Orthotown September 2022 - 68

Every interaction, starting with that fi rst
call, is a refl ection of your organization's
culture. And your culture determines how
patients and everyone else who interacts
with the business feel about you, your
team and the caliber of your practice.
Culture is your best
competitive advantage
Before I started studying culture, I
thought it was something rather " touchyfeely, "
something to be delegated to the person
who was best at planning team parties and
decorating the offi ce for holidays. I thought
it was only about employee morale. Boy,
was I wrong!
I have since come to learn a great culture
is the biggest competitive advantage a
business can have. The culture of your
practice is unique to you and your team-it
defi nes and demonstrates what you want
for your patients, your practice and your
community. Your culture cannot be replicated
by a competitor or a cookie-cutter DSO.
A great culture is an advantageous
recruiting tool, which is especially important
if you have to replace good people you may
have lost in recent years. Based on a 2018
study conducted by Chick-Fil-A,1
today's
top talent looks for three things when
job-seeking, all inherent to a great culture:
* A better boss. A manager who cares
about them as individuals, treats them
with respect and listens to them.
* A brighter future. They want to be
trained, developed, coached and
mentored.
* A bigger vision. A business that does
meaningful work and contributes to
the people and world around them.
In short, learning about culture isn't a
soft skill. It's a hardcore business strategy
for success rooted in performance goals;
accountability for results; and highly trained,
engaged people who share your commitment
to patient care and service and the future
of the practice.
68 SEPTEMBER 2022 // orthotown.com
Create the culture you want
Every business has a culture-by design
or default. A default culture is never a good
one because few if any elements necessary
to make the culture positive are present:
leadership; a vision and values to live by;
measurable goals; performance expectations;
accountability; training and development;
communication and motivation; and recognition
and reward.
We coach clients to create a highperforming,
patient-centric, growthoriented
culture. The order of those three
descriptors is no accident. Your people
need to be well trained to become a highperforming
team capable of delivering a
patent-centric experience that grows the
practice. Without the necessary training,
the team's collective performance sinks to
the level of the weakest performer, to the
frustration of good people who are likely
to look elsewhere for more professionally
satisfying pastures.
Creating a great culture takes intention,
time and patience. You'll probably need to
weed out a few naysayers who demonstrate
their unwillingness or inability to learn
better habits for the sake of the patients
and the practice.
Once you have embedded a culture, it
tends to run on autopilot to some degree.
That doesn't mean you don't continue to
reinforce and nurture culture through
leadership, but you can be confi dent that
most of the patient experience touchpoints
are occurring as you want and need them
to. Everyone on the team knows that's
the way things are done at your practice
and they are trained on how to meet these
expectations.
Make the right fi rst impression
Culture-good or bad-is not just
pervasive throughout an organization; it's
felt throughout the room. When a patient
walks into your offi ce, there's a vibe: Ideally,
everyone is working well together, being effi -
cient yet attentive and warm yet professional.
Otherwise, there's a palpable air of tension,
stress and inefficiency. Patients feel as if
they're an inconvenience to the staff who are
busy with apparently more important tasks.
That same vibe will be felt over the phone
before a patient ever gets to the offi ce. That fi rst
phone call is your team's only opportunity to
make the right fi rst impression. The call must
be handled with care and effi ciency and with
the patient's convenience and satisfaction in
mind. The same is true if a referring doctor
or a team member calls.
General dentists lose scads of potential
new patients every day because their team
members aren't trained to properly handle
those fi rst calls. You're less likely to lose the
patient entirely, but a bad fi rst impression will
infl uence their opinion of your people, your
practice, and even of you and the quality of
care they can expect before they ever meet you.
It may not be fair but it's human nature. A bad
fi rst impression takes a long time to overcome.
Train your people on how to work
together as a high-performing team to deliver
a great end-to-end experience that grows the
business by making patients feel cared for
and cared about and general dentists and
their teams feel respected and appreciated.
Start with those all-important phone calls. ■
Reference
1. " What Top Talent Really Wants in a Job, " Mark Miller
for Michael Hyatt & Co., 2/20/2018. https://fullfocus.co/whattop-talent-wants
https://www.fullfocus.co/what http://www.orthotown.com
Orthotown September 2022

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