Effective dental business management

Dentists often lack an understanding of how a dental business works and how to manage it effectively.

The desire to be independent, self-sufficient, and free motivates us dentists to open our own private practices – renting dental offices and opening dental clinics.

We dream of becoming more free and independent!

Having taken this step, many wake up in the morning feeling like a SLAVE to their private practice or business.

But how we long to live differently, with a different mindset…

What’s happening to us?

What we immediately encounter as soon as we “set out on our own” is a lack of knowledge: how to manage it all effectively. As dentists, we were taught to understand the human body, the oral cavity, teeth, and gums, but we haven’t learned how to effectively run and grow a business.

Why is this happening?

People, chasing a few extra kopecks, start businesses and then fail to manage them.

Effective management begins with human nature. With the natural inclinations with which a person was born.

A huge number of people go into business who aren’t cut out for it, who initially have no chance of being entrepreneurs and organizers, and who, by nature, are unable to organize the work of others, delegate, build and maintain relationships within a team, set goals, and move towards them.

What is the solution?

The very first thing is to decide: am I doing the right thing in life? Did I make a mistake by opening my own private practice? Perhaps I was born to be a doctor, to treat people, to heal them, and not to deal with the organizational issues of building, maintaining, and managing a team of people—a business.

I must be fully and clearly aware that being a manager is a completely different profession, a different level of responsibility, and a completely different natural talent, skills, and level of knowledge. And if I want to become an effective manager of my business, I need to train, almost like I trained in my time at medical school or university, and then practice management on a regular basis, every day, and constantly improve and develop in this direction. Everything is fundamentally the same as in history, when at some point I decided to become a doctor, studied to be a doctor, became a young doctor, then a more experienced one, and only then a virtuoso. Absolutely all the same stages of formation and maturation, only now in my management experience.

If, in essence, I am a manager and this is my calling, then I need to learn to EFFECTIVELY MANAGE MY BUSINESS, my private medical practice, my business – to become an EFFECTIVE MANAGER.

Let’s clarify the concepts of BUSINESS, MANAGER, and EFFECTIVE.

The Concept of BUSINESS

For many doctors, the word BUSINESS is a byword. I think this is because there’s a narrative that where there’s business, there’s no medicine. This narrative comes from the Soviet past, where any personalization, private activity, or entrepreneurship was frowned upon and even punishable by law.

The word BUSINESS comes from the English “busy” – meaning “busy,” meaning someone who is engaged in some kind of work. Many doctors find it easier to understand that they are in PRIVATE PRACTICE rather than BUSINESS.

Say it however you like, it doesn’t matter, but the important thing is that we understand what we’re talking about – we’re talking about EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT of your medical practice.

The Concept of Management

MANAGEMENT = RESPONSIBILITY

Management is the process of making decisions and implementing them by influencing an object(s) and/or process participants to achieve a set goal.

A manager is someone who manages something. In our situation, this could be managing the entire dental company or a specific department or division.

EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT

Management that leads to “solid results” – results that can be measured, formalized, and tangible. Management where the achievement of a set goal can be guaranteed. Management where achievements can be repeated and multiplied in a consistent manner.

Can everyone become an effective manager? Unfortunately, no. Opening a practice – yes, managing – yes, but not everyone can manage effectively. It’s like playing football – many can, but few can play effectively like Blokhin, Shevchenko, Maradona, or Ronaldo.

We are all managers to one degree or another. Some are more effective than others, but we are all managers! What we manage 100% is our lives! It’s our arms and legs. For some, managing their lives is a challenge, while others dream of conquering the world. It doesn’t work that way. The first step is to learn to manage something small and simple, like your body. The next step is to manage other people, individuals. And first, your own. Then someone from your environment—one, two, three people. Then an employee, several, and only then a team. In this way, step by step, you can develop the skill of managing a team of people. Why is this so? Because business isn’t walls and equipment, lasers and photopolymers—it’s people working together toward a common goal.

In our situation—providing dental care to people who need it.

Three steps to becoming an effective manager

• The first step is to understand: am I capable of becoming an effective manager?
• The second step is to set goals for 5-10 years, preferably for life…
• The third step is to determine the resources required for managerial improvement and development.

«You can’t manage what you can’t measure…» (Bill Hewlett, Hewlett-Packard)

If someone wants to drive a car well, they must learn it thoroughly.

Of course, to begin with, someone who wants to learn how to drive a car doesn’t need to understand every detail—how the engine, the braking system, or the ABS safety system work, based on the laws of physics. On the other hand, if a manager wants to manage at the highest level, their knowledge of the car’s structure must significantly exceed that of the average person.

The more detailed their knowledge, the more professional their management will be.

Driving experience is also important – the more experience, the more freedom a driver feels and can move from the level of “instructions” to the level of “innovation.”

For myself and my fellow doctors who want to understand how to effectively manage their business, I draw the following analogy: BUSINESS = PERSON.

Where does this analogy come from, and why do I draw it?

The human body is a SYSTEM, in my humble opinion – an ideal system that has continued to exist for millennia, repeating a certain universal structure and functionality from generation to generation, producing offspring, and adapting to changing conditions – evolving.

A business organization is also a system! An ideal business system, just like a person, must be built according to certain laws that allow it to function effectively and evolve in response to changes in the surrounding world.

This means it must also manage itself, its environment, and even the changes themselves.

We doctors have been taught quite well how to understand and manage the HUMAN HEALTH SYSTEM, but when it comes to business, we’ve completely failed.

We doctors not only manage our own body parts and the body as a whole, but we also help others manage their bodies and their health.

What allows us to do this?

The answer is a deep knowledge of the structure and functioning of the human body SYSTEM, both individually and in its entirety. Moreover, this knowledge includes not only the norms (anatomy, histology, physiology), but also pathologies (pathological anatomy, pathological physiology).

Without this knowledge, we would not be able to help others maintain or restore their health, or heal people.

Now, about business from the same perspective.

We, physician-entrepreneurs and managers, are trying to first build and then manage something we understand and know practically nothing about.

At the beginning of our management journey, we completely lack the basic knowledge of business structure—business anatomy, business histology, business physiology, etc. We’ve never heard the phrase “business processes,” but in medical parlance, these are the same processes, such as biochemical processes, or processes of respiration, digestion, etc. Marketing is about verbal and nonverbal behavior. Vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are the recording of vital business data. The human excretory system is the waste product of business.

In short, if you think about it carefully, you can draw a 100% parallel between the structure and functioning of the human body and an individual business, at a fundamental level. This applies to any business—be it a dentist’s dental practice or, for example, an IT company.

Why am I saying all this?

The point is that if I’m a doctor and want to become an effective manager of my business, I need to understand in great detail the structure and functioning of a business as a system. How is it structured, how does it operate internally, how does it interact with the outside world?

By what written and unwritten laws does everything operate, change, and evolve?

The second solution: if I realise that I’m not a manager, but a doctor 100%, and I don’t want to deal with management issues, then I should partner with or hire someone who knows how a business is structured and functions very well. Just as well as I know the human body, the oral cavity, teeth, gums… Welcome to the EFFECTIVE MANAGERS CLUB!