Work Less and Earn More In Your Practice

Are You Working 10x Harder Than You Need To? Take That All Important First Step!

STOP MICROMANAGING EVERYTHING!

Jack Wallen at Pluralsight listed the six dangers of micromanagement

• Loss of control
• Loss of trust
• Dependent employees
• Your own burnout
• High turnover of staff
• Lack of autonomy

Do you find it surprising that micromanagement results in loss of control instead of strengthening it? Wallen explains that micromanagement actual limits the management tools at your disposal, which also limits communication and eventually, your ability to manage

So here are three ways to measure whether you are micromanaging as a dentist:

1. How many times a day does your team ask you questions about how they should fulfill a role they should be performing on their own? How many questions do you get that you shouldn’t have to answer?
2. How anxious are you when you delegate a task or allow your team to carry out their day-to-day duties? Do you step in often or do you allow them to carry out their tasks independently?
3. How many things are you doing today that you didn’t expect or that you should not be doing as a dentist? Are you approving vacation and holiday schedules? Are you monitoring inventory and placing orders for supplies? Are you going through last week’s schedule to determine who was booked or not? Are you having to discuss copayment or insurance issues daily?
4. iv.If you were nodding your head as you were reading this, start delegating and train your people to do all these activities that occupy your time and energy and drain your focus. Your focus needs to shift to the things that are most important:
   • Attracting the right people
   • Training and retaining them
   • Lowering costs
   • Increasing case conversion
   • Doing dentistry (What a notion! A dentist in the chair.)
   • Getting patients in the door and keeping them
   • Collecting money

These are the things the doctor should be looking at on a monthly or weekly basis so they can hold their team members accountable for the results. I am not suggesting that you must design a marketing campaign. Just that you should know which marketing strategies brought your patients in. You should know how many patients you lost the last month so you can hold yourself and your team accountable. Your job is leadership and accountability. The rest is just doing dentistry.