In this guest blog, dental business coach, Lucie Simic, outlines the steps involved in achieving change.
Change is something we talk about a lot in dentistry. We want our teams to communicate better, patients to have a better experience, fewer complaints, stronger conversion, happier people, better systems and a culture that people genuinely want to be part of. We can usually tell you exactly what we would like to change, but perhaps we are starting in the wrong place.
I recently came across a simple idea that made me think about the conversations I have with practice owners and managers every week. It is based around three words: choice, chance and change.
The premise is simple: if you want something to change, you must make a choice to take a chance. The more I thought about it, the more I realised how relevant those three words are to running a dental practice.
When something isn’t working in practice, our attention naturally goes to the outcome we want. We say things like, “We need to improve communication,” “We need to change the culture,” “We need patients to say yes to more treatment,” “We need reception to be more proactive,” or “We need the team to take more responsibility.”
But change is actually the last of the three Cs. Before anything can change, somebody has to make a choice.
That might mean choosing to have the conversation you have been avoiding. It could mean questioning a system that has been in place for years, changing the way the telephone is answered, asking your team for feedback, giving someone more responsibility or simply admitting that something isn’t working as well as it could.
Sometimes that choice is surprisingly small.
One of the things I notice when I visit dental practices is how quickly things become normal. A patient standing at reception while everyone is looking at a screen. A telephone ringing six or seven times before someone answers it. A morning huddle that has gradually become a list of problems rather than something that prepares the team for the day. A team member who continually behaves in a way that everyone knows isn’t acceptable, but nobody quite addresses.
Nobody deliberately decided that any of those things should happen. They simply became normal, until somebody chooses to do something differently.
This is where change becomes harder, because making a different choice doesn’t guarantee a different outcome.
You can have the difficult conversation and not know how the other person will respond. You can introduce a new system and discover it doesn’t work perfectly the first time. You can ask your team what they really think and hear something you weren’t expecting. You can change part of your patient journey and realise it needs tweaking again a month later.
Leadership rarely comes with guarantees. I think that can be particularly uncomfortable in dentistry. We work in an environment built around protocols, evidence, processes and reducing risk. Yet when it comes to leading people, creating culture and delivering great experiences, there isn’t always a neat protocol to follow.
Sometimes you simply must be prepared to try. To take a chance.
Doing nothing is a choice too, and this is perhaps the part of the idea I find most interesting. We tend to think of a choice as something active. We decide to introduce something, change something or stop something. But choosing not to act is still a choice.
Keeping the same meeting structure is a choice. Allowing the same behaviour to continue is a choice. Ignoring the same patient frustration is a choice. Walking past the same problem every morning is a choice. Saying, “That’s just how we do things here,” is a choice.
Every time we make those choices, we are also choosing, consciously or otherwise, to accept the outcome they create.
I have visited hundreds of dental practices over the years, and very rarely do I find a team that has absolutely no idea what could be better. In fact, quite the opposite. Ask people and they will usually tell you.
They know the phones are a problem. They know communication between surgery and reception could be better. They know patients aren’t always being followed up. They know morale has dipped. They know a particular system frustrates everyone. They know somebody needs to have a conversation.
Often, the problem isn’t knowing. It’s choosing.
When we use the word change, it can immediately feel like a project. A culture transformation, a restructure, a new patient journey, a new system or a training programme. But some of the most effective changes I see in practices start much smaller.
A Practice Manager asks one different question at the morning huddle. An owner sits down with a team member rather than continuing to avoid a difficult conversation. A receptionist changes the language they use when there isn’t an appointment available. A team decides that every patient who walks through the door will be acknowledged immediately, even if the person on reception is already busy.
None of those things requires a 12-month strategy. They require somebody to make a choice. Then they need to be given a chance.
Eventually, if they work, they become part of how you do things. That is when change stops being an initiative and starts becoming culture.
So, what are you choosing? If you lead a dental practice, there will almost certainly be something you would like to change right now. Perhaps it is something big. Perhaps it is something you’ve talked about for months. Or perhaps it is one of those tiny frustrations that everybody has simply learned to live with.
Instead of starting with the question, “What needs to change?”, try asking: What choice could we make that would give this the chance to change? Better still, ask your team: “What is one thing we could choose to do differently this week?” You might be surprised by the answers.
Creating a better practice isn’t always about finding the next big idea. Sometimes it is about looking again at what is happening right in front of you and being brave enough to make a different choice.
Choice. Chance. Change.
Three very simple words, but perhaps the next change in your practice starts with the first one.
