Meetings have a bad reputation. Too many people think of meetings as low-value time – something to be endured, as opposed to the time where real work happens. But if they are approached in the right way, meetings set the groundwork for the high-value time. Think of it the way you would a new patient exam.

The time you spend on that exam may not bring in the same revenue as, say, a quadrant of crowns. But in many cases, you would not get the opportunity to do a quadrant if you had not spent the time doing a comprehensive initial exam and outlining possibilities.

In the same way, the most successful people that I know understand the power of meetings and know how to make them work. They take meetings seriously, and approach them with energy and purpose. Meetings are absolutely essential in creating the right mindset, alignment and motivation in a team. This is especially true in a dental practice where interdependence and coordination is so important; yet team members tend to work in relative isolation in their own "compartments."

To be truly effective as a team, there are three kinds of meetings you should be having:

1. Morning meetings should be about creating a strategy for each and every client coming in that day to ensure optimal client and team behavior. It's not just a routine rundown of "who is coming in today?" This is about "Here are the opportunities we have today to improve someone's life. How do we make them see this value? What can we celebrate today?"

2. Day-end meetings are about accountability. Examine your results for the day and ask yourselves, "Did we reach our goals and standards today? If not, why not? What do we need to do differently tomorrow?" It's not about finger pointing. It's about learning from the past and setting direction for the future. If you aren't on target to reach your monthly goals, this is when you recalculate to course-correct.

3. Your monthly, quarterly and annual meetings should be about innovating for the future. Here, analyze the best days of the practice – days with ideal revenue, scheduling and clients – and ask yourselves, "How can we take what we did to create these best days and make those behaviors automatic, so every day becomes a perfect day?"

Of course there are other ways beyond this to build a strong team culture – with team education seminars and retreats, for example – but these meetings should form the core of your alignment strategy. The simple truth is, if you want everyone to be on the same page, you have to spend some time in the same room, at the same time, focused on the same agenda.  


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