54: Discipline w/Guest host Dr. Charles Moser

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Hello, and welcome to DSO Secrets. My name is Charles Moser and I'm the Vice President of Community Management for the deo. I'm a dentist and an entrepreneur. But right now I am more excited to be your guest host for today's DSO Secrets podcast. Thank you to Emmett Scott again for letting me hijack his show. Discipline is doing what you know you need to do, even when you really don't want to do it. While attending a recent seminar, Ryan asked me what I thought my most valuable lesson was that I learned from my experiences in private practice. Then, being the dental director for a large group practice and going through two transactions and now as part of the leadership team for the DEO was a fabulous question and one that I took very seriously. So after a little thought, here was my answer. Discipline, discipline. Follow up. Discipline. To schedule the follow up. So let me explain. When I took the position as dental director for what ended up being oversight of 16 locations and about 45 associates, I had no clue. I had no clue that it was really that big of a job. I had no clue that basically I was in charge of close to $20 million of annual revenue and I had no clue what I was doing. I had no job description, no written expectations and no real onboarding. I was simply told to go to the offices and do it. What the heck was it? Well, the only real thing that I knew was that I was to go to the offices and help the doctors. Okay, I can do that. So I went. The first thing that I discovered was that I was significantly older than just about everyone. Life had flipped for so long. I was the youngest, the kid, the rookie. And like, with one wave of a wand, I was the veteran. Like, I know how that happened, but I don't know how that happened. Anyway, second thing that hit me in the face was that they had no clue who I was or why I was there. And the rumors quickly started to circulate. That I was a spy looking for bad things so I could fire people. Truth be told, I used that in my favor until ultimately my charming personality made it clear that that really wasn't the case. Okay, so what did I find? Well, in one word, inconsistency. Chaos might be too harsh, but you might get my meaning. Every office was doing things just close enough to be within the boundaries, but there were no real systems being followed by all the offices to really be called systems. Training and onboarding was different in every office and completely dependent on the quality of the office managers or the head dental assistants that were doing the onboarding. An office with a great office manager onboarded well, and that which didn't have a great office manager didn't. Now, don't take away from this that they were not profitable because holy moly, they were. And don't take away from this that the patients were being ignored because they were not patient. Satisfaction was very high. That's something we tracked fairly well. As I started to feel more comfortable, I first needed to see what systems were supposed to be in place, evaluate those, and either re implement them or create something useful. And here is the takeaway that answers the question asked at that famed steak dinner. It wasn't that hard to find, refine, or even create a system or write a standard operating procedure for the systems and procedures that we did. And now for you, it's even easier because all you have to do is listen to Emmett's podcast on how to create a sop. It really wasn't even that hard to implement the current or freshly written version of the system. That was just the beginning. What was really hard was to evaluate and follow up on how effective the SOP or the system was and to keep the teams on task using the system. So the answer was discipline. It seems that human nature is to say, oh, great, we really needed a system to do this. And then about as quickly as that last word comes out of our mouths, we're back to doing it the old way and complaining again about how it doesn't work. I find this routinely with DEO members and we work with this constantly. They tell me, wait, what? I just implemented this system a few days ago and you aren't using it now. Maybe you listening out there don't have this problem, but this is just what I found. Okay, let's try it again. Here's the system. You said you wanted it. Let's make sure you understand it and like it. Okay, go. Huge success. That time it worked for three days before they reverted Back to their old ways. Oh boy, this is fun. Now I feel a few of you nodding as if this has happened to you. Well, I wish I could tell you that I got it all figured out and created a company that could use the system and refine it to make it better at the same time and that I got it all right. But I didn't. And neither do most of you. But that's okay. What I did realize was how to use a process now known as reverse engineering. I would start by sitting down or lying in bed, wide awake, taking a shower and thinking, what is my end goal? With the end in mind, as Stephen Covey would say, I had a much better chance of achieving my goal. What happened was my goal switched. Rather than the system being the goal, using the system became the goal. Small, tiny details, subtle, but it made things different. If my goal was to create a system, then I was done once the system was done right. But when the goal became continued implementation, it wasn't done until I was certain that the system was refined and people were properly trained and I had a follow up system to review how things were going. We refer to that as traction. Now I was getting closer to, to what we were after. So let me say that again slowly because it's worth writing down. And if you're in the deo, you know that I like these write downs. Understand that your goal is continued improvement and continued use of the system. Create the system. And oh, by the way, this is for another time that you should utilize your team to help you design the system. This not only creates a better system, but team buy in to the system. Then you train, train, train and keep training your team on that system. Implement the system using an accountability manager for the implementation. This could be someone at the front desk if it's a phone technique, or a head dental assistant if it's a clinical issue. But make sure that you have someone accountable that you can schedule routine meetings to get the feedback. Create an easy scorecard. Easy scorecard is the key there? Or a checklist that the accountability manager can use every day. Then schedule regular meetings to follow up. Now this is the hardest part and the most important part. So many times I would leave an office and I'd say, okay, call me when you need me. No, they never called. Get that meeting on the calendar, maybe even two or three meetings. That's the most important part of this whole process. Then at the meeting, you let the accountability manager do most of the talking. What's working, what's not working? How can things be Improved. Who will make the improvements? What's the goal of the improvement and anything else you can think of. And then what? That's right. Schedule the next follow up. If not already on the calendar. Now you can do these follow ups with multiple accountability managers at one time. If you have multiple offices, they don't even have to be in person. Make it a zoom call. We do that all the time. So if you're starting to see what is happening, the system will organically improve with the scheduled follow ups. What you start with will never be what you finish with. So version one really isn't that important. The most important part about version one is that it's the only way to get to version 2 and so on and so forth. It's kind of like spell check on your phone. We have a self correct mode in our heads if we just use it. We're smart people, we're driven people. The mechanism to use self correction is action. Keep forwarding the action even if it's not perfect. Do it and keep making the follow up appointments and you will continue to self correct your work. And what does this continuing to forward the action requires? You got it? Discipline. So I'd like to thank Ryan for asking that question at dinner. I really enjoyed taking the time to think about the answer. My name is Charles Moser and should you desire to get in touch with me I can be reached at C Moser. That's M O S E R@deodentalgroup.com I wish you nothing but great success.

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