Q. What is the CEO’s role in
that process?
If you look toward a growth
philosophy, you have to have
leadership that is not just looking at what’s going to give them
the greatest return but what’s
going to be best for the business over the next 15 years.
You have to think for the
long term, and typically, there
are some front-end sacrifices
for things that are worthwhile,
especially in regard to personality. Employees are partners,
and you want to grow smart.
Sometimes when there is a
need for personnel, you’re
tempted to hire the first person you come across. Pick the
right person, even if it takes
you more time to fill the slot.
If you get the wrong person,
the separation and the damage
they can do to your organization far outweighs the temporary benefit of having someone
to fill a position.
Our group has strong family
values, and we try to showcase
that to potential applicants. If
we have a potential new physician, we might have a summertime picnic at one of the doc’s
houses. We won’t just invite the
docs’ spouses, but we’ll have the
kids over, because that reflects
the kind of recruit we’re looking
for and tells the potential recruit
the philosophy of our group.
Doing those things breeds a
certain closeness between the
partners.
Q. What techniques do you
use to preserve that attitude?
We have a physician lunch
every Thursday, and there’s no
set agenda. Everyone comes
and goes — sometimes there’s
productive sharing of ideas,
sometimes it’s purely a social
lunch hour — but it forms a
bond. We also go to meetings
together, which gives us a lot of
time with our partners to talk
about things medical and non-medical.
On occasion, there is a disagreement among partners, and
every now and again, that’ll spill
into a back hallway. That’s when
you rein in people and say, ‘Hey,
if you have a problem, you go to
the back office and discuss it.’
Nothing filters through an
organization more than if
employees see two of the partners disagreeing about something. To your employees and
to the community, have a unified front.
Oftentimes, in our executive
meetings and our retreats, we
have very heated debates, but
our philosophy has always
been that once we come to a
communal decision — even if
it wasn’t the view you held
going in — we’re going to all
get behind it.
HOW TO REACH: OMNI Orthopaedics, (800) 742-0345 or www.omniorthopaedics.com