8: Assistants and Project Managers

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Hello everyone. This is your fearless host, Emmett Scott. And welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. So today I want to talk about a position on the org chart, on the organizational chart. That's not an executive position, but probably leverages and bring support to the company at a really high level. And that is the assistants and the project managers. Now I'm not talking about the dental assistants here, I'm talking about those who are assisting on the business side. And it's probably one of the simplest in concept, yet most difficult positions to learn and to learn how to work with. You know, when we see the movies or the news with some wealthy businessman or woman with all these assistants around them, what we don't realize is that's a skill. You know, oftentimes we think, well, that's just because they have money and they pay people to do stuff around them. But anyone who's ever had an assistant or had a project manager knows that it's a finely tuned dance to learn how to best work with them on the tasks that are going to bring you the most leverage and help with your highest and best use. One of my favorite business coaches, Dan Sullivan, divides organizations into three different levels. He says that you have a team that is the make it up team. You have teams who are the make it real team and you have teams that are the make it reoccurring. And I love breaking out our organization and thinking about it that way. Oftentimes at the executive level you have those who are making it up. They're coming up with the innovations, the automations, the systemizations that need to happen to make the organization better. And then at the bottom, you have the make it reoccurring people who are really where the rubber hits the road that ensure that things happen consistently, appropriately, with professionalism. And they often have a lot of the customer interaction as well. But in that middle group that make it real group is the individuals who take the ideas and break them down into the projects and tasks that need to happen for the make it reoccurring. So I want to give that perspective or template as we talk about these positions of assistant and project manager and where they really fall in the make it up, make it real, make it reoccurring mindset. So first off with the assistant. Now, assistants typically are doing tasks that are somewhat reoccurring. I mean, these can be things from calendaring your meetings or checking different appointments, emails, coordinating between different vendors for appointments, or different other staff. It could also be tasks that are personal or professional in nature, going and getting your lunch, etc. Assistants are hiring assistant and having assistant. It's like a finely tuned dance you have to learn. I was talking to one of our executives about the first time he hired an assistant and he would give her tasks and then he'd get anxious about them getting done, then go back to his computer and do them himself. That is not irregular. That's frequently what happens is we're not really great at trusting and utilizing other people. Oftentimes too we, we assume that they're going to be some kind of mind reader, that they're just going to know what we want from them. Or if we, what I've heard called drive by delegation, we just kind of throw something at them that they'll be able to extrapolate out all the minutiae and detail that we want to occur, whether it's putting a report together or any of these other items that I've mentioned. And the reality is they're human beings, they need to get a lot more detail from us. And sometimes they feel intimidated. And so you've got to open up the culture as well to make sure that they know to ask questions, they feel comfortable asking questions, and that you have a process where you're meeting with them and giving them the time necessary so that they can do their job well. The other thing I'd say about these positions is oftentimes when we hire someone, we think to ourselves, great, now I'll never have to deal with that again. And I would say there is no position in the organization where that happens, especially those who are your direct reports. Oftentimes when we hire someone, it's going to relieve us in the beginning maybe 30% and then we can get it up to 50%. And in a really, you know, great organization where you're, you're syncing up well with everyone, it may be relieving you 80%, but there will always be that 10 or 20% where there's got to be coordination. There's got to be ways that you flesh out what are the tasks and what are the projects that you want them working on. So that's, that's assistance. But a lot of that applies also to project managers. Project managers are less interested doing reoccurring tasks. Now you're going to find as you grow as an organization, you'll have moments where you have a project manager who you also need to be your assistant and vice versa. But ultimately, as you scale, these are different capabilities. Project managers like complexity. They like different. They like complexity, and they like where it requires more coordination between the different vendors, the executives and other departments. Project managers are really interested in doing things that bring great roi. They want to see that they're taking this concept and making it real and driving it down to a place where it can be reoccurring in the organization. You know, I found with our project managers, where they've supported me tremendously is I am good at kind of looking around the corners, finding areas of opportunity where we can improve. But there is a lot of details between that concept and, and making it consumable enough for those who are working in it day to day to actually implement it. And project managers know how to flesh that out and how to get all of the tasks that are going to be necessary to take an idea to execution, to completion, to success. A good project manager, as you work with them will help to not only organize your ideas and your projects, but also start to prioritize them. And you want to empower them to come to you and say, all right, I've got too much on my plate. What's the priority of these things? And you'll quickly decide whether you just need to add even more resources because you want to execute on more, or if you do need to be more patient and slowly work through the list. But good project managers can keep a lot of the add nature that startups have around them and that even larger organizations can have, with too many things coming in, too many great ideas, too many crises trying to be solved at once, and all of that feeds down to some end user who has to implement it all. And project managers are great about creating that buffer and creating that clarity to make that flow so much better. Now, ultimately, what you want, your organization, is to create what's called a pmo, a project management organization. This is where you have a lead project manager and a group of project managers. Initially, you'll start off with one project manager helping you to take ideas, break them down, organize Prioritize, execute. Then you might have multiple departments that have project managers and each of them are helping those executives break down projects, organize them, prioritize them, and execute. But eventually the organization can't handle all the projects from every department because they end up hitting cross departments that might be bottlenecking. If every department needs for help to execute on something, eventually you just don't have enough IT resource. And you've got to have a way to have clarity around what all the departments are doing and how that feeds over to certain resources. Or if compliance, billing, marketing, operations and accounting all have great ideas and projects, but the end user of all of those is the front desk staff or someone else at the practice, that's too much goodness flowing down and they're going to get overwhelmed and not be able to implement and you're going to have chaos and you're going to have turnover. So what a PMO organization does is they start to take all of the projects and start to prioritize them across the organization. And this rolls up to the executive team to have a lot more clarity around how to take ideas to execution, how to ensure that we're not overwhelming certain resources, that we're not overwhelming certain users, if you will, or certain customers if you think of your employees that way. So how do we make sure that we deliver to them consistent improvements, but in a way that they can consume them? And so instead of having project managers strictly by department, you'll eventually get to a place where you have project managers who might specialize in certain departments, but they can support any department. And this helps the organization be able to drill down and focus on certain areas that are bottlenecks without overwhelming everyone in the organization. You know, some, some key attributes I think that are important just to remember is you gotta be patient. Just because you hired this assistant or project management manager doesn't mean day one, you know, everything's off your plate and you're done. You've got to be willing to train, you've got to be willing to iterate and make changes and figure out this dance and what is it you really want them to do? What is your highest and best use and how's the best way to communicate and coordinate with them. You really got to give them the right resources and make sure that they have the technology and support and ability to go communicate with others that they might need. And do you have the right expectations. They're not going to be mind readers and they're trying to customize this to you. And that's the thing there is not one size fits all. There's different personalities, both that you as an executive have and there's personalities that they have. And so figuring out that right dance. But wow, what a great leverage point assistants and project managers can bring to an organization to help more projects and improvements get completed in such a way that everyone's excited about it and not overwhelmed. So I hope this was helpful. If you have additional questions, we'd love to hear from you. Come join our private Facebook group on DSO Secrets on Facebook, of course, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. So 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.