Yesterday, I attended the book launch of my mentor Ashkan Tashvir’s new book, Sustainabilism. If you haven’t come across Ashkan’s work before, he’s the creator of The Being Profile, a framework I’m now an Accredited Practitioner of, and one that has profoundly shaped how I approach leadership and practice management.
During the launch, Ashkan said something that I quickly wrote down: “We can only build systems as good as we are.”
I’ve been pondering that statement ever since.
Look at the systems and outputs of companies like Apple or Google. These aren’t just tech giants with deep pockets. They’re organisations that have fundamentally understood something about people. They hire uniquely talented individuals, then create working environments that allow those people to perform from their most powerful space.
For example, Apple is famous for hiring only the best of the best and fostering a culture where “good enough is never enough”. They encourage every employee to think differently and push boundaries. Google goes even further with their “20% time” policy, where employees can spend one day each week working on projects they’re personally passionate about. Gmail, Google News, and Google Maps all emerged from these passion projects. Both companies prioritise hiring for creativity, curiosity, and understanding what people truly want, rather than just filling roles with warm bodies.
They’ve also built cultures of psychological safety where it’s genuinely okay to take risks and fail. They hire for potential and passion, not just credentials. And they give their people autonomy to explore, innovate, and bring their whole selves to work.
Now, I’m not suggesting that dental practices need to create the kind of working environments that Google and Apple have. We have a different setup and are a completely different business model. We can’t offer our reception team 20% time to work on passion projects, and we’re not running innovation labs.
But, I do think there are valuable lessons we can take from how these companies approach hiring and creating environments where the right people can thrive.
Often in our world, we hire people because we need the role filled. We’re less particular about seeking out the best unique talents a person has to offer. It’s more based on: are they willing to work for the hourly rate we pay? Are they available for the sessions we need? Do they live close by?
I’ve done it myself. We all have.
But here’s what happens. We hire in this fashion, and then we become frustrated when these employees don’t step up in performance. We wonder why they don’t work with greater drive and initiative. We’re disappointed when they don’t have a greater influence on the output – that is, the patient experience and productivity of the practice.
But, we haven’t hired for that. We’ve hired for convenience.
Just as Apple and Google focus their hiring on creativity, ingenuity, and understanding what the consumer really wants, imagine if dental practices hired team members based upon their love of people. Their ability to work from a space of compassion and empathy. Their genuine desire to thrive in the construct of a dental practice.
Imagine if we hired people not just to fill a chair, but because they have a strong desire and ability for this work.
As dental practice owners and managers, we might WANT and KNOW the great systems that will drive success. We might have the manual, the protocols, the vision board on the wall. But do we have the team members who will carry them out? Do we have people whose own level of development and integrity can actually hold and implement these systems?
Our systems can only be as good as the people running them. And those people can only perform at the level of their own development.
This doesn’t mean we need perfect people. None of us are perfect. But it does mean we need to be far more intentional about who we bring into our practices and how we develop them once they’re here.
It means hiring for qualities like compassion, curiosity, and a genuine love of people, not just availability and proximity.
It means investing in our team’s growth, not just their task completion.
It means creating an environment where people feel safe to try new things, to fail occasionally, to bring their ideas forward.
And perhaps most importantly, it means looking at ourselves as practice owners and managers. Are we developing our own leadership? Are we working on our own integrity of Being? Because we cannot take our teams somewhere we haven’t been ourselves.
If you’re finding that your systems aren’t working as well as they should, perhaps the question isn’t “What’s wrong with my systems?” but rather “What’s the level of development – mine and my team’s – that these systems are being built upon?”