183: Cracking the Growth Code: Defining Your Departments

First right question that you need to be asking when you're looking at department issues and department growth. Hi, I'm Emmett Scott, and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show, we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems, and get you the answers you need to face these challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the EO Growth Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott. Today I want to talk about the first right question that you need to be asking when you're looking at department issues and department growth. One of the things I'm noticing as I'm coaching individuals, helping them scale their group, is that the question I commonly get is things like, hey, Emmett, what should be my. What should my RCM look like? What is the right costs associated with my rcm? What should my HR look like? What's the right cost? Hey, I want to hire an HR director. Hey, I want to hire someone for marketing. Hey, I want to hire someone for finance. And one of the first right questions that I realize is not getting asked is, so how are you defining that department? And maybe it's because we feel like, well, we don't want to say that because maybe that makes it more complicated, or maybe we think everybody already knows what that means, or maybe we already have it built out in our head exactly what it should look like, and we think everyone can see that same thing. So one of the things I just want to lay out here is a few of the items that go into just a few of these departments so that you can start asking the first right question. And the first right question is, how am I defining this? By the way, this is the right question for a lot of situations, like, what is success? What does profitability mean? Et cetera. What is the true definition? I see as leaders, oftentimes we talk past people, talk past one another, even as partners, because we're assuming that we're defining things the same way. So let me just give you some tactical examples. Then you can expand this principle out to other places that you're leading and growing in your dental group. So, number one, let's take on hr. Hey, Emmett, I want to hire someone for my hr. Or I'm not sure if my HR person's doing a good job, or what should my cost be for hr. So the first right question is how are you defining hr? Well, how would you break that out? Well, number one is do you have someone? Oh, here was another one that has come up recently is hey, I'm looking to hire someone from the outside to consult us on hr. So again, what are we talking about? I think a lot of times what people are looking for is the regulatory component of hr. So let's put that as a bucket. There is a regulatory component associated with HR that someone needs to be out there looking at the landscape saying hey, is the exempt employee definition changing? And anybody who's below this amount, we're going to have to now move them to hourly. By the way, that's happening. So something to watch for or hey, if I do a write up, what's the right way? Or if I let someone go, what's the right way? That's someone kind of like an attorney or someone who's an expert in the HR regulatory components. Another definition of HR might be someone who's managing the admin benefits. You know, who's the one having the conversation with the insurance broker who's determining what the 401k plan and how that's managed, Working with payroll or is part of admin also doing payroll. Are you responsible for working with accounting and determining what raises are going to be or are raises approved? If an office manager comes to you, what is the process around that? You can see that these are different capabilities, different individuals for each of these positions. Now starting off, you might be the person right now it's like, yeah, I know who that is, that's me for everything. But even just being aware that you do have these different buckets of responsibility and starting to expose where you feel strong and very capable in your HR responsibilities and where you might feel weak. What about culture events, fun that usually gets piled on hr? Who's responsible for that? Is that you? Is that somebody else recruiting? That's almost totally different than watching all those regulatory managing the 401k piece, managing insurance benefits. This is a marketing position, a sales position. How are we going to do our recruiting? Am I responsible for the associate piece? Am I responsible for the staff piece? Which quickly leads to training other people in HR components. Who's training them on sexual harassment policies? Who's training them on how to do a proper hiring and not ask questions that's going to injure company in a lawsuit? Who's the one that's training them on how to do coaching and write ups in a proper way? And who's putting those Documents together. So there's regulatory, there's admin piece, there's culture events and fun, there's recruiting, there's coaching, there's raises and bonus piece. There's all of these things that we lump into hr. Now hopefully those of you who are maybe in HR feel a little bit validated, like oh yeah, I was wondering why I felt pulled in so many different directions. But for those of you who are leaders who are trying to scale, you need to start thinking about these different functions. Now. This isn't limited to just hr. Let's think about rcm, Revenue cycle management, the billing piece. Oftentimes we just call it rcm. Hey, are you guys outsourcing your rcm? Which part of the RCM are we talking about? Are we talking about sending out the claims? Are we talking about posting the EOBs? Are we talking about reconciling to bank accounts? Are we talking about appeals to the insurance company? Are we talking about collections piece? Maybe we have some in house financing solutions. Are we even talking about sometimes this gets pulled into it. We making sure the doctor is credentialed with the insurance companies or has their license piece, who's all responsible for those pieces. So again, the more we define these pieces, the better we're able to really get clear on where am I feeling pain? Am I feeling it on the claims getting sent out that a ton of them are getting rejected and the X rays aren't getting bundled correctly, whatever that might be. Or is it on the posting side? Because I've got to break this out into the pieces to be able to consume the elephant here, to be able to really solve my core problem. Otherwise what happens is I go out to the marketplace and I'm like, hey, I've got this problem in rcm, I got this problem in hr, whatever it might be. And, and then we get dazzled by their features and functions and we don't realize like, oh, I actually just needed help with appeals, right? Or something like that. Quick interruption to your podcast.

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Now back to the episode Another One Finance. So those who've been coming to the DEO intensives know that I'm really hitting on we've got to get everyone's financials better because we're trying to make all these strategic moves, but we don't have the right clarity around our financials to be able to do that. So when we talk about finance and accounting, a lot of times we lump all of that over to the CPA who does maybe a good job on some of it, terrible job on the other. So when we talk about finance and accounting, are we talking about the bookkeeping component, putting those journal entries in, making sure that chart of accounts is organized correctly? Are we talking about the controller piece, making sure we're getting things timely and accurately? Right? Maybe they're the ones really going through. Especially if you're multi location deciding what things get combined together, what things get pulled apart, how different parts get allocated, If I've got a regional or other corporate level expense, DSO type expenses, how are different revenue streams treated within the model? So you know, if I've got ortho and ortho's a little bit here and a little bit there, how is that split up? How are the costs split up? The controller can help with those things. Do I have a CFO who's thinking very strategically, who's thinking about performance, thinking about the future, helping the controller, helping the bookkeeper to figure out how to organize these things, having the conversation, do we have the right software? Is QuickBooks going to get us there? Do we need to move to Sage intact or some other solution in order to scale this out as we get more locations, those kind of things? Do I have as I really get bigger, do I have a treasurer who's looking at all our bank accounts and making sure that things are reconciling, looking at cash flow on a 13 week projected basis, is that on my CFO piece? Do I have a business analyst? Again, this might be on my cfo, but as I scale out, someone who's truly doing those performas, who's doing those budgets, who's looking towards the future, and then I have my accountant who's doing the tax side and having those conversations. So again, we can say things to one another like hey, who are you using for your accounting and finance stuff? Right? But that's not going to give as we scale and grow or even at a smaller stage, that's not going to give us the right answer because we're asking the wrong question. And so we've got to get a little more educated as we move from entrepreneur and into this executive position to really understand these different parts and pieces. Now one of the places we're really terrible at this is also marketing, right? So we're like, hey, who do you use for marketing? What part of marketing are we talking about? Are we talking about the branding continuity? Are you talking about a pay per click strategy? Are you talking about getting flyers out? Talking about someone just coming up with the strategy, someone who's looking at the budget, someone who's looking at your entire funnel to determine do we even spend money in marketing or is the real problem we're not answering the phone and it's front desk scripting, front desk availability that needs to get solved first. So sometimes again, our just lack of education because there's so many things we've got to learn here can be the core issue. And so we keep asking the same question. Hey, what are you doing for hr? How do you outsource rcm? What are you doing for your. Do you like your accountant? Should I get somebody else? What are you using for marketing? I just need some more patience or I don't like my people. And I think there's more sophisticated conversation as we understand these pieces. So here's my challenge to you. Start thinking about where you're feeling your pain point, what department that might be in. Then start asking more specific questions. Okay, Specifically within that department, what is the roles and responsibilities that I need to get more educated on or that I think are not getting completed? Then I might look at my current team and go, you know what, I actually have someone really strong on making sure payroll and benefits and the regulatory piece is getting done. But I need help on the recruiting side, I need help on the culture and fund side, I need help. So we'll get more specific and by getting more specific, we'll get better answers, we'll get better solutions, we can scale relieve some of that anxiety and stress, create stability within our business. So hopefully this was helpful. Very curious on your thoughts and feedback. What other departments do we need to continue to analyze to really understand the specifics and what those roles and responsibilities are? Maybe some of those titles I threw out there you've never even heard of before. Didn't even realize that was part of it. So as we continue to educate ourselves, then we'll continue to get more sophisticated in how we manage our business. Hey, if you have any further questions, feel free to come over to DEO Grow Secrets Facebook page or you can come to one of our events coming up, check out our site@deodentalgroup.com and until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to deo's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook group and meet other dental leaders, Cat. Get questions answered and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join DEO's Growth Secrets Group on Facebook. And until next time, keep smiling.