24: The Magic 7

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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I am podcasting live from the DICOMA event here and it's awesome. I think over 600 people have attended, great vendors and speakers and people to network with, ask questions, pick their brain, etc. So it's been an awesome event. As you know, one of my favorite things is to figure out frameworks, processes and systems for leadership and how to think through problem solving. Anytime that you can design a framework around something, then it doesn't feel like you're building it new once again. When a problem comes up, when issues arise, when you have frameworks, you can use those to design your business, your systems, and your leadership. So recently our executive team went through and looked at all our strategic projects and the systems and processes we use to drive results. And what we found we've identified as a framework called the Magic 7. These are the seven constraints for any strategic project to get implemented and the order of priority that you have to solve them in. And what's fascinating, I've seen enough DSO try to do different strategic growth or internal practice level growth initiatives and succeed and fail. That we've been able to take this Magic seven, overlay it, and say, did failure come for them, for us, because they did this in the wrong order? And the answer has been always yes. And those who are succeeding, are they doing it in this order every time? And so far the answer has been yes. All right, so I'm going to dive right in. What are the Magic seven? So, number one, patient flow. What do the patients need to be interested in the product or service that we're implementing? Is this something that's a key pain point for them? Are there patients out there that really need this product or service? That's number one. Number two, just going to hit on each one quickly. Here is clinical. I think this is the one that sometimes gets skipped over, especially if you have a bunch of business guys in Your organization, they might just assume that, hey, that clinical stuff, yeah, that'll just happen. Or even the clinicians might assume who are leading, say, you know what, yeah, we can do that procedure or service. The question really comes down to alignment and support. Do the clinicians want to do that treatment type, want to have that specialty there, want to see the organization grow in that way? If not, you're going to find that no matter what you've done on the other constraints to overcome them, you're not going to be able to execute on success. So getting alignment with the clinical team, beyond just the owner saying, I think that's a great idea, let's do that. But really down at the practice level, associates, can we get them excited, inspired for this strategic growth? That's constraint number two. Number three, facilities man. So many ideas fail because the facilities really don't accommodate the strategic concept or idea. Let's take the classic example of having general or pediatric dentistry and then we're going to overlay orthodontics in it. Everyone's excited to do that. First of all, we go through and say, are the patients interested? Typically, yes. Patients are going to want some level of orthodontic treatment. We've got to figure out what our treatment acceptance model and funnel is going to be for that. But we can typically hit that one pretty strong that, yes, orthodontics is wanted. What about clinical man? Oftentimes the other clinicians, they like the idea, idea of orthodontics being there, but once it really gets implemented, it takes a lot of alignment to ensure that they really feel the excitement, momentum for the patient or for themselves to have orthodontics there. And the facility piece, both the front desk component as well as the backstage pieces, how that might interfere with the general dentistry or the pediatric dentistry, or just the staff in general or supply management or equipment management. All of that has to be figured out. And so often we see people looking to do strategic objectives when the facility and the clinical alignment doesn't exist. Number four, staffing. What's it really going to take from a staffing perspective to execute on this in a reoccurring manner? You know, Dan Sullivan uses the framework that there's three different types of individuals in every organization. Those who make it, those who make it real, and those who make it reoccurring. Most people who are listening to this podcast are probably in the make it up group or maybe make it real. Most people we need to actually execute on things are those who are doing the reoccurring component or As I often say, just because we wrote it on the whiteboard doesn't mean it's going to execute through a 10, 12, 15, $18 hour, an employee who understand what they're supposed to do. Tuesdays at 3 o'. Clock. So really getting the staffing alignment worked out so that we understand this concept or the strategy. What are the tools, resources, support checklists that the staff is going to need and what bandwidth are they going to need additional individuals? And then that starts feeding back over to facilities again and clinical alignment, how often do we say we'll just steal a staff member to make this happen and then that starts the ripple effect back up that, that magic seven into the first three areas. Now frankly, I think if you get the patient piece nailed down and how are we going to really deliver this to the patient? Treatment acceptance, if we get clinical alignment, if our associates are excited about whatever strategy we might be doing, if the facility allow for that, or we work through the constraints of the facility and we've got the platform in place for staff to be able to deliver. We've really done a good 80 to 90% of the execution in those first four for most strategic projects. Now we've got to layer in number five, which is going to be compliance. We've got to ensure that compliance weaves in and out of all of those pieces. Are there things with osha, hipaa, et cetera, clinical standard of care that's got to get established and set up within the platform. Number six, technology. Sometimes on strategic projects that'll move quite a bit up or be the core constraint. Can I get the reporting, the data, the software solution that's going to support the execution. But oftentimes we're driving that from the perspective of clinicals needing it or the staff is needing that first. So can we buy that, build it, design it and make that happen on the technology front, if that's needed. And lastly, is the finance, the performa, the financing, the strategy or the project and how is the return on investment going to play out? Now oftentimes business guys, private equity firms, boards, when they try to help with strategy, they'll get these in the wrong order. They will look at the patient need portion and they'll gather data around that. And then they'll jump over all the other components down to number seven. They'll put a spreadsheet together and say, wow, if we had this many patients come in off of this new idea, de novo specialty, whatever it might be, then look at what could happen. I guess the rest guys is just Execution. This can create a lot of misalignment through the rest of the team because all the heavy lifting with clinicians hasn't been solved. Figuring out facility constraints hasn't been solved. Figuring out all the staff training, onboarding, whatever might have to happen there hasn't gotten solved. And then the compliance and technology pieces. So this is the order that we've seen time and time again. If you solve them in this order, you hit success. And what happens if a project stalls, let's say at the clinical level or at the facility level? What if we just can't get it past that? Well, then what we've done there is we've figured out where the main constraint is and we haven't wasted the time of staffing or the rest of the team to try to come up with ideas, programs and trainings when something really couldn't be executed on. So I want you to think about what you're most excited about right now. What's the next strategy for your business growth? And go back to, is this going to help with the patient component or is my clinicians aligned that this is something important to them or that we can get them excited about? Is the facility in place that we can have the room to execute on this? From a staffing perspective, can we put the trainings together to make this happen? Compliance wise, do we have the resources? Technology wise, and then does the financial performer make sense? I'd love your feedback as you test this magic seven. For many of you, you may be building out the resources to even have this magic seven. I know some of you have asked great questions around getting that compliance officer in place, building out that technology piece. So we're all at different stages here, but I'd love, as you work through your strategies, try this. These magic sevens give us feedback. Where are you getting stuck? Come join us on our Facebook page, DSO Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling.

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