23: Ownership in Astro

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Hello everyone. This is your fearless host, Emmett Scott. And welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. All right, so we've been talking about this acronym, astro. ASTRO stands for Alignment, Support, Transparency, Results. And I've done episodes on each of those. And now today we're going to talk about ownership. So the last part of ASTRO is the O is ownership. So anytime we're looking at projects or alignment as a team accomplishing new strategic goals, we're using astro. We're looking to say, all right, are we all on the same page from an alignment perspective? Are we all talking about the same thing in the same way? It's amazing how often you can talk past each other or you don't have the cultural emotional alignment on a project and the buy in, is the support really available? And there is the transparency there. Are we being as honest as we can about what the situation is and how to improve it and then results? Are we result oriented? Do we know what the scope of work is? And I've gone into depth in each of our each of my episodes on that. So if you haven't listened to those, I would encourage you to. So the last one is ownership. Now, like the others, it's easy to say, oh yeah, I know what it means to have somebody really own something. But let me talk a little bit about how it can be complex and really it's deciding. It's deciding who is the true owner of a project or strategic goal or where the company's going, etc. So you can either scale this up to a really big conversation or even down to simple tasks, etc. Who's really owning it. So let me give you a couple examples of people who could be owning that strategic project. Is it the person who came up with the idea? Is it the person who's going to lead it? Is it the end user who's going to actually utilize it? Which of those three primarily is going to really own the project. Now, I'll tell you, my bias is the one who comes up with the idea typically is not the best owner. I mean, so many of us can sit on a whiteboard and say, you know, what would be really cool? You know, what would be really great? And rarely are we saying, and we want to own this project from beginning to end. In fact, when I have a new executive or director on my team, typically, if they're coming from the outside world, they're going to come in with fresh eyes, see all our warts and all our issues, and they're going to go through. And I'm going to be real open about this and let them be humble about it, and they're going to tell me everything that's wrong with the company, everything that we could be doing better. Man, I'm gonna. I'm gonna love that moment. I'm gonna take notes. I'm gonna maybe even write them on the whiteboard. What else have you seen? Especially after their first week to month, they may come in and just have a ton of energy around things that are going wrong and things that could be better. Now, many of them who especially have had this experience where they've been in corporate environments where they're just happy to have their ideas heard, but. But they're so used to having pushback on why that project won't work, et cetera. And instead, what I typically do is then I'll say, all right, so these are the things we're terrible at, and this is terrible, and this should be better, et cetera. Yeah, that's what I think, Emmett. Okay, awesome. Which one do you want to own and solve first? And I always get this look like, what do you mean? And so I respond, all right, we're really open and humble here. As a company, I want alignment, I want to provide the support, I want the transparency. You provide me great transparency. So let's get the results on this stuff. Which one do you want to own first? And usually then it's like, oh, wow. Well, each of those are a ton of work. Now, occasionally someone will walk in and to say, yeah, no, I'll take this one, let's go do it. And then they find, wow, that's a lot more difficult to solve. So typically, the people with the idea don't necessarily have the knowledge, the capability to really own the project. Now, that doesn't mean that I discount the other ideas. We want to prioritize them, we want to implement them, but they're probably not the person to own it. Now, what about the person who's leading the project, are they the owner? And I would say yes. I would say they're a big part of the ownership. They're going to be the ones that look for the obstacles, help us come up with strategies to solve those obstacles. For us in our organization, that's going to be under the title of project manager. So we might have an executive or director who comes up with this great new idea, or we're going to assign a project manager to really own that if it's vetted through the team and it's a priority. And so if we've all said yes, we think we should work on that, so we've got alignment and we know what the scope is and we've gotten a clear results of what we want from this, then that project manager is going to own through the obstacles, bring in the resources and support along the way. But in a lot of ways, I think of them as the transitional owner. They're the ones owning it while it's getting developed out. The true owner, the person that I want to focus on to ensure that they are happy with this because they're going to be the owner when the project's done, is the end user. Now, let me give you a couple examples of this. Let's suppose that I'm developing out this cool new technology that's going to revolutionize what happens in a practice. It's gonna make the practice's life so much easier. And I've sat with my whiteboard and my team and my project manager and we've developed all of this out and we're so excited about it. And we take it down to the practice and we say, look at this, isn't this amazing? It's gonna solve everything in your life. And they say, well, that's not actually how we do things. And that button would have to be over here. And that's not really what's, you know, how things work here, et cetera, et cetera. What happened there? What happened is I didn't go to the person who's going to own it after the project is done. And so for me, ownership is so important to find out who's going to actually run this new product or project when it's all completed and do we have alignment and clarity from them who is truly the owner now? So often we outrun our teams by almost owning things too much. We come up with a new idea and again we say, this is going to revolutionize and change everything. And if we don't take the time to get alignment with them and allow them to own it, to really pull for the result, Then what happens is they start feeling like we are cramming things down on them. One of the best ways I've found to get someone to really own something is actually through empathy. By understanding where their biggest pain points are and then supporting them in solving that through project managers, et cetera, I have found that I can get the end user then to help continue to innovate and grow the company, because I'm solving the thing in their Maslow's hierarchy, if you will, that is most important to them. How many times have you done something that you thought was going to be so great for your practice or for the company? And then when you get to bring it down to the end user, they say things like, I'm not sure why they did it that way, or when something goes wrong in the practice, and they say, yeah, the old office manager did this because blah, blah, blah, or, you know, whatever it might be, they blame the past or they blame another user, they blame somebody else. And to me that's a sign that I don't have ownership aligned with that project or with that task. So let's say, for example, you have a practice manager who you say, now why are we doing it this way? It seems inefficient. And they say, I don't know, the doctor just wants it that way. I think to myself, okay, we need to get better alignment between the doctor and the practice manager, and we got to get the transparency there, because if we don't, then this practice manager is never really going to own the result. And so it's important that we apply those other principles in Astro to fully get ownership. Nothing's worse than hearing an employee say, well, that's not my job. Especially if they're a practice manager in a position where you want them to have ownership. So it's so critical to make sure that we have the support, the alignment, the transparency in place, a clear perspective on results, in order to ensure that we have ownership throughout the organization. One of the mistakes I've made in growing my company at times is having such great excitement and ideas and outrunning my team, outrunning my coverage. In football, the guy who receives the ball on a kickoff is one of the fastest people on the team, but he can make the mistake of running so fast that he doesn't give time for the lineman to get back and to provide him protection and support. And so when I think about ownership, I think of it in those terms of I don't want to have my idea have so much energy and excitement behind it that no one else can really provide the protection and support and allow for the ownership to develop down at the user level where it needs to be for consistency towards results in a DSO environment. What I found to be most critical is ensuring that whatever we're doing clinical, the clinical department, the clinical team, believes that that is the most important thing first. And the easiest way to find out what they want first is just simply to ask them to help prioritize those things and go solve those. Then you have clinical ownership around what you're doing as a dso. If you start creating ideas on spreadsheets and whiteboards that you think are going to grow the practices or grow the DSO and create wonderful financial outcomes, and you don't have alignment transparency with the clinical team, you will find out very quickly who the owners really are. Nothing goes faster than what the clinical team bandwidth can provide. I have seen many DSOs make that mistake, oftentimes with actually an effort to try to raise the organization as a whole, create a great vision, etc. But alignment with the clinical team has to be number one. When the clinical team owns something, man, the energy and momentum you can get as a DSO is insane. And when they don't, it's incredible how quickly they can squash any effort work that you've done up to that point. So as you think about your next strategic project, as you think about that one thing that is going to make your practice your dso, your multiple practices, so much better, I'd ask yourself, so who's really going to own this? Who's going to lead through the obstacles? Who's going to really own it once it's completed? Who cares that this gets done enough to see it through to its completion and its consistency and reoccurring nature going forward? If you can't answer those questions, then put the project on hold. It must not have the priority or figure out how to get that momentum first. Oftentimes you'll find that you need to go back and make sure that you have the alignment that you need, that you've got the support in place, the transparency in place, and you've got a clear scope around the results. And you'll notice that ownership naturally develops around the right people. I hope this is helpful and keeps you from stepping in some of the potholes that I've stepped in and and allows you to get the momentum around the excitement you have to grow your practice and to grow your dso. If you have any other questions, please Join us on our private Facebook group, DSO Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to DSO Secrets. Join our community on Facebook at 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 dsosecrets.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.