Having just finished listening to this book I would now regard it as essential reading/listening. If you run a team, or aspire to run a team at any point, or even just wish to make improvements to how you run your life, then this book could really help.

Background
The 3 authors of this book run a consultancy business providing training for other business leaders in how to lead their teams and enable their company to be productive. From the outside it sounds very cheesy but I had been recommended this book by multiple people and I am so glad I took their advice.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX)
Discipline 1 - Focus
Extraordinary results can only be achieved when you are clear about what matters most. In 4DX this means setting one or two wildly important goals (WIGs). Outside of the whirlwind that consumes most of your time running the day to day business you then work hard on these goals.

Discipline 2 - Leverage
Careful thought needs to go into working out what you and your team can do to achieve your goals. Lead measures should be tracked and worked on.

Discipline 3 - Engagement
Good ideas come and go regularly but unless you can engage your team in caring about them you will see the results from those ideas. 4DX goes into great detail about how to make the WIGs matter to your team.

Discipline 4 - Accountability
How to make the change in behaviour stick. Getting members of your team to work out the one or two most important things they can do this week to improve the lead measure and therefore work towards the WIG. Then next week every member of the team must report as a group on whether they fulfilled their promises and what they will do next week.

I do not currently manage a team but one day I probably will and I will definitely be implementing the 4DX principles when that day comes. For now I plan to use parts of it to help my current situation. My 2 WIGs for this year are to increase my private revenue and to improve my career prospects. I will be working on lead measures such as taking high detail photos to increase my case acceptance and setting myself weekly goals relating to improving my CV and enrolling on courses etc. I would strongly recommend you check this book out.

Above are a selection of some of the samples I give to patients. The big folder is my "New patient pack" including all written info I want all new patients to know. Next to that are my OHI postcards. At the top are some mini sample packs I have started giving to patients to help build extra perceived value into my exams.

The human brain processes 11 million pieces of information every second but only 40 of those are processed consciously. That means 99.999% of all of your decision making is subconscious!

The reason this is a double book review is because both #Hooked and Thinking Fast and Slow cover almost exactly the same topics and I have been reading them in parallel. Actually that's not strictly true. I have been reading Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman on and off for the past month and struggling with it. The concept is amazing (he was awarded a novel prize in 2002 for his work documented in this book) and it has probably the most thought provoking first chapter of any book I have ever read but it is not an easy read. So I had read a chapter at a time and at other times have read some of the other books I have reviewed over the last few weeks.

One of those books is #Hooked by Patrick Fagan which I found at my local library in their business section. As already stated it covers the same topic as Thinking Fast and Slow but I have found it much easier to read. It is in fact very very similar to Thinking Fast and Slow. Dozens of the research examples used are identical and #Hooked even references Thinking Fast and Slow on multiple occasions. You could actually call #Hooked an easily digestible summary of Thinking Fast and Slow.

The body of research behind both books is largely to do with how our brains work, what influences our decisions and how that can be used to get people to notice, remember and act on the information you give them.

There are so many learning points from these books and I would strongly recommend you read one or the other. Here are a few points I have jotted down while reading Thinking Fast and Slow and examples of how they could relate to dentistry:
1) Complex mental or emotional tasks drain blood glucose levels quickly resulting in loss of inhibitions. Resulting in worse decision making when hungry. Therefore have regular snacks and keep energy levels up when you know your mental or emotional drain is high.

2) Priming can have a significant impact on behaviour. Calm happy environment. Positive music. Smile pictures. Concepts of success or longevity or beauty.

3) People who use unnecessarily complex words or phrases are often seen as less trustworthy. Font and colour and clarity of text also affects people's intuitive response to whether a phrase is true or not.

4) Being in a good mood makes you better at making intuitive decisions but might make your higher thinking less inclined to switch on.

5) Your system 1 (intuitive brain) automatically wants to believe statements and recognising they may not be true requires system 2 thinking (higher power). If your system 2 is preoccupied you may believe things that you normally would not.

6) The halo effect can mean you jump to conclusions. For instance if you are not concentrating well it is easy to discount a possible minor lesion because all the other teeth look sound rather than judging it on its own merits.

7) People can be easily swayed by suggesting they might like to do things or by simple gifts. E.g. Just getting reception to ask everybody "Do you need to buy any replacement toothbrush heads?"
Or giving everybody a pack of free tepes and asking them to share your Facebook page.

And to help explain #Hooked here pages 149-151 summarising everything in the proceeding pages:

This might seem like a strange book to include on a dental blog but it actually could be quite useful for a lot of dentists. While there is a lot of very technical detail that only very tech savvy individuals will get that is balanced against a lot more broad concepts such as how to work out your brand and logo etc.

The take home messages for me from this book are:
An individual or a business needs to work out what the main purpose of their website is in the very early planning stages and build it all around that.
Brand ethos cannot be overlooked as it guides all marketing
Logo design can be difficult to get right
Basic search engine optimisation can be done easily
If you want really high website traffic or will be reliant on your website bringing you business get professionals who know their stuff as it gets very complex.