In this episode, Ben Lynch discusses the importance of delegating with confidence in order to reduce reliance on oneself and others, emphasizing on efficiency, avoiding abdication and micromanagement.
Ben also talks about a simple method for successful delegation and highlights the significance of a strong performance culture in high-performing clinics.
Quotes
- 00:31 - "So often when we get the opportunity to delegate, it's a real milestone or moment to celebrate because we are so often the bottleneck in the business."
- 01:14 - "When we do delegate, so often we delegate in a fashion that's actually abdication."
- 12:28 - "What I'm hoping to show and share with you today is a couple of copy-and-paste template messages that could be used in whatever platform you use."
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:12 Delegating without micromanaging
02:40 Reporting as an accountability measure
03:52 Revenue report template
06:53 Outstanding accounts template
08:30 Practitioner utilisation/productivity template
09:38 New client report template
10:16 Client excellence report template
10:36 Portfolio (vanity and sanity) templates
12:24 When and how to use these reports
Connect
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We appreciate your support and feedback!
Slack: Delegating, Accountability Systems and Reporting Templates
GYC Podcast E267
[TRANSCRIPT]
00:00
This is the Grow Your Clinic podcast from Clinic Mastery. We help progressive health professionals to lead inspired teams, transform client experiences and build clinics for good. Now it's time to grow your clinic.
00:13 Ben Lynch
Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast. My name is Ben Lynch. In this episode, we're going to be talking about delegating with confidence. So often when we get the opportunity to delegate, it's a real milestone or moment to celebrate because we are so often the bottleneck in the business, meaning decisions or actions come to us and through us and rely on us. Even having the opportunity to delegate something to someone else is a big relief. It's a really great moment to celebrate because you are reducing the reliance of your business on you or anyone else. Because definitely as you grow, you're able to then facilitate other team members, other leaders in your clinic to be able to reduce reliance on them.
01:12
When we do delegate, so often I see we delegate in a fashion that's actually abdication. It's kind of like, here you go, I need you to do this. And we don't check in, we don't support, we don't nurture, we don't have a feedback loop to know if it's getting done or how well it's getting done. We're going to talk about and I'm going to share with you a very simple method for you to be able to do this inside your clinic.
01:42
The sort of worst version of this is that you feel like you might be micromanaging someone and I'm guessing you probably don't want to do that or make anyone feel like they're micromanaged. But what I see in the high-performing clinics is that culture of performance is very strong. Culture means a lot of things. It definitely is a commitment to show up and live the values and work towards the common vision and purpose of the clinic. But it also entails performance. I think excellence is part of the fabric of growing your clinic sustainably over a long period of time and creating a clinic for good. Really having the impact that you seek to make relies on you being effective, productive, and by extension making an effective and productive team.
02:40
So there needs to be a feedback loop and accountability mechanism or a bunch of those in fact, for you to know if you're doing those things and how well you are doing those things. Now there's a number of elements for something like this to work. We're going to pick on one specific element and that is a reporting mechanism to see how well a certain function in your business is going. Now I'm going to share my screen. So for those that are listening into the podcast, thank you for listening in, first of all. Secondly, come over to our YouTube channel, hit subscribe. We so often share our screen and walk through live examples or show you examples that might just facilitate the ideas or evolutions in your clinic. So I'm going to share my screen now for those that are watching here on YouTube and I'm going to show you a reporting function. There's a couple of different ways that you can do this. Don't get too caught up on the absolute specifics here because you might not be using a tool like Slack. You might be using something from Microsoft or the Google version of this, but take at least the principles of being able to make this really easy. So it's not burdensome on people to create these reports and feedback that things are getting done and how well they're getting done. But just know that this is a way that you could do it.
03:52
So I'm sharing my screen now and I created a post inside our Business Academy community and I shared some examples that people could copy and paste into their clinic and use in creating accountability for any role or function. Practice managers, admin or reception, therapists, mentors or leaders, site or clinic location directors, whoever they might be. The first example that I've got here is a revenue report. So often we're looking at the financial sustainability of the clinic. And so what this offers is an opportunity for you to state the date or the reporting period. I like the emojis. I think it makes it a little bit easier on the eye. You'll see a lot of emojis here to break it up, especially if you're using a tool like Slack. So we've got our target for that period of time. Let's assume this is a week. It's at $42,500. Our break-even point, potentially that is something that you are working to exceed at a certain point. Now you're probably thinking, wouldn't you want to exceed that all the time? Absolutely. But there are periods of growth where perhaps you're reinvesting into the business, a new site or location is being developed or you've hired a massive cohort of therapists. And so that's changing. So you're looking to get as close to that point as possible. So we have our break-even point and then we have our actual number. So for those that are watching my screen, these are really simple. So we've got the revenue target of $42,500, the break-even point set at $31,788, very specific, and the actual revenue sitting at $38,239. So what we can see from this is that within sort of four lines of text, we can very clearly see how well are we tracking against our targets. What were our results? Now underneath we've got a couple of other options. These provide opportunities for the narrative around the numbers. So for a leader, a manager, whoever they may be, to add some commentary or context to bring these numbers to life. So a couple of standing items are what's working. And we want people to be really specific or get to the point. We don't want a Harry Potter novel here. As much detail that gets the point across, it also depends on the reporting frequency. In this case, we're looking at a weekly report. So there's unlikely to be massive changes on a weekly basis as distinct from if we were doing this quarterly. Also, we ask what's an opportunity? What opportunity are they seeing, the person that's reporting on this, and any other notes or commentary there? Perhaps this is forming part of a pre-reading for a meeting that you've got coming up very soon.
06:53
We're then going on to the next report. Then you can see these are copy and paste week on week, month on month, quarter on quarter, make it really easy, not burdensome. The next report is outstanding accounts. So this is money for services that you've delivered, but haven't yet been paid for. Typically, we recommend that you aim to keep this below 10% of your monthly income. Now that monthly income's likely changing month to month. So pick an average perhaps over the last three months and say as a benchmark, we want it below 10%. Benchmark always against yourself to begin with. Use what I've shared with you as a benchmark, a point of reference. If you can get it below 10% and have your target below that, fantastic. If you're already below 10%, kudos to you. I would just recommend you always look to get better than what you are. So here's the example: What is our target for outstanding accounts? It is less than $12,000 in this example. What is our actual $11,239? For those watching my screen, you can see how we use the emojis as a quick visual reference that yes, we've hit our target with a big green tick. In the case where we have not, depending on how close you are, you might use a traffic light system. Again, copy and paste this. This is a great one for a bookkeeper, practice manager, or receptionist.
08:30
The next one is around practitioner utilisation or productivity. You might get, if you've got mentors in your clinic, who take care of three to five practitioners or therapists for them to report on the people that they work with. You could use service hours. You could use appointments. You could use revenue. Whatever is most applicable to you and a traffic light system you can see on my screen here for the therapist. SD, they're green because they've hit their target of above 25 patients in a week. They hit 27. BL, my initials, I got orange, close to the mark, but no cigar. And then EP is the name of the therapist. They were well below their target. They're red. You might want to add some notes. They're red because they had a sick day or there was a public holiday or they had annual leave or perhaps this is a symptom of some performance that needs attention.
09:38
We've got another one here below, which is the new client report. Very simple. How many new clients? If you wanted to break that down by the source of those new clients, you definitely could do that as well. So the target, we use the little target emoji, is 18 new clients for the week. A big green tick because our actuals were 21. With each of these, adding some context and commentary from the person reporting I think is always wise because it presents an opportunity for dialogue and discussion and for actions, as to how we're going to sustain or improve this result.
10:16
We've got a client excellence report. You might want to track net promoter score. How likely are you to recommend our health service to a friend? We've got targets around that and actuals. Perhaps you do have Google reviews or any other form of Google reviews and a client rebooking rate here as well.
10:36
Perhaps you've got different portfolios within your clinic, portfolios or pathways. Perhaps someone takes over your marketing, CPD and training from a practice management perspective, looking at the admin functions and you want them to report back to you. So what I'm sharing with you here are vanity and sanity measures. Vanity from social media or marketing. Meaning, if you're looking to boost followers or perhaps subscribers to a group because curating a niche group online, an example being a Facebook group, because that's going to be a source of new clients for you into the future by providing value into that group. You might be measuring how many people are being added to that group over a certain period of time so that we reach that or if it's a database, you're looking to create some lead generation tools to get people onto your database with the intention that over time they choose you for the health service and become a new client. The sanity measures, ultimately, we want to make sure that we are attracting new clients to the service so we have a target and actual. Perhaps you have a cost of acquisition (CAC), meaning how much money did we have to spend to acquire a new client to book in and successfully attend that appointment to make sure that that is sustainable from a dollar and then a percentage of lifetime value (LTV) is often a really reasonable measure. So CAC to LTV is often a reasonable measure. We won't go into details about some of the flaws of this measure, but it's a common measure you might use here.
12:24
So what I'm hoping to show and share with you today is a couple of copy-and-paste template messages that could be used in whatever platform you use. We use Slack. I know a lot of clinics do use Slack. That someone who has been delegated a responsibility in your clinic can have a feedback loop and accountability mechanism to be able to share with you if that thing is being done and how well it's being done, to make it simple and easy to use, simple and easy to understand to understand using visual cues like the emojis and getting straight to the point with here's our target, here's our actual. To then facilitate conversations, whether that's in an operations meeting or a strategic meeting so that you continue to move the ball forward and make the progress you seek to make. As always, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the podcast. Bet you would have got more value if you were watching this on YouTube as distinct from listening. Please come across and join us there if you're on YouTube. Awesome to be here with you. Please remember to like and subscribe to stay across all of the new content that we're bringing to you on a regular basis and always continue to live with passion and serve with care. You can grab all the show notes over at clinicmastery.com and we'll see you on another episode very soon. Bye for now.
13:53
Thanks for tuning into the Grow Your Clinic Podcast. To find out more about past episodes or how we can help you head to www.clinicmastery.com and please remember to rate and review us on your podcast player of choice. See you on the next episode.
