Setting and achieving goals

Jul 4, 2010

Editor's note: The Coaches Corner column appears regularly on the DrBicuspid.com advice and opinion page, Second Opinion.

Goals -- end goals -- represent the big-picture final accomplishment of your practice, between now and then. Within this development period, there is a process of achievement designed through many short-term performance goals or targets. Often this is done by focusing these short-term targets around a particular strategy. A vision statement is an example of an end goal's design.

One problem with an end goal or your practice's vision statement is that it is far easier to commit to smaller target goals than to the vision itself, unless designed through a collaborative process. One measure of success is your commitment to strategic targets in support of the larger goal expressed -- in this case, as your vision statement. The measure of your commitment to a goal is always how much time and money you invest in it.

Ownership of your practice's goal or vision needs to pass from the dentist to the staff through encouragement, autonomy, mastery, and purpose, not command and control imperatives that deny ownership to the staff.

You see, the value of choice in goals is that they will impart responsibility and ownership. For example, practice goals that are coactively and cooperatively designed with the staff get immediate staff buy-in. Beyond this, it is important that the strategic targets are in service to optimum patient care and the running of the practice from a for-profit model, and that these targets are indeed achievable, even if the goal is somewhat lower than the dentist or owner desires.

The best goals then, given our disparate personalities, are those that speak to the highest standards of care possible and a higher calling of social responsibility, because only in these can you ensure the staff's full alignment and support.

If a goal is unrealistic, there will be little hope. But if it is not challenging, there will be little motivation.

Your goals should fit somewhere in between the twin pillars of hope and motivation. Those would be SMART goals (specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic, and time-phased); PURE goals (positively stated, understood, resonate, and ethical); and CLEAR goals (challenging, legal, environmentally sound, appropriate, and relevant).

Dan Kingsbury, D.D.S., life and dental coach, is a co-founder of the Dental Coaches Association, an organization of dentists who are professional coaches committed to bringing coaching to the dental profession. Learn more by visiting DentalCoachesAssociation.org.

The comments and observations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of DrBicuspid.com, nor should they be construed as an endorsement or admonishment of any particular idea, vendor, or organization.