> Leadership
Why Your DSO Needs a Good Project Manager DEO: What is a project manager? Margaret McGuckin: A project manager is someone who can really understand the relationships, processes, and details required to take an initiative and move it forward in the timelines that it needs to be moved forward. I learned project management from IT people who basically invented agile thinking. Agile thinking is really just a very structured way to approach managing a project. A good project manager will have the skill set to know when to escalate an issue as well as to whom to escalate an issue.
Project managers might be one of the best kept secrets in the world of dental service organizations. A lot of other industries understand the importance of project managers and where they fit into a business that’s growing in that world, but they didn’t really exist in the DSO world until three or four years ago. What you may find is that scaling your business creates a series of projects, and you may not have the people on staff to cover these projects. A good project manager will come in to bring order and balance to the chaos of your business. Recently, the DEO spoke with some of the best project managers in the dental industry to discuss the importance, innovations, and value of project management: > Margaret McGuckin is the Co-Founder and Principal at i3 Ignite. > Jodi Evans is the COO at Community Dental Partners. > Brett Evans is the Director of Strategic Planning at Community Dental Partners.
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MARCH/APRIL 2022 • DENTIST ENTREPRENEUR ORGANIZATION
Jodi Evans: We have this triangle that’s broken up into thirds; this is the way we explain it to our team. The top section of the triangle is what we call “make it up,” which is our executive team’s responsibility. The middle section is the “make it real” section, and that final third is the “make it reoccurring.” We learned that we needed a project manager to bridge the gap between “make it real” and “make it reoccurring.” That brought us a lot of momentum, because I wasn’t pinging the reoccurring team (regional managers or practice managers) to take my vision and make it work. Brett Evans: I think a good project manager protects the company by protecting those who give the vision and protecting those who
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