Ah yet another year has passed. In 2010 I will be at my practice for 16 years. It often seems that the longer the time here, the more difficult the new changes for the next year become. I wonder if one can run out of things to do? I hope not but I do think that the ideas are harder to come by. Maybe a goal for 2010 is to fine tune all the previous years goals. Ya' know, nothing is ever perfectly done so maybe that will be my focus this year.
It is also difficult to achieve anything close to perfection when the owner isn't always on board and accountable for his actions or lack there of actions! I supposed tackling that challenge would be one magnificent goal to achieve but after 16 years I have come to realize that you can't change anyone. If they are wired to seek out the negative, they will continue to do so and will certainly miss all the great things that the team has accomplished. Sadly, this is the biggest de-motivator I deal with. I have never been one to live by the rule of do as I say and not as I do. I choose to lead by example. I don't ask anyone to do anything that I myself, would not do. I admit my mistakes and do my best to do better the next time. I try to be the cheerleader for my team but often find myself fighting my own de-motivation as a result of the do as I say, not as I do leadership above me. How do I tackle this? Since change will never come..that is obvious...I need to come up with a plan to keep everyone positive and moving forward in spite of the constant nit picking. Any ideas on this?
Well like it or not, 2010 is right around the corner and the people and personalities that surround me will not miraculously change at the stroke of midnight so I best come up with a plan to deal with them.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Life changes
I didn't think at 44 I would be struggling with life changes but indeed I am. After 15 years in the same practice I feel I need something new to excite me. Is it a new place to live? Maybe! I have dreamed of living in the South for several years now. I had the chance at a practice in Columbia, S.C. but things wouldn't fall in to place to allow that to happen and as such not a day goes by I don't regret that! Is it a new job? Maybe! I started my own consulting company for that reason - my passion for client service and a new challenge in my life but as anyone who has started a business knows....it takes time. The clients I have had loved what I did for them but trying to get the word out is difficult. Fear also cripples the chance to take advantage of new areas, careers, challenges some times. What if they don't work out? What if I don't succeed? What if the choice was the wrong one? I hope to never let fear cripple my ability to take on the world but it has certainly caused some sleepless nights lately. What I do know is that if I don't try then I certainly won't succeed and that my husband is right....look at the worst case scenario! If it isn't that bad then you have nothing to loose! He is so smart...handsome too.
So life evaluation will continue! What do you all think?
So life evaluation will continue! What do you all think?
Owners...choose to micromanage or have a manager.
Normally when I think of or discuss professional growth I am the focus. I mean who am I to tell someone else what their direction of their professional growth should be right? Well sort of. Today I feel like screaming from the roof tops about owners and their path to professional growth if they hire a manager.
Time and time again I hear from frustrated managers who were hired to run the practice and are told daily that they are in charge. Unfortunately they are in charge in a practice with an owner who refuses to let go of control to allow them to be in charge. Don't get me wrong. Owners are the most vested people in any practice and I don't care how passionate or dedicated you, as the manager are, you are still NOT the owner. That being said, if you are the owner and you hired a manager to run your business then allow them to do so. Micromanaging at every opportunity or offering your two cents on every single subject, regardless of how insignificant, undermines your manager, confuses your team and is the fastest path to burn out I have ever seen. I suppose, as in any profession, there are managers who are there just for the paycheck. (Not sure why since veterinary medicine is not known for being the most lucrative career choice)..... but that is not the norm....far from it I would argue. 99.9% of the managers I meet are so dedicated to this profession and their practice it is heartwarming. They enter with wide eyes, huge dreams and visions and goals galore only to find out that that they really are just puppets whose moves are controlled by the owner who can't let go. Soon, these once aspiring dreamers stop reaching for the stars and enter each day with plans to go through the motions and wait to be told what to do or not to do. How sad. What a waste.
So, owners - grow professionally! You have 2 choices. Be owners and doctors who also manage or hire managers and let them manage and you oversee your visions be developed by them. They can do it. Let them try. Guide them. Tell them your dreams and goals so that they can help achieve them. Check in with them regularly, after all it is your investment and I wouldn't be foolish enough to tell you to hand it over without question to anyone. No matter what though....don't nitpick. Don't micromanage them in to depression and frustration. If you want to choose what color pens the practice uses then you are not ready for a manager so don't try. What I can tell you is that if you are ready to be a partner with a true professional then hire a practice manager and you will never regret it. (If you do don't call me - kidding!)
Professional Growth is yours my dear owners. Go out and conquer!
Donna Bauman, CVPM
Time and time again I hear from frustrated managers who were hired to run the practice and are told daily that they are in charge. Unfortunately they are in charge in a practice with an owner who refuses to let go of control to allow them to be in charge. Don't get me wrong. Owners are the most vested people in any practice and I don't care how passionate or dedicated you, as the manager are, you are still NOT the owner. That being said, if you are the owner and you hired a manager to run your business then allow them to do so. Micromanaging at every opportunity or offering your two cents on every single subject, regardless of how insignificant, undermines your manager, confuses your team and is the fastest path to burn out I have ever seen. I suppose, as in any profession, there are managers who are there just for the paycheck. (Not sure why since veterinary medicine is not known for being the most lucrative career choice)..... but that is not the norm....far from it I would argue. 99.9% of the managers I meet are so dedicated to this profession and their practice it is heartwarming. They enter with wide eyes, huge dreams and visions and goals galore only to find out that that they really are just puppets whose moves are controlled by the owner who can't let go. Soon, these once aspiring dreamers stop reaching for the stars and enter each day with plans to go through the motions and wait to be told what to do or not to do. How sad. What a waste.
So, owners - grow professionally! You have 2 choices. Be owners and doctors who also manage or hire managers and let them manage and you oversee your visions be developed by them. They can do it. Let them try. Guide them. Tell them your dreams and goals so that they can help achieve them. Check in with them regularly, after all it is your investment and I wouldn't be foolish enough to tell you to hand it over without question to anyone. No matter what though....don't nitpick. Don't micromanage them in to depression and frustration. If you want to choose what color pens the practice uses then you are not ready for a manager so don't try. What I can tell you is that if you are ready to be a partner with a true professional then hire a practice manager and you will never regret it. (If you do don't call me - kidding!)
Professional Growth is yours my dear owners. Go out and conquer!
Donna Bauman, CVPM
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
It's all about the non verbal cues.
Since client relations is the thing that excites me the most in the practice, I tend to monitor it and critique it frequently. Most recently I had a training session with my staff on the unspoken word. It started when I watched a discharge take place at the front desk. The client had already met in the exam room with the technician and now was at the front desk paying for the services. The client service member reviewed the services that were checked off on the travel sheet against those on the invoice. She didn't miss anything or say anything wrong. In the middle of this process the client answered a cell phone call. Now at first I thought she was just rude, as did my client service member, but as I continued to watch I could see her body language was not of a happy client who was just rude and took a phone call. Her spoken word also gave some clues. So after the client was finished and left I pulled the client service person aside and asked for her take on what had just transpired. She gave me the play by play, not knowing I had been watching, and her version was that everything was fine except the client was rude and took a call right in the middle of her talking. I asked her if she thought the client was frustrated or upset about her bill or the visit. The team member told me no. Next, I gave her my version of what I witnessed. I asked her if she noticed that the client never looked her in the eye - even before the cell phone rang. She hadn't noticed. I did though. Mrs. Jones never once looked at the client service person. She looked down, around at other clients waiting in the reception area, staff walking by and her dog pulling at the leash and her arm. I noticed that. I asked the client service person if all the client's questions were answered during this visit. She said that they had been. The reality? Maybe not since the client service member never asked her (our protocol states she asks!). I asked my loyal team member if she noticed that Mrs. Jones sighed a lot? She hadn't...but Mrs Jones did!
So my next step was to call Mrs. Jones. I explained who I was and that I was calling to ask about her experience at our practice today. (I call it an experience because it should be!) Laughing Mrs. Jones was very friendly and told me that she left our practice today a bit frustrated. It seems that she came in with a complaint of "shaking her head". Yes, her dog Spike was shaking her head. I asked her if she would be willing to share with me the reasons for her frustrations. Here they were:
1) Spike, though maybe a masculine name, was a girl. Client frustration? Every team member, DVM included, who interacted with Spike on this day called Spike a HE!
2) Shaking her head didn't seem like a $150 visit to the client. It was in fact a $150 bill though and Mrs. Jones felt that was a "bit high". I asked her what the doctor did today and she told me this, "He didn't do much. He looked in her ears and said something about yeast and bacteria, some test EBA and some coccidia thing." Let me back track here and tell you that most times I find a client frustrated with a bill I find a client who didn't see the value in what we did. Their problem? Most certainly not!!! Our problem!!!!! This was the case here. I talked to the doctor and looked at his travel sheet. In fact, nothing was a full physical examination. He checked Spike over head to toe but since he didn't verbalize each step, Mrs. Jones didn't know he did it. Her view? "He pet Spike." He sure did but that was really him petting over Spike to check for lumps and bumps. He pet Spike while he listened to her heart. Yes he did look in the ears and that EBA was really an EDA (Ear Discharge Analysis). Mistake #2 - don't speak in terms the client doesn't know. Mrs Jones didn't know what an EDA was or what it was looking for. She was actually quite interested once I took the time to explain it to her. Mistake #3 - all those things the doctor found. It was not coccidia - it was cocci. Yes there was yeast and baceteria but again that wasn't explained to Mrs. Jones. She was not told the differences and that different ear medications cover different things so she just thought we jacked up her invoice by adding a "ton of medications."
3) Ear appointments are a frequent item of contention at our practice. I think it is because the client thinks it is a simple thing that requires, at best, a simple, single medication. Our doctors know differently. They most often run the EDA, they frequently use the video vetscope to see inside the ear canal and there are often a few different medications. We know this and we had a plan in place for just this thing but we didn't use it. We didn't show her the ear canal on the vetscope screen. We didn't print her photos. We didn't give her the handout on the ear canal, how to administer meds and what an ear infection is. At discharge, by this time she was already angry, we rattled off, once again, all those things she just heard but didn't understand which only frustrated her more. (hence the no eye contact, cell phone call and many sighs). We had a chance to fix this by asking if she had any questions or if she understood everything that took place in her visit today...but we didn't.
So you see what happened here? We missed the non verbal cues that were screaming at us that we dropped the ball and that Mrs Jones was going to leave and maybe never come back...she certainly wasn't coming back for the recommened medical progress exam in 2 weeks. People often tell you they are fine when most certainly everything about them is screaming that they are not fine. Read those cues. Act on those cues. Fix the issues or you risk losing your clients.
Mrs. Jones is now happy. She asked me how I knew something was wrong. I told her about all the non verbal cues I witnessed. She chuckled and told me how perceptive I was and then she said she was also good at reading them and that at that point she knew I was smiling while talking on the phone with her. Of course I was. That is rule number one of answering the phone at my practice!
Donna
So my next step was to call Mrs. Jones. I explained who I was and that I was calling to ask about her experience at our practice today. (I call it an experience because it should be!) Laughing Mrs. Jones was very friendly and told me that she left our practice today a bit frustrated. It seems that she came in with a complaint of "shaking her head". Yes, her dog Spike was shaking her head. I asked her if she would be willing to share with me the reasons for her frustrations. Here they were:
1) Spike, though maybe a masculine name, was a girl. Client frustration? Every team member, DVM included, who interacted with Spike on this day called Spike a HE!
2) Shaking her head didn't seem like a $150 visit to the client. It was in fact a $150 bill though and Mrs. Jones felt that was a "bit high". I asked her what the doctor did today and she told me this, "He didn't do much. He looked in her ears and said something about yeast and bacteria, some test EBA and some coccidia thing." Let me back track here and tell you that most times I find a client frustrated with a bill I find a client who didn't see the value in what we did. Their problem? Most certainly not!!! Our problem!!!!! This was the case here. I talked to the doctor and looked at his travel sheet. In fact, nothing was a full physical examination. He checked Spike over head to toe but since he didn't verbalize each step, Mrs. Jones didn't know he did it. Her view? "He pet Spike." He sure did but that was really him petting over Spike to check for lumps and bumps. He pet Spike while he listened to her heart. Yes he did look in the ears and that EBA was really an EDA (Ear Discharge Analysis). Mistake #2 - don't speak in terms the client doesn't know. Mrs Jones didn't know what an EDA was or what it was looking for. She was actually quite interested once I took the time to explain it to her. Mistake #3 - all those things the doctor found. It was not coccidia - it was cocci. Yes there was yeast and baceteria but again that wasn't explained to Mrs. Jones. She was not told the differences and that different ear medications cover different things so she just thought we jacked up her invoice by adding a "ton of medications."
3) Ear appointments are a frequent item of contention at our practice. I think it is because the client thinks it is a simple thing that requires, at best, a simple, single medication. Our doctors know differently. They most often run the EDA, they frequently use the video vetscope to see inside the ear canal and there are often a few different medications. We know this and we had a plan in place for just this thing but we didn't use it. We didn't show her the ear canal on the vetscope screen. We didn't print her photos. We didn't give her the handout on the ear canal, how to administer meds and what an ear infection is. At discharge, by this time she was already angry, we rattled off, once again, all those things she just heard but didn't understand which only frustrated her more. (hence the no eye contact, cell phone call and many sighs). We had a chance to fix this by asking if she had any questions or if she understood everything that took place in her visit today...but we didn't.
So you see what happened here? We missed the non verbal cues that were screaming at us that we dropped the ball and that Mrs Jones was going to leave and maybe never come back...she certainly wasn't coming back for the recommened medical progress exam in 2 weeks. People often tell you they are fine when most certainly everything about them is screaming that they are not fine. Read those cues. Act on those cues. Fix the issues or you risk losing your clients.
Mrs. Jones is now happy. She asked me how I knew something was wrong. I told her about all the non verbal cues I witnessed. She chuckled and told me how perceptive I was and then she said she was also good at reading them and that at that point she knew I was smiling while talking on the phone with her. Of course I was. That is rule number one of answering the phone at my practice!
Donna
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