How does your office work its calendar? Does everyone have access to each other's calendars? Can people schedule things for each other? Can others book appointments on your calendar and have dialogue about the ability to attend or not? Do these questions make you cringe because of the level of transparency and possible lack of control?

We've had an open calendar in our office for almost 15 years. As an appraisal, brokerage and software development company, I know we're unusual.  But if you think we're unusual, hold onto your hats and keep reading. 

What is one of the most difficult things to get scheduled in our personal lives? For me and I'll bet for many of you, it's doctor visits.  Hopefully most of you are healthy and so it's not a huge issue, but what would you say if I told you that sometime in the near future you may be able to book your appointments yourself without going through a human at your doctor's office. I don't know about you, but many times I really, really like my doctor and I really, really dislike their front office. The communication to try to find a date that works for them as well as me is many times frustrating and always takes longer than it should in my opinion.  So you can imagine my surprise and restrained excitement when I read the other day about a 15 hospital healthcare provider that has started letting patients, yes I said patients, see the doctor's calendars and book appointments themselves online. Holy transparency Batman!

Clearly there were a lot of worries about moving in this direction.  Physicians fretted loudly about giving up control of their schedules, finance worried about letting first-time patients make appointments without first proving insurance, security was just plain worried. It seems that it took about two years to work through the issues but that wasn't the biggest surprise, the biggest surprise came from the fact that a physician's office saw its no-show rate drop from 10% to 2%.  Seems like giving the customer a view of the calendar instead of only the staff created more options for the customer, so they picked something that really worked for them instead of sort of doing it just to get off the phone quicker with a doctor's staff. And guess what? The data shows that patient satisfaction and retention went up significantly where the doctors offered online access to lab results and other information. 

What do you think would happen in your office if your schedule was interactively available to all? Just because I tell you it has worked for me for a long time probably doesn't really mean much.  You might not feel better about it if you knew that it works better because we have appointments that are available for everyone to interact with, as well as those that are held private only for selected eyes.  Do you think you would ever allow your prospects and/or customers to look at your calendar and pick dates and times that work for them and allow you to agree or suggest something else?  Would you be willing to take the leap of faith that this kind of digital interaction is exactly what your coworkers and customers want and demand?  Maybe it's time for us to be like kitchens that have become a part of the dining room in some of our favorite restaurants where the openness and transparency lets us be more engaged with the entire experience. Hmmm, connected and engaged.  Aren't those things we would want for those we work with and serve to feel?