22: Results in ASTRO

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Well, hello everyone and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. This is your fearless host, Emmett Scott. And I'm so excited to be with you today. We have been talking through the acronym ASTRO and how we use that in our business environment. A has been for alignment, S for support, and T for transparency. And if you haven't listened to those episodes, I'd strongly encourage you to. They are so powerful as we're trying to navigate the various, you know, issues, problems, challenges that come from trying to build a DSO and a consolidating market. So now we've moved to R. R is for results. Now for those of who are A type personalities, when I say that word, man, it just, you know, gets us goosebumps. Like, we love nothing more than having a team, having a mindset that is all about results. So as I was talking through alignment and support and transparency, you might have felt something was missing. And this is where that results piece comes in. A focus on results. But what's interesting with results that I have found to be the biggest challenge as leaders is we way oversimplify the concept. We think that we put something on a whiteboard. We, we give something in passing, drive by delegation, if you will, and we think that the result is crystal clear for our team. So as we talk through results, I want to give you at least three items to really look at as you're building a results driven team. Number one, is the result clear? Is there a clear scope for the project? Most of the time, the reason results do not happen well is because there's a lack of clarity of what result we're really trying to achieve. Let me give you an example. Let's suppose that we said, you know what, our patient experience is suffering. We do not have a good patient experience. Team, we need to fix that. And then we're frustrated that results didn't happen. Our doctor recruiting isn't going well. Team, we need to fix that. And then Results aren't happening. You might say, Emmett, those are really broad subjects, but I hear them all the time in meetings. Okay, let's get more granule. Team, we are not getting consent forms like we need to. X rays aren't as clear as they need to be. We need to fix. And oftentimes as leaders, we walk out of the room, there might be more discussion, but not nearly as clear of what result we're really trying to achieve. Now you can see why alignment, support and transparency have to be the key principles you go to first. Because if you go to result first, which is fine, you will circle back to alignment, support and transparency to try to figure out. So why do we think that that next level result we're trying to achieve isn't happening? Where are we not on the same page as our team? Are we on the same page as what we're trying to achieve? Are we providing them right tools and support? What is the bigger discussion, the deeper discussion that we need to have to get to root cause to really understand how to solve for this result. If you find yourself in meetings thinking, man, we've been talking about this for so long, why aren't we achieving result? I'd encourage you to go back, listen to alignment, support and transparency and say, do we really have clear alignment? Do we know what support is needed and are we being clear with one another on what the core issues are? At the end of the day, all this needs to lead to a very clear statement of what result needs to look like. Oftentimes, as leaders, sometimes the result is simply we want the team to go out there and try. We've never done something before, so we want you to go try doing something and then report back on what's working and what's not so we can more clearly formulate the project. So one thing that I have found helpful when I'm being very entrepreneurial and I'm thinking, hey, let's go try this as a team. One, keeping the scope very clear to only a practice or team member or so forth, not rolling something out broad when I'm not clear on how we're really going to do that. But number two is helping the team understand that this is a beta test. That result is to go get more data to figure out the best path towards the ultimate result, which would be the implementation of a new system, the improvement of patient experience, better processes, better support to the team, etc. Etc. So number one, when you think about result, is the scope clear? Does everyone know? If I went around your team and Said, what does it mean to you to achieve this result on this project? Does everyone have the same mindset of what completion and result really looks like? Number two, I find that team members look at effort and the process and work to get to result as the result. Let me give you an example. I'm over an IT team that works very hard to keep our system stable and oftentimes with new projects, it takes a ton of backend work to get to a place where their project brings value. For example, they might be researching which server solutions, what software solutions to bring to the project to help the operations team achieve a result or an experience for the patient that they're trying to achieve. Sometimes it's easy to interpret that all of that backstage work is the result that they are done, once all of that research is done, once that server is implemented, etc. But by keeping focus that the result isn't really achieved until the user has achieved their result has helped us tremendously to create more momentum and more success. Or let's take a front desk person who you might say, listen, we need more confirmation calls to happen, or we need more outbound calls to set appointments to happen. And so they start doing that effort but no additional appointments are set. Have they achieved the result? It's easy for them to maybe say I am doing the process, but what were you really asking for when you said I want more of this to happen? Really the end result you wanted was more patience, right? So getting clear on that scope and that the effort and the process is not the result, the result is to achieve that end impact that return on the investment. I found this discussion to be really helpful in team environments is really explaining return on investment, that the investment piece happens as everyone is working so hard, money's being put into something new, software is, is built or bought, vendors and consultants are brought in. All of that is investment that is not yet return. Return really happens on the last 5%. Return happens when patient flow increases, when doctor capability increases, when culture improves. All of those last pieces, that's where you get the return. It's really in the last 5%. One of the worst things you can do as a leader is have too many projects, too many results driven projects happening at once because you'll be making a ton of investments and quickly the team will feel that their effort towards all of those investments are the result that they're achieving. They are working so hard, they're staying up late, they're doing long hours, whatever it might be, and that sacrifice feels like the result they're bringing to the team and to the company. You may even fall into this trap, you know, having overly adrenaline of constantly working on the business and feeling like all of that effort is result. But let's be honest, from a pure business perspective, if you're not increasing patient flow, the number of patients that you're impacting, if you're not increasing patient care and the amount of patients who are receiving treatment, if you're not lowering major expenses within your business, are you really driving a business result? If you're not increasing the culture, helping with retention, those kind of things, are you really achieving the core result you're trying to do? So number one we talked about is making sure that we have clarity on the project. Does everyone really understand what result looks like and when we are going to achieve result? And again, you might have to break that into milestones. Result number one, result number two, result number three, to help the team know what we're trying to achieve. Number two, make sure that effort and process are not interpreted as result. Those are the investments we make to get to return. And number three is really a cultural thing. So often the result that I have seen, especially when I'm hiring people from larger corporate environments, is that they see result as them looking good, as them appearing that they are putting a lot of effort in on the project, as them appearing that they didn't make mistakes or that the mistakes aren't theirs. Sometimes the result that people are trying to achieve is simply to protect their job. You have to be really careful that you're not creating a culture where this is true because it will be almost impossible to achieve real business results, real customer impact results if everyone's simply trying to protect themselves within your environment. So we do a lot up front in our hiring and, and in our cultural discussions to make sure that people understand that failure is not a bad result. Failure is actually wonderful on it's an investment. But it's wonderful as you look to to get to the end result. Because knowing how to perfectly get there, as much planning as we might do, there's just too many variables. So everyone has to be really open that failure is going to be one of the steps to getting to result and be very comfortable owning that, even proud of it, hey, I figured out that this doesn't work. And then that gives us more raw material to be able to set ourselves up for success for the results. One of the HR questions in recruiting we found to be really helpful is if you know a better way to do something, even the right way, and a Team member has their way of doing things. What should you do? It's interesting because obviously we get a lot of questions. You might think how you would answer that question. If you feel confident you know the right way and you're in a group discussion and others feel like they know the right way, what is the right way to navigate those conversations? And one of the responses we have found to be probably the most telling that someone would align with our culture is simply this. Really, I'm more concerned with getting the result than being right. They almost cut through the process piece and the way of doing something and more of if their way. We'll get the results and we have alignment as a team and we can get everyone, you know, transparently supporting one another and that gets us result. Who cares what way we got there? All right, so that's number four of our five step process with Astro. I challenge you to take your big hairy problem and challenge that you're working on right now and start taking it through this podcast process of all right, do I have alignment as a team? Are we providing the right support? What tools and resources do we need to be looking at? Are there conversations that we're not having that we got to get more transparency, people not bringing up obstacles that are clearly there? And at the end of the day, is everyone even clear on what the result we're trying to achieve beyond just, you know, we're trying to roll out this specialty or whatever it might be, but down to the granular level, do we understand enough that there's clear alignment to achieve result? If you all have additional questions about astro, I hope you'll join us on our private Facebook page at DSO Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling.

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