New Year New Start

Planning is the Bedrock of Effective Compliance

At the beginning of this New Year, some practice managers will have already invested quality time in planning and organising their compliance measures for 2016. They will have updated their business plan, drawn-up a Mobilisation Plan with a schedule of policy audits and ring-fenced time to embed new procedures into their teams’ working practices.

If you are not one of these managers with a structured Business Plan to direct management activities, then the New Year is a good time to create a plan for the year ahead, to ensure that every team member can make a positive contribution to the success of the business and is given opportunities to do so. The purpose of the plan being to ensure that each quality of care requirement is rooted in proven quality management theories, leading to increased team effectiveness and efficiency.

The Business Plan

A Business Plan is a written strategy that specifies the profile of the business and identifies its goals over the next 1, 3 and 5 years.  The plan goes on to map in some detail how the business is going to achieve its goals. This is map is the Mobilisation Plan which consists of a series of action plans and targets to cover all business activities such as:

• Marketing and customer care;
• Finance- cash flow projections and budgets;
• Operations;
• Training and development.

These activities become the management strategy as defined by Management Theorist H Fayol, who outlined that the Functions of Management as processes used by managers to translate ideas and intentions into a clear and well communicated strategy.  A Mobilisation Plan is the vehicle used to move the Strategy forward; by adding operational details, determining  how to proceed with work, who tasks will be assigned to, how they will carry it out and when.

The Mobilisation Plan

To mobilise your strategy begin with detailed SMART objectives to specify the required tasks and allocate resources. Test the plan with a SWOT Analysis to identify potential strengths and constraints.

Once the strategy has been translated into the tasks a timetable can be developed using a Gantt chart to specify individual tasks. Some tasks could be started right away. Simply identify the people needed and find out when they are available. If you don’t have enough staff, prioritize tasks and calculate the effect on the schedule and the team. The mobilization plan lets you identify staffing bottlenecks and, enables you to make decisions between delaying the plan, or proceeding on schedule and delaying other activities.

Resources

Use the Mobilization Plan to make sure the required resources are available, and to inform the responsible employees of the tasks required from them. Your strategy may also have a budget and cash flow requirements.

Identify Regulatory Requirements

Your strategy must accommodate professional regulations that must be observed. Other parts of the strategy may have other constraints, nevertheless the manager needs to:

• Bond the team to a common ideal;
• Provide a reference point for decision making.

The process of creating a formal, written Business Plan has the potential to increase teamwork and job satisfaction throughout the team. Allocating areas of responsibility along with monitoring and reporting processes are essential for business success. Business planning is often overlooked in dental businesses, even although this essential business activity has the potential to be the driving force of practice development. Dental businesses can involve their teams in securing business success, by involving their teams in business planning and so accessing previously untapped team potential.