No one likes team meetings that go on forever without an agenda. What’s worse is when your team feels obligated to be there when they know nothing ever changes and ideas never get implemented.
In this short article, I’m going to share with you three simple phrases that will turn your meetings from boring to BOOMING with excitement and enthusiasm.
But first, let me share with you a few basic team meeting “must-haves” that are the foundation of setting up your practice to succeed.
- Frequency: you must commit to weekly team meetings, in addition to your team huddle
- KPIs: you must evaluate your measures of success during every meeting and share them with team members. Are you hitting your goals? How many new patients came in this week? What was your case acceptance percentage?
- Accountability: every action item you determine as a team must be handed off to a team member for implementation. Without accountability, you might as well not have meetings at all.
Assuming you have the foundations in place, let’s proceed to the three phrases that can completely change the culture and success of your dental practice!
- What is something that we as a team must STOP doing?
- What is something that we as a team must START doing?
- What is something we as a team must CONTINUE doing?
These three magical words can change your business: stop, start, continue.
Let’s breakdown each one.
What must we STOP doing?
Throughout the week, your team is identifying inefficient systems, procedures and practices that are costing your practice time, money and creating headaches. Without an outlet to properly voice ones concern, these issues often get bottled up.
After all, no one wants to be the person to bring up the issues that they know are driving them crazy! Give your team full permission to be honest with you and you’ll hear of items and scenarios that you had never thought about.
What must we START doing?
Once the stops have been listed, start asking what you can start doing to make the practice more money, become more efficient, etc. Many of the responses you hear from the team can likely be implemented right away without having to increase your expenses.
You might hear simple things like: “we must start greeting new patients by first name within 10 seconds of them walking in the door”. And in order to do that, we need their photo attached to their chart!
What must we CONTINUE doing?
Now it’s time to share the stuff that your team is already doing that is leading to the desired results. Example: “we must continue asking every new patient for a Google review before they leave”.
The continue part of this method usually brings up ideas that need to be celebrated more and you should give kudos to the members that are contributing to the success, especially anyone going above and beyond to make the patients experience even better. Consider an employee of the quarter program, which is awarded based on team votes and the winner gets a $250 gift card to their favorite restaurant.
Team meetings don’t have to suck.
And with Stop, Start, Continue, they can completely change the trajectory of your practice.
If you’d like to talk to me about this idea, or other ways you can be more fulfilled as a dental professional, fill out the information below and I’ll reach out.
