According to the person leading my spin exercise class, today (Monday, March 20) is the first day of spring. Spring is a great time to have a general clear out and give your domestic and professional spaces a good tidy up. I recall the time when I was up on my ladder cleaning the leaves out of the guttering and had to remove a bracket from the wall to repair one of the joins. The bracket was secured with four screws, three of which were flathead and one crosshead. After getting the first three out with the correct screwdriver, I proceeded to use the same flathead screwdriver to leverage out the fourth screw, only to slip and scrape my knuckles down the brick work.
The words ‘the right tools for the job’ rang through my ears, especially as at the foot of the ladder were a set of screwdrivers, one of which fitted the offending screw perfectly. So, I asked myself why did I not simply pop down the ladder, pick up the right tool and save myself from the pain of picking grains of brick out from my hand? The answer is that I don’t really know. Perhaps, it was some kind of personal challenge or annoyance that the person who fitted the bracket did not have the courtesy to use matching screws.
You might well be asking what these musings have to do with optics and you would be right to ask. However, in my line of work mentoring and coaching business owners, I often come across situations where the right tools for the job have not been provided for the team and, as a result, efficiency suffers.
During the Covid-19 lockdowns, many practice owners had to run their practices while their team were on a furlough summer. Many were probably surprised to realise how much their team relied on having the right tools and some were even embarrassed about how much they had neglected their teams’ needs in
the past.
Whether the issue was a faulty seat for a patient or computers that were too slow due to old age, owners realised that for a relatively small investment they could easily help their teams be more effective. The question is why it took a pandemic for business owners to walk a figurative mile in their employees’ shoes.
Ask the team
So, with spring in the air, now is a great time to look at your practice and make sure your team have what they need to be effective going forward. One of the best ways to do this is to ‘walk the four corners’ of your business. Consider asking your team members questions along the lines of these:
- What do you see that I may not see?
- How can we make this better for our customers?
- How can we make this system or process more efficient?
- What would help you do your job better?
- How can we grow faster?
Then, simply stand back and listen.
Asking your staff these types of questions is a great way to build trust. Your team work day-in and day-out on the front line, and chances are they have answers to just about any problem that arises in your business. They also know ways you could improve the practice and the patient experience, as well as uncovering opportunities that you may not have considered. The problem, however, is that they usually won’t tell you what they know unless you ask.
All too often, we are rushing round and neglect to ask for input or, even worse, assume the people we employ in front of house, locums or those in part-time roles do not have anything valuable to offer.
The founder of Intel, Andy Grove, regularly called his salespeople who operated the furthest distance from Intel headquarters, just to chat. When asked why, he said: ‘The snow always melts first on the edges.’
As this example demonstrates, ‘walking the four corners’ of your business, both physically and by talking to the team, can be the best tool you have for understanding what is going on and to discover how to keep developing your practice.
Practice staff know what needs to be done and generally want to be part of a successful practice. You just need to ask them.