Team Goals (Part One of Two)

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Transcript

Jonathan:

Welcome to the Tooth and Coin Podcast, where we talk about your adventure of being a dental practice owner. In these episodes, we're going to be talking about problems that you will likely face as a practice owner, as well as give an idea about actionable solutions that you can take so that you can get past this problem in your practice. Some of these concepts are really big ones. Some of them are very specific, but we hope that these episodes help you along with your journey. Now a very important piece for you to understand is that this is not paid financial advice. This is not paid tax or legal advice. We are not your financial advisors. We are not your CPAs. This is two CPAs talking about informational and educational content to help you along with your journey. It's a very important piece for you to understand.

Jonathan:

Another thing that you need to know is, if you enjoy today's content, join us on the Facebook group. So we've got a Facebook group that is active with dentists, that is going to have content talking about what we're talking about today, to continue the discussion. Agree with us, don't agree with us, have a story to tell, have something to share, join us in the Facebook group. If you go to Facebook, and you search for Tooth and Coin podcast, click on it to join it, and be able to join us there.

Jonathan:

Finally, if you need some more help, we're developing a list of resources that are going to be centering in around our topics of discussion, to be able to help you a little bit more than what the content is doing. So if you'd like access to that whenever it becomes ready, all you have to do is text the word toothandcoin T-O-O-T-H-A-N-D-C-O-I-N to 33444. Again, that's toothandcoin, all one word, no spaces, to 33444. Reply with your email address, and we'll email you instructions on how to get into the Facebook group, as well as add you to the list, to be able to send you those resources when they're available. And if they're available, we'll go ahead and send them to you as well.

Jonathan:

So on to today's episode. I hope you enjoy it.

Jonathan:

Hello, ambitious dentist. Welcome back to the Tooth and Coin podcast. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about a leadership topic that is one that is just not really talked about very often. And that is how to keep your team engaged when trying to reach the goals that your practice has set. You want to make this seem like some really big, fun, exciting, giant topic, and it is fun and exciting, but at the end of the day, it comes down to engaging with your employees and communicating to your employees and having a feedback between yourself and your employees, so that you can tell them how they're progressing and keeping them engaged with the goals that you've set as a business, as a practice, so that you can actually move forward as a team, keep everybody rowing in the right direction, so to speak.

Jonathan:

So I'm going to be interviewing Joseph about this topic. Joseph is the leadership guru in our company. So I'm going to be asking him the questions, and he's going to be helping us out with this. So Joseph, let's start with that. Let's start with, number one, why is it important for us to be having these discussions with our employees, and how does that typically look in terms of how these communications are set up?

Joseph:

Yeah, great question. So I think that, in general, one of the things that is difficult in leadership is to give constant, sincere, appropriate feedback to your team. And one of the things is, as human beings, we just don't like to engage in anything that might be challenging. There's a very small fraction of the population that likes to fight, but that's far and few between. And by the time we're professionals, especially practicing at this level, especially getting a chance to engage and have a team of five or 10 or 20 or however big your practice is and the number of team members, we just like to avoid confrontation. And it feels like anytime that we've got to address anything with our team, it's going to be confrontational in nature.

Joseph:

And I would say that, while some things are confrontational and may not be the best thing, if you do it in the right way, it can help you achieve your goals as a practice. It can help you achieve your goals as a team member because one of the things that they've found, as they've studied employees and employee engagement, is that a lot of people, when they're disengaged at work, they're a fraction of the way productive as they would be if they were fully engaged. And if you poll your employees, one of the things that they would say is I get no feedback.

Joseph:

I think the cliche word that we use all the time in our society now is communication. Well, we just don't have good communication at our office. Well, if you look at why don't you like your boss? Well, we just don't communicate very well and that kind of thing. So I think that that's kind of the framework to start from is your team members want feedback. They need feedback. And if you avoid that because you're afraid that it's going to be uncomfortable, what that will eventually lead to is that will eventually lead to employees and team members that are disengaged, they're burnt out, and the big question, mark, Jonathan, is that they're left guessing, how am I doing? Am I doing okay? Am I not doing okay? How is the team doing? How are we progressing in our goals? And they're left to guess.

Joseph:

And there certainly are lots of people that, whenever they start playing the guessing game, they're very positive, optimistic, and they say, "Well, I haven't heard anything, so no news is good news." And then there's a percentage of people that say, "Oh my goodness, I haven't heard anything. That must mean that they don't like me and that I'm not doing a good job. Well, if I'm not doing a good job, that means that the practice isn't doing well, so that means we're probably going to go bankrupt. And I saw that thing the other day that made me think that the practice is getting ready to close, and we're all about to get fired." And then they start making up all these stories in their head because they just don't know.

Joseph:

So one of the things that we're going to talk through here is to just give you some tools and some things to think about in terms of how do we keep employees engaged, how do we keep them motivated, and how do we create consistent, constant feedback that is respectful? I would not ever encourage you to be disrespectful with your teammates and the team that you're leading, that you get the privilege to lead. I think that's one of the things we lose a lot is this concept of it's a privilege to lead people and to lead an organization. So I mean, what are some of your thoughts, kind of whenever we kind of bounce some of those things out?

Jonathan:

Yeah. So you did a really good job of outlining, and I mean, to me, there's a big problem that's as a part of all of this and, number one, I think the root of the problem is that employee engagement and any type of engagement in today's society is really hard to become active. It's hard to actively engage with other people and from a lot of different elements. And I could probably go down a rabbit trail of talking about social media and people's attention being numbed and all these other things that are out there.

Jonathan:

But at the end of the day, what we're talking about is employee engagement, and if you think about the fact that a lot of dental practices face a very real problem, which is turnover, I really wonder, if they had really effective leadership in all of these practices, if turnover would be helped a bit. And the way that you get about doing that seems to me to be have actively engaged employees that enjoy their job, enjoy what they're doing, and one of the ways to do that is keep them engaged and have them have some type of sense of accomplishment and have some sense of purpose inside of their position.

Jonathan:

I can already hear kind of the counterpoints to this in my head, which is, well, none of my employees want to be engaged. We just can't find those types of employees and things like that. And there's a real chicken and egg question that comes in there, as what comes first, the leadership or the engagement? And then it could also just be is it an issue in the hiring process and things like that. So for purposes of this discussion, we're going to assume that you have a strong hiring process to where you've weeded out the people that don't want to be actively engaged, and so if you feel like you're in an office that doesn't have those types of employees, just hear us out. You're still going to learn a lot about this process and ways to go about this.

Jonathan:

So this is something that I have struggled with, and we have great employees at our company, at Tooth & Coin. And that's because I am not, we're probably going to beat this word to death today, me not being a very engaging person on a lot of senses is we have to actively work at this. And this is something that we've been intentional about over the last 12 to 18 months at Tooth & Coin is trying to have more of these types of discussions amongst leadership, as well as with employees, about what it is we're planning on doing.

Jonathan:

So let's start with how do you set some type of a goal for the whole team to be a part of, and then how do you check in with it? And if you want to talk about how we did, or if you want to talk about the best ways to do it, go ahead.

Joseph:

Sure. Well, I think that a lot of things in leadership and a lot of things, when we talk about goal setting, they need to have some sort of a why behind it. So at the end of the day, the audience that's listening to this probably, probably work in a for-profit business. So we could say, at a high level, that we need to just set goals that make sure that we are ultra profitable, that we maximize our profitability, and we maximize the amount of cash that we take home. I can also make an argument that says that nonprofit organizations have to run at a operating surplus rather than deficit, no margin, no mission, something that I've heard before. So I think that that is certainly part of it.

Joseph:

So as I just gave you a kind of a buzz phrase that I learned a couple of years ago, no margin, no mission, if we're running a net operating loss, then we're not going to be able to pay our people, and we're not going to be able to pay them well. We're not going to be able to invest in IT upgrades, or we're not going to be able to invest in clinical upgrades or clinical staff or continuing education and those kinds of things. So if we're not profitable, at the end of the day, we're not going to be able to do the bigger thing that we all decided to get into this business for, and that's that we want to help people. You want to help people with your very specific skillset that you paid quite a bit of money to obtain that skill set. At the end of the day, we want to help people and help people feel better about themselves, about their smile, about their level of self confidence, even if it's a pain thing, help them get through these specific pains.

Joseph:

I mean, I have some root canals done several years ago. I think I told you that story. I was in pain, and I was so thankful that the dentist was able to perform these two root canals for me. It cost a fortune, right? Because dentistry is expensive. It cost a fortune at the time. But at that point in time, I was able to get help from these folks. So I think that a couple of things, whenever we're talking about goal setting, I think it needs to fit into those two different pieces. How do we continue to remain profitable so that we can do the things that we want to do inside the office clinically, so that me, as a business owner, I'm able to get a return on my investment, my time, energy, and effort, how do I support my family?

Joseph:

But it's also got to boil back down to the why behind what it is. So if we were to poll our audience, and we were to say, is the reason that you want people coming in for six-month hygiene checks, is the only reason for profit? No. There's a big, huge benefit that comes with having your teeth examined and clean and having a hygiene visit. We can identify problems earlier. We can help people sooner. We can eliminate a lot of this stuff on down the road. So I think that, when we look at the things that are most important, it does certainly have to do with profitability, but that can't be the only thing. That can't be the only reason that it is that we're doing what we're doing is for profit and for bottom line.

Joseph:

But that's important. I can't underestimate the importance of that. And again, no margin, no mission. We could go run a volunteer clinic and not pay anybody anything and do all of that stuff, and then how would you feed your family? How would your team members feed their family? So we've got to have some sort of a profit motive, but we've got to also focus it back to the why. So we're going to have these goals. They may be subjective in nature. They may be objective in nature.

Joseph:

So my dad works in retail and has run retail stores his whole professional career. One of the things that's a metric or a goal that they have is a customer service score. So let's boil down to a customer service score and net promoter score or your Google reviews or any of these other things that come out as part of running a dental practice. Why is it that we want to have good customer service scores? Well, there's a couple of reasons, right? If you have an unsatisfied customer, they're not going to come back. So that's the financial reason, right? But at the end of the day, do we really want to run a business that people are mad at us and think that we're just taking their money from them and not helping them? That doesn't factor into the why that we became dentists or CPAs or to run a retail store.

Jonathan:

You got to get that patient engagement, right? We got to move the engagement away from the employee, as well as have it be to the patient because it's hard. I mean, it's easy for the dentist to make an engagement with the patient. It's sometimes hard for the dentist or the owner to make sure that the employee engages with that person as well and has a reason to do that.

Jonathan:

And we've talked about social good being tied into being a business, in a prior episode, and I love that. And I can think of almost no better types of businesses to have social goods associated with their business, other than medical. Now, sometimes social goods can be a bit divisive in some ways, and some people may like one social good or another social good, but most people, in general, are going to be happy to be a part of something that is doing that.

Jonathan:

So, yeah, I completely completely agree with that. So let's assume that you've got your goal that you've decided to make, and we can probably do a whole episode on setting goals as well. And let's talk about now how we are going to engage with those employees, to make sure that that goal is not being forgotten about and that the engagement continues on because this is something that I had ... I think, Joseph, you may have ... I think it was you actually. You, at one point, said to me, "What is it that we're doing here every day? Because I know we're doing CPA services at Tooth & Coin, but why are we doing what we're doing?

Jonathan:

And it was one of those things that it was in my head, I'd talked about it in the past, and it had just been so long since I'd brought it out at a meeting or talked about it or whatever it was is that people had forgotten about it. And even though it was the same people, that we didn't have staff turnover, it was just one of those things. It was just it had to be re-communicated, over and over and over again. So, Joseph, how do you do that? How does someone do a better job of keeping that goal in the front of people's minds and helping people along the way of reaching that goal?

Joseph:

Sure. I remember when I was a kid, and I was learning different stuff about spelling and all the different facts and stuff, and my mom made flashcards so that she could help me study all this stuff. And one of the things that always stuck with me is that repetition strengthens and confirms. So I think, first and foremost, is we've got to remind people why we're here. So I don't know that that needs to be something that we plaster all over the wall and the website, which those things are fine, well, and good, and I would encourage you to think about all those different things. What's the mission of the business? What's the vision of what we're trying to do, the mission of the practice? Maybe it's to create healthy smiles.

Joseph:

I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and there are a number of kind of the big, corporate people that are out there. And there's one corporate group that is out to make sexy teeth, and there's another one, I will make you have a sexy smile or whatever. That's a big part of their marketing push. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I'm not here to judge that. It stuck with me, so it's got some stickiness in there, effectiveness. There's another company in town that says, "We make healthy teeth." Healthy teeth first, before we make them sexy, is kind of the innuendo.

Joseph:

So I think when we go back to repetition strengthens and confirms, so back to your back to your illustration, if one of the things that we're trying to do as a firm is we want to be their CPA from the time that they get into practice ownership until the time that they retire, if we wrote that down one time and said that at one meeting, two years ago, that is out of sight, out of mind. So at whatever point it becomes relevant, whenever it's timely, whenever it is appropriate, we need to be reminding people of what it is that we're here to do.

Joseph:

Now, it's not every morning that we stand and do the pledge of allegiance, and we sit and make a pledge to the vision and mission statement, straight out of Office Space or something like that, right? It's not about that. It's about just getting a chance to remind people why we're here. So annual company meetings are a good time to do that. There are a lot of offices that have a holiday party, where there's a couple of speeches and that kind of thing, and then quarterly is another time that people can do it and kind of remind people of why it is that we're here.

Joseph:

Because it's really easy, whenever you're sitting in the weeds, and you're just work, work, work, and you're getting through, and you've got the patient call list, and you're collecting on the AR, and you're trying to get Ms. Jones scheduled, and we're trying to verify insurance, and we're trying to get a case acceptance rate, and we're trying to get call backs, there's all this stuff, and sometimes, we get so busy in the weeds that we forget to take a larger picture view. So I would say, first and foremost, repetition strengthens and confirms. It's important that we continue to do that in a way that is sincere and appropriate. I think that's kind of first and foremost. What are your thoughts on that? I pledge allegiance to Tooth & Coin, the CPA firm, who's going to be awesome for the time that we're all here.

Jonathan:

Yeah, so that's, if I had my way, we ... And honestly, it's funny because I joke about it, but I can see now why they do it. So when you're in college, in business, you learn about all of these different cultures of business, and I think Japan actually does that in a lot of their businesses. The lifestyle of person who works in a lot of Japanese businesses is that they do pledge of allegiance to their company. They thank their company, every day, for letting their lives be a part of that, and they work insane hours. In Japan, I think there's actual places where you can rent out a place to take a nap, just so you don't have to go home, and you can keep working.

Jonathan:

So that's the more dramatic version of it, but yeah. And this is something that I still struggle with because I'm not, I don't know, a fluffy kind of guy, in terms of how I talk to people. I'm not big on talking about feelings, or I don't even have ... I'll just do spirit hands. I don't know how else to say it. So communicating things that are big picture about how we want to help our dentist not have to worry about the tax world, even though it can be really scary, and we know that our dental clients don't know a whole lot about it. We want to be that strong arm that helps them through those pieces, to where they're comfortable knowing they're not going to be ever spending in their taxes. They know it's going to be well-prepared and taken care of. And I want them to be able to understand how their business is doing. And I can say those things on a podcast when I'm talking to the people that are performing those services.

Jonathan:

Sometimes, if you say that same thing, over and over and over again, me, personally, I get the fear that I'm going to be almost saying that what they're ... I'm trying to convince them that what they are doing is what they were doing, and if I say it too many times, I'm going to be shoving it down their throats too much. And even though we have such a great team here that I know that's not an issue, the communication of that is important because it's really easy to lose the trees from the forest whenever you're trying to figure out where you're going in this path and this way.

Jonathan:

So for the dental clients out there, the dentists that are out there that have set this goal, they've shared it with their team, I mean, what is the frequency? How often do you say this? I mean, I think that we've set up a system where we have an annual, we have a whole day annual meeting, and then we have quarterly check-ins. We have annual calibrations with our teammates. We have a weekly check-in with your leadership person. What type of frequency would you think is right? I mean, is there a universal one, or is it more dependent on style and communication and personalities and things like that? Or what are your thoughts on that, on a broad level?

Joseph:

Sure. Well, I'm sure some people are sitting and listening, thinking, man, that sounds all well and good, Jonathan, but I just don't have the time. Like you said this, and you say all this stuff. And that's great, if I had 36 hours in the day, but I've only got 24 hours in the day. I've only got X amount of days that I'm chairside, and how much time am I going to spend kind of having the CEO day or having the CEO half-day or even doing that after hours. I don't have time for all of this. So I guess, first and foremost, my encouragement would be that you've got to start somewhere. So if I come out and say that this needs to happen daily, weekly, quarterly, if you hear Jonathan say, "Well, you need to check in with your team weekly," and you have never done a check-in with your team before, that would probably sound very overwhelming and very onerous. And then you would just kind of get discouraged and decide, I don't have time for that.

Joseph:

So first and foremost, I would say we need to get started. You're going to have some place to start. So there certainly is, and I'm telling my team all this, all the time, is there are lots of different things that I would call best practice. And then there kind of ends up where reality is going to set and going to be. So I can give you lots of different things. I think that just at a bare minimum, you've got to sit down with your team and talk to them individually at least annually, at bare minimum, no matter what happens. If it's been years since you've done a performance review with any of your team, now's the time. We need to have an annual performance review.

Joseph:

And there's lots of different stuff. We could probably spend two or three episodes on how to structure a performance review. But there's a lot of different things that are in there, so going back to the company goals, if we've got practice goals, I would say, as far as frequency goes, I think that you run the risk of, in December or January, you sit down, and you make these company goals, these team goals, these practice goals, and then you don't tell anybody, all year long, how we're doing on those goals. And then all of the sudden, it comes December time, you get the email from your CPA that says, "Hey, if you have any year-end payrolls, now's the time." And you sit, and you scramble, and you say, "Oh man, I want to get that tax deduction this year, so I'm going to run a bonus." And then you just randomly give people a bonus, and it's $500, $1000, $100, and they have no idea, where did that number come from? How did you get to that number?

Joseph:

And be like, "Oh, yeah. Well, we had a great year this year, so here's your $1000 or $500 or whatever it is." And essentially, what we've done, and I grew up playing sports, and I know you did too, Jonathan, is we've asked people to go out and compete and play really, really hard, and we never showed them the scoreboard. Not one time did we say, "Here's how we're doing." We just said, blindly, at the end of the year, January, December, whenever it is that you pay your, quote, year-end bonus out, or you look at those company goals like, oh, we either hit them or we didn't. And we've asked them to play their hearts out and give them everything that they got with no scoreboard.

Joseph:

And I think that that's providing your employees a disservice, your team members a disservice. So my recommendation, my best practice is to definitely give your team an update on how you're doing on your goals quarterly, and at a minimum, they need to hear from you twice a year. Because at least twice a year, we can have an idea, and we can recalibrate, and we can say, "Okay, well, we've noticed that the cancellation rate is higher than what our goal was, that more people are canceling and not showing up, and we're having a bunch of empty chair time." If you're only waiting and looking at that once a year, then you don't have any time to pivot or to adjust or to come up with different ways to have your team help you problem solve those things.

Joseph:

So my recommendation is to at least give your team a quarterly update. I know that that's something that we, as a firm, have implemented this year is to kind of do a quarterly update on how we're doing on the different team goals that we've set and practice goals that we've set. So that would be what I would call best practice. You can certainly do it monthly. I think as the owner of the practice, if you have a practice manager, an office manager, or somebody that's helping you do that, look at those things monthly. If it makes sense, and you're looking at patient count stuff, that's certainly something you can look at weekly like, that we're talking about big team goals, things that people can really wrap their arms around and understand, you need to be communicating quarterly with your team how we're doing on the team goals, and what are we're seeing?

Joseph:

So if you were to come out and have practice goals that you set in January of 2020, we have this global pandemic that hits, dental offices are shut down across the globe for a good chunk of March, we would say, "Well, we didn't hit our quarterly goal for Q1 of 2020. Here are the reasons. It's because we were shut down for eight weeks. It was because we did emergency only." And all of the sudden, we're able to kind of add some color around what's going on. One of the things that I've noticed is that the first quarter of 2021 has been really, really good for a lot of the practices that we help. Okay, well, what's going on there? Let's add some color to all of those different pieces.

Joseph:

So I'd say, at a minimum, you need to communicate that stuff quarterly. You, as the business owner, need to be looking at it at least monthly. And then if you've got folks that you can communicate on your team, that can help you reach your goals, as frequently as you can, looking at those, if that's even weekly or if that's monthly. But I would say, at a minimum, you definitely want to look at it monthly, and you need to communicate with your team at least quarterly. At a bare minimum, I'd say twice a year.

Jonathan:

Hey, everybody. Jonathan, checking in really quick here. This episode got a little long, so we cut it into multiple pieces. This is episode one. You can find episode two next week or in the following weeks. So make sure that, if you listen to this episode, you listen to the other episode as well, so you have the full context around everything that's going on. Thanks for tuning in, and we will see you next time.

Jonathan:

That's it for today, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Tooth & Coin podcast. If you are going to be a practice owner or a new practice owner, and you're interested in CPA services, head on over to toothandcoin.com, where you can check out more about our CPA services. We help out around 250 offices around the country and would love to be able to have the discussion about how we could help your new practice.

Jonathan:

We do specialize in new practice owners, so people that are about to be an owner of a practice they're acquiring, about to be an owner of a practice they are starting up, or has become an owner in the past five years. That is our specialty. We'd love to be able to talk to you about how we could help you in your services, with your tax and accounting services.

Jonathan:

And if you enjoyed today's episode, again, go to the Facebook group, talk to us about what we've talked about, join in on the discussion, and let's create an environment where we can talk about some of these things so that we can all help each other get through these things together, so that this adventure of business ownership is more fun, more productive, and better in the longterm.

Jonathan:

Lastly, if you want access to those resources that we are currently building, just text the word toothandcoin to 33444. That's toothandcoin, no spaces, T-O-O-T-H-A-N-D-C-O-I-N, to 33444. Reply with your email address, and we'll send you an instruction to the Facebook group. We'll send you the resources when they're available. And we will see you next week.

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