Does your team have a morning huddle every day? If so, do you use this time effectively?  Morning huddles are a great opportunity to maximize the productivity and profitability of your practice. 

But some practices don’t make the best use of their morning huddles. That means they’re not getting the maximum benefit for their practice. The good news is having an effective morning huddle is simple. Here are two things you should do in your morning huddle every day and two things you should avoid to maximize the impact of your daily huddles.

Connect with your team.

Morning huddles are not just about day planning and task management. They are an amazing opportunity to build practice culture and deepen connections with your team. For example, you could give each weekday a theme and assign a different member of the team to take ownership of the theme. In this case, assume Mondays were themed “Motivation Monday.” You could invite a team member to share something that happened recently either personally or within the practice that was positive. Or, they could share a quote, poem, or YouTube video to inspire the rest of the team and get them ready for the week.

You could have “Thankful Thursdays” where a team member leads everyone in sharing something they’re grateful for, personally or professionally. Fridays are a great day to go through patient surveys. Appoint a team member to be responsible for reading the surveys and reviews that have come in the last week and pulling out important information. It’s nice for the team to hear what patients say. Often, your patients will mention a particular team member in their response, and this is a great opportunity to share those comments, acknowledge the great work being done by your team, and get everyone excited and motivated to serve your clients further.

The connection part of the morning huddle is all about having a system, delivering it consistently, and having team members take ownership. The creativity and preparation they bring to those meetings will drive a much closer connection between team members.

Review key performance indicators.

If you only discuss what’s happening in the practice that day, you miss a great opportunity to look at the bigger picture of your practice performance. The morning huddle is a great opportunity to keep track of your performance by taking a good look at your metrics.

How are you doing this month with your goals? If you’re on or even ahead of your targets, shout out your team. Give them a big round of applause, acknowledge the work they’ve been doing, and celebrate that success. 

Perhaps you had a goal to start a certain number of Perio Protect cases and your hygienists have surpassed it. This is an opportunity to get really excited and show them how much you appreciate their hard work. 

As you review your goals, emphasize how important it is to communicate with patients, to explain the benefits of those value services, and how their hard work has paid off with more cases booked and more patients served. This will lead to more energy, excitement, and awareness of how their work that day will impact the practice.

Reviewing key performance indicators lets you know what needs more attention, too. Does your team need more training in an area? Are you hitting your targets for getting new patients? If not, what are you going to do about it? You might want to run a targeted social media campaign to get those numbers up. Maybe you can plan some Facebook Lives or ask patients if they have family members that need to be scheduled when you call them. 

Avoid sitting around reading charts.

Does your team use the morning huddle to read up on the patients they’ll see that day? Of course, it’s crucial for your team to know the important facts about their patients. But is reading about them in the morning the best way to remember this information? Or are they likely to get distracted and miss out on the important details?

What if you used stickers on physical charts, or pop-ups on digital charts, to identify patients with diabetes or high blood pressure, or other important details? This means you’ve not only found a better way to log these important notes, you can also eliminate reading time from the morning huddle.

Avoid using the huddle to huddle to identify and fill gaps in the daily schedule.

Identifying and filling schedule gaps should happen days earlier. If you wait until the same day, you will end up with many gaps you can’t fill. Ever thought, “Wait, is there an opportunity to get Ms. Jones in today?” but then found that Ms. Jones can’t leave work so you’ve missed the opportunity? It happens all the time.

If you contact patients ahead of time, there’s much more chance they’ll be available. And it gives your team more time to prepare for that patient’s appointment. It makes your days much smoother.

Instead of using your morning huddle to try to fill in holes, create a regular process for looking at the schedule a few days earlier, and concentrate your huddle time on the things that will make the most difference to your practice. 

Do you need to make your morning huddle more effective?

Making your morning huddle more effective is as simple as doing two things and avoiding two things. Build connection. Review key performance indicators. Avoid reading charts. And avoid trying to fill schedule gaps each morning.

If you want help, join our free Facebook group for dental bosses. In that group, you will be able to mastermind and share with dentists and team members. And if you’re looking for training or coaching for your team to accelerate your growth, click here to learn more.