21: Transparency in ASTRO

Welcome to DSO Secrets. I know what it's like to be an entrepreneur in the dental industry. I've had my ups and downs, just like you. There's so much opportunity to be excited about, but so few resources to get answers. From here on DSO Secrets, we get you those answers so you can change the lives you're meant to bless and achieve your personal success. When I was working as an associate rat at a school, I never imagined I could own these many practices with this amount of support. So thank you. You have helped build my marketing mind to a whole new level. You have this natural talent, this unique ability. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and we are moving on to the next business pillar in Astro, which is transparency. Now, you're going to find as I talk through this, the transparency has a lot of synergies with alignment and support. The first two pillars that we talked about. A couple years ago, I decided to jump on the social media site Goodreads. It's really for nerds who love reading. And you put in all the books you've read and books you're reading and you share those and get to see what others are reading. And as I went through, I realized kind of for the first time that I had been a business book financial book junkie. I had over 100 books that I had read around the topic of business and leadership and finance and marketing and everything associated with business that I could get my hands on. And I give you that context because when we talk about this topic of transparency, I can tell you wholeheartedly that the business books got this wrong. They got this wrong in a big way. And I think it's destroying a lot of companies. The theme you hear in every business book or you read is kind of this theme of the alpha male who knows exactly where he's going and he brings his vision into the team. He gets them in line and he drives them towards a result. And if they're not in the right place and they're not getting that done, then you just get the wrong team members off the bus and you drive forward. I thought the Steve Jobs biography did a really poor job on this concept too. I mean, they showed Steve Jobs as completely hard charging, doesn't care about anyone, and he's got a vision and. And if you can't get it, then you're out of here. And I'm not saying that's not where most entrepreneurs start. And these business books encourage us to act that way and make us actually think that if we're going to achieve our vision, that that's the right way to do it. What few people know is that Steve Jobs didn't get successful off of that approach. And in fact, it took him getting kicked out of his company completely to come back with the right approach that really changed the world. So many of these books expect the visionary, the entrepreneur, the leader to know everything to they give the impression that the team is there to execute on what you tell them, but that their feedback and their ideas are always going to be less than what you bring and that the expectation is you know, everything and you show them how to do it. You know these sayings of don't let them see you sweat. You know, it's lonely at the top. You got to be the lone wolf, the rugged individualist. I can tell you that that is a great way to be by yourself. That's a great way to have a very small company that never executes fully in a scalable way on your vision. And maybe when you read these business books, you don't interpret them that way, but I've talked to enough entrepreneurs and business people that they definitely felt that there was a time where they just had to get away from the philosophies in many of these books because it just, it doesn't work. What does work is this concept of transparency. And if you spend your time with high level succeeding entrepreneurs, you will find that they use transparency in everything that they do. Now I'm going to give you a definition for transparency that is really simple and maybe I can expound on it a little bit. But I think that you pondering through what it means to you as I give this definition and how you could utilize this in your business is going to be where it's most impactful. Transparency to me is sharing where you feel uncomfortable in every meeting, in every one on one and every discussion, looking for where you just don't feel things are right. Now, obviously transparency is also where you're sharing, where you're excited and you feel things are on the right track and so forth. But I think the big part is understanding when you're sitting in a meeting, it's not about knowing all the answers. It's saying to yourself, this feels really exciting, we want to do it, but something doesn't feel right and I feel uncomfortable. Now, it's critical that you figure this out for yourself first because the next level as a leader is to be able to sit in meetings, sit in one on ones and look across the table and ask Yourself, who doesn't feel comfortable with what's being shared right now, who's holding back, who's not fully expressing their concerns. Now, I can tell you, early on, as an entrepreneur, I didn't want to hear people's concerns. I didn't want to hear their negativity and why this wasn't going to work. I was creating a vision and I didn't need them to be raining on my parade. What I needed them to do is have a can do attitude and get things done. And there definitely is a problem with somebody who doesn't want to execute on your vision and just doesn't want to be on the team. But what I'm speaking to more is listening and watching and even pulling out of people where they think there might be obstacles within the vision and where support is needed in order for the vision to be executed on. To have enough bandwidth for you emotionally and enough maturity in your process to allow for those obstacles to come into the discussion. You can see why this is so tied to alignment. Because if you come in as this rugged individualist, if you're just driving for this vision and you say, guys, this is what we're doing, whether you like it or not, you're just not going to get the hearts and minds of people. As Stephen Covey says, you can buy their hands and their back, but you have to earn their hearts and their minds to really get that energy in order to execute. You can see how transparency increases alignment. If everyone's given the opportunity to say, here's where I'm really excited about this and here's where I feel uncomfortable, here's where I need support. Alex Charfen, a great business coach, uses the terms pressure and noise. Where are you feeling pressure and noise? Where is your team feeling pressure and noise? I would give them that jargon, I would ask them that question, allow them to say, this is where this idea brings pressure and noise for me, this is where this issue is bringing pressure and noise from me. And then the counter to that is what is the protection and support that's necessary to eliminate that noise and that pressure from your life. You know, we're not running a manufacturing plant here. We are built on humans. And our service offering and our vision all has to be executed by humans. We can try to ignore the fact that they have concerns, they have personal lives, they have stresses in their life and just say, this is work and that needs to stay at the door and we're just moving forward. The problem is it just, it doesn't work. It doesn't work on a scalable fashion. It doesn't allow for you to get the momentum that you want. And I think increasingly society is demanding that business be a place where people can be heard in order for them to execute on results. The biggest benefit I've seen by having this level of transparency, of explaining to people how I'm feeling, where I'm not feeling comfortable, where I'm feeling stressed. Let me give you another excuse I've used to not be transparent in the past. Listen, I've got this stress, I'm feeling it, but there's nothing my team can do about it, right? I'm the CEO. This is a CEO problem. This is an owner problem. This isn't even something that another executive, a practice manager, whoever can really solve. I would counter that with saying that you too are human and you being able to express to someone where you're feeling stressed will do a couple things. Number one, they might actually be able to help you might be wrong, but let's say that you're right. They can absolutely say, okay, if you've got that on your plate that I can't help with, let's look at some of these other things that are on your plate that I can help with. And they can relieve that pressure and noise from you in other areas, those stresses that you're feeling in other areas. And I can tell you just feeling a little bit of support from your team can make a huge difference for you. And number three, and most important is your team will have context for your moods and behavior. So if they know that you're under a lot of stress for something specific and you're being humble and transparent about that, their ability to support you through that goes up. Otherwise, team members are left to believe that you hate them, you're trying to torture them, they they're doing something wrong, they're failing. And all of those things lead to turnover, lack of production, and a lot of brain power being used in the wrong areas. So I'd encourage you to think about where you could increase transparency within your organization. It'll always start with you. But sharing this concept with your team too, and getting their feedback. Let me give you some benefits of transparency. Number one, it increases alignment. And when you've aligned all the assets within your company, the momentum and the productivity that comes from that is huge. Number two, it avoids avoidable failures. How many times do you get to something where you, you know, something fails and someone in the group says, yeah, I wondered if that was happening. I just didn't want to say anything, right? You've got to have a platform where everyone's saying what they feel and you're giving them the opportunity to then help you solve that problem. So avoid the avoidable failures and then it allows the journey to be so much more enjoyable. I know that the biggest challenge, frankly, is vulnerability. The biggest challenge is the ego of wanting to sit in your position or believing that your team members can't handle the truth. Right? If I told them what was really going on, they'd all leave. I can tell you that you have a group of people around you who want you to be successful. They signed up not because they have equity, not because, you know, they're looking for the biggest salary in the world or whatever. It's because they want to support you and help you. And if you start with a level of transparency with them from you and then start requiring that from your team, you're going to make a process that is so much more enjoyable and you're going to attract some of the best talent out there. So for business pillars, this might feel a little foo foo y and a little bit of, you know, opposite of everything you've ever read or ever gotten the impression as you were reading. But I can tell you that the more you apply transparency and however you want to interpret that increase the vulnerability within your organization, your ability to scale and have success will go up tremendously. So there's your third pillar in astro, alignment, support and now transparency. And as you do this with your executive team and other leadership team, you'll find your momentum increases dramatically. If you've got questions on transparency or any other questions in running your dso, come join us on our Facebook page, DSO Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to DSO Secrets. Join our community on Facebook @DSO Secrets and get answers and resources to some of your most challenging questions. If you want to get a copy of the seven secrets of any DSO, go to our website at DSO secrets.com and we will get that emailed to you. Remember, don't go at this alone. Let us be your team while you build your team.