TeleTracking Technologies Inc. celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and for the company’s owner, Michael Zamagias, that means one quarter has been completed.
That viewpoint was strange to President Michael Gallup when he first joined the business five years ago.
He was used to publicly traded companies, where the 90-day quarter’s results impacted whether or not you’d be able to execute your strategy as originally planned.
Gallup says he’s learned how to focus on the mission and make the right decisions — and not focus on the tactics and results of each quarter.
“I can think more about the employees than I ever have; I can care more about their life and their well-being,” he says. “I can care more about our clients, and it’s been a massive change for me in my leadership style.”
He says he wouldn’t go back to a management model that requires you to shift your strategy because of a bad quarter or two. Two or three data points don’t necessarily make a trend.
“Is the bullet headed toward the center of the target, but it’s just moving slower than we thought, or is the bullet not even heading for the target? That’s how we view it,” Gallup says.
If the bullet is heading for the target slower than you thought, an entrepreneurial-backed company like TeleTracking will still press forward.
“We are going to do the right thing for our clients; the right things for our employees; and we’re going to try to do that as best as we can over a long time period,” he says.
That long view affects everything TeleTracking and its more than 350 employees do, including building new products as it migrates from a point solution provider to a provider focused on driving customer outcomes.
In a new direction
Previously, TeleTracking would install health care software as quickly as possible, and then let the system run while providing strong technical support, Gallup says.
Today, it might quiz a hospital about its pain points from a cost perspective, length of stay or emergency department perspective, he says.
Then, TeleTracking works with that health care provider to walk through the metrics, establish baselines and figure out what the two can achieve together, in order to begin a process of change management.
“Not only are we expanding the portfolio significantly from three or four products to 10 or 15, but we’re also expanding our capabilities from a service perspective to help them change their culture on-site,” Gallup says.
There’s market demand for this new approach. It also fits the bill of TeleTracking’s mission, which is central to the company’s culture. That mission is to help eliminate the waste of time and money within the health care space.
But anytime you go in a new direction with your customers, you have to educate them.
