This week on the podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and practice management nerd Stephanie Goss are talking through an email they received in the mailbag. This letter might be short on details and the challenge this practice is facing is definitely long on the challenge. This practice has spent a lot of time and energy to work on their culture and the team that is there loves working together, loves their clients and the management. Yet people are still leaving the practice! We know we can't control losing people to life events and yet this writer is finding themselves shouting at the top of their lungs “What am I doing wrong!?!?!?” Let's get into this…
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Episode Transcript
Stephanie Goss: Hey everyone! The Uncharted Veterinary Conference is just around the corner. And I have to take a quick second to say thank you to our amazing industry partners, because without them, the Uncharted Veterinary Conference wouldn't be possible. So from the bottom of our Uncharted hearts, I just want to say thank you to this year's partners, Nationwide, Nutramax, Hill's Pet Nutrition, CareCredit and InTouch Practice Communications. This group is absolutely amazing. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, from the whole crew.
Hey everybody, I am Stephanie Goss, and this is another episode of the Uncharted podcast. This week on the podcast, Andy and I are tackling a message from the mailbag. We got an email from someone who is in practice and really struggling. Because they have a culture that they've worked really, really hard on, and they have that kind of top of the world feeling that you get in the sense that their culture is stronger than it's ever been. Everybody loves work.
Everybody enjoys their clients, their patients, everybody gets along. Things are going great with communication. And yet. this team has had the highest turnover rate that they've ever had. They've had a whole bunch of people leave and this person, we don't know whether they're a practice owner or practice manager.
They're sitting there wondering what in the heck am I doing wrong? Andy and I didn't have a whole lot of details to work off of, but since when has the lack of details stopped, either one of us from telling a story. Let's get into this.
Dr. Andy Roark: And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark, and the one and only Stephanie Please Don't Say Goodbye Goss.
Stephanie Goss:Hi, Andy Roark. How's it going?
Dr. Andy Roark: I, it's going, it's, you know what, it's going pretty darn well.
Stephanie Goss: We got a great letter in the mailbag. Which I'm excited about because I think it is, you know, we get a lot of questions from people who are like, I've got this big challenge with, you know, people getting along or with culture, or, you know, there's lots of big scale problems.
And this one was quite the opposite, and I thought it was, I thought it was really interesting. I'm excited to hear your take on it, which was a practice who, it is someone who has written to the mailbag previously, so they were giving us an update on their practice. And they said that their practice culture is probably the strongest that it has ever been.
Everybody gets along really well, things are grooving, they're productive, everybody really seems to enjoy coming to work. They have had pretty significant turnover in the last year. And so like to the point where it's a, was a letter from a practice owner who said, you know, I feel like this might even be our highest turnover rate ever.
And so they were like, what am I doing wrong? You know, I feel like we're doing all the things and everybody seems happy and it's, you know, everybody likes coming to work and yet we're still losing people. And I thought it was a really, you know, interesting and unique question and so I'm excited to hear where your head is at with it.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh man. Yeah, this is a good one. This is fun. This is interesting. I– there's so much about this and some of it is it's gonna be interesting to have this conversation without digging into the details because I don't exactly know what's going on But I definitely have some immediate thoughts The first thing that popped into my head as I chuckled immediately because whenever anyone's like hey this thing is happening across our entire practice What am I doing wrong?
And I'm like, You my friend, have a strange belief about how much control you have over the world. Which I think is funny, you know, and again, I, and I see it because, like, these things pop into my head when I have been that person, and the path looks real familiar, you know, and you go, oh, I think this is going to be really great.
Stephanie Goss: I recognize this forest.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, totally. I said I know where that path goes. This will be a fun conversation because I don't think a lot of people talk about this. And so I like this a lot. There's a lot of head space here. I've got some action steps too, but I got a lot of head space. And so the first thing that I think we should talk about is good culture and people getting along and you know, it's amazing to me that people look at teams and I think we've been sold a false bill of goods, right?
I think we've been sold a false bill of goods. There is this narrative that's put forward that if you are a good leader or a good manager, you will have a great culture and everyone will get along. And your team will execute at a very high level every day. And, that's not true. Okay, like, that's not true.
So, like, hear this. And there's a lot of analogies of this. But in my work with leaders, whether they're practice owners or medical directors or managers or whatever over the last 15, 20 years, I have seen absolute great leaders and bosses go through times. when their culture was a dumpster fire, and they, you know, and their clinic was not a good place to be, and I have seen their clinics screw up and drop balls, and wait times were through the roof, and, they were unhappy clients, and, you know, and you go, what the heck, and they're like, I know this person.
And I've worked with them, and like, I know that they're good. And I have seen the best and the brightest really struggle. And I just don't think people say that because we want to have, a lot of it is, there's this, ego in vet medicine. There's so much ego in vet medicine. I love it. I mean, I love vet medicine, not the ego.
I love vet medicine. But it's like doctors can't show weakness in so many cases, right? They have to be right. The idea that I didn't know a thing. And the other doctors knew it is absolutely terrifying for people. And so I don't ever want to be perceived as a doctor who is less than in any way, shape or form.
And the same mentality extends to management and leadership in vet medicine, where it's like, I would be mortified to tell people. Look, man, everybody at my clinic is fighting with each other and, you know, and we do not get along and we've gotten more one star Google reviews in the last year than we did in nine years before.
People go, oh my god, I would never share that. I go, yeah. That's why there's a perception that good leaders have good teams and good cultures all the time. it's just not true. I think one of the things I've struggled with the most as a leader is giving myself permission to have rough patches with our business and with our team and there have been multiple times that I have been really down in the dumps and I have gone to mentors of mine who I'm so lucky to have and I will go to people who have run huge companies or I will go to people who have done inarguably incredible things in medicine and I'll be like man I'm getting my butt kicked and he's like what or he or she is like what's going on and I'll tell them and they're like, that totally, that happens all the time.
You know, like, they're like, ah, the number of times that I was right where you are, God, I can't even count them. And I'm like, what can I do to prevent myself from being here? And they're like, nothing, Like, that's just,
Stephanie Goss: Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: That's it. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you're powerless, right?
One of my favorite things is I'll talk to people and they'll say, I don't have any power, I don't have any control. And I'll say, well, if you wanted to, could you make the situation worse? And they'll go, yeah, absolutely. I'll be like, great. Well, then if you could make the situation worse,
Stephanie Goss: You still have power. Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: You could also make it better. I mean, you have some power. Um, And they go, okay, fine. The some power. But I do think that's, I do think that false bill of goods is really important. I think that, Having the knowledge as someone who is trying to run a team, who is trying to run a practice, who is trying to run a company, that you're going to have times when your culture is great, and you're going to have times when it's not so great.
And that's just life. That is, the impermanence of life. And I think that one of the things we really want is, we desperately want control. We desperately want to achieve a good culture, to achieve a happy team, to achieve a system where we communicate with each other. And if we achieve that, then it will be achieved.
We can put a checkbox next to it, and then we can move past it, and it's on our, it's done. It's on our done list, which means we don't have to deal with it anymore, ever, because we did it, and now that's where we live forever. And I'm like, that is not true.
Stephanie Goss: That's not how it works.
Dr. Andy Roark: That’s not true. It's not true. Culture is a process. It's not a destination. It's not a destination. But so many of us are like, ah, I will get there and then we will hold it there. And like, I don't know. I think it's, I think it's depressing. I think it's depressing to realize. You can't, you're not going to hold it there. And, you're going to do all this work, and it's going to get better, and it's worth the work.
And, you might have it for a couple of years. You might have it for a decade or two. But at some point, the pendulum will swing back, and, you know, and things will happen, and you will have a not great time. culture for some amount of time. I think it's important for leaders. I also think it's important for people working in the clinic because I have seen people who are like, oh this I guess I guess it's time to leave because things are not as good right now as they have been and I'm like.
Stephanie Goss: Right.
Dr. Andy Roark: I don't know, man. If you can't take it, then definitely leave. You know, if it's awful, and you, and if you don't think it's gonna get better, that's one thing. But for most people, it's like, especially if you're confident in the leadership, it just takes, it takes time. You know, it takes time to sort things out and bring them back.
So anyway, the first thing I wanted to start off with is this idea that good culture. Once you have it, it stays there forever. And then related to that is the idea that if you have a good culture, no one will leave. You will have complete stability of your people. And that is also just antithetical to the human experience. In my, you know, experience.
Stephanie Goss: Well, and I think a lot of it goes to your point when we think about how we share ourselves and our journeys, no one wants to look like a hot mess express, even if they acknowledge to themselves that they might be. And so, you know, I think about it a little bit like the way we present ourselves on social media, like we're putting out the best or the glimpse where you're, You know, house looks perfect, and then there's just out, out of, the screenshot, there's crap everywhere, right?
And like, that's kind of how, as a society, we have been conditioned to present ourselves. And I think it's really no different in our work. We have been set up for success in school by being rewarded, by being the ones who do the things right and follow the directions. And so you don't. You're, we're not taught to show that. weakness, I guess. And, the reality is, I, think one of, it's so, so cheesy, but I think one of the things that really stuck with me was early on in my career, I had there's really, there's been two things that have really made a big difference on how I kind of looked at the world as leader.
And early on in my career, I had the pleasure of getting to work with a consultant in my, in our practice. And I remember they were a big fan of like the cheesy, like, late nineties, early two thousands, like inspirational work posters. Um,
Dr. Andy Roark: Yes! You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take and there's a rim with a basketball. Yeah.
Stephanie Goss: Yes, and, but but I vividly remember there was one and like we would always laugh about it because like we would like stuff when we got together as a team and anything that they made would always have like inspirational quotes and it made me, laugh and the whole team week it was kind of a joke but I, I vividly remember there, there was one that was that way and it had, I'm sure, you, you've seen it there, it's like the poster and it has three different quotes and it defines the word fail and end and no with different words.
So fail is, failure is not a failure. It's like, if you fail, never give up because fail means first attempt in learning. Right. And so it's reframing those thoughts. And it's the same for end, like the end is not the end. In fact, end means effort never dies. And if you get no as an answer, remember that no means next opportunity.
And it was funny because it was like, It had, I don't remember what the background was, but it had the cheesiest of all the backgrounds that I had ever seen on those posters. But it really stuck with me because it was like, Oh, yeah. Okay. Like that is true. You think back to when you're really little and you're learning, you make the mistakes and you're encouraged to learn from them.
And at some point that stops along the way. Like you're, your parents or your cheerleaders in your life might still encourage you to learn from those things, but the failing is encouraged to keep that private, right? Like, don't show the world that weakness. And I think it's the same in business.
And so I think I think as leaders that has honestly, like you, has been one of the most liberating things for me. It's funny because I get told all the time, like, when you and I go places or are out at industry events, you know, people will come up to us and say, Oh, you know, I, love listening to you guys on the podcast and, you know, you just like, I want someone like you who can manage my practice.
And I get told that a lot. And it always like, I am, I immediately turn neon red because. I, the first thing that I will tell them is like, I don't, I'm going to screw it up. Like I'm going to screw it up probably as much if not more than I'm going to get it right. But that's what I love about what we do is getting to talk about those failures because I learned so much more by having people in my life who encouraged me to look at the failures not as the ending, but as the beginning.
And that, attempts to. Try again. You know, and fail different next time because you're still going to fail. Like, you're never going to perfect it. You're never going to, you're never going to get it right. I think that it's a smart thing to lean into that as a leader and recognize that it's not going to be permanent, like you said.
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, you and I talked about this not long ago. You know, I said you know, last year was a hard year. But I know that I am better at my job than I was a year ago. Like, I know I am. And the reason is because when I look back a year ago at the decisions that were going to be made and how things were being approached, I go, ugh, don't do it that way, past Andy.
Oh, Andy, past Andy, you're doing it. Oh, he's gonna do it. Like, I look back and I can't warn him he's gonna do it. I'm like, Ooh, I would not do it that way. I would not do it future. Andy would not do it that way. And again, I think past Andy knew that future Andy probably wouldn't do it this way, but I don't know what else to do, so we're going this way.
But like, I don't know if that makes sense, but it was true. My point when I was reflecting back and talking about this was, I know I'm better at my job because when I look at my position a year ago and the way I approached it, I know. A better way to do it than I knew how to do it then and but that only happens with failure because here's the thing If you look at your job and I say to you, are you better than you were a year ago and you're like I'm going to say yes because I feel like that's what i'm supposed to say.
My question to you would be, how do you know, and if you have not struggled, and you cannot look back and say, oh boy, that's how I would do it. I know exactly what I would do. If I could time travel back a year, I would fix this, or I would do this differently. If everything you have done has worked, then you don't have that.
You're like, I don't know, a year ago, I didn't make any mistakes. And now, I'm not making any mistakes. I'm like, great, seems to me that you, my friend, have probably plateaued. Like, you, like, you hit a– you're not pushing yourself. And so that, I think that's important. And so we're talking about, we're talking as if this is the leader's fault.
And it's not, but I just, I think it's important to talk about how hardship just exists when we talk about the, this whole, like, if you have not had hardship, are you pushing yourself hard enough? I think probably not. I heard this interview with this economist recently, and it was funny because he was talking about the media.
He was talking about problems with modern news and modern media. And one of the things he jumped on that I was, it was really interesting, but he really pounced on this. And he said, you know, one of the big problems with the media is we have a way of presenting Disasters as things that need to be fixed.
And so if there's an earthquake and a house falls down and people are hurt, our media is like, how do we make it? How do we prevent this from happening in the future? This should be let's get town council in here. Let's get the government in and fix this and make sure it didn't happen. And his point was, you don't want to live in a society where no houses fall down in earthquake. Because in order to live in a society where no houses fall down during an earthquake, you have to have the most ridiculous permitting process. The construction costs are going to be asked to make it so that no building falls down. If there's an earthquake, nothing falls. Like the build costs are enormous and We don't have infinite money, which means that money is not going to something else that our society probably needs and uses.
Stephanie Goss: Welcome. Welcome to life living in California.
Dr. Andy Roark: I mean, there you
Stephanie Goss: I mean, it's a super, yeah, it's a great example.
Dr. Andy Roark: Now, of course you don't want buildings falling down all over the place when there's an earthquake. That's terrible, too. But, and this sounds crazy, but there is a right number of houses falling down.
Which means, like, if there's an earthquake,
Stephanie Goss: Right.
Dr. Andy Roark: And no houses ever fall down because of earthquakes.
You go, boy, we were probably over policing this. And housing affordability is a thing. Is it because we've got these restrictions, you know, that are just over the top. The same thing with policing, you go you know, we see crime and we're like, how do we stop this crime? And at some point go, you don't want to live in a society where there is zero crime, because that would be the biggest police state in the history of imagination.
You know, it was, it would be the end of privacy. and, almost certainly there would be terrible punishments or all the things you would do to have zero crime. You go, I don't want to live in a society. Where not a single crime happens, because that means there's no freedom. And so, all of those things to say, and so bear with me here, there is a right number of disasters. If you have fires all over your practice, that's probably bad.
And, if you never have a problem in your practice, What are you doing? Like, what kind of milk toast practice are you running? We're like, are you, I mean, clearly you have very limited services. Clearly you're doing minimal interaction with clients.
You know, like, if no pet ever dies on the surgery table. Are we doing all that we can to save pets? Or are we just going, nope, we're not risking surgery on this one? Like, you know what I mean? And again, I know that's a sort of extreme example. But my point here is, you should fail a certain amount of the time.
And if you're not failing a certain amount of the time, you're not pushing yourselves. And it's the earthquake example of, I know you think you want no disasters, but you don't want no disasters. You want the right number of disasters, which means there should be things that are going wrong in your practice.
And if there's not anything going wrong in your practice, you are probably stagnant. I have this in our own business, Stephanie, I get, I don't talk about this a lot, but there are times I a hundred percent look around. You and I have done this together. I will look around and I'll be like, things are really quiet.
Stephanie, like everybody, everybody is working industriously. Everyone is getting along. All of our clients seem happy. Our members are successful. And I'm like,
Stephanie Goss: Let's throw a monkey ratchet here.
Dr. Andy Roark: Something, I'm like, something is going to happen. And again, I love you to pieces, you do this too, you'll look around and you'll be like, something has happened.
And then, you'll be like, I think I'm sick, and like, you'll, just come up with something, you're like, I don't know, about this inflation? And you'll just point at inflation, like, what about inflation? and I'm primed for it, so I'm like, you're right, inflation's gonna get us. And it's like, it's because we can't just have a time when nothing is wrong because that's just, we know that's not how it's supposed to be. So anyway there's this.
Stephanie Goss: Now Let's be clear. Andy and Stephanie are not saying go inventing catastrophes.
Dr. Andy Roark: No, that's not good.
Stephanie Goss: Nobody wants that either. But like, I love your point and I think it's I think the anesthesia example is a really good one because when you first said that, my thought was I can imagine countless numbers of people in veterinary medicine who would say no anesthetic death is acceptable.
And I can understand why they would say that because we care about our patients and we don't want to lose patients. And the point that you were making, which I think is, like, in my head, these are the mental gymnastics that I was doing while you said that. Then I was like, well, but if no patient ever dies under anesthesia, we don't have the learning opportunities that come from doing, you know, rounds postmortem after an anesthetic death.
We don't learn about how we could have done things better or differently or worked differently together as a team. Like, we don't have those opportunities. And the reality is, to your point, we also probably aren't putting patients who could benefit in the long run from what we're trying to do by putting them under anesthesia.
Under because we're probably just saying, you know, that we don't want to risk it, right? We're minimizing the risk by just avoiding it or sending them somewhere else. And that doesn't mean that the risk is not happening then elsewhere. It's just not happening in our backyard. And so like, I think that's actually a really good example.
And I will say like, as a technician, anesthetic desks suck. They stick with you. They haunt you. They're awful. And you learn.
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, I mean, I guess, I guess I would say this. And so I think of it as, I'm not saying it's okay for pets to die under anesthesia. do it, doing wellness procedures or dentistry. I'm not talking about, I'm talking about if you're an emergency vet and no patient ever dies in your hands, I have a hard time getting my head around how that happens.
You know what it—
Stephanie Goss: That’s just– I don't think that's reality.
Dr. Andy Roark: It's, but it's, and it's not supposed to be real. But that's the point. Now, if every patient you touch dies, that's bad.
Stephanie Goss: Right. Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark: but if your patient
Stephanie Goss: Let's try for the middle.
Dr. Andy Roark:n never dies, I'm like, are you referring the really sick ones away? Are– you know what I mean? Like, what are you, how are you doing that?
Because that's not how life is. I think every vet should have a pile of bones. And again, I'm this, I may regret saying all this, but I hope not. I hope people hear, I hope people hear the intention in my voice is like, Every vet should have a pile of bones because if you don't have a pile of bones, I think that probably means that you are not wading into cases that are challenging.
You know what I mean? I mean the greatest clinicians I've ever met in my life talk about their pile of bones and like they are, these are the people writing the textbooks. These are the people I interview over at the Cone of Shame podcast. Like I interviewed them because they're geniuses and they talk about their pile of bones and I go.
These people are cutting edge. But here's the thing, if you never have something go wrong, how are you the expert? You know what I mean? Like, you're clearly not pushing yourself out there, you know what I mean? to stretch yourself and expand and learn. So anyway, I don't want to get too much bogged down in this.
I hope people sort of understand what I'm saying as far as the right number of disasters. It's going to be, there's definitely going to be some one star reviews of people talking about Andy is pro houses falling down and killing people. He likes earthquakes, he likes dead pets, he likes I don't know, whatever else I talked about.
Stephanie Goss: This is just going to be one of those episodes. Okay.
Dr. Andy Roark: Moving on. Moving on. Moving on. If you run a business and you don't ever have a disaster, I think you're probably doing something wrong.
Stephanie Goss: Well, and so let me take it, let me take it back and also take it back to or onto the, to the next point, which is if you run a practice or any kind of business and you have the same team for ever and ever, and you never have change in that team. Aren't you also then missing opportunity to grow and develop and learn the same way we would learn from an anesthetic death or a house falling down?
Like when you add somebody new to the team, You have that forced growth, you have to figure out how to integrate them, how to learn from them, how to absorb them into your culture, and vice versa. And like, so I think, I agreed with you when I read it, I thought, okay this, practice owner is doing what so many of us do, which is take something that isn't ours to That is not a monkey for us to carry and putting it squarely on their back.
And they're saying what, you know, because they specifically said, what am I doing wrong? And so your point about, there, it, you don't actually have the control here, number one. Number two you, we should want to have some turnover and we should want to have some change and growth in our team. And that's not to say that we want to lose good people, which is where I think this email was coming from . We have a great culture.
I like everybody. And it seems like they're all happy. So why are they leaving? And I think for me, like from a Headspace perspective, I love the, you know, your idea of what do you actually control here, because I think that's really important. And I think it's really important to recognize that there is a lot we can't control when it comes to turnover in our practice and not, just for us, for industries as a whole.
It was interesting when we were getting ready for this and I thought I want to, I'm curious, I was curious to see post COVID, like what is the current separation rate? And it's interesting because For 2020 one, the separation rate of all US jobs was about 47%. But it has grown tremendously since Covid has happened.
And so the US Bureau of labor and Statistics, and I'll put this in the show. It's for people who want to get nerdy on data, but they publish data every single month about turnover in across industries and across sectors. And historically, healthcare, which I would argue that we are a part of, has one of the highest sections of turnover.
And they actually look, did a look back now that we have become post COVID and the voluntary quitting has more than doubled over the last 10 years. Like the per, the percent, the rate at which people are quitting. And so this is a thing that has. Not only is not only happening in veterinary medicine, but it's happening across all industries and it has continued to grow and in frequency.
And so I think that when we think about what do we control here, I think what we don't control is the fact that people are going to quit. We know that they're going to quit. In fact, large percentages of them are going to quit. Right. And so I think part of the headspace has to be accepting our fate and recognizing that we can do more.
So, we can work as hard as humanly possible, we can have the best culture in the world and people are still going to leave. Babies are going to get born, marriages are going to happen, moves are going to happen, separations are going to happen, like there is so much as an employer that we cannot control and so, so much of that headspace has to start with recognizing what you don't, what you do control, how much of it you actually do control and also recognizing what we don't control.
Dr. Andy Roark: I'm right there with you. All right. Let me summarize. Because I know it's kind of rambled all over the place and then we kind of wrap this up. The things for me– I think your point is great. I use the phrase all the time. There's three things you can't control. The past, the future, and other people.
And your staff are other people. Which means you can't control them. I think People are going to leave and it has nothing to do with work. We have all left jobs that we liked for lots of reasons. And these things just happen. You and I, when we're recording this, we had our last episode that came out was there's something in the water, everybody's pregnant. And we just talked about like, I don't know why we have, you know, what seems like.
Stephanie Goss: An epidemic of babies.
Dr. Andy Roark: Pregnancy, yeah, an epidemic of babies, but, it just, like, it seems like it feels that way sometimes, and we just, you just have to deal with it. It's just what it is, and so, okay, we'll deal with it, and so that's it.
The big thing for me is, okay you can't control other people and so you don't have that control. Trying to own that you don't have that control is good. Remember that success is a process, it's not a destination, which means You are never going to be able to get the culture right and then not have to worry about losing people like it just it doesn't work or to get the culture right and not have to worry about culture issues in the future because it's right.
That's just it's always a moving target. You're always going to be tinkering with culture. You just are. You can have a great culture and people can still leave. I. believe that there's, I believe for whatever reason, that we're all meant to have a certain number of disasters. Like, I believe that sometimes we walk in the rain, which I've talked about, which is you do everything right.
And sometimes it just rains on you. I believe that sometimes the cosmos just decide to kick our butts for a while. And I don't know why, but we've all been through that. And it's like, it's not one thing. It's just everything. It's like you just get, you know, you, you wake up with a head cold and then your kid's school bus doesn't show up.
And then there's a traffic jam in a place where there's never a traffic jam. And that's like a two hour period of time and you're like, why? Why all of a sudden am I just getting absolutely dumped on? I don't know. But that's part of the package deal that you get with life. Yeah, it's just life. And so that's it.
The big takeaways here are, Number one, try not to take this personally, as a leader. Try not to take it personally. And that's been a long come around to that point of, try not to take it personally. And it's really hard. And everyone wants to believe, if I was better, people wouldn't leave.
And I would tell you, I really don't think that's true for most of us. You know, it's pretty rare, I think, that if you behave differently, people who seem to be happy would stick around. Like, I, that's pretty rare.
Stephanie Goss: Well, I think those things are, I think what's really important is recognizing that those are not mutually exclusive. Right? Like you, can be the best that you can be, and people will still leave, and so the question is not, what could I do better so that people don't leave? The question can be, what can I do better in the future?
Like, you can ask that of yourself, but putting that on yourself that if you do better, or if you strive to be better, that you'll get to that, You know, place where nobody ever leaves. That's the hallucination, right? Like, separate those two things in your head.
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, that's the other big headspace part for me is that culture is always changing, which means you have to constantly manage it. You have to always be making adjustments. You know, if you're running on autopilot, that's probably not good. You're going to have to engage and manage culture. So anyway, that's enough headspace.
That's, I think we've talked this kind of all the way around in kind of a weird way to basically say, try not to take it personally. These things happen. Keep doing your best.
Stephanie Goss: That was the long philosophical Andy and Stephanie pep talk. That's what that just was.
Dr. Andy Roark: We talked about, we talked about earthquakes and pets dying and surgery. God,
Stephanie Goss: What do you think? Should we take a break and then come back and talk about some action
Dr. Andy Roark: Let’s take a break and come back and, yeah, we'll, do action steps real
Stephanie Goss: Okay.
Hey there, podcast listeners. I wanna take a second and talk to you about our Leadership Essential Certificate. Now, some of you have heard, Andy and I talk about it on the podcast, but if you're new or if you haven't heard this before, I think it's really important, which is why I'm gonna share it with you now,
When our team sat down in the very beginning. We said, hey, look, we really believe that there is a foundational truth here to build off of. And that is everybody that's a part of the Uncharted team, everybody that is a part of the Uncharted community and finds us tends to believe that every single member of the practice has value and worth and deserves investment in.
That's number one. And number two is that everybody on the team is needed and needs to have some basic leadership, professional, personal development skills, and business development skills in order to help the practice and the team run as efficient, effective, and rockstar ish as they can. And so, our team sat down and said, what would that look like?
What would be some of those things that we would want every member of the team to have access to in terms of learnings? And after the last years of doing content for Uncharted, Andy and I pulled together the best of hits in terms of those foundational level content and workshop questions and discussion questions, and we put it together in one awesome, if I do say so myself, awesome, package.
And that is our Leadership Essentials Certificate. And so if you were like, hey, this I would like my team to be maximally efficient. I would like them to be maximally effective. I would love them to learn how to be better communicators and how to work together as a team. We've got you. And if you're someone on a team listening to this right now, and you're like, Hey, I would like to do that.
We've got you to, there's the ability to take one module at a time. You can buy the whole certificate. You can take it online. You can take it in a hybrid version where you do some workshop in virtual cohorts, but you also asynchronously watch videos. You can even come and do the whole thing in two days live with our team.
And you can find out information about all of it at unchartedvet.com/certificfates, thats certificate with an S at the end, because there's more where that came from. And now back to the podcast. Oh, but don't forget to go sign up.
Dr. Andy Roark: All right. So action steps. The first thing I have to say, and everyone's gonna jump on this, the first thing you gotta do is, check your assumptions, right? Like, is it, is the culture really good? And I just, again, I said, don't take it personally. I was like, okay. We have, at least look in this box.
Like we just need to look in this box real quick. And so I don't know exactly how you do that in your practice, but just do a quick pulse check. Without talking about people leaving, I'll just be like, how do I confirm that people are like, yeah, it's good. We got it, it's good here. You know, just because I don't want to be totally naive and just go, look, I don't understand.
The culture here is great. Why is everybody leave? And meanwhile, they're screaming and, you know, they're like, I hate it so much.
Stephanie Goss: I so much love that you said that. And also I'm super proud of you. I'm slightly surprised because that was where I was gonna go as well. But in the– there's really like three things that I think that we should look at when it comes to metrics, if you will, because you know that I'm a data nerd and I love the numbers.
And so, one of those should be looking at how, like, who are we losing and how are we losing them? And that's probably maybe where you're going next. But like that one of the other ones for me was, why are the people that you have staying? Like, how do they really feel? And so, if you're not, to your point, if you're not doing something to measure how your culture, what your culture is, and how happy people actually are with it, like, that is, that is absolutely action step number one, which is figure that out.
And there's a whole host of ways that you can do that. You can do anonymous surveys. You can do 360 kind of feedback where you ask them to just tell them how they feel about working for you and at your practice. You can do like formal engagement surveys. There's a whole bunch of ways that you can do that.
But just like we survey our clients after their visit to find out how they felt about their experience. We should be doing that with our team. And it's that same idea of we get a net promoter score from our clients, right? The number of people who would recommend us to other people. What does that look like in your practice? What percent of your team is truly happy with their experience and would refer somebody else to come work for you?
You want a way to capture that net promoter score for your team as well. And so there's tons of ways to do it. If you honestly, it's like, If you don't know where to start, it does not have to, you do not have to have a big formal process. They are totally out there. It's something you can outsource. There are companies that absolutely can do engagement surveys for you and not at a super high price point either.
They have options that are for small teams as well, but just to simply administer some asking. That you got to ask them and you know, it can look as simple as you actually sitting down saying, Hey guys, I want, I just want to know how things are going to having a formal thing, but you have to have some way where you're actually trying to get data so that you know, why are they saying, are they truly happy here?
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. No, I think that's, I think that's really good. I like that you say that. So some of it is, what's going on here? Let's, let's check our assumptions. And so that's my first time I start with, right? The second thing I would do, and this kind of actually really fits into, I really like your, The second one for me is check your objectives, which is, what are you trying to do?
Like, what is the culture you want to create look like? Are you just making a culture based on kind of, I don't know how we feel. Have you stopped and thought for a moment like, what is a good culture? What do I think a good culture is? And a lot of us throw around the word good culture all the time, but we don't know what that is, or what it looks like, or what it feels like, or what it sounds like.
And if you're like, I'm at a complete loss, go ask your team. That's a great team exercise, is what does a great culture look like, feel like, and sound like? And have them talk about it, and then you guys can all talk together. And that's a great way to do it. You may have your own views on, like, these are what our values are.
This is what we care about in our practice. This is what we're aspiring to. I think asking the people, Why do you stay here? What do you love? I think that's a great way to go, Aha! Well, that's part of the culture, or that should be part of the culture. But, funny how we look around and you go, I don't know, do I have a good culture?
And my question back is always, What constitutes a good culture in your mind? What does that look like, sound like, and feel like? What are the values that drive a good culture? What are you trying to accomplish here? And so anyway, that's a big one for me. So, check your assumptions. What, what really matters here?
And what do people actually care about? And I think that's what you were getting at, so I love it.
Stephanie Goss: I, oh, I, before you jump to your second one, I also think that part of that process, I love that you said just ask them and like, what does the objective look like? Because part of that should be, if we go back to the headspace, if part of it is accepting that people are always going to leave part of it.
Part of this process should be figuring out what is acceptable turnover because we are always going to have turnover. And so, you know, looking at that for yourself and your team and recognizing someone's always going to leave. And so figuring out what is acceptable. What is that threshold for yourself?
So that it isn't just this gut email that this practice owner sent us of like, everyone is leaving. Well, is everyone leaving? Or have you had one person leave and you're taking that super personally, right? Like you need to know what that kind of that threshold is to know.
Dr. Andy Roark: Hi. I'm kind of with you, I'm kind of not in that. I would say, I think it's, so we have what's called recency bias, right, where when something happens to us recently we're like, oh my god, this has a huge weight, you know, and having one person leave today feels really big, even though a couple of years ago, we had three or four people leave over the course of three months, but we've had two people this month.
Oh my god. And it's like, that's recency biases, because it just happened. It feels bigger than past events. Looking back and saying, like, what have we had in the past? Is this really abnormal? Or is this, you know, is this over time? Does this sort of make sense? I get that. I don't know what you do with, like, if you make a acceptable level, I guess my whole sort of thought at the beginning was often if you're doing what you can to control the culture, you just don't have that control, you know, if the, if you say the acceptable level is two people leaving in a month and three people come in and say, they're going to quit.
What am I going to tie myself to one of their cars? You know, like I like, Oh, that's what it is. I mean, I already knew this was not what I wanted. And now, you know, I don't know that I can set a limit and say, I'm sorry, we've had all the resignations we can have this month. You're going to have to wait until next year to put in your application to resign. So I don't know. So data for this, like, it's good to have some perspective. I think that's good. All right, so hold on, let me get back on this. So action steps, check your assumptions, check your objectives. What does a good culture look like? Figure that out, whether it's from your values or from talking to your team.
What do they care about? Number three for me is think of what is in your control. What is really in your control? So to Stephanie's point, like before of like, Is this an acceptable level of me sort of saying, I don't know what you're going to do about it. I can't stop people from leaving, but I can make a plan and say, this is, what we're going to try to do based on what we've learned based on what we think is going to help, whether it is. attracting and recruiting new people or making sure we keep old people or not old people, but keep our current people. I don't know, but I don't want to let the old people leave. Like look Cheryl, you really can't quit. You're almost 70. I've got to have you.
Stephanie Goss: I gotta keep you.
Dr. Andy Roark: I’ve got to keep you specifically because I'm keeping old people.
Anyway, almost 70 is not old. Just before the, before more. God, we're gonna get so much hate from this episode. So much hate. It's going to come to me at this episode. Anyway, you get to, just, anyway, what is in your control? Can you make a plan? Can you write it down? Every time you start worrying, look at the plan. And that leads me into my next step, which is– stop ruminating. And again, this eats people up. It's just, it's constant. It's the constant worry. What am I doing? What am I going to do? What am I, you know? If this is out of your control and they're leaving, worrying about it doesn't help.
And I know it's easy to say that and it's really hard to do. My it's action over anxiety is figure out what's in your control, do your research, talk to your people, make a plan. Run your plan. Whenever you start to ruminate, go back to your plan and say, What could I be doing right now to advance this plan?
And that's my thing. Just remember, continue recruiting people, continue developing the people that you have, continue to cross train, so that if and when people leave, you've got coverage. Like, those things need to be processes that are ongoing. But anyway, that's it. That's all I got.
All over the place, but that's there is a plan there. I promise. There's a plan. Check your assumptions. Check your objectives. Figure out what's in your control write a plan make it stop ruminating. Remember that recruiting and development should be ongoing processes.
Stephanie Goss: Okay, so I love that you said stop ruminating and make a plan because that's all, that's where my head immediately went to with the action steps. So step number one is if you aren't asking them why are they staying and starting to engage with that information and figure out what to do with it. That's one piece of it.
So I said there's three pieces for me. So why are the people staying? And then what do you do? Once you start to get that information, you have to make a plan for what you're going to do with it. Do more of it because you want, if you know why they're staying and they tell you why they're happy.
Okay. If you want them to stay and you want other people to stay, you just do more of that and figure out how to make that happen more frequently, right? So that's number one. Number two would be if you aren't looking at why people are leaving and tracking that and doing something with that information, that's the second step.
So that looks, that can look, again, that can look a whole bunch of ways, but minimally it should be for, your own sanity, keeping track, whether it's in your, payroll software or in a spreadsheet, just when you do have people leave, was it voluntary or involuntary? So did they choose to leave or did you terminate them? And then a reasoning, right? So that I can look back. And this is super, helpful for staying in that healthy headspace. Because let me tell you, I remember vividly, being in a place where I had a year that was my highest turnover yet. And I was feeling not dissimilar to this practice owner and really down on myself and was like, I'm a horrible manager.
All of these people have left over this last year. And when I sat down and looked at my little spreadsheet, All of those people, except for one, had a legitimate thing. Someone retired, we had marriages, we had babies, we had military separations. So like, I look back and I was like, could I control any of that?
No. Were they happy when they left? Did they tell me that they were sad that they were leaving us? Yes, all of them. So why would I freak out about that and make, turn this into a mountain when it really is a molehill? Because I had one person who I could have potentially impacted. So I thought then was able to choose to focus on what did they tell us?
Why did they leave and they gave some good nuggets because I was doing exit interviews in what we could do. And so figure out a process that allows you to look at why are your people leaving and then And you know me, I like looking at it from a statistical perspective, but also the, what, the information that you glean from that.
So if you're not asking them when they leave, if there's things that you could have done better, and is there something that could have convinced them to stay, like, that's an easy starting place. Ask everybody who leaves your practice, you know, why are they leaving? Could you have done anything better?
And is there anything you could do to convince them to stay? Not that you would. So, be able to do it, but just so that you know, because if you consistently start to hear people are leaving because of the pay, that is maybe something that's within your reach to change. And to your point, if then the next step is to continue to recruit and develop, like that's something actionable that we can put into play with our existing team and with future teams.
So look at why people are leaving, look at why they're staying. And then the last piece is to look at those two things together and figure out where the gap is. So if you're consistently getting told it has to be to do with pay or more opportunities or things that are a part of you, actually a part of your control as an owner, as a manager, as a leader, you can create that action plan.
If you're not getting those two pieces of data, you're just sitting there in the rumination place. And you're going to live in a box in the woods with Andy. So get out of the box and start asking them the questions. That's all I got.
Dr. Andy Roark: No, I agree. All right, let's wrap it up here guys. Thanks for tuning in to listen, everybody.
Stephanie Goss: This is a, this was fun, Andy. Thank you. Have a great week, everybody.
Dr. Andy Roark: Bye everybody!
Stephanie Goss: And that's a wrap on another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. Thanks for joining us and spending your week with us. If you enjoyed this week's episode, head over to wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. It's the best way to let us know that you love listening. We'll see you next time.
