"Most widely read dental practice
management eNewsletter on the planet!"
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ABOVE THE CLOUDS
For
Dentist Entrepreneurs
Chicago Ritz-Carlton - July 29-31, 2010
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SERVICE VS. PROFITABLITY;
POLAR
OPPOSITES
Few outside the dental industry really understand.
Most who use your dental services don't understand.
Entities that finance the industry don't understand.
Vendors, suppliers, and other contract service entities
don't understand. What is it they are missing? That in
private practice dentistry, the dentist is always pulled
between two distinct and very powerful poles of
attraction.
One pole is the purpose of any for-profit business
which is to make money. The other pole consists of
those principles on which a service business is
grounded and in dentistry it's not only patient comfort,
but also best-of-class treatment. And these two poles
are many times diametrically opposed.
How do you navigate between these two poles? To
steer safely so you are not dominated by either pole is
very difficult. If you drift too far toward one, you
underperform in the other. In addition, each pole is
now more charged in our rapidly changing
dynamics occurring in the world, our economic
turmoil, the cry for changes in health care including
dentistry, and the increased pressure from the rising
costs of doing business.
In the pole of service there are many elements at
work. Customer care, which lets the patient know they
are valued, sensitivity to the patient's economic
situation, and an authentic level of empathy for your
patient's concerns about dentistry itself. You must
build a relationship of trust and affinity to have the
patient understand the nature of their problem and the
solutions you are recommending. All these elements
must be present and must be attended to in order to
provide the required levels of service to succeed in
practice.
The forces that emanate from the service pole are
increased when you have the appearance of new
technologies (i.e. cone beam) and new distinctions
(diagnosis and treatment planning based on risk).
These technologies are expensive and require costly
CE to enable you to be a better dentist, which
increases the conflict with the for-profit pole.
At the other pole, for-profit, there are also a number of
powerful elements at work. These elements possess
opposite forces than those at the service end.
Maximize efficiency to optimize time, equipment and
material usage, and pricing procedures and time to
generate maximum revenue against a backdrop of
competition and 3rd party influence increases the
powerful forces of this pole. The pull of this pole drives
you to hold costs down in all areas to generate a
decent margin for ownership.
And when the economy hits a down turn, when cash
flow becomes a problem, when new patients aren't
saying 'Yes' to treatment plans, the for-profit pole
gets stimulated. It's hard not to try to sell more
dentistry than is needed and difficult not to cut
expenses that
impact quality of service to the patient.
Many times dentists feel pulled, nearly split apart by
the dichotomy created by these two powerful polar
forces, yet my highly successful clients are able to use
the tension created between these two poles to
generate power, drive and vision. How do they do
that?
They realize you can't make whole two disparate
parts, service and for-profit. In fact, you want to keep
them distinct. But you can master both domains and it
is this quest for mastery in operating and leading a
successful for profit business 'and' (not 'or')
committing yourself to deliver the highest quality
dentistry possible that distinguishes these providers.
The more intention and attention applied to each pole,
without trying to homogenize them, produces more
and more energy. The higher the energy, the greater
the practice performance. That's why successful
dentists don't try to justify or defend making money.
They drive hard for profitability while not settling for just
delivering the care they learned in dental school. They
are on a committed quest to continuously become
outstanding clinicians.
Successful dentists know, the more masterful they
become at each pole, the more successful they will be
and they understand they don't need to justify or
rationalize their quest for mastering these two distinct
poles. The greater the level of mastery in each pole
creates greater and greater tension between the two.
The higher the tension, the greater the energy. The
greater the energy, the greater the performance of the
practice.
Dr. Marc B. Cooper
The Mastery Company
MasteryCompany.com
NOTES
You can now access
past
eNewsletters (Mastery and The
Enlightened Dentist) at the Mastery website. Just click
on ARCHIVES.
VALUOCITY
now on the web!COPYRIGHT WARNING: This is a public notice. Do
not repost copyrighted articles or materials from these
eNewsletters without Dr. Marc Cooper's and The
Mastery Company's permission. If you find something
interesting in the eNewsletter, post a brief description
and the web address. Brief quotes or extensive
paraphrasing of an article is fine if properly cited.
Wholesale copying without permission is illegal.
Dr. Marc B. Cooper
President and CEO
The Mastery Company
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