How To Think Differently and Grow Your Practice

For most dentists, sometimes success requires thinking outside the box and innovative creativity. But this requires ideas of a way forward—solutions to problems. And when we as practice owners are contending with so much, it is sometimes challenging to develop the clarity needed to “design” new solutions to our challenges or obstacles.

So, we do nothing. We procrastinate.

Indeed, many look upon a dental practice with some simplicity.

They believe that all practices essentially operate in the same way. This is not true.

Through my experience over the last 15 years as a UK National Private Dentistry Awards Judge, I can tell you that successful practices utilise ingenious methods to create new values in patient perceptions.

This helps them to distinguish themselves from other competitive dental practices and take the lead in their field of dentistry.

However, do you ever get stuck with coming up with innovative ideas in the first place?

Do you find that your business problems just kept piling up, and then you don’t know where to start?

Alternatively, you may know what to do and how to do it, but your team don’t seem to get it!

You may find it difficult to clearly convey what you are trying to accomplish.

This then opens up another can of worms where you experience resistance and retaliation from the team and consequent frustration on your part.

So why not use your resources in a more productive way and get better returns on them?

Have you heard of the saying “Two heads are better than one”?

If you have a team, then you have a group of people with differing backgrounds, knowledge, experience, talents and capabilities.

Your role as the leader is to simply harness this and channel it towards the creative solutions you need.

In other words, use your team to brainstorm ideas.

Use your team as a “Master Mind” to gain power for the momentum needed to attain success.
In “Think & Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill states,

“Power is organised knowledge”, and your mastermind is “coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose”.

Your role is to aggregate the ideas and channel them towards an effective and efficient solution.

However, this requires getting the team’s mindset right so that everyone is contributary to begin with.

Bettering your dental team

More often than not, practice owners find it difficult to get their team to open up and contribute meaningfully in team meetings.

I feel that this situation is more about team insecurities and empowerment issues than the fact that they don’t want to help.
When you ask for advice, most people are willing and usually offer more advice than necessary.

Regarding your dental team, it may be that they are not confident about whether their opinions matter or whether they will be valued or appreciated for their contribution.

Dental team members may feel that if they say something incorrect, they will look silly in front of everyone. And so they refrain from input and remain quiet in a safe comfort zone.

But this doesn’t help anyone.

Building a successful dental team means transforming your people into an empowered, impactful team.

One that is committed and contributory to the overall success of the Practice Vision.

This can only happen if they feel part of the journey.

This is why it is so important to have a team that participates in the transformation process.

For this, you need an inspirational Vision. But better still, if you start the process by involving your team in the Vision Creation Process, they will feel that they are part of the shared purpose.

Thereafter, when you require innovative solutions to challenges that you as a whole team are experiencing, the team will feel obligated and responsible for gaining the correct solutions.

This is when you will have established your dental MasterMind.

Get in touch with us for help to better your team your to create a successful dental practice.