Stop trying to increase accountability and ownership in your dental practice

Practice owners and managers will frequently explore how to ‘make the team more accountable’ and justify their ever increasing suite of measures and KPI’s. They will also bemoan the fact that those attempts to inspire or make others accountable, most often backfire, however well they are presented or framed with some fluffy management speak.

It’s why everybody dreads conversations about accountability, because the basic presupposition of accountability is flawed, that you need your boss to tell you what you are accountable for because you can’t be trusted to do it on your own.

Yes of course we need to measure stuff and see what’s happening outside of the immediate surgery walls, and we need that in order to understand where we have been and get insights about where we are heading, but it’s mostly just data for the management and leadership team, rarely an effective use of either carrot or a stick for everybody else.

It may be true that you can only manage what you measure, but that is not a license to intervene with fear if what we manage isn’t measuring up. Who actually wants to monitored and checked up on…hardly motivational or encouraging?

We have been exploring this with our clients for some months now and whilst you may need help nudging this conversation along with your employed and self employed teams, it’s a comfortable conversation to have, to explore what teams themselves consider they are accountable for and in particular for the things that matter to patients.

Do you need help with accountability or working on your dental practice in some other way? We can help..have an hour on us, to work on your business. Book online and we will do the rest.