> Best Practices for Growth
Know How to Grow Implementing systems that scale with practice growth By Amber Collins
those two along with our systems, processes and trainings.
Hiring the right people
There is a world of difference between operating a single dental practice and running a successful multi-location organization; a truth that many organizations who failed to shift their mindset as they grew learned the hard way.
Fortunately, the Peak Dental leadership team had that insight at the very start of our expansion efforts. Expanding a small dental practice starts by implementing systems to grow just that one practice. When Peak was still a small practice, our biggest focus was on supporting the doctors and learning everything that we could about how to run a dental practice.
At the three to five location mark, we realized the more that we were looking to scale, the more we had to have consistency across locations. It’s important to think about if your management practices and processes that will work for a handful of locations are also going to hold up work for 40 or even 100 locations. We think a lot about culture and people, and how to continue to scale
44 MARCH/APRIL 2021 • EFFICIENCY IN GROUP PRACTICE
One tentpole of Peak Dental’s success is the group’s hiring practices and mindset. We typically look for people who have a good attitude and who are capable of receiving feedback. This may be surprising, but industry experience is not always a requirement. We tend to hire a lot of people who have no dental experience because it’s not necessarily the dental experience that matters in leadership especially in our organization. It’s really [those] people who are going to take opportunities and learn along the way and grow. Managing a company’s human resources can be a challenge, especially when an organization is actively expanding. My advice? Try to figure out where your organization’s biggest “pain points” are. Identify what is taking up the most of your time that could be spent on things that you know are going to grow your business.
Standardized training One of the key ways that Peak Dental creates and provides organization-wide consistency is by implementing a standardized training program. Sometimes, the best way to make sure a training program
dentalgrouppractice.com
