  They may be reluctant to discuss it and it could be affecting the profitability of the practice.  Many of the issues that sabotage success can be surfaced and headed off by doing a quarterly performance review.

 

Review Process – It is very wise to have the staff member write their own review using the same form you as the leader will use.  This helps the employee to know very specifically the targets that have been set for their particular job, the measurable outcomes, the qualities and values being assessed and the skill levels evaluated.  It makes it easier and quicker to identify the gaps both in performance and perspective.  It also opens the door for agreement on what is well done and to discuss with ease what needs to change.  It is often very interesting to see how someone sees themselves in contrast to your viewpoint of their performance.  It is a wonderful opportunity to re-direct and also introduce new responsibilities, educational opportunities, and for you as the leader to help them to continually understand how their position adds value to the practice. 

 

If you are not already conducting quarterly reviews, I encourage you to begin.  It is important that you have job descriptions with very clear guidelines on measurable outcomes, expectations, standards of performance, consequences for poor performance, length of time before action is taken on inadequate performance and also what your reward system looks like, how good performance is rewarded, what educational benefits you provide and any additional expectations and benefits offered.

 

If you need help pulling your job descriptions and performance review reports together, check out Mascha Scheutjens services through MMC, your practice builder consultant, or your coach!

 

Send me your questions – I am all ears!  Thank you!

Kathy

Ready to Implement Change to Grow Your Practice?

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One Way Conversations

August 19, 2008 at 6:01 pm · Filed under People, Symptoms for Change Intervention, leadership ·Tagged , , ,

How many times throughout the day do you feel like you are the only one in the conversation?  What does it feel like to you to not be heard?  When was the last time a member of your team or a patient looked like they were fully engaged and not off someplace else in their head?  How many times do you repeat what you are asking or saying? How about the darting eyes?  Have you ever experienced someone speaking with you but their eyes are darting everywhere?  Are they looking for their quick get away or the nearest exit?  Are they waiting for the next patient to come through the door?  Could they possibly be bored or feel like they have heard it before?  How often does it happen?  How frequently are things not done to your satisfaction?

These are symptoms of learned and unconscious behaviors and depending on who you are speaking with, it is really important how you as a leader recapture their attention.  You want to avoid making someone wrong and yet you want to simultaneously accomplish a couple of things.  You had a mission when you began the conversation so you want to keep in mind that you still have a message to deliver and the second thing you want to do is discover how you can be heard.

One of the first ways to avoid one way conversations is to ask if this is an ideal time to have this chat.  The second thing you can do is to discover why you aren’t being heard by asking clarifying questions.  If you are referring to a prior conversation or a work request that did not get done, you can ask if they understood what needed to be done and by when.  You can ask what got in the way.  By moving the focus away from the fact that you feel like you were not heard and focusing on the result you were seeking you can often learn the true cause.  Sometimes our distraction is so habitual we don’t realize we are doing it and gently calling it to someones attention is the first intervention during the actual conversation.  Asking for verification of what you said for “repeat offenders” will begin to help the listener to develop good attention skills. 

There are so many courses on communication skills because it is the most important thing we do every day.  How well we communicate, how well we listen and how effectively we deliver our messages can make or break us as leaders. 

A great leader uses powerful communication skills and demonstrating great listening is the first step.  Set the stage and let them follow your lead.

Speaking of one way conversations – I’d love to engage you on this one and tackle a couple of your most frustrating communication issues.  Thank you!

Warm Wishes

Kathy

Change Happens – Are you prepared?

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When things don’t quite go the way you want…

August 12, 2008 at 4:47 pm · Filed under People, Symptoms for Change Intervention ·Tagged ,

What do you do when things don’t go the way you planned? 

 

A Lesson from my past – I remember how excited I was when I had my full team in place and everything was working out so well – sales were up and people were on the right path, customers were happy and happily referring us to others and business was booming.  Then one day I received a phone call and the person on the other end of the line asked me if I was sitting down…in that conversation I learned that one of my top performers was leaving, being drafted by the competition and offered an opportunity they couldn’t refuse.  I fully supported their path, that is the kind of leader I wanted to be – one who always wanted others to follow the path that was perfect for them.  I remember being happy for them and simultaneously realizing what this was going to mean and the challenge as well as the opportunity that was now before me.  I took a deep breath!

 

What came next was a flurry of activity to adjust to the change – who would cover their territory until the new hire was in place?  Who would be the new mentor for the new hire?  Did I have anyone in my files I could call to interview for the position?  If not, did I have the right resources all lined up?  Was my process for this change all lined out so that all I had to do was follow the steps?  How well was I prepared to handle this and balance the needs of the customers and my other direct reports?  How would this affect the team?  What did I have in place to help them adjust and set the stage for incorporating a new team member?

 

What I have learned in my years of corporate experience and my years of coaching in large organizations as well as small businesses and small medical and dental practices is that the dynamics of change and how change affects people and organizations is very similar.  I also learned that by having an action plan in place made it easier for me and for the people on my team to adjust quickly so that the customer was unaware and unaffected by the changes taking place except in a very positive way.

 

What did we do?  Because we had a plan, we followed the process we had established for handling this kind of change.  As a team, we had developed plans for many of the types of changes we would face.  Each person knew their role, what to expect and what was expected of them.  I called a meeting; we reviewed what needed to get done, by whom, by when and how.  We made adjustments to the plan according to the situation and we moved forward – not always seamlessly; however with guidelines and guidance we managed to keep all of our existing business and grow at the same time.  I don’t recall who said it, but I do believe that “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.  So my question to you is – are you prepared for the changes that are taking place in your practice?  If nothing is happening now, be aware – it will soon!  Change is inevitable.

 

I’d love to hear how you lead through change.  Thank you!

Kathy

 

Master Change

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Symptoms indicating a need for a change intervention

July 24, 2008 at 4:42 pm · Filed under Symptoms for Change Intervention, Uncategorized ·Tagged , ,

I thought I would start out today with addressing some of the reasons you might want to consider implementing a change strategy with your team.  I feel that can best be described by answering the following question.

 

What are some of the symptoms that demonstrate my need for the “1in9 Dentists Change Blaster Kit”?

 

This list is not comprehensive, yet is representative of many of the indicators for a change intervention – frustration with work requests incomplete or untouched, deadlines on important projects missed, difficulties within the team, inability to delegate, frequent turn over, burnout, lack of control, misunderstandings, patient loss, you are already going through change and want it to be as seamless as possible, you desire to develop change muscle or to master change, flexing with change, increasing your teams ability to adapt to change, creating strategies for handling current and future change, and finally mastering communicating change with strength and compassion.

 

Some critical behaviors that may signal a need for change – patient complaints, frequent misunderstandings, silly arguments, poor attitude, drop in performance, increased absenteeism, mini explosions when asked to do something, grumbling and that eerie feeling that things seem to be going well yet you sense a brewing storm.

 

Other specific situations that having a change intervention plan in place will be helpful include purchasing a new practice, melding two teams together, integrating new services into your practice, major technological upgrades, or preparing to sell your practice.

 

The most significant contribution to effective change is communication.  I will talk about that frequently throughout our posts since it seems to be the bridge to making complex things easy.

 

And on the lighter side – all of this is simply fixed, just not easy!

 

As a coach I am also committed to be a resource and as I searched for dental blogs I came across The Digital Dentist for anyone in need of a technology resource.  It is written by Dr. Lorne Lavine and he gives great insight if you are considering upgrading or changing your technology.  http://thedigitaldentist.blogspot.com/

 

 Thanks for your input!

 Kathy

 http://www.1in9Dentists.com

 

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