Dr. Steve Matzin attributes much of his success to the layout of his offices at Dental Care Alliance. The president and CEO equates
closed doors with a closed culture and says opening things up goes a long way toward creating a more open culture. If an
employee looks down a hallway and there are 30 offices with 30 closed doors, that’s not an inviting social situation, he says.
What you should do instead, he says, is rip out all those offices and create an open environment, says Matzkin, who led the
company to revenue north of $120 million. Smart Business spoke with Matzkin about how to handle an open corporate culture
and how to communicate your message.
Have a clear and consistent message. It’s
important that everyone understand
what you are trying to achieve and that
you don’t waver back and forth, so
everyone knows what is to be expected.
We have a goal and everyone understands what the goal is, and that stays
consistent or can be elevated once that
is achieved. Everyone understands the
implementation of how to achieve those
goals. A lot of it is through delegation. I
can’t micromanage this business. There
needs to be a good chain of command.
People need to know who to report to
and what is expected of them.
When it comes to goals, we bring
everybody in once a year and we create
budgets for the regions of individual
offices. Everyone creates the goal together and buys into the goal. Our IT system shows them on a daily basis what
the goal is and where they are toward
achieving that goal. Everyone knows
how to achieve that goal from the bottom up. Then, once a year, we bring in all
the regional managers and dental directors and a lot of the key players for a
meeting. We go over the yearly goals,
how everybody did and we give out
awards.
Delegate responsibilities. A CEO or president, if they try to do too much they are
probably not going to be successful.
There are only so many hours in the day
and only so much attention can be put
forth on a project before you are burning
out or things are let to slip through the
cracks. You can’t do it yourself. You have
to find the right people and trust them
and empower them.
There’s a process where people come
in, and they aren’t going to think the way
you think or understand everything you
have learned through your experiences.
But, they are going to have the right elements. They are going to make mistakes,
and that’s OK.
They can make their mistakes, and that
should be expected. They’ll learn from
those mistakes. Over time, they will make decisions that would be very similar to the decisions you would make,
right or wrong.
There’s a process, and time and a learning curve to do that. When you get to
that point, you need to trust them. There
will be times when someone will make a
decision, and I’ll say, ‘I wouldn’t have
done it that way.’ But, I can’t deal with
everything that goes on every day.
There’s just not enough time. The closer
they get to making similar decisions you
would hope they would make, the more
you can delegate it to those people.
Create a culture that fits your employees’ personalities. First, you have to decide the
types of people who will succeed in your
business and what kind of culture they
will best survive in.
If you want that kind of open and sociable kind of business, then you have got
to have an environment where people
feel comfortable. It starts with the CEO,
COO and CFO. If they are open and
encourage that kind of interaction, then
it will be a lot easier than if employees
are afraid to knock on a CEO’s door
because they are afraid he/she is always
in high-level meetings and doesn’t have time to talk. I walk around and say hello
to everyone when I come in.
We do bowling tournaments and parties. We do things because if you enjoy
coming to work and the people you
work with, people will be more productive, stay and not always be looking for
another job for 5 cents an hour more.
It’s almost like you’re with your friends
or family. There’s an attachment there,
and that’s what we strive for. It goes
back to the type of people we hire. They
want that kind of environment. Some
people like the environment where they
walk into work, they shut their door and
do their job and leave.
Be proactive, not reactive. We are constantly
looking around and gathering information. We gather with companies like us,
not competitors of ours because one
company operates in California, etc. We
get together a couple times a year and
talk about what is going on in different
markets just to help each other. Saying,
‘Hey, this is happening in California, this
could be happening in Florida next.’
Don’t look over people’s shoulders. Everybody
has their responsibilities and goals they
need to work up to. As long as those are
being met, there’s no reason for me to be
standing over them looking at everybody
and what they are doing. If it’s not being
met, then it’s time for me to say, ‘Why
isn’t this happening?’
Everyone knows what is expected and
as long as they accomplish that, then I’m
not standing over them saying, ‘You left
at five minutes to 5 today.’ It’s a job-orientated company, not a time-orientated
company.
If someone gets it done in six hours
instead of seven hours and they want to
take an hour extra for lunch, that’s fine.
As long as their job was done, I’m not
going to be all over them.
HOW TO REACH: Dental Care Alliance, (941) 955-3150 or
www.dentalcarealliance.net
