One of the things that has made me laugh on patient medical histories over the years is when someone comes in and has listed their occupation as ‘Director’
I always fall into the trap of making myself laugh by saying:
“I see that you’re a Director?”
“Yes” says the patient
“Have you done any films I would know?” I ask
What the patient means when they write ‘Director’ is ‘Company Director’ (I’ve never met a Film Director!)
People like to call themselves Director. You see it all over the place in many different guises.
In dentistry, the area which was most commonly used was that of ‘Clinical Director’
When people started to get their own websites, they would list themselves as Clinical Director, even though they were the practice owner.
Generally speaking, the practice owner would probably be the Chairman and the Chief Executive. Maybe they would also hold the role of Clinical Director, but if they want to have a Clinical Director they would need to have a Finance Director, a Marketing Director, a Human Resources Director and an Operations Director etc.
Generally what people do, particularly in small businesses, is to give themselves a title without a structure. There’s not really any point calling yourself a Clinical Director if you’re not directing anything, you don’t have any other Directors or you don’t report to a Managing Director.
It's fine to call yourself the Clinical Director but if you’re also the Managing Director it’s kind of pointless because the Managing Director is responsible for the Clinical Director, so you go back to the situation of ‘the chicken and the egg’ and we say ‘what comes first, the job title or the job?’
What I have realised over the years watching people who are extraordinary running their organisations, is that you create the organisational chart with the jobs that you need for the business that you want and then you fill the jobs.
It’s generally the opposite that happens. Generally, people who run businesses have somebody good and give them a title. That’s entirely the wrong way around.
It’s why it’s so important to start with a vision of what you want, because once you decide what you want your business to be, then you can decide what type of organisational chart you want to have.
Sadly, this involves learning stuff that you might not already know, and also doing work which isn’t directly treating a patient and not able to be billed so it seems to be of no value.
There is the age-old idea of ‘spending time working on your business instead of time working in your business’
The absolute truth of that is that your business is unlikely to grow to any great extent if you don’t spend time on it.
The business of dentistry is changing all the time.
People are becoming more and more aware of the need and requirement to work ‘on’ your business and to develop structures within your business which allow you to have the life that you want as opposed to working seeing patients 9:00 – 6:00 each day and running your business at lunchtimes and in the evenings while your partner watches Netflix.
One of the early things to do is to set the organisational structure.
If you’re never read the E-Myth by Michael Gerber and you’re in any way running a business, then read it now (it’s great on audio book too)
It explains the concept of organisational charts in the best possible way but more importantly, the fact that, in a small business at least to start with, you hold almost every position in the chart.
Your job is not to keep those positions and do them well, your job is to get rid of those positions to appropriate people to make your way up the chart and ultimately, out of the chart.
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