In this episode of the Dr. Marketing Tips podcast, you’ll hear a recap of a two-day Finding Your Why training session Corey and Susan presented to the management team at a large, multi-location medical practice. With competition moving in down the road, the practice is investing in leadership training for managers to enhance culture and develop stories and messaging that will differentiate the brand and refocus employees on the front lines.

As thought leader Simon Sinek says in his best-selling book Start With Why, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute. We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe.”

Tune in to discover:

• How “finding your why” can enhance your practice’s culture and boost employee engagement, ultimately leading to better patient care
• Methods to transform and improve the way your staff communicates with each other and interacts with patients (for zero dollars!)
• How storytelling among your management team can inspire teamwork, connection, and a sense of family
• Why employee engagement and recognition programs create a sense of unity among employees, management, and physician partners

Transcript Notes

Speaker 1: Dr Marketing Tips, paging Dr Marketing Tips, Dr Marketing Tips, you’re needed in the marketing department.

Speaker 2: Welcome to the Dr Marketing Tips Podcast. Your prescription to the answers you seek to grow your medical practice easier, better, and faster. This show is all about connecting practice administrators and medical marketing professionals with peers working in practices, learning from experiences, making mistakes and sharing successes. Let’s get started.

Corey: Hey, guys and welcome to another episode of the Dr Marketing Tips Podcast. I’m Corey.

Susan: And I’m Susan.

Corey: And today we are going to share with you a recap of a recent training session that we did with one of our clients. So, in this session, it was two days, and Sue and I went down to their practice, and we presented a training session based on the Simon Sineck, Find Your Why training. So, we called this the It All Starts with Why training.

Corey: And the reason that we did this is because we wanted to kind of find out how this practice sort of feels about their culture, and ways to enhance it. And by no means do they have a bad culture. But what we did was we sat down with all of the managers, and we wanted to find the purpose, and the cause, and just the belief that makes them want to come to work every day.

Corey: So, we set out on across two days. It was four hours each day, one in the afternoon, and then one the following morning. And so in this episode, we’re going to kind of break down some of the themes that we heard, some of the ideas and the recommendations ultimately that came out of that.

Corey: Sue, why don’t you get us started and just kind of give us the overall kind of sense of the first day and some of the themes there?

Susan: Yeah, so what we were trying to do was have them remember and kind of get back to that passion and that purpose of what they’re doing. And of course, being in a medical practice, you’ve got to have that compassion and that care, or else you wouldn’t be in there. So, we know that we have those kinds of feelings. But what else kind of drives you to go into work every day for that particular practice?

Susan: And that is what we were trying to draw out of the management and the leadership team, so that they could then connect that to their employees. Because we know that when employees are engaged, then our patients are engaged.

Susan: So, the management, what they liked best about the session, which was really great, was all the open discussion that took place, and that they were able to share, and that they had face-to-face time with each other because there’s separate locations. There’s multiple locations with this practice, and it brought them together for a cause of remembering passions, and even talk about what their values are. And they never get that opportunity to share that. And that’s what was so great about the first part of the session.

Corey: Yeah. So, this first part of the session we had everybody come in, and then we basically ran them through a couple of scenarios, and then split into groups. And we have these like really big note pads, and we wanted to start by sharing stories, and just having them tell us some general stories. We talked about what experience working at the practice has made a difference in their life, and what experience has made them feel like they’re part of a team? Just to sort of draw out some of these themes.

Corey: And a lot of what we heard was family, teamwork, feeling valued was a big one. I thought from a lot of the managers, and as we were going through the discussion, the ability to help people. I mean, and you were touching on it there just for a little bit. I mean that’s obviously why they’re in the healthcare field, but there was also a sense of pride and support. And I thought that was really interesting, that came out of this day one as well.

Susan: And it was also interesting that they shared experiences, and nobody knows all the experiences that you individually go through. But it was interesting how their experiences during their work hours at the practice, a lot of them didn’t know… Even though they’re all part of the leadership team, and they may have their management meeting every Friday, but they didn’t realize what they do above and beyond on their work day. And they were amazed at some of the above and beyonds that everybody does, but they don’t talk about it. And I think it brought together more of a sense of unity and a connection.

Corey: Right. I would imagine it’s like this in most practices. I mean everyone that I’ve worked with, it’s very similar, where you kind of get siloed, right? So, you deal with your department and you put out the fires there, and make sure everyone is as engaged and efficient as possible. But you don’t really get an opportunity sometimes to hear the stories from other folks.

Corey: And that was something that as we were going through this storytelling exercise, I think really kind of stood head and shoulders above a lot of the other activities that we were doing. It was fun to break into groups, and talk about some of these stories. But really when we got back together and we were sharing the answers to some of the questions. You remember there was the one person that said that she was able to basically save somebody’s life because she noticed that something was wrong, and she was like in billing or something, so that’s not something she ever normally does.

Corey: But she was telling this story and I would say over half the room had no idea, and she kind of got choked up as she was telling the story. And it was a really cool and powerful moment. And not only did it help bring them together, but it also sort of crystallized why everyone is doing what they’re doing.

Susan: And teamwork was a big theme out of their stories.

Corey: Huge.

Susan: And the story you mentioned was teamwork because she contacted clinic right away, and then someone from clinic came and kind of diagnosed the patient, that the patient needed to be taken out and taken to the hospital.

Corey: Right.

Susan: And the patient had internal bleeding, and yes, it did save that patient’s life. And teamwork was one of the themes that kept coming up, and they actually proved it. You know what I mean? It wasn’t one of these things where people talk about teamwork, and they kind of fantasize that they want teamwork, but they actually experienced it and lived it, and brought it to the attention of each other that we really do, do this, and support, and that they have a sense of pride, and that they’re family like.

Susan: And that was another theme that came out of their stories was how proud we are, and that we all are like one big family. And that’s hard to do. And when you know that your practice is at that point, that’s a great level to be at. And I think now at this time, that practices are feeling more of a we have to focus on that teamwork, and how everybody has a role in the patient care, and that delivering that positive patient experience. Because that basically at the end of the day, that’ll make or break your practice.

Corey: Yeah, exactly. And this group is… I think they’re like over 200 people, so it’s really interesting that everyone said that they feel like a family. Because that’s a pretty large group and it’s hard to keep everyone sort of connected and engaged, like you were talking about there.

Corey: And so we tell these stories as a group. And going back to the finding your why, if you guys familiar with that. So, it’s essentially the Golden Circle concept. So, it’s the how we do what we do, and then the why we do it? So, the how and the what are pretty obvious. So, we provide care. How do we do that? Through some sort of comprehensive or state of the art, just delivering care. But why? That’s what we were trying to drill down.

Corey: So, the storytelling is sort of part one of that. And then part two, and this is still on day one of our two day session, we broke into groups again, and we did a contribution exercise, where we ask questions like share a specific story when you felt most proud to work at the practice, or tell us about how working here has made an impact on the community or patient specifically.

Corey: And again, what we were trying to do here is drill down into these themes. And what we got out of this was a lot of feeling… Contributing to life improvement was a big takeaway, providing positive experiences, not only for patients, but for the team. So, going back to that teamwork was a big piece of this as well. Connection to the community and to the patients and to the coworkers. And what we uncovered was at least from the management side, it does really seem like they are one big team, and that puts them, I think ahead of a lot of practices.

Susan: Yeah. And you could tell that the sharing part, which was basically both days, both sessions. The sharing part, I think was their most valuable takeaway because they got a sense of what each other does and their contributions and the impacts that they have. So, that particular exercise was a real eye-opener to a lot of them. And again, they felt proud because they see that there really is a connection there and teamwork.

Corey: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so that kind of like wrapped up day one. So, when that was over, Sue and I sat down and we kind of did a brain dump because there was just so many really good stories that came out of that. And then day two, we started the next morning, and we had everybody come back, the exact same group as before. And what we were doing there was… So, the first part of the day we wanted to draft the why statement, which is typically to blank, so that blank. And with this particular group, we didn’t want to come up with one why. It’s really hard to do that, especially in such a finite amount of time. So, we actually came up with a handful of whys that we were going to take back to management. And so we spent the first part of the morning again with these giant notepads on the walls. I think we wound up with like, I don’t know, 15 or so to start.

Corey: And then we whittled that down to like four that we were going to show to management. And then we shifted into what we call the walk the walk part of the session, where we essentially said, okay guys, so now we’ve shared stories, we’ve come up with these themes, right? We know what we’re doing, so let’s kind of break into two sides. I mean, again, we did this on a notepad. Split it up and said, “Okay, what can we do, right when we walk out of here, that’s going to reflect these whys that we’ve been identifying? How can you change the way you communicate and therefore change the way that your team and your employees, your staff is interacting with patients? That doesn’t cost any money.” And then let’s say budget was not an option, and you could do anything you wanted, what would you do there? And that could be anything from saying, “Hey, let’s get another printer so I don’t have to walk as far. And then patients don’t have to wait as long.”

Corey: And that was really interesting because it kind of… And Sue, I think you’re on the same page here. It kind of turned into like a therapy session, right? Where everyone was able to sort of vent and just like kind of let their feelings out. And it was a really awesome exercise to be a part of.

Corey: Hey guys, Corey here, cohost of the Dr Marketing Tips Podcast. And I wanted to interrupt this episode just for a minute to tell you about Insight Training Solutions. So, Insight Training Solutions is an ongoing employee engagement and training platform for your medical practice, meaning employees can log on and take these medical practice specific trainings whenever and wherever they are. And each training is meant to increase employee engagement, improve practice reputation, and develop some patient service mindsets.

Corey: If we’re being honest, something that we all know some of the employees may lack, not calling anybody out by name, but one of the cool things about Insight Training Solutions is they’re always developing new content, and they just released 10 Steps to a Phenomenal Patient Experience, where you’ll learn how to create a phenomenal patient experience, strengthen job security, and discover customer service secrets for your entire team.

Corey: So, this course is in addition to the other ones they already have, which include Communication Across Generations, and How to Understand Today’s Multigenerational Workforce, and How to Develop Overall Patient Experience. This is another course, the New Approach to Customer Service. We’ve also got Eight Ways to Wow Patients, and you can sign up for a free trial to see what everything is about at InsightTrainingSolutions.io. That’s InsightTrainingSolutions.io, or just Google “Insight Training Solutions,” you’ll be glad you did.

Susan: It did. But it was good. And they actually wanted that to go longer. We structured it in so many hours, and they took it past that time period, and they were good about it because it was like a therapy session for them, because then they started talking about things they would really like to see enhanced or improved at the practice. But then they felt as though maybe whatever they come up with won’t be implemented. And that was something important that came out of it, was about overall, they probably had about 60% trust factor with their executive team to implement anything that they wanted to talk about that came out of this session. And so we had to help them extract things that they think can be implemented. And then, that was part of what we did at the end of it was, put it all together and then present it up to the executive team to say, “Hey, here you go and here’s their trust factor with this. And these are items that need to be discussed.”

Susan: And so that was really cool. And we called it the walk the walk. And it’s actionable items that we move forward with. And I went back down there to do some one-on-one sessions with individual employees to kind of extract another layer of information that goes along with this training. And I found out that the management team that we did this session with, one of the things was on their management meetings on Fridays, it had been taken away the time for each one of them to go around the table and discuss what’s happening in their department, would they put that back in?

Corey: That’s awesome.

Susan: Because we ran that up the flagpole to the executive team. So, that was really cool. They are listening. They truly are.

Corey: Yeah. And that’s a great point. One of the reasons that we only had sort of the managers in there, but not the executives, is because we wanted it to feel open and feel like they could voice their frustrations, and give compliments to each other, and not sort of have like big brother over their shoulder in a way.

Corey: And we got a lot of really good ideas. I’m not going to share all of them. But one thing that I know wound up getting mentioned again when you went and did your one-on-ones you were just talking about, but it was also in the walk the walk session, was more opportunities to meet with the physicians. Because depending on what department they were in, they were saying, “Yeah, I interact with the doctors every single day.” And then you talk to somebody else and were almost afraid of the big scary doctor because they never see them, or they only see them when they’re upset, or something like that.

Corey: So, that was one idea. So, like what you were saying Sue, so we took all these ideas, we distilled them down, presented them, and now we’re working through the recommendations on how to in fact implement things like more opportunities for staff and managers to interact with the physicians.

Susan: Yeah. And I was surprised to hear that because they are the leadership team, and a lot of them were a little bit afraid to speak with the doctors. And I didn’t realize that. That was interesting. So, that was something very important to come out of that. Because how do you expect employees to connect with the practice and with their patients, if their management doesn’t even feel like they’re connected with the doctors?

Susan: Employee recognition program was another one of the themes that came out from what the management would like to see. And I think that’s a way where you can then mix the doctors, and invite them to that type of an event, and then the employee, management, doctors, they can all then be together, and that was a great outcome from all of that discussion.

Corey: Yeah. And so at the end of the session, we wound up with four to five whys that we can actually use company wide to remind folks why they come into work every day, not just because of a paycheck. Because a paycheck is kind of a reason why you would come, but only for your family. The paycheck isn’t the reason, the family is. So, we kind of went through that whole exercise, identified the whys that can be used in the practice, and then through the walk the walk exercises, we wound up with a bunch of different ideas that we can take back to management. Everything from the opportunities to mingle with doctors, like we were just talking about, to small things in the waiting room, having TV or music or something like that. And then we put this into a giant report. We took it back to management and then we went through what everyone was saying, and the reasons why they want these things.

Corey: And what we’re doing right now, actually this week, is we’re coming up with a full sort of rollout plan, so that the managers know that their voice was heard, and that we can try and improve this employee engagement, starting not only from the manager side, but also from the executives, and then ultimately down to everyone in clinical, and within every department.

Corey: And some of that can be either an action plan, it can be some sort of a communication committee. Because that was something that they had mentioned wanting is just better communication, not only amongst their department, but within the different locations in the teams.

Corey: And overall, I would say the big takeaway is that the importance of engaging employees is more important and more vital now than it ever has been. And you have to do something with this data. That was what we kind of left the executive team with, is when we were done, we said a lot of trust and faith was put in the managers to us, but to you guys as an executive team and as physician partners as well, that now that we went through this whole exercise, we actually have to do something about it. We can’t just say, “Oh yeah, that’s really great. Let’s put it aside til next year.”

Susan: And employee engagement is high on their list as far as their strategy overall. It’s not just part of their marketing plan. It’s an overall strategy for them for 2020, and so this exercise complimented a full strategic plan that we are delivering, and this plan is taking probably, what do you think? Maybe twelve months. Nine to twelve months to fully deliver it all.

Susan: And we started with the leadership team and figuring out what connects them to the practice, and how can they connect that to the employee? And then following this session, we then went into a full employee engagement, which also included the docs. The full employee engagement on demand training for patient experience. And each one builds on to the next. And so that’s what’s really exciting to see is how all of this just keeps transitioning into the next level. And you can see the connection and you can see the light bulb going off with leadership. You can see the light bulb going off with the employees.

Corey: Yeah, absolutely. And like we were saying at the beginning, their culture wasn’t bad in any way. It’s just these are ways to enhance it, and they know that they needed to do something. And they wanted to do something to enhance it and make their practice a better place to work.

Corey: And I think the big idea is that when you quote unquote, “create a culture,” that creation is never done. The culture is never set in stone. You don’t just sort of build it and walk away. It can always improve or change, and you just have to be ready and willing to accept that. And I think all of these pieces coming together really show that they are taking the right steps to enhance their culture and enhance employee engagement and patient experience.

Susan: Yeah. And that’s what’s really exciting to see is how… We’re not trying to change anything. We’re just enhancing and tweaking, and making some improvements, and really trying to knock it out of the park for this practice, so that they know what they’re doing is they’re doing it… They’re already doing it, they just need to do it at that level of greatness. And you can’t touch a practice like that once they reach that.

Corey: Absolutely. All right, so I think that will wrap up this episode of the Dr Marketing Tips Podcast. Again, thanks for listening. I’m Corey.

Susan: And I’m Susan.

Corey: And we’ll catch you in the next one. Thanks guys.

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