Categories: Uncategorized

This Is Our Practice

Upon walking into the first day of training camp during the summer of 1961, Vince Lombardi said, “Gentlemen, this is a football”.

You see, the Packer’s previous season had ended with a heartbreaking defeat in the NFL Championship, and that hot summer day was ‘Day 1’ of a process that would lead the Packers under Lombardi’s leadership to never lose in the playoffs again, and to win five NFL Championships in seven years.

And it all started with a Vision.

Truly relationship-based / health-centered practices function in the same way. They are founded on a Vision which is based on a Philosophy, which is grounded in Core Values which are essentially a practice’s functional belief system.

And once that belief system is identified, like Lombardi, the dentist says to his or her team, “This is our practice”, and they start to define every aspect of it, based on this newly clarified perspective.

And what does that look like in the end? Well, there certainly are no NFL banners hanging from the ceiling to mark accomplishments, rather there are behavioral, and personal, and practice growth benchmarks instead.

Wilson Southam labeled this practice model as “volitional” where “In a health setting, of authentic caring and freedom, most people will choose to strive toward higher levels of self-care of their own volition. Volitional practice utterly respects the right of individuals to choose what is best for their own health future, with its ultimate objective to help people better help themselves.”

And I’ll bet if you took the time to work with your Care Team, you would be able to define what you do -and strive to do- in equally eloquent terms. But regardless of your eloquence, it’s the process that is most important. And its the spending of quality time together and the discovering of how everyone feels, as well as what they are willing to fight for which organically drives the practice toward the vision.

This is your practice.

Where will you lead it to this year?

Paul A Henny, DDS