Message From The CEO

Overcoming the Obstacles of 2020

By any account 2020 has been a year unlike anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. The country has faced a once in a century event with the COVID-19 pandemic, a contentious presidential election, and an extraordinary year of weather events with the most named storms in history in the Atlantic Ocean.

The magnitude of any one of these issues solely would be significant; but, in total they have narrated the story of 2020 as a year of unprecedented and extraordinary events. Even more so in the field of dentistry, the entire field faced and an unimaginable shutdown of the entire industry as state mandates dictated the cessation of dental practice largely as we know it. Almost more unimaginable was the rapid and unprecedented reopening and restart of dentistry. However, most of DCA’s affiliated practices are operating at new levels of normal, and largely at full capacity. A year ago, this would have all seemed preposterous and we would have brushed off the potential for an event such as COVID-19 as highly improbable.

Recently, I have read a series of articles on the extraordinary likelihood of unlikely events and have adopted a new appreciation for the seemingly outlandish chances that extraordinary things can, and often will, occur. Many have classified 2020 as a Black Swan year in connection with the often overused and often misunderstood term “Black Swan.” The Black Swan theory, or theory of Black Swan events, is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. You may have read the book authored by Nassim Taleb in 2007, titled “The Black Swan,” in which the author describes a Black Swan event and what it means for society and civilizations. I recently read this book again. Ironically, Taleb classifies the COVID-19 pandemic not as a Black Swan event, but rather as a White Swan event. Taleb’s point is that COVID-19 was compatible with statistics —a global pandemic was highly probable and certainly could be understood as inevitable in the context of the history of pandemics. Black Swan events are not perceived or predictable and are off the chart of statistics and even randomness. Not to digress down the rabbit hole of prediction science or art, to me the issue of COVID-19 and the extraordinary events of 2020 are less an issue of whether or not they occur, but rather are an issue of how organizations respond. I have had the benefit of leading companies that have had isolated, extraordinary events, both good and bad. There is one thing that has defined the organization that will succeed in the face of untoward news and extraordinary events, and this is an ability to adapt. This one attribute, beyond others, is the one factor that will determine if an entity will survive and ultimately succeed. Over the last nine months, I have been consistently impressed by how the DCA team has been able to rapidly and orderly adapt to whatever has been thrown at us. The COVID-19 pandemic brought extraordinary challenges at all levels of the company. In the depths of the shutdowns that occurred in April and May, we knew things would be different and the details of those changes were likely only to be revealed as we reopened the company. During the past nine months we have all learned and adjusted to the new normal. As we begin to trek out of this long bleak tunnel of 2020, we can all applaud our ability to deal with the extraordinary and the unprecedented. This ability to change and adapt has been a hallmark of DCA and a key skill for the team of outstanding professionals at all levels of the company. To each of you, I want to express my sincerest thanks, as well as those of the many constituents of the company, for all you have done over the last year. We now have hope. Despite the fact that we are now in perhaps the worst period of COVID-19, a vaccination is becoming available to dental healthcare professionals, and essential worker. We have all learned much and as we move toward 2021 with optimism, I look forward to a new year and our new normal.

Jerry Rhodes

Chief Executive Officer

Overcoming the Obstacles of 2020