Jack O'Brien: Ahoy. Oh, well, well, well, look who the cat dragged in.

Ben Lynch: He's back. Can you tell by the glow? Actually, more like exponentially more grey hairs after spending a few weeks with the kids. You know, it's great fun until it's not.

Jack O'Brien: You need a holiday after a holiday.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, it's so true. G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode.

Hannah Dunn: People can't believe that I don't have conversations where I don't have team members come to me and say, I just want to have a chat about maybe getting a pay increase.

Jack O'Brien: Is it a green flag if someone is asking about KPIs or is it a red flag if they're not?

Hannah Dunn: I talk to the fact that often people with a higher KPI actually feel like they're doing less work than people with a lower KPI. How do we actually think about and go about setting targets? We do not pay the highest salary. Like you can go somewhere else and get a higher salary. but the way in which we support you is through a large amount of professional development, clinical support and then the rewards on top of that.

Ben Lynch: Firstly, you don't want to compare to the average because the average clinic sucks. This episode will be right up your Allie if you're looking to improve the performance of your practitioners. We're diving into setting performance targets. You'll want to hear how Hannah talks about targets when recruiting new practitioners. Plus, Jack shares how he deals with a team member that believes performance targets are at odds with patient-centered care. Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by allyclinics.com. If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organised and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Ally. Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your clinic's policies, systems, and training. Test it for free at allyclinics.com. And in other news, applications are now open to work with us one-on-one at Clinic Mastery. If you want support to grow your clinic and bring your vision to life, just email helloatclinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast, and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. It's good to be back. Here we are. Let's go to what's on the desk, J-O-B. A few warm welcomes to new folks testing out Allie. We've got Daniel, Sam, Kate, Jackson, and Taylor. Thanks for checking out Allie. And also, after a couple of weeks off, my inbox is full at 65 emails of folks wanting to be part of the Nucle, Splose, and Halaxy integration into Allie. So thank you. And I also had a really nice email from Shane O'Sullivan. He said, great work on the pod. I'm a longtime listener. It's the highlight of my week. Plenty of great insights, which is really nice. I hadn't shared that with you both, but that was part of the delight when I opened my inbox. J-O-B, what else have you got on your desk?

Jack O'Brien: Well, it's not a line we typically hear the delight when I opened my inbox, but definitely not for me. No, certainly not from you, but, uh, nevertheless, literally 30 seconds before we hit record, um, Anna joined our elevate program. So Anna welcome. If you do the math, you'll work out which Anna you are. That's so stoked to have you join us. And also Sally has joined us in the business Academy in the last couple of days. So, uh, It's all happening. And folks, if you want to have a conversation about how we can help you grow your clinic, see if you're a fit for us, we're a fit for you, send Ben an email. It would delight his inbox. Ben at clinicmastery.com.

Ben Lynch: I once requested a nice email from someone. Maybe it was a job application, I can't remember, a few years back. Anyway, someone wrote, like, hey Ben, this is a nice email. Here you go. I was like, oh, that's good, like, you're funny. But it is nice when you open up an email and there's some tonality and people care, because there's plenty of spam that does come through the inbox. Oh, well, today we're going to be talking about targets, KPI targets, so key performance indicators, specifically setting targets for our practitioners and rolling that out. Now, whether it's a new team member, like they've literally joined, you've recruited them and you've got to introduce it to them. Maybe it's new in your team overall. It can be a slightly awkward conversation. It can be awkward addressing them if there's like a bad performer or a low performer. So today I want to dive in and get your perspective, the both of you, on especially communicating targets, how you frame it up, how you continue to anchor back to them, and also how you go about thinking and doing the calculations to set targets. This is quite nuanced. I actually want to get into some of the pragmatics of this. Now, the context is in onboarding a whole bunch of people to Allie, we give them the ability to set targets for every practitioner in every stat that we have available. And it's come so naturally, and maybe over a long period of time, we've developed it, the three of us and the extended Clinic Mastery team, that it's made me think, how do we actually think about and go about setting targets? Because for plenty of new folks on Allie, it's the first time they've ever done it. And they asked me, hey, Ben, how should I set these? How high should I set them? Should they be ambitious? Should they be like break even? So I want to explore those with the both of you. But first, when it comes to the communication piece, I think it's super important that we share the relevance and the importance of KPIs in the context of our clients, what it means for them, what it means for our team, our practitioners, and what it means for the business. Although there's a caveat. And my question to you, Hannah, should clinic owners address the elephant in the room and actually talk about how targets and KPIs affect and how they're important for the business? Or should you just focus purely on why this matters to the therapist?

Hannah Dunn: We talk about both. I think it's important that they understand the why and also they understand the why for them. I think it gives them a whole lot more context. And when we have context and understanding, it allows us to have more open and transparent conversations I think around those KPIs. So you like to address it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We do it right from the beginning, right from interview point and right through to the end of them being with us potentially. So, yes. And on a regular basis and through a few different avenues which we can talk about.

Ben Lynch: Great. Just quickly on the hiring piece, how does that come out? Like, literally, what do you say? Is this the first interview and how do you kind of frame it up?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, so we have two interviews. So the first one is sort of gauging to understand what their experience has been previously with KPIs, what they've looked like, what they've achieved, and then we sort of have a conversation. They'll often ask, if you don't bring it up, oh, what are your KPIs? And so I think you're better off having that conversation ahead of the game. Sometimes we ask halfway through an interview, do you have any other questions to see if they're going to ask us about KPIs to see if they're well aware of them?

Jack O'Brien: On that, is it a green flag if someone is asking about KPIs or is it a red flag if they're not?

Hannah Dunn: It's a green flag if they are, it's not necessarily a red flag because sometimes they'll say, oh, there's a few questions, but maybe we'll get to them or things like that. But I'm not worried if they don't bring the conversation up. But I do think it's a step ahead if you do bring it up. good insight.

Ben Lynch: I like that. You're asking their question, like, tell us about your experience with KPIs in the past. I think that's such a brilliant idea because I think I've made this mistake in rushing into tell people All right, this is what we're doing. These are the results. These are the targets." Rather than, you know, tell us about your experience in the past because then we can find those little elements, those gremlins that we need to address when we're talking about it with this individual that's going to be different from the next team member. So Jack, do you also agree and advise clinic owners to talk about the business side of things and the relevance for that, or you just focus on the individual?

Jack O'Brien: The short answer is yes. I do emphasise clinic owner speaking about the business significance of KPIs as well as the clinical significance because if it's not spoken about, it's assumed. An assumption, it sets us up for unmet expectations. In a really simple example, clinicians will do the maths in their head and try and work out, you know, the revenue they're generating and the revenue the business makes. And typically, it's rather overinflated usually because they forget that they get, you know, 11 days public holiday a year and 10 days sick leave and all these things. So anyway, they overinflate it and then they conflate this revenue number with, you know, the amount of money that the clinic owner is typically making. So it opens the door for poor assumptions and therefore unrealistic expectations.

Hannah Dunn: We're all on the beach, aren't we? Just hanging out, living off the rocks. Yeah, pina coladas, yeah. It also gives a really good foundation to have the conversation of your KPIs to say, look, you're already achieving what we ask of you in your other workplace or, you know, what you've been doing is an hour short a week. And so this is how we'd support you to get there.

Ben Lynch: So you're literally trying to create that comparison. Here's where you are. Here's where we want to get you to and support you in the process of being able to do sustainably. And that just makes it really clear and obvious. So you both spoke to explaining the why. Why is this important to the business? Hannah, what are some of the elements that you talk about when you explain it?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, we talk about sustainability, we talk about our ability to provide professional development, our ability to support clinicians. I say in the interviews often that we do not pay the highest salary, like you can go somewhere else and get a higher salary, but the way in which we support you is through a large amount of professional development, clinical support, and then the rewards on top of that. And so you absolutely have the opportunity to achieve the same as what you're getting in this other role, but it's just in a different way. And so it just allows us to have more certainty to create more opportunities for you as a team member.

Ben Lynch: Can I get a sense for what you actually say? You address there a couple of bullet points, but like, how do you actually frame it up? What do you say when you say, OK, we're going to talk to sustainability, but how do you frame that up? How do you actually say it?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. So I'd say, so we're looking at, let's just use 25 as an average for OTs. We're looking at 25 like billable hours. Yeah. Impact hours. Impact hours. Yeah. Fantastic. And we'll talk about the fact that that includes your direct and indirect time and that we have a multitude of other ways that you can revenue generate, like doing professional development or coaching of other clinicians externally to our company, or we sell some resources on our website. So all of that revenue goes towards your impact hours. And so it's not always direct work. And then we talk about the fact and the reason that we have, you know, if another company says to you, they don't have KPIs, then they're not telling you the full story. Because if you go to work and say, no worries, no KPIs, I'll say zero clients, that is never going to be okay with a company. And so we need to ensure that we're sustainable. And that's why we set these targets. We're really open to feedback about the targets. And you know, we'll work with you throughout. I talk to the fact that often people with a higher KPI actually feel like they're doing less work than people with a lower KPI, and that's due to getting into flow and rhythm and having systems in place and getting more on top of using templates or Heidi. or other AI, and then talk about the benefit to them being that we can offer quite high salaries with the rewards program if that's their target. But if their target is also about family flexibility or their targets around ensuring they get PD because they're a newer graduate, then this system also works for them. We know one model doesn't work for everyone, and so by having rewards, it allows us to target the areas that are your desire statement goals.

Ben Lynch: Nice. So you're starting to really dovetail that into the relevance specifically for the team member to dovetail, dovetail. That's beautiful. So a couple of points here like sustainability, in other words, profitability as well, the ability for them that to be reinvested back into the tools, the tech, the training, the mentoring and support to grow the human, support them in their career. They're really nice bits of framing. Jack, What else would you add to that or perhaps nuance in how you describe the importance of setting targets for the business when you're talking with a practitioner?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, so when we're talking about targets for the business to the practitioner, I'd be thinking, for me, it's informed by two key books or two key concepts. So the seven habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey, you can see it on my screen here, you can grab it on Amazon, no affiliate links that I'm aware of. Anyway, one of those key habits is to think, win, win. And this is a really important concept for clinicians to consider. If the business was to be highly profitable and winning, but you as a therapist, are paid below minimum wage, you're not getting enough to support your family and your desire statement, that's a win for the business, a loss for you. Would you tolerate that as an employee? No, nor should you. That's a terrible situation. The same is true in the inverse. If the employee is earning a really good salary, great reward structure, super fulfilled, but the business is not making any money and isn't sustainable, That's a win-lose and that's no good for anybody. To Hannah's point, if the business isn't sustainable, it goes out of business. You no longer have a job and the clients, participants, families that we care for no longer have a place to come to have their health supported. And so it must be win-win. We have to seek a win-win. And that dovetails nicely into the second book or resource that I love to talk about. It's Adam Grant's book called Give and Take. Wonderful book here. And you think about it, perhaps if you're listening along, if you're married or in a long-term relationship, it's like these relationships work when I seek the best of the other party and the other party's looking out for my best interests. If we all just sit in our own sandbox and try and take care of ourselves and let them take care of themselves, It doesn't work. I've got to look out for that. As a clinician, you want to be seeking the best interests of the business and as a business owner, you want to be seeking the best interests of the clinician and that's a beautiful example of givers, you know, this whole notion of givers gain. If you're just a taker and you're just in it for your own, it's futile and it doesn't work. And so when we frame up those concepts with clinicians, whether they've been on our team for a long time or they're a recent addition to the team, it's those philosophies that underpin then the targets that we set and how we go about pursuing them.

Ben Lynch: We've unfortunately seen a number of businesses, clinic owners go out of business, maybe just a handful over our time. And it's really sad, but they've gotten to the point where it has been unsustainable for a number of reasons. And it is reasonably rare in healthcare because of the nature of the industry, or just plenty that are in this really tight spot financially because they've set up some unsustainable reward structures, payment methods, And so being able to frame it as win-win, as you said, Jack, is a really elegant way to discuss this and anchor back to it with our team members. So then let's progress to team members. You've both alluded to it, but how do you really make it hyper relevant to the individual that's right in front of you? How do you make it relevant and important, Jack? Right.

Jack O'Brien: I mean, this is where Allie is super powerful because, you know, so often we get clinic owners come to us as coaches and say, what should my targets be? What should my KPIs be? What are the industry benchmarks or standards? And I get where those questions are coming from. There's this little voice in the back of our head that's always interested in what are the standards or the norms or the averages. And so often our response to clinic owners is two parts. Firstly, you don't want to compare to the average because the average clinic sucks. That's, you know, you join the business academy or elevate to be above average, not to compare yourself to average. So ignore averages and benchmarks. And then point number two is What's most useful is an internally relevant comparison, not an externally relevant comparison. And what we mean by that is, let's pick on cancellation rate as an example. If your cancellation rate or your clinician's cancellation rate was 16% last quarter, let's set the benchmark relevant to that, maybe 14%. Now, someone might say to you, oh, 8% is the, you know, it should be your target. Yeah, but if you're at 16, getting to eight is a journey over time, and it's gonna be a demoralising journey for a long time. So let's set relevant internal benchmarks and targets based on recent performance. And I love that Allie has that auto target feature that just reads the most recent history and applies those targets moving forward.

Ben Lynch: And Jack, how do you then relay that to the practitioners so that they care? Like, how do you nuance that so that they're like, oh, yeah, I see the point. I understand the point you're making.

Jack O'Brien: Right. And this probably comes back to Hannah's commentary about hiring and who we hire. So we want to be hiring people who are humble, hungry and smart, to quote Pallanciani, and specifically hungry people who are interested in progression and growing and developing and learning. And so, when you've got a clinician in front of you who is on this lifetime pursuit of getting better, it's super easy to say, hey, your cancellation rate is X, let's make it X-1 or X-1, depending on the metric you're using And so it comes back to the types of people we have on team. Are we lifelong learners? You know, that's a family core value that our kids say, O'Brien's a lifelong learner. It's great. Well, if that's the case, then let's progress your PVA target or let's progress your rebooking percentage because we are lifelong learners. We are constantly pursuing this journey of getting better. And so we just nudge the bar a little bit higher.

Hannah Dunn: I think there's, yeah, just not waiting for my question. I think there's two areas that I see businesses, fail's a strong word, but have challenges with the rewards program. And I think one of them is not linking them to desire statements. So not understanding each individual's clinician, each individual, each clinician as an individual. Here are my words today. And so I think not linking them to their specific goals makes them less meaningful for every individual. And so if we can do our desire statements and make sure that we can utilise the system to fit their goals is where we see a lot of success. And the second place I think where we see failure is, or challenges, is when rewards programs are based on a flat rate. So no matter if you're a new grad or an experienced clinician, you get $500 if you hit your target. So the new grad's target might be $25, the senior clinician might be 30, let's say, and they might have project work, but no matter what you do, everyone gets $500. And so I think when there's no, or, you know, your targets are 25 in your first year and 27 in your second year, and you get $1,000 reward if you hit them, and there's never an increase, I think that that is where we really see, where there's no increase, sometimes in targets as well, is also another place where we see that falling down.

Ben Lynch: So what you're saying, Hannah, is actually part of the relevance of setting targets for practitioners is tied to their remuneration structure. And so that's a key element to this. If you have tried implementing key performance indicators and putting targets in place, but haven't coupled it with a reward structure that allows them to also see the upside of their productivity, then that's a great opportunity for development. And to make their remuneration structure mean even more to them, coupling it with what we call a desire statement, a version of the wheel of life activity, understanding some meaningful goals in a number of domains of their life is also an essential ingredient to setting targets that have meaning to the practitioner and sort of reverse engineering from there. Just to make sure those that are listening or watching in, come and join YouTube. Then you understand some of the other elements that make this work. Jack?

Jack O'Brien: Yes. Yeah. You know, to give an example of what HANA means when we talk about tying performance metrics to a desire statement, let's play out a bit of a scenario. Maybe a clinician says to us, I'd love to move house into a more desirable neighbourhood and that means, you know, my mortgage would be an extra $100 a week. And so, they're effectively pursuing more income so that they can live more in alignment with where they want to be. It's like, okay, great. As business owners, for us to know why their remuneration increase is meaningful means then we can talk about, all right, so let's talk about our cancellations. If we're able to move those cancellations from 15% to 12% or 10%, what that means for you as a practitioner is an extra two appointments per week. Let's talk in a musculoskeletal context. An extra two appointments per week. which means your billing is increased by two appointments per week. It's got $250. And as part of your remuneration structure, what that looks like is an extra $100 a week of gross income, you know, annualised out or quarterised out over the course of a quarter. And so if you're able to reduce your cancellation rate by that, you know, from 15% to the 12%, what that means is you'll have an income that means you can move house into a more desirable neighbourhood. And so here's the one or two strategies that we're going to work on collectively. You're going to work on some scripting in your consulting. I'm going to help our admin team refine some of their processes around cancellations. And if we can collectively work together to see your cancellation rate reduced from 15 to 12, In 12 months time, the banks will give you the tick of approval to see you move house into that more desirable neighbourhood. How does that sound? And so then, what we've done is we've tied it to their desire statement and the reason that it's meaningful for them. And then when the rubber hits the road inevitably and we're struggling to get that cancellation rate down or we're finding it difficult to stay to our scripting or language or hitting some of those gates, the accountability conversation comes back and looks like, hey, I really want to see your remuneration progress so that you can move home sooner. Is it okay if we role play some of these scripts or let's maybe audit some of your Heidi recordings or patient notes or whatever the case may be so that we can help you do better with your cancellations. So ultimately we can see you upgrade your home and, you know, share a Shampers when that happens.

Hannah Dunn: And looking at like. People can't believe that I don't have conversations where team members come to me, and this is the same for a lot of the practices including mastery, where I don't have team members come to me and say, hey, can we have a chat? I just want to have a chat about maybe getting a pay increase. Because they know what their targets are, they know what their KPIs are, they know how to get those increases. and they know what level they need to hit to be able to do that and they know it will happen as soon as that's achieved. And so I think it's like such a privileged position to be in and one that so many clinicians and practice owners would love to be in, in where you're not having any surprise conversations about salaries or about how to get there.

Jack O'Brien: Well, it's such an awkward conversation right now when a clinician comes to you and you're on the back foot and so to create a system and a process that removes ambiguity, removes awkward conversations and the goalposts are super black and white.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. There's so many different ways to do a rewards program. For us, it's tied to impact hours and about how those impact hours are being achieved over a 13-week period. For others, it may be over a shorter period or related utilisation rates. The other thing that I get a lot of feedback on that people say to me, oh, since you said that at the summit, I've now been using this in my clinic, which is you were just talking, Jack, about cancellation rates. One thing we look at a lot is utilisation and looking at their calendars and one week ahead and four weeks ahead, what's happening with those bookings to make sure that flow of clients are there. And so when we sit down and have those conversations, if someone isn't achieving it, we retrospectively look at their calendar and say, see this time here, to me it looks like you're sitting down and staring at the wall. I know that's not what you did. I know that you worked in this time, but your calendar doesn't show me that. And so we have a conversation about what was this time used for. So the expectation for us is that even if you're doing emails, even if you're because we would be charging for emails if they're for clients, but if they're for something else that may not be chargeable, I just want to know what you've been doing in that time so that we can use it to support you to get better at those tasks. And so that has been really powerful for me to just say, look, it looks like this, that you're staring at the wall. I know that's not the case. What is happening? And that also helps with clinicians who can be hesitant to feel like they want to charge under NDIS or a private family for those phone calls, for those indirect times.

Ben Lynch: It's a great conversation starter that you've got there, Hannah. And as you've said, at your clinic in particular, one of the core values is around communication. Solves everything. How do you say it?

Hannah Dunn: What's the actual phrase? I used to say nothing can't be solved with good communication, but now it's everything can be solved with good communication.

Ben Lynch: A little spin on the framing. If you're setting targets, then you need a way to track actual performance. So, a dashboard or a tool like Allie. And you want to be able to see trends. Because at various times, perhaps people are building up a caseload. Maybe you've opened a new location. And so, a practitioner is building their caseload there. Or they're a new grad and we want to support them. But setting targets actually allows you to direct your mentoring support quite thoughtfully as well. So many clinic owners will say to us, they feel challenged having the accountability conversation, as you alluded to. And I just want to pick up on something that you've both alluded to, and that is In the mentoring, you're getting practitioners to actually self-reflect on how they're doing in their stats, rather than it being sort of top-down, like, hey, you're not doing well on cancellations or rebooking. They're actually seeing their own data, is what I'm hearing. And they're actually doing some version of self-reflection, self-reporting. So it's not me holding them accountable, like breathing down their neck, necessarily. but them being part of the process. Where are two or three opportunities that you can see in your dashboard for improvement over the next period of time, and how can I support you to make those changes? I think a question that we've also used, and I'm so inspired by you, Hannah, here in the interview process, that we'd ask a lot of therapists is some version of, Why do you do what you do? And help to understand the story of what led them into healthcare. And what do they aim for in their career moving forward? It's usually a version of to have a really great reputation. A reputation for being a good therapist. You know, getting great client outcomes, being respected by my peers. Hopefully they would. If they don't, they're not the right fit for your team. And so often I feel like that's a natural progression into, well, how would we know that your reputation, how would we know that you're getting better at supporting clients through a journey of care? Well, we'd need some feedback loop. We'd need to know how you're going, and then we'd need to set some parameters to see that you are making progress, that you're not just stuck in new grad year and on repeat. And so targets are really, what are we aiming for? What are we working towards? And I think if we couple that with the client experience and the client journey, it's one element of it, that we can start to actually put the training and mentoring into perspective that we're providing those team members. Are they getting better at assessing the new client, diagnosing and prescribing a treatment plan that they commit to, they don't just drop out of? But for those folks, whether they're clinic owners or practitioners that say setting KPIs and targets is business-centered and not patient-centered, Jack, how do you reply to that?

Jack O'Brien: Everything is patient-centered and everything is business-centered. And so it's not one or the other. Everything is so interconnected. And so we can look at it from the lens of how does it impact the business, or we can look at it from the lens of how does it impact the client.

Ben Lynch: That's a really neat answer, but what if you got those really resistant team members that are like, just, this is not the way that we should be looking at client care. It causes over-servicing or indiscriminate use of healthcare services. Like, this is too much to look at. We're rebooking and our visit average is so much. It completely overlooks patient outcomes.

Jack O'Brien: Okay, if you're that type of practitioner, strap yourself in. You've got to meet your team where they're at. And I've coached numerous clinic owners through this situation where their practitioners are resistant. So there's a couple of different ways you could think about it. You have to address the person in front of you and We need to be winsome, right, in how we present our ideas. If we're just speaking at someone to try and change their mind, it probably isn't going to work. So you do need to, probably on the fly, just change your tact a little bit and become more coach-like. And so we're not sitting across from an adversary trying to change their mind. We're sitting next to a team member walking in the same direction. We are shoulder to shoulder. Both figuratively and literally, I wouldn't do this across a table or through a Zoom call. I'd go for a walk or sit alongside a table and let's work on a computer or piece of paper together. So, we're disarming that conversation firstly. If someone's, you know, resistant and defensive, we need to disarm that. And then we need to think about what's going to speak their language, what's going to be meaningful for them. Now, potentially, if they're a health professional, they're quite evidence-minded, they love a good journal article, let's talk about P equals less than 0.05, statistical significance, all of those fun statistical terms. There are a number of journal articles that speak to the importance of creating rapport. of how long it takes to establish rapport, of how our patients don't always understand some of the health education that we provide, that evolving and tweaking an exercise program in a musculoskeletal context or rolling out some therapy at home as well as in the clinic for a family takes time and takes a number of sessions to get right. And so, if your practitioner is quite evidence-minded, then I'd be saying, well, let's go through the evidence, both in a journal context and also in an individual context. If you're worried about over-servicing, Mr. Therapist, do you over-service? No. Would you ever over-service? No. Great. Then there's actually nothing to worry about here because you're responsible for yourself. So we're never talking about over-servicing. What we do know, again, statistically speaking, is that health professionals chronically under-service, which does our patients, when you under-service, you do them a disservice. And so my job as a clinic owner is to help you to not do your patients a disservice.

Ben Lynch: Sorry to interrupt, Jack, you and I and Andrew Zachariah have spoken about the clinical patterns or clinical pathways, like literally when we break down. I love how you just sort of lasering in, you said coach-like, which I imagine is ask a lot of questions, be curious to really get to the nuts and bolts of it. but also then look at, well, you know, for X condition or presentation, what would we, you know, likely see as the best journey in their healthcare towards recovery and actually breaking them down and comparing to where they have been, whether they've been nurturing someone through that course of care. Is that also something that you'd look to do with a, with a stubborn or resistant therapist like this?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, absolutely. And we can just challenge our own assumptions. So it's really helpful, again, disarming to challenge your own assumptions as we go into this and maybe lead by example and go, well, you know, if we're presented with, I'll use a physio concept, it's easier for me to do that than an OT or a speech example, though I could do that. You know, if you're presented with an acute ankle sprain, How would we think about the first two weeks of treatment? How would we think about the second block of two weeks of treatment? And here's what I've done in the past, but here's why I might change my approach. Maybe initially I saw them once a week, but in hindsight, I probably should have seen them twice a week, because we know that if we can get the swelling under control, we can resume some proprioceptive stabilisation work. And so leading with how you've done it in the past and perhaps how you'd change, then opens the conversation to say, well, how have you done it, Mr. or Mrs. Therapist, and how might you adapt your approach moving forward?

Hannah Dunn: And I think what we're really saying is like we're saying to these clinicians, tell me more, like tell me more about what's happening here for you and being solutions focused, like taking on board what it is that they're saying. For example, I feel like I'm seeing this client not frequently enough or too frequently. and looking at how we can find solutions to work together on that.

Ben Lynch: So then let's get into how to actually set targets. This is a common question that I get. I'm sure you do too in the coaching sense. When people typically log into Allie, there's this ability to click the wizard button. I'll just share my screen. and whether using a dashboard or Allie. As part of your onboarding, there's the option of a wizard button. It uses, as you said, Jack, some of the previous historical data as a reference point to create a target for each metric. But you can individually alter every metric. So if you're looking at my screen over here, we'll go to new clients as an example. When we click on the target, I can see all of the individual practitioners and their respective targets for new clients. And then I can see the sum total for the clinic overall. In this case, it's 126 new clients per week. This is quite a large team. And so we can change those targets and they're reflected straight away for the practitioner when they log in to their secure hub where only they can see their own data. I think that's part of getting them on board is that when a clinic owner says, here are your stats. Naturally, there's a bit of skepticism about where these stats have come from. Are they accurate? And so many people have said to me, it's great having Allie as this trusted third party where they can log in and see their stats at any other time. And so we can go and change them and they're visualised on the chart. So you can see the target, the trend, and sort of the discrepancy between actual performance and where they need to be.

Hannah Dunn: Such a big area where things fall down when people say, no, my team can't see their stats. I present them to them at the end of the quarter. Like if you're doing that, there's no room for growth or change. They need to have live updates weekly at minimum.

Ben Lynch: So it's a great point. That frequency, intensity, and velocity of the feedback loop is something we've talked about. It's key ingredients to progress being made. If they've got it in their hands, they can do wonders with it. I want to run this by you both. I haven't shared this with you. I've had hundreds of onboarding sessions with folks on Allie, and it's forced me to think about and simplify how we set targets. And so I've got this couple of bullet points that I go through with everyone where it's the first time that they've set targets, and I want to get your reaction to it, okay? So the first thing is we cover a lot of the context that we've covered here, and I often say that it's important to roll this out perhaps to just one team member first, and then go to several others. You want to get a little bit of feedback on your communication, how it went and what landed, and try and pick the best team member who'd be most receptive to it. But I think a couple of things serve as anchor points or reference points to how you might set targets. each of which we've referenced here, but just to call them out explicitly. The first one is by profession. So a psychologist is going to be different to an OT, is going to be different to a physio, different to a dentist and a GP and a surgeon, and we've worked with all of them. So I think you start with profession. I know, Jack, you said, I don't really like profession-based benchmarks, the average, but that might be at least an initial filter that we're looking at this through. Sure. The next would be by experience. A new graduate is going to be different from a senior therapist that's 10 years out. So we want to essentially create some separation in a number of stats based on their years of experience, different expectations. In fact, for a number of clinics have said the word targets kind of is a little bit off-putting. And so through conversation, we've talked about really these are just standards. These are expectations. This is what we expect of you in your role. Next is to filter it by workload. Are they working full-time hours or part-time hours? That should be an obvious one for most folks in here. Or is a senior therapist going from full-time consulting to maybe half-time consulting because they're picking up a mentoring load? We want to nuance their targets by that. Then, this is where it can get a little gray. I say, we want to think about setting these as a range or a band, because I've seen clinic owners come to me and say, these are my targets, and I've set them as minimum expectations. These are maybe a break even for the clinic for various bits of context, or this is just what I want them to see. I want them to feel like they're hitting their targets regularly. Because on the other side of the range is maybe an optimistic version. This is a high, high performer. Or it somewhat connects with their remuneration structure, as you alluded to, Hannah. So once they hit this threshold, they're now in, quote, bonus or reward territory. So we've got a range.

Hannah Dunn: And what we're really talking about here is setting up a system that is for your clinic. We're not talking about setting up a system for each individual practitioner, because that is where it can get so tricky when people think about their current team and not about a whole system that would work for anyone coming in and joining their team.

Ben Lynch: And so you want to, what, publicise those, standardise those, share those with the team? Hannah, how do you do it?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, we do. We do standardise them. They know that if you're on say 80,000 inclusive super, that your targets are X for your KPIs, maybe 24 for your KPIs, and that every time that 5,000 goes up, it goes up by 2,000 worth of KPIs. And so they can work it out. We don't have a fully published document that they can just pull up and see where they're at, but we could. But it is just that as soon as you've got 5,000, your level two becomes your level one. So they can work out further ahead. But I think when we're developing these KPIs, where I see clinicians get themselves or directors get themselves into a real fluster is about, oh, this person's been with me for this long and I want to individualise it for them, opposed to thinking about what is the system and where do I fit that practitioner into the system that is going to be a lifelong or can be system.

Ben Lynch: To keep it standardised. And then, to add just one more, the question that I think we all get a lot is, on what sort of weekly amount should we base this on? Is this 52 weeks of the year? Is it 48 weeks of the year? Is it 42? Which we'll come to in a moment. But Jack, Is there anything else that you add to the criteria for helping a clinic owner set targets? How to think about setting targets?

Jack O'Brien: I'll speak to a clinic owner setting targets in the context of the conversation with the practitioner and your first conversation about numbers or your first screen share of Allie should not be about targets. It should be about past performance or past numbers, past metrics, because we want to, again, decrease the threat or perceived threat of all these numbers and stats. And we want to get some emotional credits in the bank account. We want to be able to have pumped up their tires and acknowledged where their numbers are crushing previously. Maybe you've done that once or twice or three times. Like, hey, I noticed your cancellation rate has been trending really well over the last two quarters. Like, kudos, you're doing something right. In the consult room, I don't hear every word, but you're clearly doing something right to see that cancellation progress. Or, hey, I noticed your average revenue per consult is trending up. Kudos. Well done on taking great care of your clients. And so once you've banked a couple of those types of credits in the relationship bank account, then we can start to talk about targets. And typically, again, I'd encourage clinic owners to think more coach-like and not tell what your targets are, but ask your team members what they think their targets could be. not should be, but could be. What's possible here? And you would usually frame it up so in light of last quarter where your cancellation rate was 15%, what do you think could be a reasonable target for us to aim for in the coming quarter? And hopefully, they answer in the ballpark of what we were thinking and we can say, oh, perfect. That's exactly what I was thinking. We're on the same page. Let's go. And also, if they're well off the mark, it gives us a chance to course correct and moderate some of their thinking. Now, typically, they're somewhat clueless, right? Or at least none the wiser. And so if their cancellation rate was 15%, they wanna aim for 5%. They're like, that's lovely and noble, but probably unrealistic. Now, look, let's hope for the best, but let's plan for what's real. And instead of aiming for 5%, let's aim for 10%. So you're putting the ball in their court and coaching them through how to think about this rather than, ah, the boss just arbitrarily tells me what I have to do.

Hannah Dunn: And I think another measure that we're looking at is that sustainability piece around what is the percentage that we'll be paying them out for the rewards based on the revenue that they generate.

Ben Lynch: And is that then the ultimate place to anchor to as your target is looking at essentially what they bring in and what we pay them and everything works backwards from there?

Jack O'Brien: It helps me. I think the simple answer is yes, because, you know, dolls don't grow on trees, right? There is a commercial reality to what we do and there are commercial limitations to how much we can how much we can spread around is simply dictated by how much we bring in. In short, Ben, yes, but we probably do those sums on the back end with our coach or on our spreadsheets in our own mind. That's not a clinician-facing conversation.

Ben Lynch: Good distinction. To clarify, if we know we're paying this therapist you know, their salary and their super. We can then put a multiple on that to figure out what revenue they need to generate. And then we can break that down as a weekly target. And then that helps all of the other targets be set from there. Is that how you would do it? That's a way to do it for sure. What other way would there be?

Hannah Dunn: Well, Hannah? I'm not fencing. I'm saying yes, that is a way that I look at what is the percentage of revenue using the calculator that Clinic Mastery provided when I was a member many years ago. And look at what is it, what would we be paying them as a percentage of their revenue if they were to hit their target if we were to pay them $1,000 if it'll pay them $2,000 and we make sure that that's sustainable for the clinic. Now there are some clinics that don't have admin support and there are some that don't have a whole lot of AI and support and resources and maybe they can pay a higher percentage than we can pay for example because we offer those other things. So I think in regards to what that percentage is, again a range, but yeah I think it's important that we look at our sustainability and the what-ifs of what that would look like.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, and when I say that it's one way to do it, Ben, probably what I'm actually meaning is that we need to think about these concepts from multiple different angles and triangulate our thinking. And so we have to be right in a number of different gates in order to make things work. It can't just be a you know, multiple or a percentage as you originally spoke to, if that doesn't meet our personal business owner desire statement profit goals. So if our goal is to, I'll say, you know, generate $250,000 worth of profit, we're going to need X number of team at X utilisation. And if we're limited by space and we need four clinicians in order to generate that type of revenue, then Our percentage, you know, multiplying multiple to three practitioners is all well and good, but it's only three practitioners, not four. And so you have to cross-reference and triangulate your reasoning across multiple domains. And that's where it's really difficult to get out of your own head, get a coach to observe and speak into these things. And we do, we're blind, oh, how's the pop? We're blinded by our own biases often. So you need a third party perspective.

Ben Lynch: It's a really great point of starting all the way back at the practice as the primary filter and then working out what does my team need to achieve? And then it's being nuanced by some of those other factors. That is good food for thought. As you said, J.B., it's not as simple or as easy as just putting a couple of numbers up and saying, go hit them. Because then you might be dealing with some second, third order consequences down the line when you realise, oh, that's unsustainable and I actually need to meaningfully increase it for these team members. And that's always a tricky conversation.

Jack O'Brien: You speak to an important point there, Ben. If we set the bar too high or too low, it's very challenging to move that bar over time. People become accustomed, learn behaviours, we end up moving the goalposts. And so I know we're labouring on the point a little bit, but it's worth labouring on to get it right and do the initial thinking and cognitive work so that you're not having to, you know, unpick your stitches over time which is pretty unpleasant both for your team and for you as a business owner to, you know, eat your words and go back and change your tune. Hannah, you look like you got a sprain. I changed my tune this year. That's good. So, I'm not saying we're beyond changing our tune but I'm saying it's a challenging situation. So, can you speak to how you felt about changing your tune?

Hannah Dunn: We increased our targets. So before I said like it was 80,000 let's say had to hit 25 impact hours, we changed it to be 27 at 80 or whatever the numbers are. And the way we spoke through that is that when we set these targets, we weren't charging for indirect time. Now that we are charging a lot more for indirect time, these targets have become more achievable and we sort of spoke to the why they needed to change. But we do have to continue, this is not a set and forget system. There absolutely can be changes that need to happen when NDIS prices increase, when, when, when. When there's differences in what you're attributing to revenue, if you're able to develop another system that increases the revenue, you need to make sure that it remains sustainable and that it doesn't get passed along.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. I mean, other examples are if you're as a clinic owner, you don't have admin and then all of a sudden, over time, you end up hiring a client care team member or a practice manager, that necessarily changes the targets for your clinicians, because they have less admin time necessary, they can be more client facing, or I know some clinics have changed their CEIs, KPIs, they've changed their targets based upon the rollout of tools like Heidi or other AI softwares, because all of a sudden, one, there's an extra expense for the business, but also that clinician has freed up some time. And so we can expect better performance out of them because we are tooling them up to do better work.

Ben Lynch: The other thing is they've had an error in their calculations and that's happened. You know, you get the spreadsheet formula wrong or the calculation wrong, and you realise, oops, I got to go back and check it out. And one of the most common ones to answer this now is, People are often looking to set targets for their practitioners, and when they do, they ask, over what time period? Is this a full year, or is it a moderated year because we don't work all 52 weeks? So, Jack, how do you go about answering that? So there's a couple of ways to think about it.

Jack O'Brien: Two, as there always is evidently. So look, I would say, you know, we have to consider the four weeks of annual leave and give or take two weeks of public holidays as time that our team will not be consulting. So at minimum, we need to subtract six weeks off. And then if your team are highly likely to get sick, maybe deal with a sick population or, you know, there's, you know, snotty, sneezy kids around all the time, oldies, whatever the case may be. If your team are likely, so at that point, it's discretionary. So I would say the six weeks of annual leave and public holidays are non-negotiable. We have to work off 46 weeks at best. and then some clinics it's more likely to consider 45 or 44. So that would be one thing, Hannah, I'll get you to speak to that in, actually speak to it now, because I've forgotten my second point.

Hannah Dunn: We're 46. I give them two different metrics because we're giving them the KPRs and say if you… work 46, this is what the target is per week. If you work 44, this is what the metric you're working to. So I give them that right to show the difference.

Jack O'Brien: That's awesome. And then the second thing I was going to speak to is it's in our business's best interests to observe clinician performance over a longer time span because that shows us sustained performance over time. If we're talking about calculating rewards, it's in an employee's best interests to look at shorter time frames. And so as an example, a business might be looking at a quarterly performance bracket in order to calculate their rewards, and that rewards sustained performance over a 13-week period in a quarter. But if you're a clinic that pays your rewards based on a fortnightly calculation, rather, a clinician might have two amazing fortnights, flash in the pan, they go all out and they hit their 28 impact hours, no worries, for two fortnights in a row, get rewards and then they slack off a little bit and they drop the ball or maybe they have some manual leave and then the subsequent fortnights are well below the expectation. That clinician has picked up reward for two flashes in the pan, but if it was considered the other way, the rewards are for over an extended period of time. So I say that to say Yes, we want to think about 46 and 44 weeks generally. And we want to think about how can we set up structures and targets that reward sustained ongoing high levels of performance, not flashes in the pan.

Ben Lynch: A lot of talk of sustainability as we look to wrap here, Hannah. What do you think is a keynote for folks listening in or watching on YouTube here to take away and apply when setting or resetting the targets that they have for practitioners?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think it's really about taking on board all of those metrics we've spoken about and understanding that it will take time to get those numbers right for you. So it's not a quick solve if you've got someone coming to you to say, I want to pay increase and you say, I'm looking at a rewards program, let me get back to you. It's not a quick two week thing. It needs a bit of time to really look at what your system will be. And Jack?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I'll echo that as well. It's similar and just tweak it a little bit. I think having our goalposts move can be a good thing. And what I mean by that is flexibility as a clinic owner and instilling flexibility in our practitioners so that we consistently seek the win-win. So what I mean by it's having the humility as a clinic owner. To come and say, hey, I think this target isn't quite working for me or inversely, I can see that this target is way out of reach and it's not fair and equitable, sustainable for you. And so being comfortable having these flexible conversations over time that seeks the win for the clients primarily and for the business and for the clinician.

Ben Lynch: Great framing there. The win-win-win. These have been tricky conversations in the past for a lot of clinic owners, but they can become a lot easier, especially when those team members are engaged in the conversation. As you said, Jack, be more coach-like, and Hannah, right from the interview process, asking about their experience so that we can draw on that and draw parallels and connection points when we're talking about targets with them. Thank you for sharing so openly. This is such a key ingredient for clinics to grow sustainably. If they can install targets effectively with their therapists, they will grow and they will know where the opportunities to grow are into the future. Well, folks, thanks so much for listening in. It's good to be back, refreshed as we head in to the back end of the year. I'm excited for that. Head over to clinicmastery.com forward slash podcast for the show notes and some really great episodes just recently. If you're new to the pod, go check them out. Jack, Hannah, I will see you at the same time next week. Bye for now.