Dental practices, like all businesses, need to establish clear goals to properly plan for the future. Goal setting is a scientific process that should result in a step-by-step plan, allowing dentists to project business factors such as financial needs, the physical facility, staffing or other needs that will be required to achieve the established goals.
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THE BASICS OF GOAL SETTING
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The first step in business goal setting requires the dentist to determine what he or she wants the practice to become. It is important to take into consideration both personal as well as professional factors. For example, does this dentist want to work three, four or five days a week? Does the dentist want a $500,000 practice, a $1 million practice or a $1.5 million practice? Is the dentist willing to accumulate significant debt in order to build a physical facility that will allow for the production goal being considered? These are just a few of the questions that, as an owner, each dentist must ask in the goal-setting process.
Goal setting is a powerful business technique that is far more than just a motivational concept.
Once a dentist has established the general direction and parameters for the practice, annual goals can be created. Establishing a goal involves three components:
- – the goal must be written in clear, specific language;
- – the goal must have a deadline;
- – the goal must be measurable.
Creating goals using these three factors has been shown to have a much higher rate of success than creating goals in a more unstructured, random manner. In general, most people simply keep goals in their heads rather than consciously following the three steps mentioned above. Doing so does not allow for a clear focus on goal achievement.
Goals must be documented.
Keeping in mind the three factors described above, a specific list of goals must be created that a dentist would like to achieve. These goals are evaluated based on personal and professional questions such as those outlined above. How large would you like the practice to become? What types of services do you wish to provide? How many days each week do you want to practice?
Match your goals against your general guidelines to see if there is a good fit and if your goals are realistic and achievable. Look for any conflicts between your personal and professional requirements, and modify goals accordingly. For example, can any practice produce $1.5 million per year when operating just 2
days a week? For most practices, this is not reasonable. Therefore, this goal represents a conflict between the personal and profession requirements of the dentist and must be modified.
Goals must have deadlines.
Can a practice reach $500,000, $1 million or $1.5 million in gross production in the next 12 months? Naturally, this depends on where the practice is today. Still, a realistic assessment should be conducted and a deadline assigned to that goal. This is a good test of the realistic nature of the goal.
Goals must be measured.
Peter Drucker, the business management guru, once stated brilliantly, "What gets measured gets done." I firmly believe that consistent tracking and measurement of performance is a critical component of goal achievement. Set a guideline indicating how often you will review progress toward the goal, and be sure that it is a quantitative assessment.
Just because a doctor feels generally that he or she is "getting there" is not a valid monitor of goal achievement. If a goal is to be achieved, it will be numbers—not feelings—that verify it. If your goal is a $1 million practice and you have produced $800,000 by October of that year, you can realistically evaluate the likelihood of achieving the goal.
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SUMMARY
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Goal setting is a powerful business technique. Far more than just a motivational concept, it is an outcome of strategic planning. Doctors who set goals are usually more clearly focused on where they want the practice to go and when they want to get there.
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THE BASICS OF GOAL...
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