From 70-Hour Weeks To Freedom - Allied Health Systems

But if you're that knight in shining armor that comes in and saves the day, then you have just built your own prison.

We talk about that being a loop of dependency.

All right, Cathy, this, I feel like this has been a long time coming.

It's like the date we've been trying to organize for 3 years. So delighted to be here.

We've done a lot of work together and there's a lot to love about Cathy Love. I feel like, um, I mean, you live on the Mornington Peninsula.

I took the, uh, the beach route to get here.

You, uh, you work with allied health businesses. We work with a lot. We find the systems message really connects with them. You, you love systems champions. You've, you've got two of them.

I know you've met them already.

Uh, and you love Systemology. And I'm just looking forward to getting your insights because, you know, allied healthcare businesses probably better than anyone in Australia because you work with so many so closely. And I'd love to just learn more about some of their challenges and how you help them get over those challenges and where the Systems message really fits into that. So first things first, thank you so much for making some time.

Oh, thank you for having me. And back at you, Dave. As I was driving up, I was thinking, how would Dave measure the impact that Systemology has had? And I I couldn't do the math because I was clearly driving, but the Systemology is just such an extraordinary method for developing systems, but not only developing them, but really rolling them out so that people use them. And I was thinking, do you even know how many businesses it's in and how many employees it impacts and how many days it improves?

Hundreds of thousands of businesses. I know that much. To quantify it. I always have trouble just quantifying it at the one business level because the business owner sometimes will say, what is the impact of having good systems? And I'm like, it affects everything. It touches everything. Some things, you know, we can talk about bottom line profits, but then there's a whole bunch of intangible things like what is the price for having freedom to be able to choose how you work in the business, which is ultimately the freedom that a lot of business owners search for. So it's, it's very hard for me to, to quantify, but I feel what touches me most is getting the messages from the business owners, having them say, hey, this transformed and changed my life. And the, the longer I've done this now, we're probably close to a 10-year journey now. I've just recently had a few interviews where we get to tell that long-term story. I know there's a lady, I'll have to share you the link, Renee Kelly. Cool. What a fantastic systems journey she's been on. So that's, yeah, I love seeing at that level. To drill into NAYKA, because that's your business, if you can, I'd love to know a little bit for the people who don't know your work, the work that you do and whom you serve. And I think that'll kind of give us some Really good context for the discussion.

We're down the rabbit holes already, which is quite glorious. Uh, yeah, NAKA Consulting grew out of a clinical business that I ran. So I've got occupational therapy DNA, and I've always worked with children and families and educators in the disability sector. And I've worked all over the world and had extraordinary work experiences to the point that you don't realize how good they were till like 10 years after you've left the job. But I started my own private practice in the mid to late '90s. And like many, it started on the dining room table in the little square 6 inches that there was there and was community-based. But then I went into clinics and then I had multiple sites and I had teams of employees and contractors and I sold all of that. And I sold that at a time before the NDIS was coming in. I was part of a federal reference group that was working in the room next door to the architects of the NDIS. So we cross-pollinated and I could see what was coming and I didn't think that I wanted to be part of that. What I didn't know was that I was going to become a business consultant and business coach and run a small but mighty team supporting exactly those providers who stayed in, in the game. So NAKA Consulting kind of grew out of a clinical business. I trained as a coach. I was running other advocacy and parent support programs post-sale before NAKA took flight. And it was an accidental start.

Yeah.

But I think being naturally quite entrepreneurial since childhood, I sort of thought I've always been curious about what I've got and how I can help and how I can just make people's lives a bit easier, whether it's at work or at home or at school. So my colleagues, bless them, started phoning and saying, well, now you're not running your own business. How did you do this? And how did you do that? And I said, oh, well, you've got to speak with so-and-so, or you've got to follow that or read that thing, or your accountant should be able to. And I had all of this knowledge that I honestly had no clue was helpful. I just assumed I was 20,000 miles behind all of the other business owners, and there were only a handful of us in the mid to late '90s. I sold in 2012, by which point there was more popping up, and it was just an assumption that I had barely enough to run my business. But what I had in the context of my clinical and really, um, industry knowledge was incredibly valuable.

Yeah. I think the bit as well that you've learned so well is the business side of allied healthcare. Cause I mean, it's very common for a business owner to know their craft. They're on the tools. I mean, anyone in allied health, that's what they train up to be, like the practitioner that helps the patient. And then like all small businesses and business owners, they realize, oh wow, there's a lot of other skills required to run the business. Beyond just doing the work. And oftentimes they, they'll get trapped doing the work or on the tools, being the person, because that's what they've been trained to do. And that's all they ever know. And it's that, that bridge that so many people struggle with. And I've watched it over the years. You've developed a huge base of knowledge that fills in all of the gaps. You don't tell someone how to be a better therapist. You show them how. How to Build a Better Therapy Business. Yeah.

Well, we're both familiar with the story of Sarah in the bakery, right? So we won't unpack that one. There'll be a link if you want to read about that one, I'm sure. And it's like passionate cooks opening a café. It's that piece about where someone has a unique clinical knowledge set that they— that's why they went to university. That's why they got their degree. And for a range of for a range of reasons, they find themselves the very surprised business owner. And I think there's a piece there that I remember I sat with until I realized it was just the biggest problem in the business. It was actually me. It was this bit, well, I'm educated, I'm smart, I know what's going on. I've got a degree, I've got a degree. Why on earth can't I understand the business stuff? And I thought that my clinical skills were transferable into a commercial environment. Some of them were, especially leadership and communication and some of those things. But there's all these other skills around HR and money and customer service and systems. We will get to talk about systems, I'm sure. Marketing, can't even remember the list now. There were all these other things that I could have a good common sense go at, but that wasn't enough. To run the business that was scaling way quicker than my capability was as well. So I— and it is quite anxiety-producing for many allied health business owners that their commercial, their business acumen, their people leadership isn't at the same level as their clinical prowess. And that's tension. That's tension to listen to. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just a little tap on the shoulder that, you know, you might need to upskill in these other areas. And the clinician kind of will grow into a CEO-type role if they have the awareness of that bridge and if they're willing to invest in themselves so that they grow faster than their business.

What are some of those early problems that these clinicians start to have? Like when they, like they're stretched thin, they're not, wearing all of the hats very well? Like what often surfaces specifically allied healthcare practitioners?

I wrote a blog last night about the fact that I was about to go on leave. I go on leave all the time.

Your sabbaticals. I've heard of your sabbaticals.

My sabbaticals, when I'm only to be found on a remote beach somewhere ridiculous. And as this blog kind of baked. It was about the fact that I have remarkable people who do remarkable work, and that is made easy by the fact that we've got systems that work. They don't work all of the time. I'm very happy to share about what some of our glitches this week has been, but it's a bit about having operational backbone, and we'll define systems, I'm sure, such that good people can do their best work with as little friction as possible. That frees me up. I do not have to be putting out the fires, I do not have to be making a certain level of decisions. I have oversight, but I don't have anxiety about hoping that people are doing what they've been told to do. We don't have that culture at NACA. So some of those early red flags is feeling that the whole business depends on you, putting out fires all day, every day, being dragged into the weeds. That's an expression we have with our members, being pulled down into operational drama, I guess we could, we could call it. And all of that is exhausting. It's exhausting because so many clinicians go into business because they want to do business their way. They want flexibility. They want to be well paid. They really, really want to make a difference. And when they're kind of wrestling with something granular in their practice management system or a complaint or something, their eyes are taken right off the ball and right off the reasons about why they went into business. Us in the first, in the first place.

I imagine, and it's very common with allied health practitioners because they want to help, like they're helpers, it's baked into their DNA, which is both a blessing and a curse because that, that helper gene is also, unless it's managed correctly, I mean, if you're always helping everybody and you're the knight or knightess. I'm not sure what the female equivalent— or are they both knights? Maybe they both are. But if you're that knight in shining armor that comes in and saves the day, then you have just built your own prison.

We talk about that being a loop of dependency. And I remember this, and it still happens, but I have, you know, alertness to it, is needing to be needed. So there can be a piece where it's important to you and your status or whatever to be needed and to be the solver and to be the fixer-up of all of the things, but you create this dependency loop such that that becomes your role and you're just pulled in to do those things. It's quite a mental shift, I believe, to step through that such that you're up and out of the operations. But that can only happen with trusted delegation. And trust takes practice. Trust isn't always an overnight thing. And trust is going to be strengthened by things not always going right.

Yes. Yeah.

Yep.

I think one thing that helped me with letting go as well, and I mean, I always fall back on systems because I feel like the systems set the expectation and then says, well, here's the way that I want things done. And we try and create this open, transparent organization where everybody can see what everybody's doing and it's out in the open and that allows me to let go, like black boxes and hidden pockets of knowledge and things like that. That's where it's actually hard to trust because, you know, it's happening off where you can't see it. And it's not that I want to look under every cover and look in every corner. In fact, I don't want to do that. I don't want to micromanage.

Who has time?

Correct. You don't want to do it. And I think that's another big misconception with a lot of business owners because they're a micromanager. And it's not that they're a micromanager, it's they want something done to an appropriate standard. And if that standard was defined, if it was clear on what that was and not just trapped in the business owner's head, it's actually one of the steps to letting go, I find, which is, um, yeah, quite, uh, an interesting place to find yourself as a business owner. You've got all of these habits and tendencies that have helped you grow the practice to one size. But then it's also what stops you from growing it to the next.

It also stops you from embracing the opportunity of evolving your role in a business as well. You can live in operations and essentially be your own practice manager forever. And that might be okay if that's a conscious choice, you know, you got my support on it. But it's not everybody's conscious choice and they get very, very trapped in that piece. And that is a a ticket to burnout.

Yeah. I think one thing I love seeing with you, cause you do this just about better than anyone I know on the calls that we've had together, you know, and we've got Marcus and Regina on the call and the king and queen of systems. That's right.

Self-appointed, but well-deserved.

And we talk systems and you are just like, that's not my thing. Uh, and you've got very clear on what you're great at. And what you're not great at. You, you know, well, what are the key parts of business? And either you have to be great at it or you need someone else on your team who's great at it. But then you know what your roles are and then you're like, well, that's not my domain. Which is interesting because you love systems and processes, but it's not that you love writing them out. So I'd love to kind of unpack a little bit about how you think about that.

All right, let's just relax onto the psychiatrist's couch here. I am systemized. I love them and I loathe them. The creative part of me—

In equal measure.

Not always. Not always. I'm exceptionally creative. Nothing makes me happier than creating something and throwing it over to my implementers. I've learned that that's not always well received. So I am growing up eventually, but I know they need it. When I sold my first clinical business, I pretty much sold the operation operational system for a small private practice.

Yeah.

And I sold an extraordinary team of clinicians who have, on the whole, all gone on to run their own businesses. And we're still mates, which is, which is great. So I absolutely respect and admire, and I know that a small but mighty and efficient business needs operating systems that people are willing to follow. So I'm more enamored of the outcomes of it because it means that I can have oversight of it. I just need to know what's working and what isn't and who's going to do what to address it. So we have a really strong improvement culture. We're reasonably comfortable with things screwing up because it gives us a chance to improve or to just quickly pull it apart. And so something that perhaps isn't always thought about is systems is there such a part of your quality and improvement framework as well. In that we know what works most of the time, and glitches, just a chance to kick it down the road and improve it a bit. So I know that they're absolutely essential for me to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants, which I say in front of my team and all of our events all of the time, such that I can do what I'm better at. And that might be partnerships, it might be consulting, it might be supporting clients, it might be meetings, meeting with members of parliament, might be meeting with peak bodies. It might be all sorts of conversations that fill out my knowledge and fill my heart, but will also ripple through to supporting allied health business owners leading the business lives that they want.

When did you discover this and how? Was it by reading the E-Myth? You mentioned about Sarah Story a little bit earlier. Is it when you're running the practice? Is it come from a parent? Did you always know it? Um, ah, because once you see it, it's obvious, like a systems business versus a non-systems business. Like, why would you choose?

Yeah, like it's a school day and I'm going to be down the beach most of the rest of the day. I cannot put my finger on one single thing. I've been asked this question, interestingly, quite a few times in different ways over the, over the years. And I, we're human, right? Like we're human and we have so many influences through our childhood and through our teen years and through university. I've traveled a lot. I've been very fortunate, or I've made the opportunity to travel a lot. And it's one of my values. But I've also had the opportunity to have conversations and to work alongside a remarkable range of people. Both in my clinical world, but also in my personal world, in my broader professional world. I've always been a fan of investing in what I don't know. And this sounds a bit bizarre, but I'm also a fan of getting to the edges of what I'm not comfortable in. And I've worked with executive coaches, extraordinary mentors. I've worked with people who I've learned to love and respect, but they were, they were on my edge of comfort at the start. So I guess, I guess there's always been some constant challenging. I'm very clear about what I don't know, but I'm also really curious about, well, what if I got to know it and I liked it?

Yeah. Yeah.

So there's some curiosity there. But it's been a huge, a huge element in my family and in the teams that I've worked in that we invest in ourselves.

Yeah, yeah, perfect. Um, one thing that you invest in also is your team, because I know you've got your systems champions and training them up and getting them to follow— like, I mean, you've gone all in on Systemology, which I absolutely love, and you're such a great advocate for the work that we do, um, introducing us to your clients. What, what is it that you see the gap that Systemology fills? Um, because, because I saw it, like, uh, when I, I saw this whole systems thing and I read, read the books like you. I'm a great self-learner. I thought there's a big hole here, um, that, that's not very well addressed.

Yeah.

Um, What was it that you saw in Systemology as something that could help your clients?

I'm going to answer in two parts. First of all, it helped us. Yeah, it absolutely helped us. When I sold my clinical business, the new buyers wanted to see all my systems. You know, showing them a PDF, that's the first clue of the problem, uh, wasn't enough. He said, no, I want you to print them out. So I went back to the office at night because no one knew I was selling, and I popped into Officeworks. I got a thing of paper and an arch lever folder, and I just sat and printed all this stuff, just mortified and quite proud. And I filled the first arch lever folder and thought, oh my gosh, hit pause, back to Officeworks, shameless plug, I guess there. And I filled a second arch lever folder. So we're talking about nearly 1,000 pages of systems. And when I sort of, you know, started to build in the infrastructure for Naker Consulting, I knew I followed a similar methodology. We had all of our systems like a recipe book, locked down in a PDF. And then we got into the whole cult of Asana. I think we used some others first, but certainly got into Asana in the early days. And what we were doing, we were putting our policies and procedures on the one ticket.

Yeah.

Which we thought was great. And it just meant that there was so much reading and so much thinking before you could even do the bloody task.

Get to the task. Yes, you love a scrolling.

Yeah. And we were, we had it all in one place and we were very systems thinking. We often call them recipes because it just feels a bit more friendly and accessible, but it meant that we didn't have workflows. We had a whole jumble of how you, how you do it. So I heard about Systemology through someone that we both know, with some people that you were working with, and she knew your, one of your managers at the, at the time. And she said, I think you should really look at it. I think you'll like it. I don't know if I ever told you this. I read the book on a flight from Melbourne to Sydney. And by the time I landed, I was drinking the Kool-Aid. And so what it did, to answer your question, was it pulled apart the workflow from the workhouse. That's the language we use with our clients. The workflow is task over time and the workhouse is how you do the thing, whether it's your moment in that workflow. And that was a game changer. Our Asana card started to look very different very quickly. And I don't know if you know, our daughter was our first— my daughter was our first Systems Champion. I need to interview her.

I love—

you do, and I'll tell you why later. You absolutely do.

I love that, that relationship that it's almost like a mentor-mentee thing that happens when it's a child and they take on a Systems Champion role. I've seen so many cases of a family member running with this and it being a game changer.

It's just DNA, isn't it really? Yeah, we'll talk about that later. So she sort of set up the architecture for it. She read the book, she was working in the business probably at the time when you did the early work with us all those years ago. And when she handed it to Marcus and Regina, she said, you know, it's all yours now, don't mm it up. And they're still all mates and I know they've been communicating this this week over something completely different. So it was the pull apart, the workhows from the workflows. That was a game changer. And that was the first time I'd ever seen it so clearly articulated to have a system for developing your systems. Gold. We already had SOP templates and I think we use a mix of yours and ours from the book. But what the book did was push it past what I knew. No, what it articulated was what I knew energetically, that it's one thing to have them, but it's— you're only at step 4 at that point. You've got a few more to go to bring the crew along to like them and to use them and to see the value of them.

Ah, hey, I know you're tuned in right now, so I'll keep this super quick, but You like awesome YouTube videos, don't you? Well, there's not really that many YouTube channels that create great content about how to systemize your small business. So I want to make sure that you catch every video that I publish. So if you haven't already, firstly, give this video the thumbs up and then go ahead and subscribe to my channel. You can even hit the bell notification to make sure that you're the first to know when I publish anything. So go ahead, Do it right now. I'll wait a sec and then I'll transfer you back to the video. It's funny, when I saw the whole, the whole I saw was there's a big case for why, but it was the how-to and a simple enough how-to that someone could follow with clear steps. And I'm finding a lot of people, yeah, different places. Some people don't have your recipes in place. Other people have recipes. Some people, uh, like, have systems champions, some people don't. Everybody's at a different journey, but it's a very easy system to hop into and just start moving through and to fill in gaps. Yep.

Allied Health business owners totally, totally get that they need to have systems, but there are 101 definitions of what systems are. Yeah, doing some air quotes here. Uh, I would want to put my very last Fredo Frog on systems being a document, a PDF document, or maybe a Word document with headings and some search functionality. And that's a great start. Like, I'm not going to kind of put that under the bus. That is hours and hours and hours of work and unpacking from people's heads. But the work that we like to do is to translate that into something more operational and something perhaps a little more sophisticated. Like an Asana platform. There are lots of others. We'll just use Asana to represent all of the others, such that you have, you know, some of the principles of project management is shared visible workflows along with deadlines and deliverables. And heaven help it if, you know, my name is against any of those things. And so to bring it to life in a platform like Asana means that everyone can see what everyone is doing enough of the time for it to work. I think it also makes it easier to change and to bring improvement and quality through things as well, that you're not stuck at home at midnight trying to find the part in the document to update how you do that piece now. You can just find those steps and update and update them. So it gives so much more flexibility.

There's a couple of little things you've mentioned, which are almost like themes that are starting to come through. And I think it's One of them, when you have a systems mindset, there's a misconception that they will be very rigid and once they're set in stone, they are what they are. And then that removes chance for creative thought, those sorts of things. But what you're talking about is we're creating a culture of constant, never-ending improvement where adjusting and tweaking and things break and then we improve it. And That's part of the process. I think that's absolutely a real key one. And what, why do you think allied health practitioners resonate so well with systems? There's a few industries that I see it with, like trades-based businesses, engineering, architect, like any of that sort of stuff. Yeah. Even like auto repair shops. Allied health is another one. It feels like there is a way of doing certain things. Like there are certain SOPs, or I don't know, it's a lot. Oftentimes a lot of them know intuitively that they need them. And some of them even have parts in place. Um, and I don't, I don't know exactly what that is.

It's interesting because the, all of those, uh, industries that you mentioned are very, methodical and structural, and you can't do this until those 3 things are done. Oh, you've given me something to think about, albeit while I'm on the beach this afternoon. I don't have a fast and firm answer on that. I'm not sure how that clinical brain, because that's the brain that went to university, how that brain shows up in a really methodical methodical, sequential way. There's got to be something in the DNA, in the temperament, in the training that craves a methodical approach. But so many clinicians and allied health business owners I know are so wildly creative as well.

I think that was one thing. Again, I'm just looking for the common elements in the allied practitioners that I've seen, and I think of like Renee Kelly, and I think of you as well. Um, very successful, both have exits, but very creative. But it's almost— she has the same thing. She's like, I'm not the systems person. She had her person, Caleb, and she appointed him, and he worked his way up through the ranks and systemized the business, and it was a key part. But it's exactly the same thinking as you're talking about here. And that makes me think there's a lot of other allied healthcare practitioners that are probably that level creative, and for some reason they think, oh, because I'm that creative, I can't have systems.

I don't want to be locked in. Yeah, maybe there's another piece to this triangle, or maybe there's another corner, and that is about your business acumen and your commercial confidence. Yeah, because model that we kind of work with, we've got a whole A whole third of our model is on operational excellence. And we talk about effective services, systemized productivity, and spirited improvement. And to be commercially confident, to be commercially successful, you cannot put out all of those fires on your own. You cannot be available 24/7. You cannot be in micromanagement mode all of the time. You cannot just be hoping that good people will do good work without some structural way of measuring it. So maybe there's a piece there that it sits a bit with what they want from their business and what they want financially from their business, what they want by reputation and joy and time in and out and on their business as well. Dunno.

Yeah, I try and, because I think about allied healthcare practitioners that are listening to this and I'm always thinking, how do I build the case? How do I get someone to throw their hat over the fence and say, I'm going to do this. Like, for me, a big turning point was, okay, I found out we were pregnant and I thought, right, I don't want to be just chained to the business working ridiculous hours and not being present. I know other clients, they've consciously thought, hey, I'm getting a bit older here, I need to think about exit. There's other things I want to be doing with my time. I don't want to just be chained to the therapy chair. Oftentimes for a lot of them, it's there's some turning point which becomes the catalyst and the trigger. But I don't know if that's something I can engineer or create. I mean, I try and build the case. We talk about, you know, the ROI on this. I don't know if you've got any thoughts on the clients that you have seen, like thinking of some of your best clients that have really crushed it. If there was something that either you did that triggered this chain reaction, or if they were just ready and it's like age-old Confucius, the teacher will appear when the student is ready. I don't know if you've got any.

All I can hear in what you're saying, Dave, is time and freedom.

Yeah, yeah.

It's all I can hear. And in our Boardroom Program, one of the metrics that we measure and manage is work hours. And we look at the hours that they're client-facing, that they're team-facing, that they're business-facing. And we measure personal recovery as well. And it is extraordinary to see those numbers change in the right way for that business owner. And so I guess there's a question or an invitation here that if you're an allied health business owner here and you want to be working less hours, yeah, to unpack that and to think, what's it going to take for you to work less hours? Is a really good chance it's not recruiting more people. It's a really good chance it's not opening a second clinic. It's a really good chance it's not bringing in a marketing agency.

Yeah.

You know, some of the critical drivers, well, probably one of the main critical drivers is going to be, um, does the business run without you? What's that going to take? Good people doing good work with good systems.

Yeah. Which some of those things you said there It's very obviously counterintuitive because a lot of practitioners think, oh, the way I'm going to fix my business is I just need more clients. I just need to get them through the door and that'll get the cash flow going and everything will get going. Or they, um, they don't necessarily recognize that sometimes throwing more people at it isn't going to solve the problem. It's only going to multiply chaos.

It's like whack-a-mole. Like whack-a-mole.

Yeah.

20 seconds later, something else pops up. So I guess there's this sort of questioning spiral that we've got the opportunity to invite people to think through.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, because I see systems as being absolutely critical to me working less.

Yeah.

Or working differently, whatever I choose.

Yeah, I feel like that's, that's the key, and I do I would like to think that intuitively, even if you were a creative, uh, person, that you would still recognize that systems, um, make it possible for you to transfer tasks and get them done to a certain standard, and that's going to give you freedom. And the reality is you actually want everything in your business that has to happen a certain way clients have to be, or patients have to be onboarded. They get into the waiting room, there's certain things they have to do. At the end of seeing the, you know, having their session, they're going to have to be booked in for the next session. There's certain steps that happen for claiming NDIS. There's all stuff that has to happen.

My brain is just sparking with delight.

Like, it all has to happen a certain way. So that stuff is the stuff that should be systemized. And then the pocket when, you know, the clinician is sitting there with the patient. If everything else is systemized, that actually gives them the space to be creative and do their best work.

And bring personality to the session.

Because they can be present because they don't have to think, oh, did we send that claim form incorrectly? I think that's the bit.

Ticket to Freedom.

Yes.

But it's Ticket to Freedom for the business owner and for the practice manager and for the team leaders. And for the clinicians. And you say very clearly at the start of the book that not every element needs to be systemized. You need key systems. And what got me hooked, second chapter, third chapter, gosh, I could have really reread the book before this, couldn't I? Was that is putting the person in the middle of the systems because any system is only ever going to be as good as the system is who it serves.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Were there any other takeaways? Now I'll put you on the spot. Were any other things that you took from the book or any of my work that stands out?

Like, here we go, president of the David Jenyns fan club. Uh, the book is so readable.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, who would have thought that a book about systems could be a page-turner? Could be really interesting. And, um, I don't know, I should be on some commission for book sales. I know I've given away dozens and dozens of them because you've been so generous in providing them. But what I— the sticky note I put on the front is, this book is not what you think.

Yeah, yeah.

This book is really interesting. Consider this a recipe book. So the book is very accessible. Your knowledge is very accessible. You're very generous with who you support and you've come in and backed us at Naked Consulting and backed our clients. I think the key thing is the model and that it is a series of stepping stones that puts people front and center of the systemization of any business. I think without that, it might have landed on the technical bookshelf and been quite inaccessible, I guess, emotionally and energetically.

It's been—

Is that enough?

Do I get the Christmas hamper? Yeah, go for it.

Thank you.

You do. I think one thing, a great sign of a great system is a system that is, has enough detail that you can follow it, but it's not too much detail that it's so optimized to one specific scenario. There's a sweet spot in the middle. It's not over-detailed, but it's not under-detailed. And then that way it can be applied to many different circumstances. I've really loved watching— I mean, there's huge disruption with AI right now, and even still I'm finding the core of the Systemology process and the framework still works. Even after— yeah, and it's just, if anything, it's become more relevant now to be clear on your systems and your processes. I'd love your thoughts on what you're seeing with the changes in allied health? I know you mentioned, well, obviously NDIS is completely changing, but there's so much change going on.

I need notice on that.

Yeah. And AI has just flipped it on its head. I mean, people are using it for meeting notes and counseling. Yeah, there's so much. It's getting used for planning and back office stuff. What are you seeing with your clients?

Everything and nothing. So everyone has got their own spot of discomfort. Or addiction with AI. And I guess it's important to get on the record here that allied health is bound by the Australian privacy rules and principles. And so this is almost kind of a point of tension as well. Well, what can I use and what data can I put where? And I think, oh my gosh, that organization doesn't have a policy or procedure that this person knows about that they should be following. So overarching, there is a very strict governance on where clinical information is used and stored. In allied health, there are a couple of, or several, amazing purpose-built AIs that support, or agents that support clinicians. It can record sessions, it can provide summaries, it can support you with your documentation. And yeah, is a couple that are increasingly well used and very much respected and really appreciated for the, not only the time saving. I think there is an assumption that any sort of agent is going to save the clinician time. That is part of it. It does not take away the clinical responsibility or clinical governance. But I am going to suggest that these new tools are actually challenging and maybe coaching and maybe sharpening some of the clinical thinking as well. I certainly know what it's done for me as a writer and a podcaster and a coach. It's really challenged the way I've written and it's really given me a bit of a kick and it's got me back to writing, which is something I've always loved. So the clinical AI tools are amazing. Yeah, absolutely amazing. But I can also understand where they're uncomfortable and they're not going to be for everybody yet. But if you're not increasing your— if you're not intentionally strengthening your confidence and capability and capacity with them, I'm not sure how employable you will be.

Yeah, I think I almost—

which is really— I can't believe those words have come out of my face. But anyway, that's kind of what I'm known for as well. It just might be a requirement or else. I don't know.

I do feel like every clinician needs to be thinking about what is the magic that they provide that the AI and the robots can't, and they need to be doubling down on that. I mean, it's the relationships, it's sitting in the room with the patient and talking through that and providing that human empathy and understanding. And I think everything else around that and the running of the practice and the organization and all the back office stuff, like that is prime to go to the robots to then free the clinician up to do what they do best and to bring their unique magic. And I think that's what a lot of them should be thinking about. One use case I'm hearing, which is great, I mean, the AI is great at taking in all of the context. So when it comes to patient notes, like A clinician is meeting God knows how many patients every single week and they're hearing different stories and it's very hard to, you know, you'd have a full brain and then the patient comes in and, but if the AI just has the context and the complete history of everything that's gone on with that person, it does tremendously well to summarize and serve that up in a block to, you know, the clinician who can then go, ah, yep, okay, bang, I'm up to speed now. And it puts me very much in the moment.

The clinician then, the clinician has to learn to trust all of that as an adjunct to their clinical self. But as that evolves, I do wonder whether, and I don't work as a clinician nowadays, but I do wonder whether with a good AI, trusted AI partner, that it brings them that time and freedom again to be back to the creative clinical self, the wholehearted clinical self, tapping back into many of the reasons that they went to university for. If it reduces some of the administrative— oh, I don't want to use burden because we're talking about people in their lives, that's not the right word—

but obligations for compliance.

But there's something else that I'm a bit worried about with this AI bit, and that is allied health businesses positioning to understand where their clients' data is ending up. Yeah, yeah.

Very important. Yeah.

And I've been asked just this week, well, how do I manage when clinicians are using their AIs? And I said, just stop, just stop. Just need, you know, literally had heart palpitations because there wasn't security measures in place yet. There was 49 minutes later, let me tell you, about where this data is ending up. And so yeah, some policy and procedure around that. Yeah, really quick smart is going to be important because clinicians are nearly always going to want to do their best, but they may not have a complete and remarkable understanding about the impact of taking stuff out to their own personal AI systems.

The reality is the business owner, someone who owns an allied healthcare business, needs to know that their staff are using these tools. So compliant. You're much better off saying, well, hey, here's how we use these tools and here's how I've set it up for you. And you can use this particular closed AI system that That we do is safe and compliant. That's the key. I think they need to be on the front foot because if they're not doing that, then, you know, especially some of the juniors, they're just going to ChatGPT and pasting in the transcripts from client sessions, which is not good for anybody.

My toes are curled.

Yes.

The other interesting piece that we're watching and got lovely partnership and conversations with is some of the practice management software systems are bringing in their own AI, like in-housing it as such. And that's all work in progress. And I can kind of get why clinicians and business owners might say, oh, it's not as good as such and such, it's not as good as such and such. And I sort of say, it's 15 months old. We're toddling, we're toddling. The intention is there for it to be a complete closed-loop system that is probably a really, really good thing. And so patience and feedback and push it to the limits. And what you might want to do with your team in that instance is to develop the habit and the reflective practice and to talk about how you embrace it and use it in-house rather than critique it as not being good enough or that it's replacing or that it's not as good as some other external supplier. Kind of work with it.

I'm definitely finding The clients that are moving the quickest and getting the best results with AI are the ones that have all of their process down and clear. Because if you have clear process, it's very easy then to ask the AI, ah, here's how I do something. How do I do this faster, cheaper, and better with AI? And then re-engineering components. So like I said, everything outside of personal confidential information with clients is up for grabs.

Up for grabs. Well, you've spoken with Marcus and Regina from my team and they're leveraging AI all day, every day, as I expect them to. Yeah. I do as well. Our business manager does as well. And I was in a meeting just yesterday and we were checking the tone of some of our comms and looking at it thinking, how does this sound? And have we gone too far as well? And so we've put some checks and balances in place to make sure that we continue to write to the NAKA voice, that it's wholehearted, that it meets our writing guidelines, so on and so forth. We've got really strict screening for what leaves the building. And I think recently we've just been on the edge of our own tolerance points. But once again, it's having a system of checks for that, that means we can bring it back to its next place. And so right across our team, we use AI for all sorts of things. I know Marcus and Regina love it for systems. You can write policies, you can write procedures, but it doesn't mean it's going to be correct. Yeah, it's just a great place to start. It just removes the blank canvas. Terror, if you like, but it's still got to be, it's still got to run through the humans using it before it's valid, before it, you know, is a trusted piece.

I feel like one theme of today's discussion that's gone all the way through for me is around the way that you build the culture in your organization, this culture of systems, this culture of giving it a try and constant improvement. Culture of trust and letting people have the opportunity to try and solve their own problems. And if they make a mistake, that's okay. Are there any other things that you, like, is this something you actively think about and work on with culture, or is it more just in you and that's just the, you know, the, your DNA is getting impressed into the DNA of the business?

All of the above. All of the above. It's not going to exist unless it is part of my belief system. It has to come from somewhere. And my occupational therapy DNA really screams here because as an occupational therapist, I have this belief that I have a role in helping people, guiding people to become the best versions of themselves. And a lot of occupational therapy kind of marketing over the 100 million years has been, you know, we promote independence, we promote independence. I parked the independence word many, many years ago because I'm not sure humans are particularly good at independence and whether they even should be. It's about living a life where you are the best version of yourself at that moment in time with whatever supports you need, whether systems or people or trust or, or whatever. It's a very dynamic thing. You don't just get independent and that's it. And the expectation that we can do it all on our own, I just think is really faulty and not very helpful. So my OT DNA screams through our work and our coaching. It's loud in the, in the business, but it's not so loud that everybody else doesn't have their own voice and bring their own beliefs and way of working.

Yeah. It's, I love watching it. I love seeing the standard that you set. I love seeing the community that you've built. I love that you love systems. I appreciate the support of our work as well. And as I said at the start, there's a lot to love about Kathy Love. So thank you so much for your time today. And if people want to find out more and follow along with the Neika story, website, that's the best place to go.

Yes, neika.com.au.

Cast.

Oh, our podcast. We're coming up for 400 episodes. Yeah, wow. I think the team are going to do a takeover, so I won't even know what that's like. Yeah, there'll be a system for it, no doubt.

Of course. Very good. All right, thank you again.

Oh, thank you for having me.