On a regular basis, we have seen practices suffer –and sometimes die—because of one of the great practice killers out there: lack of communication. In fact, it may be the top practice killer that I know of since so many negative situations have no communication or miscommunication at its heart.
In our own practices, this has come up a lot recently. For example, in Mexico, we made the very difficult decision to close one of our offices. Since that time, the closure has been an absolute comedy of errors (without the funny part) because at the time we told our staff about the closure, the people involved all went in their own direction and no one spoke up to coordinate the closure. Some staff showed up at the office as if nothing had been announced. Some immediately left and some patients were left in the middle – that vast majority of whom were concerned and upset because no one had spoken to them.
Over time, the reasons for poor communication emerge and most often it is linked to fear. People in key positions are afraid to get sued, afraid to make a mistake, afraid to show weakness or something similar. On countless occasions, I have had doctors tell me that they do not want to share bad results with the staff because if they do, the staff might quit or rebel. Then, that would throw the practice into chaos.
What throws a practice into chaos is no one knowing what is going on. Then people take action that may or may not be beneficial to the practice. Here’s one example:
In a practice in Oklahoma, the doctor initiated a promotion to give roses to all of the new female patients and their mothers. The thought was that the practice would become known around town as the one that gives out roses to their patients and that would become a hook or keystone for that practice. As you might expect, this promotion was less-than-successful. Getting roses does not influence people to go to a dental office and the plan was so poorly promoted that hardly anyone knew that it was a promotion. The doctor didn’t communicate with the manager that the program would have to be shuttered or reworked so the manager placed a bulk, fixed monthly order for roses to save on the per-unit cost. After some time, the office began to look like a florist shop with all of the roses in there. Or, a funeral home given the lack of patients from that promotion.
While a number of people have successfully employed the strategy of “ignore it and the problem may go away (or the person with the problem will forget about it),” that doesn’t seem to ever work for the rest of us. In countless situations, no news has not been good news. It’s helpful to be the initiator and director of communication. The results will be surprising.
If you ever have any questions about your practice including how to improve communication or correcting a situation caused by a lack of communication, please contact us.
