44: When Culture Breaks Down w/ Jacob Puhl

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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I am here with Jacob Poole, CEO of deo. That is always a mouthful for me. We just had the most amazing event with DEO members here on site at Community Dental Partners. And I'll tell you, the sharing and the mastermind and the things that came out of it were just awesome. And we thought we need to kind of drill down on a couple things here that came from that. So I think the piece you really wanted to get into, Jake, was culture. So go ahead. I mean, what's your thoughts?

Well, let's say what really just happened is I came to your place and I've been in your organization here for all day talking to other people. And I was on fire after this event ended. And I said, emmett, let's go right now and record a podcast. I'm so excited. And so that's why we're really here. I basically pulled you in here. So, yeah, there was some cool stuff at the end, I thought. And I was thinking the names of this podcast and one of them would be like, oh, no, not another culture conversation. You know what I mean? Cause one of the folks, one of our DO members was mentioning how he hears about culture so much it makes him nauseous. Right? And me too. I mean I just any. It's not just in dental, but any scaling of a company. Anyone who's done it, like you, you know, culture is the most important thing. But when you are in the midst of growing, people don't always know what that means. Right. So I thought we could talk about another question that came up, which is the inevitable breakdown of, of your culture as you grow. Right? So when your culture breaks down. So we had. Somebody was speaking just a little bit ago and their culture had been amazing for many years. And then they started growing. They decided they want to grow. They're at about 80 employees. They want to start to scale up a little bit and it broke. So I wanted to get. I've got some. Three different ways to look at it. Three actions. And these are actions, right? We're going to try to take these actions.

Yeah, yeah. We want to make it like really tangible. And I think, I think your actions will probably tie into why did it break too? Because I think the question is, if you had it at some point, why did it break? So are we assuming, like, as I'm playing out the scenario, are we assuming that they had culture of some kind, that they were trying to drive?

Yes.

And then it. And then it broke. One thing I'll say too, on that culture makes you nauseous. I love what he said next, which is, hey, here I finally seen that culture with accountability and results actually go hand in hand. And so I think we need to lay that groundwork is that we assume that it's a culture that isn't just about, you know, nap time and bringing your dog to work, etc. It's really about something that's centered around treating humans like humans. Having a why, having a vision, people really grasping onto that. And when they show up every day, they're driving with that why. And the reports and the metrics and the goals and the objectives are all right there with them, hand in hand. But then something happens and now they're showing up, but it's like, it's like a task for them. It's a job, it's not a vision anymore. And they're saying things like, I don't know, it's what you told me to do, or it's what so and so told me to do. And you can just almost feel the energy level and the momentum drop. Is that what you're talking about, when culture breaks?

Yeah, absolutely. You lose the momentum. And as far as the culture goes, I can verify I'm here on your site and the culture is incredible. We've met a lot of your staff is absolutely incredible. And I didn't see any ping pong tables that I know of. Right. No beanbags or anything like Silicon Valley. Maybe they're coming, but so far, so far there's not. You still have an amazing culture, so. Yes, it's when it breaks. I mean, the pressure's on your employees and you lose that sense of culture and it needs to be regained. It's happening to some of our folks. It's happened to people before. And so I would imagine there's folks out there dealing with it.

Yeah. Okay, so do you want to start first and give, like.

Yes.

You feel it so the scenario is you're coming in and maybe with your. With your partner, your business partner, or maybe you're on your own and you're just like, it's not fun anymore. Or I can tell it's not fun for them anymore, and we've just lost some mojo. Right.

And one thing I will say, because typically when we're at conferences or when I hear business folks speak, whenever I say there's a culture issue, people's tendency as advice for the first solution is, oh, you have the wrong people. I don't know if you ever come across that. It seems to be what people go to first when they're giving advice. Like, you must have the wrong people.

Interesting.

I don't. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Maybe it's just. Maybe it's just me. But we're assuming that's not the case because you had the same people and you had a good culture.

Got it. Yeah, I like that. And I think, too, that almost says that the culture is driven from the bottom up, and if you just hire the right people, somehow they magically set the stage.

Is that. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So we're not even gonna go down the road of, like, hiring and core values and making sure that you've hired the right people and all that. So I've just listed a couple, and these are things I've seen done to rectify. These are things we've worked with some D.O. members to do. But the first one, and we're in a scaling environment, right, where things are breaking, is to slow down, potentially. Right. From my experience, things break potentially, or people feel overwhelmed when things start to go too fast. I'll give you an example. We had a DO member who got, obviously high vision, a lot of aspirations, and they went and made three or four big changes all at the same time. So they changed their practice management software, started to look down sort of associate ownership model, and. And they were forming their DSO and then also creating a centralized office all at the same time. Lo and behold, people were demotivated. And so the first thing is take a look at, from my perspective, what everyone's got going on, what their bandwidth is, and potentially slow down a little bit for the moment.

Let's tease on that a little bit, because I think for those of us who are highly motivated, man, we've been hearing slow down our whole life. So we hear that we almost have a natural resistance like, you won't keep me down, you know, and so I think we have to tie this this is different than people who are saying, well, you can't do it and you need to overcome that, you know, negative perspective. What we're really saying here is that you're moving at a speed that you're not able to help your team members, one, understand why those tasks are so important towards your vision. Right. So they're probably losing the why behind this. And now it, I think quickly, number two is he or she's just starting to treat me like an object, right? And they think I have unlimited bandwidth and they don't realize what I've got going on personally. And then that kind of like spirals out of control and that then they start seeing everything you do is not being sensitive anymore. So I do want to kind of break that out. Do you think so too? Is that this is different than like slow down and don't try so hard and your vision's too big and you'll never achieve that, you know, someone being negative and more of absolutely try to achieve those goals. But you need to find a cadence and a pace where people can feel heard, where people understand the why, where you're not doing drive by delegation, where you're not taking into consideration other things they have on their plate.

Right, exactly.

And they don't feel like an object, you know, actually.

And maybe it's also take a step back, right. But it just made me realize because one big question folks have is, you know, how fast should I grow? Right? And my favorite framework from that was always Dr. Mark Cooper, who talked about keeping your promises and grow as fast as long as you can, keep your promises and as soon as you stop dropping, start dropping your promises then. But maybe another way to look at that is as fast as you can while maintaining your culture.

Yeah, that's a great metric, right.

And once you see the feel the culture, then maybe take the foot off a little bit until you get that. But that's the baseline, right?

Which just by being self aware enough that you're asking yourself, am I breaking the culture? Will probably keep you at a better pace, right? Because if you're going in to people and make sure, making sure that the culture is being maintained, that probably slows you down a little bit because now you're starting to listen a little bit better, you're hearing what they have on their plate, etc. I like Dan Sullivan's quote on there's no unrealistic expectations, just unrealistic time frames. So oftentimes when I've got a highly motivated person who may be seeing the culture break Underneath them, I oftentimes try to say, yes, we are going to do all of those, but let's find the right order that we can do them in and the right priority. And then let's look at the bandwidth of our team and say, hey, what's, you know, what's the right cadence to execute on this?

Absolutely love it.

Okay, great. So number one, slow, slow down.

Maybe step back a little bit.

Yeah.

Number two, one of my favorite things in the entire world, survey, gather feedback. Whether that be one on one with people or actual employee engagement survey or some kind of formalized survey. But surveyor people let. Let ferret out the what's going on underneath the surface. You'll dig deep to see to find the, you know, the guck that's going on inside the business. Yeah.

You know, at dinner, one of the dentists asked me, said, when you see a project not in momentum and people aren't moving forward, you know, how do you approach that? And so we kind of started role playing a conversation and it was really a survey. Right as I was sitting in this role play, sitting across from the individual who's supposed to be moving this project forward. And I said, all right, where are you feeling that you're hitting some constraints? Where do you need support and why do you think that this project is stalling? He kind of stopped for a minute and he said, wait, don't you say, hey, I really wanted this done by Thursday. I need you to get it done. And I thought that was a really fair feedback because that's what you read in a lot of business books. Right. Set the vision, set the deadlines, make them do it. And I think surveying could be formal, but an informal survey too, of really listening to them and getting that feedback of where are the core constraints they're running into and starting to hear. Are you hearing excuses or are you hearing real things? But either way, give them the support to get back into momentum.

I just don't think you can't go wrong gathering information and getting people to vulnerably open up. And if you can't get people to open up. So we had another member that sent out a survey and no one responded. It was anonymous. Even. And even that tells you something about your Totally.

Yeah, right.

People obviously don't feel comfortable at that moment speaking up. So even, even no feedback or they're

not checking their emails.

Yes, exactly. So that's number two, action item number three, turn up the positivity. Right. So when I always like, I think I heard this from Bill Belichick a coach in the NFL, New England Patriots, but he talked about when your team is negative, you be positive. When your team is positive, you. You be negative. In other words, balance out the team's energy. Because when, you know, in sports, for example, when the team's really excited and thinks we're really good and they're looking forward five weeks and we're already in the playoffs and all that, he wheels them back, Right. But when they're down in the dumps and they have low confidence, he builds them up. So this is an example of that. When your culture is hitting a rock bottom, you can come with the opposite. Very, very positive, high acknowledgement. Turn up the communication with. With positivity.

Yeah, that's a good point. So, yeah, I want to seize on that a little bit more. So I think the place I'd want to be careful of there is if you become a little too rah rah, if you didn't do your other two pieces, then you could come in. Because I've done this before and like, all right, team, we're going to do this. And by the way, you're doing so great. I've got another thing that we're going to be implementing, Right. And so that rah rah of positivity could actually be even more demoralizing. Like, he's still not understanding that I'm in pain. Like, no one wants a cheerleader when your hand slammed in the door, Right. You just actually want a locksmith or someone to open up the door.

They want to be understood. They want to know that you now understand their problem.

Yeah. And so I think after you do step one and two there and then turn around. And I think the best positivity is a belief in them. You know, the best positivity is to say, by the way, and maybe gratitude is, I am so thankful for you being willing to take this on and do it right. So anyway, that's my positivity.

Actually, my favorite sentence in those instances when your team is overloaded and things are breaking down is, well, I understand what you're going through and help is on the way. If they leave that conversation knowing that help is on the way, then you're off to the races.

Now, do you have to actually provide the help or just use that?

No, that's just saying it.

Okay.

A world.

We're just saying it is all you need. But, you know, and what I'm saying, you know, when the team's positive, being negative. What? I don't mean being negative. I mean balance out you know, for example, everyone's hitting their goals and everyone's really excited. Definitely. I like, personally like to celebrate a lot, but also, hey, let's keep our foot in the gas, y'. All. We're doing, we're doing well, but let's not let up.

Right, Right, right. Well, and I think the other way you could balance that positivity. What came to my mind is when you have maybe another partner, another team member who's driving forward with a lot of positivity. Hey, guys, we're doing maybe helping them to balance out of. Of saying, let's make sure that we're supporting these people too and not just cheerleading.

All right. And then you said one other thing as a bonus on vision, when the culture is breaking down, coming back to the vision, maybe you can share a little bit more about that.

Yeah, I think that we can get operationally focused, we can get cash flow focused, which are, I think, natural things. I mean, when cash flow is struggling or when you just get excited about hitting a production goal or whatever it might be, that goal can almost become another value system that you didn't mean to put as actually we're just all about the money, or actually we're just about efficiency. And so one of the stepping backs I think you could do is let's say you're implementing a new software, right? Because all of us are trying to find the magical, perfect practice management software, or you're layering in some other new product or you're adding a specialty, right? We all want to add more specialties, et cetera. Stepping back and say, why are we doing this? And if the answer is because Emmett will make a freaking more money, you know, or whatever, then you got to find a deeper why than that. Because the. I think your team members are going to feel that you've left the culture train and you're on now just like about the money, which that's fine if that's who you want to be, but if you were somebody else in the beginning, they're going to feel the shift and they might. I don't know that you want your whole team to become money oriented team members, because that's when you start into all of those, hey, if we're all money oriented, I'm in it for me, right? So I think stepping back and saying, at the end of the day, how does this specialty serve our bigger vision? And then coming back and making sure all the team understands, listen, this is the reason we're driving towards this. How does this software solution help us have Bigger impact? How does it allow us to serve more patients? How is it ultimately going to allow our team members to have smoother path, easier, less effort, whatever it might be. What is it within our pillars or our value system that we think this is going to drive? And you know, someone might argue, listen, sometimes you just need efficiency for efficiency sake or what's so wrong about me, you know, wanting to make more money and that's, that's my only goal. And I'd say that's fine. But those will now become a value system within your culture and it may dilute down your other pieces and, and people will feel the loophole, so to speak, that you're creating.

So anyway, no, so hopefully we've given some people. I totally have experienced that as well. Yeah, hopefully we've touched on what people are going through. Well, hopefully they're not going through this, but we're helping the people that may be going through this and taking a little more actionable. I just know the culture thing, which by the way, for those of you listening, this culture and what you've created is beyond impressive and you've managed to. The number one piece of feedback I get from you or about you, from people I talk to is like, you know, Emmett's the real deal and I'm here to confirm you're the real deal. In other words, keeping the integrity of what you say. But you practice what you preach in building something that is culture driven. So it's something you can be for sure proud of. And it was very, very impressive the operational excellence that you all have achieved with the heart and soul that you can feel in this place. So hopefully we're able to help folks on the call. Thank you so much for having myself and other DO members here. Yeah, very, very exciting.

Well, thank you Jake. Appreciate all the compliments. And if you all have more questions around this and how do you tie culture into operational efficiency and into change management and everything else, come jump onto our Facebook site at DSO Secrets. Jake's there too. Come check out deo. Find other like minded people like you trying to have bigger and bigger impact. And until next time, keep smiling.

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