The Importance of Keeping Score

As I watch the Winter Olympic events I am struck by the level of performance these athletes have achieved and how narrow the margin is between victory and defeat.

These athletes train for years, honing their skills and improving their times until they make it to the Olympics where winning a gold can come down to being just a fraction of a second faster than your nearest challenger.

These are people whose lives are all about obsessing about performance measurement.

 

However, you don't have to be an Olympian to understand the value of tracking your performance. I know I like to record my progress in my workouts, and I have never met a golfer who doesn't know his handicap, or a marathon runner who doesn't pursue beating a personal best time. These numbers are a source of pride and motivation.

The same is true in dentistry. We often see dentists come out of Facially Generated Treatment Planning or Occlusion workshops saying that they have discovered a new way of seeing and they notice quickly that it is making a big difference in the way they present and in the improved response they are getting from patients. Later, as they go through the Restorative Design and Worn Dentition workshops, they find their confidence and case acceptance levels improve. These dentists sense that they're doing more complex cases, and doing them more often; the things that used to be considered significant are now becoming routine.

I say they "sense" this because in many cases these clinicians are not recording their progress. Many dentists resist the idea of tracking their performance because they assume it has to be elaborate and time-consuming, or they don't want their life in the practice to come down to "crunching numbers." However, knowing a few key numbers is vital to understanding and improving practice performance. This comes down to basic data that is easy to gather and calculate and the results can be eye-opening.

Tracking progress simply comes down to awareness. The clarity you get from measuring your progress can keep you moving in the right direction. In dentistry, as in sports, it's hard to tell if you're winning if you don't keep score.