Set standards, especially for managers. The managers need to be very accountable and organized. Our managers present me with a checklist every week about what they’ve done that week to improve a particular area that we were focusing on. One thing I really like is objective measures for performance. When it comes to reviews — and this is very empowering for the staff — is figuring out how they’re really measured. If you do that, you can give each person an objective measure against a goal or objective. If they have a list of those, they know what is important, and they know that we are looking at that. Many times, staff members can be doing the right thing all the time and no one notices. So what we do, and what is empowering, is we sit down once a quarter and tell each person, here is how you’re doing, ‘Here is how we’re going to rank you, and you’re going to rank yourself.’ We look at all the different points, and if there is any disconnect, if the staff thought they were doing a 10 job on something and we thought they were only doing a 3 job, we figure out what is going on. In that way, you really get a connection between what they think their performance is and what we think their performance is, and then they can better know what they need to do to perform.
To put objective measures in place, basically you sit down with managers and ask what do we want this person to do. You can say that you want them to do a good job and so forth, but really it’s how do we show them how they do each task, what would be the ideal. What you write down is all the points you can think of for each scenario that comes up. Then you grade them on, ‘Did they do it, or did they not do it?’
Get out of the office. In being humans, face to face is so much more powerful, in terms of meeting someone. E-mails are certainly good and phone calls save time. But really face to face conveys empathy for whatever is being discussed and the subtleties of the importance, as well. You can convey more in a face-to-face meeting, so I think those are important.
To engage your people like that, you have to make it a priority. Time is about making priorities. You have time for what you make time for. If you don’t block out time, it won’t happen, because there is always something else to do.
Delegating is another critical aspect of making time for communication. You can’t do everything yourself. Delegating is very key, and the key to delegating is to find a person who you know is going to be able to follow through and report back on whether something is being taken care of. If you delegate to someone who may do something or may not, you spend all your time following up on that. So in addition to delegating, you need to get reports back that allow you to follow up on the task at hand.
How to reach: Holtorf Medical Group Inc., (310) 375-2705 or www.holtorfmed.com
