The impact of business culture on your results

15 Jul The impact of business culture on your results

Suppose you want to develop a successful and sustainable business that consistently produces the results that you signed up for. In that case, you first have to lead a business culture that delivers the right behaviours.

In healthcare, therefore, virtuous behaviours matter, and you cannot just rely upon commonly used and conventional measures, KPIs, and percentages (that have finally become vogue in dentistry) to produce them. Whilst such ‘digital measures of success’ are easy to obtain and understand, what do they tell you about your leadership, how people feel about coming to work or how well they know what you expect of them?

But just as dentistry continues to play catch-up (yes, EBITDA has been around since the 1970s but is comparatively new in dentistry) the news and headlines outside of dentistry remind us yet again that it’s easy to move the needle on the dial in the short term, including making a profit, but how a business achieves its results is essential.

Business history tells us that your results will be short-lived if they expend the things that should come first and matter most, such as trust, loyalty, team engagement, talent, and goodwill.

The early warning signs are there that some dental practices are ignoring what matters most. It’s easier than ever to see dental marketing messages that ignore trust and solely focus on price, being the cheapest or offering services for free. We have practice owners who understand the importance of team loyalty, but they are measuring it in the context of 50 pence per hour pay conversations. Meanwhile, managers are constantly urged to push Google reviews without the autonomy to prioritise excellence. Additionally, the quality of patient relationships, understanding, and consent is often confused with financial metrics, targets, selling, and tick boxes. And whilst it’s easy to be attracted (and distracted) by the latest tech, the ‘next big thing’ is often merely the next quick fix.

We need to keep talking about business culture because all of your conventional measures won’t fix it, nor will AI, next-gen imaging and digital workflows.

We need to keep talking about business culture, because your patients and the people you want to walk through your door can sense the problems you are not talking about.

We talk about business culture and show you how to improve it.