The contentious, dreaded morning huddle discussion. I feel it is my duty to inform you that morning huddles are a vital part of a productive day. Save the airing of grievances for Festivus because the rest of us want to be accountable, engaged and motivated to succeed. Every productive dental practice I have worked with over the years executes a morning huddle. A daily fifteen minute huddle does more than just set your day up for success, it is essential to your practice success.
The morning huddle is the heart of any business culture due to its emphasis on motivation, growth, goals, accountability, and trust. It’s the most important discussion of the day because it can greatly impact your team’s ability to work together, be organized, increase efficiency, reduce stress and improve the patient’s overall experience.
First, you have to establish some ground rules:
- BE POSITIVE
- Everyone must be present (including the doctor) and come prepared
- Huddles start on time
- No more than fifteen minutes
- Share essential information
- Everyone contributes
“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.” - John Wooden
Your team must be prepared for the morning huddle. Treatment scheduled must be realistic. **Your end of day production numbers should never be less than scheduled treatment**. For clinicians, the morning huddle is not designed to review the things we can see on the schedule but rather to discuss the things we cannot see, like: Who referred the new patients? Is the patient apprehensive? Are we celebrating any patients today? Is there any outstanding treatment to be done and is there an opportunity to complete the work today? Administratively, let’s talk numbers. Celebrate wins from yesterday. What is our production goal for the month? What is our production goal today? How much is scheduled?
**Always review charts before morning huddle** This is called chart prep - a process in your morning huddle system that helps you to understand the patient’s needs and wants and verifies the accuracy of treatment scheduled.
Surely, you have set financial goals for yourself and your practice. Wouldn’t you want to make achieving those goals easier for just 15 minutes a day? No dental practice is too big or too small for a morning huddle. Verne Harnish (author of Scaling Up and other notable business works) considers morning huddles, “The most important 15 minutes in any company.”
If your practice currently conducts a morning huddle, when is the last time you recorded it? Is everyone following the structure? There might be an opportunity to improve the system.
It is the start of a new year and it is time to think about things differently. If this past year has taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen. Many of you will be glad to see the back of 2020. Why not leave behind the old ways of doing things? Think of your dental practice like a football game. Teams huddle, but instead of a football, you have sharp instruments and a lot of hand sanitizer. A well designed morning huddle increases your ability to achieve goals or WIN! A morning huddle will generate some team spirit.
May the new year bring prosperity and good health. From all of us at Design Ergonomics, Ergonomic Products and Reboot Practice Productivity Training, Happy New Year! Starting January 1st, 2021, make every day count.
