What 4Blocks is About
4Block Roles
We're always talking about transparency. In one sense or another, it comes up all the time in the Growth Model — it's just that important. What's great about transparency is also what can be daunting about it at first: it means that everyone is aware of what's going on. We must be aware of things in order to understand them and work on them, and awareness is the product of transparency.
Shared awareness is so valuable that it's worth working through whatever issues the prospect of operating more transparently might bring to light. The Four Blocks Model is a great example of the calm clarity and ability to improve that is created by reinforcing awareness on your team.
What 4Blocks Does
In Four Blocks, each role in the office is broken down into four outcomes each role is responsible for. Everyone in a dental practice does a million things each day, but it would not help corral any of the complexity to merely list all those tasks. Rather, clarity happens when we give each team member a way to keep outcomes in mind, and to connect those outcomes with the habits that lead to them.
Four Blocks helps everyone keep clear, front-of-mind awareness on what they need to do and how — reinforcing that all outcomes must fulfill the core responsibilities of each role, and that all of these are about taking care of patients and supporting your teammates in doing the same.
The clarity of 4Blocks vanquishes indecision and the dread of unclear expectations. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. It's all been laid out for you. All you need to do is execute.
Face-to-Face is Always Job #1
The first and most important responsibility for all team members without exception is Face-to-Face. Building and growing great relationships with patients (and teammates!) is absolutely crucial for a successful practice. To make the acronyms more memorable, Face-to-Face may appear in the middle or end of an acronym — but it's always everyone's "job #1."
An Example: Front Desk
The 4Blocks for Front Desk is represented in the acronym PAFF2. The letters stand for:
- P — Phone
- A — Appointments
- F — Financial
- F2 — Face-to-Face
All tasks and responsibilities for the Front Desk are organized under these headings. Seems simple because it is — but that simplicity mustn't be taken lightly. The 4Block Roles introduce shared language and shorthand to discussions about personal, individual, and team performance, making it easy to course-correct and improve. It's a simple, powerful step toward facilitating training and constructive conversations about role performance — and it is crucial in creating a culture of constant and never-ending improvement.