In Part 1 of my morning huddle series I shared some tips on how to get the team on board and establish a time and place. Now, let’s move on to the details! This is broken down by department and goes into the specific expectations of the team.

It’s no secret that dentistry is a tough profession! As a clinician, tough patients and complex procedures await you daily. Patients don’t want to be there very often. We have “experts” out there telling us what we are doing wrong. If you are an office manager, running a practice has an equal amount of challenges. There’s insurance, regulations, office team personalities and dynamics, and more to deal with week to week. In other words, it’s not difficult to get sucked in to a negative mindset.

Some of my best memories of being an office manager involved morning meetings, otherwise known as a “huddle” – although I refer to this as a meeting as it better reflects the purpose. I was constantly thinking about ideas to spice things up and every day I was preparing for the next morning. I used to gulp coffee as soon as the alarm went off, listen to loud and fun music in the car, and rehearse important points I didn’t want to forget.

It is common practice to have production goals for the office and clinical team members. However, every team member has an associated value of what their time is worth, and every task has a value as well. These are numbers that are often forgotten, yet just as important as the other numbers we calculate when analyzing practice profitability.

I am going to tell you the story of a colleague that made a serious professional mistake, one that almost cost her a career. Mistakes, errors, flubs, oversights, whatever word you use…. they happen everywhere, even in the dental office. We are imperfect and emotional human beings, and we have to remember that, if and when the time comes to face the music.