I recently ventured to Las Vegas to attend the APTA PPS conference. This conference is the premier event for private practice physical therapy and business management. The events hosts an array of expert speakers and exhibitors, and brings in over 1200 private practitioners and owners.
As the chair of the PPD, managing a large network of private physical therapy clinics, and educating on business and practice management, I have a vested interest in staying on top of the latest cutting edge strategies. And the PPS conference was definitely a great place to be and to come back and share with my Canadian colleagues.
One of the standouts for me was the keynote address: Build on Values by Ann Rhoades from People Ink. People Ink focuses on creating organizational cultures based on values and performance.
I wanted to share my key takeaways from Ann’s presentation, because as clinic owners and/or clinicians, the insights are incredibly valuable.
Let me share:
- Where culture begins and ends and why it forms the basis for hiring A-players
- 5 key principles of building a model for continuous practice growth
- How to build an A-grade team that are highly committed to your practice and clients
Culture and Values
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, a company that saw incredible growth because of culture says: “Get the culture right and success happens naturally on its own.” He also says: “We developed a list of committable core values…not just values that end up being part of a meaningless plaque on the wall.”
That’s exactly what Ann Rhoades recommended: Create culture around company values.
Core values UNDERLIE your whole company culture and have meaning, importance, and worth. As Hsieh indicated, values developed have to be committable, because they become the basis for which your whole team encompasses – living and breathing these values within your practice.
For instance, one of your values might be to “deliver the best outcomes to patients.” Then, you’d get your PTs to focus on delivering that culture on a daily basis. They live the value of delivering the best outcomes to patients at every point of contact.
Developing core values and living by them isn’t an easy process. It does take conscious effort to design your culture. But you don’t just want to let it happen as you’ll end up with a business that struggles.
One of the first places culture and values get implemented is during the hiring process. As one example, Southwest does 28 interviews before hiring. Yes, that’s a lot! But, finding the right people to bring onto your team is vital. You need to ask a lot of questions to identify behaviours that live up to your values. If team members do not exhibit the core values of your company, do not hire them.
You also need to get your team involved in the company’s core values. How do you keep your team involved with the values you share? For example, Jetblue sends out a weekly newsletter to ALL employees with the “VALUES cloud” in the header.
Hsieh says:
“Once we had our final list of ten core values, I sent an e-mail to the entire company describing each of them in more detail. We still refer to the original e-mail today. In fact, when new employees join the company, they are required to sign a document stating that they have read the core values document and understand that living up to the core values is part of their job expectation.”
To make this process easier, let’s step back to basics and follow a model that Ann Rhoades recommends.
5 Key Principles of Building a Values Model
- Values blueprint
- Hiring “A-players”
- Continuous Discipline/ Improvement
- Customer Branding
- Accountability and Rewards
Your Values Blueprint
Before writing this post, I took a look around at a few PT websites and noticed no core values on any of them!
While you don’t necessarily have to have them displayed on your website, I thought I’d find someone with their values displayed. Since I didn’t, this may indicate that as PTs, you may not have your businesses off to a good start. If you don’t currently have your values defined, your first step in this process is to build your values blueprint.
Ask yourself: What is it that you don’t like about other clinics and businesses? Remember, it is important to look at businesses, outside of the physiotherapy and healthcare industries. Use these insights to create your own unique values.When you do this, be sure to consider the entire customer lifecycle. And, most importantly, communicate your core values – with your team and with your clients/ customers.
Here are just a few examples of company core values.
Nurse Next Door core values:
- Admire people
- WOW customer experience
- Find a better way
- Passionate about making a difference
Zappos core values:
- Deliver WOW Through Service
- Embrace and Drive Change
- Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
- Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
- Pursue Growth and Learning
- Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
- Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
- Do More With Less
- Be Passionate and Determined
- Be Humble
Along with a list of values, companies normally create a short descriptive paragraph of what the core value means.
Hiring “A-Players”
Involve your people in recruiting and hiring. Afterall, you are a team and together, individuals in your team can provide great insights. For example, Action Coach uses a group interview technique …
“The reason group interviews are so effective is you get to see the entire group at one time and are able to rank those candidates,” Shaw explains. “If they’re in the room, they’ve met minimum expectations for what we’re looking for in the role … I’m really looking for cultural fit.”
When hiring, interviewees will also tell you what you want to hear. Ask them behavioural-oriented questions to get them to share situational examples.
For instance:
- Tell me about a time when a potential customer told you NO but with your persistence, you won the customer back?
- Tell me how you would deal with an upset client that came into your clinic?
Past behaviour is 90%+ predictive of future behaviour, so if you can get them to share situational examples, you will pick up a great deal of information about their internal values.
The most important thing in the hiring process is to hire on values and train on skill. You can train people in competencies, but you cannot train someone on motivation or commitment. If they don’t live up to your values, don’t hire them!
Hsieh notes,
“Be Humble … is probably the core value that ends up affecting our hiring decisions the most. There are a lot of experienced, smart, and talented people we interview that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line. But a lot of them are also really egotistical, so we end up not hiring them. At most companies, the hiring manager would probably argue that we should hire such a candidate because he or she will add a lot of value to the company, which is probably why most large corporations don’t have great cultures.”
Accountability and Rewards
Recognize your staff in front of peers, especially our millennials.
Most managers assume that millennials are just interested in money but that’s not the case. Millennials want meaningful work, feel that they are ‘part of something that means something.’ Core values help you disseminate this meaning right through the core of your company and build powerful incentives that attract and maintain employees.
Whatever form of recognition you choose, you need to make sure it is important to the people that work for you. A few examples include:
High-5 Fridays – sending out an email once a week to the entire team, acknowledging wins for the week.
Zappos reward = apple pie and apron.
Or you could make a core values evaluation chart.
The important point here is that you highlight great behaviours. And do it openly in front of others.
Customer Branding
What we’re really talking about here is customer loyalty.
What do you think influences customer loyalty the most?
- Price and value
- Product or service
- Operational processes
- People
Here’s a tip, Jetblue customers come back because of the employees who serve them. Customers are loyal, mainly because of the people!
Ann Rhoades shared this breakdown of Jetblue’s customer loyalty basis:
- People 36%
- Price and value 25%
- Operational processes 22%
- Product 17%
The success of your practice is a team effort! Think of it like this. The right people on the bus with the same values — leads to higher performance. To learn more about customer loyalty, I’d recommend the book Great by Choice by Jim Collins.
Continuous Discipline (Continuous Improvement)
When you think you are hot, that is when you may not be.
In business, we can always get better! Continually focus on improving PERFORMANCE and improving your brand.
Start communicating key performance indicators (numbers) to your team so they know what matters and how it can be improved. You need to identify safety goals, performance goals, outcome goals. You need to measure so you can manage better. You need to use those measurements to hold your team accountable for performance.
Ann Rhoades says, in healthcare, treat fairly, NOT equally. You are not just the friend of your team members, you are the leader. So lead. Though, as a leader, don’t be afraid to LAUGH at yourself. You want employees to enjoy being at work, too. And most importantly, focus on providing exceptional customer service.
What is customer service?
CARING. Transparency. Integrity.
Listen to the client. Value each client/ customer as an individual and provide them with a service that will make them say WOW! Live and breathe the core values of your practice with everything you do. If you can do that, you’ll build a winning practice that is unstoppable!
“It’s not products or services that bind a company together. It’s not size and might that make a company strong. It’s the culture – the strong beliefs and values that everyone, from the CEO to the receptionist, all share.” ~Simon Sinek.
