A short YouTube lesson by Dr. Allen Nazeri describing strategic planning for dental (and medical) practices using the SWOT framework (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). He explains how to run a four-quadrant SWOT with the team, gives concrete examples for each quadrant (e.g., equipment, procedures, capacity, competition), and recommends regular review (monthly to bimonthly) to adjust priorities and protect competitive position. The talk previews later lessons on evaluating sustainable competitive advantage.
Chapters
Hello, this is Dr. Allen and in today's video lesson I want to talk to specifically dentists and any doctor who's listening as well about the strategic planning of your practice. Now let me define for you what strategic planning means. Well, strategic planning is basically a management activity that practice owners need to undertake which allows them to set priorities and be able to focus their energy and resources to improve operations, bridge the gap between the management, employees and other stakeholders to work toward a common goal, establish agreements around desired results and adjust them accordingly as needed on regular basis. Well, this all sounds a mouthful, but let me explain to you what we typically do when we have a client who is considering a new project. The project can be, you know, buying a certain equipment, maybe an office expansion, maybe it could be that they are acquiring a new practice. One of the most commonly used strategic planning framework is referred to as SWOT analysis.
Now the SWOT analysis is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Basically it's a business framework that is used by businesses of all kinds to determine both the external and the internal factors that affects that business.
Also, the strengths and opportunities are the positive, typically the side of the.
This framework and the weaknesses and threats are the negative part. So let me go through the detail with you on how you can set up a SWOT analysis for your practice so you can better again understand how to allocate your resources.
Once you understand what the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats are. So, so let's look at the strengths. So what you can do is you can create basically four quadrants and you can have a meeting with your management team, your office team, if you're a small office, you can have invite your assistants and so forth to be involved. And yeah, I mean, do not overlook the information that can be shared even from some of the lower ranking people in your company because all of this can be very, very extremely valuable. So anyway, so we have four quadrants here. We have this, the strengths, we have the weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The strengths are going to be list of items that basically is going to make you stand out.
From the competition. It's going to give you a competitive position in the marketplace. Okay. And.
The weaknesses are going to be areas where you have to be very candid. So these are areas where you need to learn how to manage these weaknesses better so you can face them early on so you're not caught off guard. And then opportunities are basically some external opportunities that may be available to you and your practice where you can explore sometimes when we'll look at some Examples here, but sometimes the weaknesses that you have may actually be an opportunity that you can grow into. Obviously the threats, the threats sometimes are more macroeconomic factors that can affect your business. So you need to understand what some of those threats are and be prepared to handle all of these together in your strategic planning. Now I typically recommend that most doctors that are part of my coaching team.
Coaching clients, they do this at least once a month, if not at least once every two months and have this available so they can constantly evaluate their competitive position in the marketplace. So let's look at some examples and you can make as much list, as many items as you want on your list is totally up to you. So let's take a look. So strengths, let's say a doctor is looking at it only. He's the only dentist in a 10 mile radius. Let's say he says, you know what, I have the latest equipment and technology. I offer payment options.
I do some advanced techniques such as all on four where other clinics are not doing it.
We use various technology applications to basically book patients. Patients can get to us fairly easy. We have free parking, we are open long hours and weekends. And obviously these are all strengths. Now in future lessons, we will be able to look at these strengths and evaluate and assess them to see if they're truly competitive, a sustainable competitive advantage or not. So for example, all on four was a very like a competitive strength and competitive advantage for many practices for many years once when it was initially introduced back in the early 90s. But then gradually over the years, more and more.
Surgeons went on to get training. And pretty much now you can find all on four practitioners pretty much all around the world in different cities that are capable of doing the surgery. Now if you're looking at like zygomatic surgery, that is still a sustainable competitive advantage because there are not too many people who are doing those zygomatic surgery. But at the same time you don't have enough patients that are also asking for that type of a procedure. So anyway, we will look at these in the future lessons through a different framework to see what is a sustainable competitive advantage. Now the second quadrant here is about the weaknesses. The weaknesses could be that, you know what, I do not have enough dental rooms to treat more patients. Many maybe I cannot find dental associates that want to work in a small city. Or it could be that, you know, we do not have enough budget to buy a 3D cone beam, a dental laser.
Have to rely on a specialist to come to my office to do the dental work for me. My Office is outdated or not all team members are computer literate. So I cannot incorporate technology very easily into my office. So let's look at this for example. Example, let's say one of your weaknesses is have to rely on a specialist come to the office. Well, that is a weakness. So by understanding this, you can create a strategic plan as how you can manage this weakness. Part of it could be that you can attend some training and surgical residencies and so forth, so you can become good at possibly even just doing single dental implants. So you do not have to rely on a specialist schedule to come to your office. So if you have a patient coming in with a broken tooth, they can go ahead and take care of you can go ahead and take care of that patient right then and there. Okay? So again, understanding these weaknesses allows you to focus on how you can manage these weaknesses. Maybe your weakness is you have an office that is outdated. Well, if your office is outdated and there are some new offices coming in town, then it could be the patient's perception that they have a higher value if your fees are the same.
Or equal to the other one. So you have to assess all of this in a strategic fashion. Now, the next quadrant could be opportunities. So the opportunities could be that, you see. You know what, if I have a chance to increase my capacity by adding some dental chairs, maybe I can grow my office, make it bigger, maybe break the wall down and so forth. Maybe I can hire an associate. Then I can, you know, produce more, and I can maybe take some more time off and I can grow the practice more. Maybe the opportunity is to do more bigger and comprehensive cases. So then part of your strategic plan could be that I'm going to go ahead and go to.
Some of these programs. Excuse me, Some of these programs that they teach, you know, big case management like a spear education or the Las Vegas Institute, or, for example, you know, the Pankey Institute and so forth. So those are all part of your strategic plans. Okay. Now, as far as the threats are concerned, the threats could be things like, you know what, there's a new dental office opening.
Corporate dentistry is basically coming into my town and opening office. These are out of my control. These are external factors. So how can I prepare myself for these threats? Well, if there's a new dental office opening, can I make sure that maybe I can add more value to what I'm doing for patients? Maybe I can, you know, have, I don't know, longer hours, better equipment, better train the staff to handle the phone calls coming in and so forth. Okay, maybe part of the threats is that.
You know, I have.
Lots of, you know, international patients and we have currency fluctuations. Okay. So if we know that threat early on then we would not focus as much of our strategic planning on international patients but rather focus more on local patients and provide them exceptional service locally. And I have had a client like this before where we had talked about growing in domestic market and less emphasis on international market but unfortunately.
Not all clients listen to you as a consultant and sometimes they make big, big mistakes. So anyway I hope this video helps you better understand about strategic planning using the SWOT framework And if you find this video of a value please share it with others but you also can contact me for a personalized coaching for your practice and and I can help your practice in various areas of growth and I basically help doctors develop their businesses, scale and sell them successfully. Thank you and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye bye.
