In the acronym, CREATE, the first letter, C, is for CLARIFY and we’ve spent the last few weeks clarifying our vision, mission, values and goals. Take as much time as you wish on these and you may even want to clarify your philosophy, what you stand for and some of your beliefs (about dentistry, dentists, patients, team, insurance, money, etc.).
This week, we are moving on to R—Relay. Relay your vision, mission, values and goals to your family if you are working on your personal life and to your team if you are working on your practice.
This is short and simple—share from your heart with as much clarity and passion as you can. The people you are sharing with can help you flush it out… Ask for their input in the areas you want it. You can spend a team meeting or more on sharing your vision (I’ve seen this done as a team exercise and I don’t necessarily think the team needs to have a lot of input in this. The vision comes from the doctor, though you would like buy in and help tweaking it so that it is inspiring and clear to all!)
- Share your values clearly and passionately. If you want to adapt these to be more aligned with your practice, that’s fine. You may want to have separate practice values and do this as a team or share yours as a starting point to find words that are congruent for the entire team and practice.
- Share your mission clearly and passionately. You may share your personal mission and you will likely want to come up with a practice mission. This is usually done as a team exercise and the mission statement is defined by the group (yours may be used a starting point). It’s likely that your personal mission will be in harmony with the practice mission.
- Share your goals (it’s okay to share your personal goals, but probably better to just share some ideas about possible practice goals and brainstorm as a team). Even though this isn’t really about your personal goals, please keep them in mind so that you make sure the practice goals support your personal goals. The practice goals will be team developed and usually come from parts of the vision. Again, it may take a meeting or two to pick the top 3 or 4 and prioritize, etc.
Remember to review the Vision, Mission, Values and Goals at least once a week and preferably daily so that they are top of mind. You can create reminders—post its, screen savers, pictures, etc that help you and your team remember.
Next week, we will talk about engineering, which was sort of outlined already in your Goal-setting doc. I will separate it out for you to make it clearer.
Please share below in the comments section any ideas, suggestions, wins, etc!
Have a stellar week!
Allison Watts
ps … if you need to access the printable worksheets for the Values, Visions, Mission & Goals clarification exercises, please go to our RESOURCES page.