What Every Dentist Needs to Know About Setting Goals

Everybody likes the idea of seeing improvement in their life, and many people are genuinely committed to working hard to make things better. But I have found that with dentists you can predict very early on who is going to have the most success with their efforts at improvement, simply by asking what it is they hope to see in their lives and in their practice five years from now.

It should come as no surprise that almost always the dentists who get the greatest results and hit their progressive milestones most consistently are the dentists who are the most precise and detailed in their expectations for the future. This makes sense—it's a lot easier to stay on course when you know exactly where you want to go.

Dentists Are In Charge of Their Own Success

Of course nobody can give you a checklist of items that would make your life perfect. It is up to you as a dentist to define what you would like your life and practice to be like, in the most precise terms possible. The problem with vague generalizations such as increase revenue or do more challenging cases is that it is hard to be motivated by something that abstract.

If you're talking about tangible things, whenever possible put a number to it. Be as precise as possible for your expectations when it comes to things like:

• Personal and practice economics


• Improvements to the facility and work environment


• The kind of cases you will do and the balance of case types


• How much time you will spend in the practice, working on the practice, and outside the practice

And for those intangibles that aren't as quantifiable, do some serious creative visualization. Describe in the most precise terms you can:

• How you will feel at the beginning, and end, of each day.


• How patients and team members will respond to your guidance


• How fulfilled you will feel professionally

This is not just some exercise in wishful thinking. As a dentist, this is how you create a vision for a better life that has the power to get you out of bed each day with an inspiring and energizing feeling of purpose. The more precise and real that vision feels, the more urgency you will feel about getting there.


If you find topics like this helpful, check out Imtiaz Manji's practice management courses available to you through our Course Library. Not yet a member of Digital Suite? Click here to learn more.