Motivational Moments with Eric Vickery: Effective huddles require a structured agenda to avoid distractions and ensure productivity.
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About Eric Vickery
Eric holds a degree in business administration and brings a strong business and systems approach to his consulting. His initiation into the field of dentistry was in the area of office management. He managed dental practices for over ten years and has been consulting over 250 offices nationwide since 2001.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:02
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management, and training. Hello friends, welcome to your weekly motivational moments with Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. Today’s, this week’s topic, today we’re gonna be talking about effective huddles. Now, notice I didn’t say effective morning huddles, because some of you do not have your huddle in the morning. Some of you have them at the end of the day in preparation for the next day. That’s fine. The same…
00:31
concept, the same system, the same structure will be essential. We have a handful of different versions of an effective morning huddle. I want to point out something else. The key word here, effective. Let’s talk first about what’s not effective. So not having a written agenda will ensure that it’s not effective because you will definitely drift into unknown territory that causes distraction, frustration. People will check out. So you want to have effective huddles. The first thing you have to have is an agenda.
01:01
And we’re gonna look at past, present, and future in that agenda. We look at what happened yesterday. How did we do? Did we hit our goal? We talked about ideal day scheduling, scheduling the goal. So how did we do there? What could we have done differently? Celebrate a win. It’s so important to celebrate wins. And when you don’t hit it, celebrate that too. What could we have done differently? How can we learn from that? Now, today, part two, today, what can we do today to make today the best day possible?
01:29
What it is not is, hey, what shade are we using on Ricky Bobby at three o’clock? Did Joey have to be premedicated at four o’clock today? That is a clinical discussion that the clinical team needs to figure out and then communicate administratively. That also means that your huddle that’s written is filled out as you go. It’s not, let’s wing it. Here’s our agenda and let’s just talk about things. It’s actually filled out.
01:56
We have many offices that will laminate front and back their huddle. So they always have yesterday’s huddle with dry erase marker filled out on it. And then today’s huddle, dry erase marker. And then they erase two days ago when they get to tomorrow. And you’re constantly filling it out because you have some people who don’t show up at the same time as you. They have a different schedule. They’ll come in and they will see the written huddle all filled out. And then they can be fully informed on what’s going to happen today. Then you’re going to look at tomorrow. You’re going to look at…
02:24
maybe even a week, you may be even looking beyond that, whatever you do, but you’re gonna look at the future and you’re gonna say, are we scheduled to go tomorrow? Some things that you cover in your huddle for today. So I go through and say, all right, in hygiene, who has family members coming in who have unscheduled family members that don’t have an appointment? So if mom’s coming in and she’s bringing in one child, do the other family members have appointments? Let’s identify that, right? Write that down. How can we be more, how can we increase the business is the concept.
02:54
If someone has unscheduled treatment in hygiene, we need to announce that, talk about that. We gotta go back to your systems and say, all right, case acceptance has not happened. The treatment plan happened, but case acceptance did not. How do we revisit this with them? Something else you’re gonna review is overdue family members. You’re gonna talk about asking for referrals. You’re gonna talk about new patients coming in. So in the hygiene schedule,
03:19
Look at all these things and say, all right, who picked two patients today that I’m going to ask for referral from? You’re also going to look at new patients who are coming in, hygiene. What’s the great call sheet research form, your intake form, say about this patient coming in? Do I have that information? And then on the doctor’s side, you’re going to talk about, hey, we’re finishing treatment on this person. What else are we getting case acceptance on moving forward? Do they have their hygiene visit scheduled? And do they have any unscheduled family members?
03:48
Who on our schedule are we gonna ask referrals from? What new patients do we have coming in? Do we have our research form filled out so we can walk in and look like we know what we’re doing, create credibility? And then where do we put emergencies? This is how you make your business better. All right, guys, have a great week with your morning huddle and let us know if you need the agenda. Just email us, heat
04:14
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
