By: Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, MAGD, Publisher, DentalTown Magazine

Do you ever wonder why the Yankees have been in the World Series four times in the last ten years and won it three of those times? You should think about it a lot. Do you have the Super Bowl on your mind? Who won the Super Bowl last year in 2003? The Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Why was Tampa not in the Super Bowl this year in 2004?

Who won the Super Bowl in 2002? The New England Patriots. Why were the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl again in 2004 and not the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Wouldn’t you assume that if the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were in the Super Bowl in 2003 that they would have such an awesome team that they would almost be assured to at least be in the following Super Bowl and most likely even win?

Let me tell you about the talented, exceptional, able and gifted boss. Let me tell you about my favorite sports owner and boss, George Steinbrenner. Dentistry is filled to the brim with touchy feely, find-your-inner-self consultants who try to take your lousy dysfunctional staff to the next level. Let me tell you why I couldn’t disagree more.

The reason the Yankees are always top contenders for the World Series is because if you can’t pitch, George Steinbrenner is going to fire you and find a better pitcher. Do you really think George Steinbrenner is going to listen to you complain about your aches and pains? How you can’t find a working alarm clock to make it to practice on time? Do you really think George Steinbrenner is going to send you to a weekend campground retreat so you might go and lose your bad attitude and come back on Monday with a winning attitude?

The number one mental error in practice management today is that managers think they are responsible for their team’s performance. This is completely backwards. Management is responsible for finding teammates who perform exceptionally well. I do not accept mediocre employees with bad attitudes. I will not take you to a weekend course in Las Vegas to try to motivate you to want to work. If you don’t like to work, I am going to fire you as quickly as possible and find someone who does like to work. If you have a bad attitude, I’m sorry if your childhood went wrong, but I do not have the time, money, and skills to fix it. I will simply fire you and find someone with a great attitude.

Southwest Airlines says we hire for attitude and train for skills. Dentists tell me daily that they have a certain hygienist, or receptionist, or assistant, that always comes in late, has a lousy attitude, and will not go to any continuing education! My question to half the dentists in the world is, “What does a staff person have to do to get fired?” What are you running; the United States Post Office where employees have to “go postal” and shoot several of their co-workers before the Postal Union will fire them?

Separate your players, that is to say, dental office team members, into A, B, C, D, & F players. Truly talented owners are the ones that never hire a D or an F player. Truly gifted dentists are the ones that determine if someone is a C player and lets them go as well. What you end up with is B players with a very rare and occasional A player.

Let me tell you what happens when you leave a C player “in the game”. It’s 5:00 o’clock and the dentist and C player dental assistant run out the door because they are finished for the day. The A player dental assistant double-checks to see that each of the two dental operatories are set up for the 8:00 a.m. appointments the next morning. The A player dental assistant also notices room three is scheduled for a crown seat and the crown is not in. So she goes and calls the lab. The lab is closed but this A player knows the personal cell phone number of her lab rep so she makes a call.

Then it hits her! Why should she be calling around town chasing down a crown when the dentist and the other assistant couldn’t care less? She starts to think, “I work so much harder than the other dental assistant and the doctor doesn’t even care.” So to get mental equity and fairness, the A player dental assistant starts to purposely give less effort. She now hangs up the phone and thinks, “I don’t even care that the crown will not be here tomorrow. I can’t wait to see the doctor’s face when they have to reschedule the patient. They probably won’t even care since no one else seems to! Nothing ever changes around here! Nothing ever gets done!”

You might not like George Steinbrenner and you might not like me. Neither of us is trying to win a personality contest and yet we both have very winning teams. Do you really want a winning team? Then fire everyone who doesn’t want to win and replace them with winners. When you have a loser on your team, management spends so much time working with them and management still looks bad. When you have winners on your team management hardly ever spends anytime with them and management looks so darn good. Never settle for less than winning players who love the game of dentistry!