Mark Topley, Team Performance Specialist
How would it feel to take a fortnight off, and come back to a practice that ran without you?
For most owners that sounds like a fantasy, because the practice runs on them.
Whether it can run without you comes down to your Team Performance Code: the unwritten rules for who decides what, and what happens when you're not in the building. I'll help you find yours, and then we rewrite it together.
A team that runs the practice, so you can lead it.
Find your Team Performance CodeA free 25-minute call with me. No pressure, and you'll come away knowing where to start.
Sound familiar?
The practice runs on you.
Every question comes to you
You're in surgery all day and you're still the person everyone waits for, so the day ends with a queue of decisions nobody else felt able to make.
Good people leave, and you're recruiting again
You hire well, and eight months later you're writing the same advert, because the new person walked into the same unclear set-up the last one did.
Things get agreed, then nothing changes
The team day was good and the meeting went well, and a fortnight later everything is back to how it was.
It's quicker if you just do it yourself
So you do. You hand a job over, it comes back not quite right, and before long it's back on your desk for good.
And all of it shows up in the diary, in hours spent in the office that should be in surgery, and in gaps in the book that nobody's watching.
None of that means you've got the wrong team, and it isn't because you're not working hard enough. It's your code, and codes can be changed.
The bit nobody talks about
Every practice has a Team Performance Code. Most owners have never seen theirs.
It's the pattern underneath your practice: who really decides what, where jobs land when they fall through the cracks, and what happens to a standard at four o'clock on a busy Thursday. It isn't on your org chart and it isn't in your policy folder, but your team follows it every single day.
It's why two practices with the same size team, the same patients and the same fees can feel completely different to work in, and why one runs smoothly when the owner is away while the other waits for them to come back.
The good news is that a code isn't fixed. Once you can see yours, you can rewrite it, one part at a time. Most owners can't see theirs because they're standing right in the middle of it, which is what the call is for.
The Practice Playbook
We rewrite your code together, one part at a time.
The Practice Playbook is a twelve-month, done-with-you programme for a practice owner and their practice manager. It installs the Exceptional Team System: six systems that go in in a set order, each one built into your practice and bedded in before the next one starts.
You don't write the systems, and you don't get sent away with homework you haven't got the evenings for. You get the system, and building it into your practice is what we do together. One session to build it, the next to bed it in, and when it wobbles in week three, which it will, that's what the next session is for.
Each month installs one thing and moves one number. Your numbers are taken before month one and every three months after, so what has changed is on a page, not in a feeling.
By the end, your team knows what to do, does it without being asked, and keeps your standards high whether you're in the building or not.
- Get Steady, Get Clear
- Create Culture by Design
- Say It Straight, Say It Kindly
- Get It Off Your Plate
- Hold the Line
- Hire for Fit, Land Them Well whenever you hire
Real practices, real results
What changes when the code gets rewritten
Amy now has Mondays and Fridays off. The management team sorts things out in the group chat, and she doesn't come back in on a Tuesday to a list.
patients on the waiting list, worked through and closed, and the weekly takings target is now being beaten after months of missing it.
team members say "team first" is now just how things are, and 13 of 15 say the same about handovers.
Georgia's two end-of-day reports to the owners have gone for good. Debts, accounts and CPD logs have moved to the team, and none of it has come back to her.
in business, and the owners feel on top of it for the first time. The department leads now run the day, so the practice runs because it runs, not because they're holding it up.
including a new lead nurse, with three hygienists interested and a good nurse turned away. "I used to end up lowering my standards because that was what was available."
More than 80% of the practices I work with renew, and nobody renews to be polite.
Your first 90 days
What could you expect in the first 90 days?
Your code shows where the change needs to start, and every practice starts somewhere slightly different. For most, the first ninety days look like this.
You're steadier and calmer
Your week has some shape to it again, and you know the three or four numbers that tell you how the practice is really doing.
Everyone knows who owns what
The top roles are written down and agreed, so the questions that used to come to you have somewhere else to go.
Your first gap is closed
The one thing that takes the most off your plate gets built and bedded in before anything else starts.
In good company
Practices and organisations I've worked with
And the organisations I work with
Judging panels
Find me in
Most practices don't need more ideas.
Mark Topley, Team Performance Specialist
I do one thing.
I help dental practices build teams that run the practice, and I teach the people at the top how to lead them.
If you want help with marketing or your fees, I'll point you to someone brilliant. If it's your team and how you lead it, that's me, and teaching it properly is what I'm qualified to do.
I qualified as a teacher before I ever set foot in a dental practice, and it's the reason any of this sticks. I spent thirteen years running Bridge2Aid in Tanzania, which is where I learned most of what I know about leading people who don't have to do what you say. Today I write for Dentistry and Private Dentistry and speak at the BDA and the Dentistry Show.
Why this matters to me
I've been the one holding it all up. I don't recommend it.
For a good while at Bridge2Aid I was very proud of things that worked beautifully, for as long as I was standing next to them. I hadn't built a system at all. I was the one holding it up, and in the end I burned out, properly.
I see the same thing in practices every week. Owners who are brilliant at what they do, holding everything together by being there, and quietly paying for it with their evenings, their weekends and their health.
You can always earn more. You can't get those years back.
That's why every part of this programme gets judged on one question: does it take load off you, or pile it on?
My promise
My promise to you
If I don't think the Playbook will make a real difference to your practice, I'll tell you on the call, and point you somewhere better if I can.
If you join and it isn't right for you, tell me in the first two weeks and you get your money back, as long as you've come to the onboarding and the sessions.
Your next step
Find your Team Performance Code
A free 25-minute phone call with me. We'll look at three things:
- Where your practice is today.
- What your code looks like, and the part of it that's costing you most.
- Where you'd like to be in twelve months, and whether the Playbook is the right way to get there.
You'll come away knowing where to start, whether or not we work together. If it's a fit, we'll talk about what comes next. If it isn't, I'll tell you that too.
Book your call
You may be thinking
The questions people actually ask
"I've done courses before, and nothing changed."
You've almost certainly done the courses, and you know most of what you need. This isn't another one. It's done with you, inside your practice, and the next session checks that last month's change actually held.
"I haven't got time for this."
The time is already being spent: on interruptions, on the same conversation for the fourth time, and on replacing the person who left. This moves that time to before the problem instead of after it.
"My team won't buy into it."
Your practice manager is in every session from day one, and from month seven the wider team comes in properly. People back what they've helped to build.
"What if it doesn't work for us?"
That's what the call is for, and my promise covers the rest.
"What does it cost?"
We'll talk about it on the call, once we both know it's the right fit.
Twelve months from now
It's a Tuesday morning, and you're not in the building.
The message about nursing cover goes to your practice manager, gets sorted, and you hear about it afterwards. A standard slipped last week, and someone who isn't you picked it up that same day.
You could be anywhere in the world, and the team takes full responsibility, because the practice runs on systems and the people who own them, not on you.
Find your Team Performance CodeNot ready yet?
Not ready for a call? That's fine.
Get to know me first.
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Every fortnight I run a free online session on how teams that run the practice are built, and you're welcome at the next one.
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