We’ve all heard this statement: “Practice makes perfect”. The trouble is that it is totally false. Not one iota of truth. Dig a little deeper and you will forever know that “practice makes perfect” is a false statement that too many of us accept as common sense. In fact, the practice makes perfect idiom can destroy your practice. It insinuates that if you just keep practicing or doing what you are doing, you will eventually get it right. The real truth is that practice does not make perfect, it makes permanent. It can forever tattoo failure on what you do, if you practice imperfect systems and protocols. If you continue to repeat an action that is flawed in the first place, you are guaranteed to never get better, never succeed, and most likely will end up with unintended results. The real truth is that “only perfect practice makes perfect”.
I’ve played a lot of tennis in my life and most of the coaching I got tried to break my bad habits and made-up poor strategies and playing style. Over and over, I was amazed at the improvement I could make when someone with the knowledge and a history of proving their concept helped me. The missing link in improving from the “tried and not so true” element of practice to a new and better protocol is extremely challenging. You literally have to forget what you have practiced forever and move away from one thing to something better. This takes time and faith that the “out with the old, in with the new” will exact a permanent and better path to success.
Today I want to briefly discuss how each of us, in our search for “perfect” practice can assess the viability of systems and protocols. Most of the Michaelisms you have been reading about for the cornerstones of every system and protocol Max and I have developed over almost forty years of dental practice. Coming up with perfect protocols and systems requires a five-step proof of concept before committing to utilizing something that you would want to “practice”. For true, lasting improvement, they all need to be:
- Teachable. Hopefully this is a duh moment and you are thinking, of course it has to be teachable. The problem is that if you can’t teach it, you can’t delegate it. If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. This means that you must be so familiar with this system or protocol, have worked it out for yourself, have tested it, and found it worth teaching, that you can actually transfer the thought to action in the form of a system or protocol. Your audience is usually your team. As a leader, you have to make sure that people actually heard what you thought you said. It’s not enough to say the right thing, your team has to understand what you have said in a way that they can easily implement the protocol or system.
- Scalable. Shift happens and what got you here won’t get you to the next level of practice. Your systems and protocols must adapt to an ever-changing dental economy. Change is always with us. Embrace it and adapt your systems to your demographic and economy. While the foundation of a system or protocol stays the same, it needs to have the ability to move with the times. Scalability is the capability for your systems and protocols to work now and in the future when you go from 3 employees to 20 and anything in-between.
- Repeatable. You have proven the concept, taught it to your team, and find that it is scalable as the size of your practice and the economy hits its highs and lows. Next, there has to be a level of consistency driven by repeatability for you to have a perfect system. Each and every member of your team needs to master the system and protocol to the point that they too, could teach it to the next member of your team. They know it so well, that they own it and embrace the importance of what it brings to the office’s goals and vision. If you can’t repeat something, it is not possible to perfect it.
- Flexible. Flexibility, while similar to being scalable, offers your systems the ability to do what you do perfectly 97% of the time but it also works in those times when each member of your team has to step out of their normalcy and handle something a little different. You will have firm policies and consistent systems that at times will need to be flexible to fix this particular occurrence. It won’t happen often, but the systems and protocols have the flexibility to accommodate even slight deviations in your day-to-day routines.
- Sustainability. Think back to all of the systems and protocols that have fallen by the wayside, and yet, you find yourself coming up short. What made this fail? Methods were not replaced with better systems and protocols that fulfill these five important benchmarks. It is only in the trying and testing, that we can successfully come up with systems and protocols that have lasting ability to weather the ups and downs of practice life. Only the truly well thought out and executed systems and protocols will survive. Guard these well. They form the foundation of “perfect practice”.
Michael Abernathy DDS
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972.523.4660 cell