When we consider some of the biggest challenges for orthodontic practices, they include managing workload and maximizing efficiencies. Productivity is often the management of workload and its impact on each team member in our ortho practices. We balance practice growth, time, and energy as our career follows its path. Every day is busy, yet digital work stacks up. Patients go over treatment time, and we don’t have enough time to do what we need to do. Time consequently runs out.
Parkinson’s Law
We observe that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. In this essay from 1955, C. Northcote Parkinson described what can take minutes may take several hours for another who drags the work. People often don’t sit idle but keep busy by creating extra work adding subordinates, and multiplying the work involved. As organizations grow, this issue can increase the time spent on projects that seemingly should not take that long. As a result, teams become less productive, and work stress increases.
For example, we may have a report assignment that takes seven days to complete. However, many get it done a few hours before the deadline. Did that take a week to perform? Or was it only a few hours? Many of us work in CAD development like ClinChecks® and set a timeline to generate these digital plans. We give ourselves several days to perform these tasks, and it more likely takes you that whole time to get it done. As Parkinson’s Law reveals, the work expanded to fill the time you gave it.
Set Goals
Orthodontic teams should revisit goals and prioritize why we do certain things. For instance, review what should be done and optimize how we do them. We get busy working in our practices. Therefore, it is critical to step away from the daily routine and work on our business. Instead of the continual daily workload, we should evaluate past performance and set goals where our work is optimal in terms of results and efficiency.
The goal is not to be continually busy but to be productive and reduce workload. We achieve this by focusing on what truly matters. Stepping back, revisiting what we do, and removing work that doesn’t add value to patient care should be removed. Ultimately, we set goals to standardize, optimize, automate, and outsource all work in our practice.
Improve Timelines
Focusing on productivity, we have the opportunity to improve timelines. So we improve team performance and balance the schedule to avoid the overwhelm that comes with tight deadlines. Orthodontic offices run with fast and frequent appointments. Digital work has a recurring flow of CAD work that also has deadlines. We should improve the process to improve the team’s performance.
Timelines should leave the right time for typical performance. They should be realistic and stretch our performance to improve it. Unless we strive for continual improvement, we lose the opportunity to grow as professionals and grow the organization.
