Ben Lynch: G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode. This episode will be right up your Allie if you're looking to support your practice manager to level up. We're diving into the tension of managing time between the front desk and the back office. And trust me, you want to hear Bec's take on how to prioritize a growing to-do list. Plus stick around for when we talk about success measures in a PM's role.

Bec Clare: I think for a lot of practice managers they love lists and they feel really good and they feel really accomplished once the list is complete. Let me tell you the reality is that that list is never going to be complete. I think it's actually about becoming comfortable in the tension.

Ben Lynch: What are some of the key outcomes that you like to frame up for practice managers as what quote success looks like?

Bec Clare: We now call it role focused time versus off the desk. It's a subtle distinction.

Ben Lynch: Tell us what you're seeing and hearing, how you're helping the best clinics change the structure in how they support their reception team through coaching and mentoring.

Bec Clare: You can only understand what it means to drive in your role and for your team and for your clinic if you totally get what's happening in front of you.

Ben Lynch: Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by AllieClinics.com. If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organized and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Allie. 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 AllieClinics.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 is episode 352. I'm again joined by Bec Clare, amongst many things, mum, clinic owner, and host of the Practice Leaders Program, where a community of practice managers get support to run better admin teams. How many folks are you now supporting as part of the program, Bec?

Bec Clare: We are currently sitting at around 190 practice leaders, so that makes up practice managers, operations managers, lead admin team members, so a vast array of position descriptions and titles in there, but yeah, around 190. It's an awesome community.

Ben Lynch: That's so good. And you can really see the peer-to-peer support that happens through the Slack channel. People sharing resources, answering questions, or here's our experience with different problems. And today we're going to be talking about getting off the front desk. navigating this practice manager dilemma of perhaps being pulled back onto the desk. What do you do? Do you just deal with it? How do we find more time to work more on the business? We're going to unpack that in a moment. My name is Ben Lynch, and amongst a number of different things that we do here at Clinic Mastery, we put pen to paper and created this book. It's called the Grow Your Clinic Book and it outlines the seven core areas that you need to think about adding structure to your business and to your life so that you can sustainably grow. We call them the seven degrees. You can get a free copy at our website or you can get a paperback like I've got in my hand. There's a bunch of different downloads and tools that you can get access to that are inside the book. We put a bunch of QR codes. This book was a COVID baby. QR codes are littered throughout. Isn't that just like an artifact of the COVID times?

Bec Clare: It's like a stamp.

Ben Lynch: Now, before we dive in, a warm welcome to folks that have installed Allie into their clinics to support with a number of those systems and by extension supporting their teams. We've got Caitlin, Stuart, Suzanne, Allie, Chris and Sarah. And also something a little bit different here, Bec. I'm going to acknowledge a couple of the CMT members who recently celebrated another milestone as part of the CM team. Regine, Katie and Trav, awesome team members that have been part of the fabric of supporting our community. Well done. Now, let's tee this up. Bec, you said, let's talk about this. How do we support practice managers on the front desk? Perhaps part of the narrative here is you have a high-performing, trustworthy, receptionist admin that progresses their way into a management role because they're quite capable. But in doing so, they find themselves kind of yo-yoing between being pulled back to the front desk and then trying to get time to work on the business or all the operational stuff that the clinic owner wants them to work on. And they're spinning many, many plates. not knowing where to focus or how to juggle it all. And it is such a tricky role, like perhaps one of the trickiest roles in a clinic because they are managing so many different things. So where do you want to start with kind of breaking down and helping the practice manager navigate that tension of, should I be on the front desk or should I not?

Bec Clare: Yeah, it's a tricky one and it's one that we talk about a fair bit in the Practice Leaders program. We talk about it in our own clinic with how much time should be off the desk. We now call it role focused time versus off the desk. It's a subtle distinction. How did you come up with that? Yeah. What was the thinking behind that? It was born out of this notion of, and I'd love to unpack this here, but the notion that being off the desk was more valuable to the business. and that it came with this sort of higher, I guess, hierarchy or you were now part of something else versus it being role focused, which was this really quite a deliberate name that there might be some elements of your role that cannot be done on the front desk. And therefore this role focus time had to live outside over here. Um, because It was just becoming a real challenge of more people, more team members asking for off-the-desk time, off-the-desk time. Well, why? And for what purpose? And I guess it came from actually us unpacking that request or that need a little further was, why do we need off-the-desk or role-focused time? Is it because you can't get anything done while you're at the front desk and you feel stuck? Is it because it comes with this higher sense of purpose or contribution? Um, or is it a desire to have more strategic work as part of the role that you currently don't have? So I think it's really about understanding where that need or want. drive comes from. And I guess what I do see most often in our own clinic and in the Practice Leaders program is just a general frustration about how reactive the work is. And as you say, this is a complex role. They've got to be across so much, many spinning plates, and yet they've got to do it like they're a swan on the water. And so I think it comes where we got to was that it came from this notion of I'd love to be more proactive in my role and I feel like I'm constantly spinning plates by being on the front desk.

Ben Lynch: So how did you support your own team in, I guess, coming to terms with the challenge of splitting their time role focused versus being reactive on the front desk and then feeling kind of frustrated? Like there's all this stuff I want to get to or need to get to off the desk, but I find myself not able to do it. So how did you navigate getting clearer on that with them?

Bec Clare: We're still navigating it and it's still an ongoing conversation. I suspect it will be for quite some time and one that, yeah, I'm not sure that it will ever get solved in our clinic because we're learning and evolving. And I think that's the point. A couple of ways we've gone about it is we've shared some numbers around what it would take and what it would look like in order to unlock more investment, which is essentially what it is. More investment in our admin team for them to get more role focused time. We've been quite specific that that time needs to be for strategic tasks.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: And also ensuring that our practice manager understands and champions the fact that operational excellence comes from being on the front desk.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: You can only understand and change operational things and drive for being world-class, which is one of our values, by actually being part of it.

Ben Lynch: Okay, so there's a few things there to unpack around how you're framing the front desk and its impact on their ability to do the off-desk work. You also spoke to goals, essentially trigger points or investment points that unlock more time, and also around the strategic elements that they would do in that off-desk time. Let's start with the off-desk time and the strategic stuff. How did you frame that up so that it is maybe objective or quantifiable? I'm interested even in your framing of it to say, yeah, these are the sorts of things that are valuable to work on and did you prescribe them or did you allow them to figure out what those things are based on their own day-to-day work?

Bec Clare: Firstly, we completed the role audit exercise, which is part of the Practice Leaders program. That's an exercise where literally we document everything that this team member does and we work out the priority order, essentially, and how valuable those tasks are. Are they $10 an hour, $100 an hour, $1,000 an hour tasks? And then the next iteration of that is, can we automate any of it? Can we delete any of it? Can we delegate any of it? And what are the things left that we need to dominate at? And I guess that it came as twofold. The tasks that we could dominate at and should be dominating in and those that are worth a thousand dollars an hour, they are role focused time tasks.

Ben Lynch: Do any come to mind in that $1,000 an hour task list that you think this would be true for many practice managers and admin that have off desk time?

Bec Clare: I definitely think it, a lot of ours centres around ensuring that the resources for our team are as up to date as possible. So things like documenting current processes or changes, ensuring that our induction and our onboarding processes are there. Cause essentially the freedom piece for a practice manager is how well does your team perform? That's it. Operational excellence that you can rely on every member of your team being able to absolutely dominate at what they do.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: Allows you to then not be as reactive, not have to go and pick up the pieces, put out the spot fires, and you're going to spend less time spinning those plates. So the tasks that we look for in that strategic time, role focused, is how, what are the resources that empower our team to deliver an amazing experience?

Ben Lynch: So where would you put things like rostering, if a practice manager is indeed responsible for rostering the admin team, accounts receivable, chasing those monies that are owed to you, hiring the next batch of admin team, and it sounds like you're referencing in resources training, making sure the team are excellent. Would those things fit in the strategic bucket in your mind or are they allocated somewhere else?

Bec Clare: To a degree, some of them probably need to live there. Rostering, having concentrated time where you can do that for sure. However, even just this week, we've realized that our rostering software has some AI tools available in it. So the automation in that space is also going to mean that that task slowly should become less dominant in our strategic time.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: So it's really also in that strategic time learning and developing what other resources are out there that can help us deliver our roles and our activities. Look, accounts receivable, this one's been a state of flux for us. We've had it as a whole team effort. So everyone on the team needs to know how to be able to chase outstanding accounts and even our junior team members allocated to smaller portfolios. As we've grown, that hasn't been as sustainable for us. We've now moved to a position where we've got someone purely dedicated to finance, but that's because we've carved out that strategically again. I do think for us that was around setting goals as well. To be like, okay, once we hit this amount of revenue, we have the budget to employ someone in finance. But until that point, it's a shared responsibility.

Ben Lynch: Okay.

Bec Clare: Um, it really depends on how big your accounts receivable profile is. So it's, you know, it's what's going to fit your clinic, but essentially it needs to be how, what ROI, what return on investment do those strategic hours have? And we need to see that return.

Ben Lynch: It's a really great point around doing the audit of what they currently do in their role and then assessing the impact of those tasks and the value of those tasks, even just directionally by the sounds. Is it $10, $100? $1,000 an hour type of work, what's the consequence and impact of this? Again, say you're rostering two team members versus 22 team members, it's going to be meaningfully different. And we've seen some of those bigger clinics where the admin teams are quite large, that the consequences of getting rostering right or wrong, in a sense, can be tens of thousands of dollars.

Bec Clare: Absolutely.

Ben Lynch: A little bit sort of quote overstaffed, people would say. So there is a lot of context here, but that framework of what do they currently do? Let's assess the value and impact of those things. And then we're essentially saying, do we need to delete, automate, or what else did you use? Delete, automate, or refine, optimize, delegate. So with that, you mentioned sort of like assessing domination, that was the key, like we're dominating this thing. We're going to choose to keep it. You're going to keep it on your task list. How do you think about, okay, what does we want you to dominate this actually mean when you say that?

Bec Clare: Firstly, that the actions done consistently. And I think that's where practice managers find their role really quite challenging is because it's quite reactive. Therefore, having things live in regular places in the diary, as business owners, we say, why don't we time block? How about we time block your role? This is a key challenge for practice managers is the consistency of delivery. So when I say dominate, I want to know that that thing is being done routinely, at whatever interval you decide, and it's a non-negotiable. Pretty well, the clinic's going to be burning down in order for it not to happen. That's something that's really got to be going down. Because I think also where a lot of practice managers tie their significance is that they have this notion of The more the team contact them, the more important they are. Therefore, they're involved in everything. Those strategic hours and the outcome, consistency, is about closing the door, turning off the Slack, notifications off, do the thing, and ensure that it is fully completed.

Ben Lynch: It's a really good point around comms because so often, whether using like Google Chat or Microsoft Teams or Slack or something like that, you can feel like you're being pulled into conversations. very reactively and it almost feels like they're urgent. How do you coach and support clinic owners and even, oh sorry, practice managers and your own team about deciding when to jump in or when something could wait?

Bec Clare: We unpack this quite a lot in the Practice Leaders program because naturally we have a group and a community of people who want to help others. Yeah. And that help sometimes means they feel like they've got to jump in all the time. And so we actually do some things around personal flow.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: And starting to set up communication frameworks. So for the practice managers, them carving out their strategic time as notifications are off, it's not a time to be on Slack. If you are being provided with this role focused time, you're there to do your role and those strategic things, high level tasks.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: There's plenty of other times to be back on Slack. The team will be okay without you for an hour. Okay. So we start to chip away at it at small intervals. And when, then when practice managers actually realize that they can have their notifications off for an hour, they go, Oh, okay. They, they managed. All right. And so it's often this turning point for them to be like, it's going to be okay. We also unpack the advice monster. Because practice managers love to lean into this. They want to provide the best advice and solve the problem for everyone, which means that their team become completely reliant on them. They, they don't go to their, um, Google site to look up that answer. They don't go into Allie resources to look up the answer because, hey, the practice manager is right there and they're the fountain of all knowledge.

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Bec Clare: So they sort of create a rod for their own back. So a couple of things is small incremental notification time.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: And the other is just in coaching and mentoring. So when a team member asks a question of their practice manager, the first response is, so what have you tried so far?

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Bec Clare: It allows the practice manager to pause and find out what the team member has gone and done, and it allows the team member to go, oh, they're actually expecting me to go and do something or find something before they come to them first.

Ben Lynch: It's one of those frameworks that we've used before, the 131. Typically we've used it in a practitioner context, but it's so applicable here, right, which is a really great mental model heuristic for your team and a kind of a rule or a principle for them to use, which is whenever there's a problem, one, there is a problem, what is that? Then present three possible solutions or up to three possible solutions that you see. And then the final one is provide essentially your recommended solution of those three. And then the practice manager or clinic owner can say, yeah, great. Go ahead with it. Looks good. Or maybe they can offer an alternative, but it starts to create this culture where the standards are that team members are problem solvers. They're part of solving the problem.

Bec Clare: I actually think, Ben, that's it, right? It's less of a need for practice managers to have more off-the-desk or role-focused time. It's actually a need for them to have less reactive chatter that they have to go and deal with or administer, right? So for all the practice managers listening and for the practice owners and directors is how can you ensure that your team or a team of problem solvers that irrespective of whether you're there or your practice manager there, operational excellence is just a given.

Ben Lynch: Yeah. Well, this is a good tie back to, you mentioned broadly three points here. One was like achieving certain goals or milestones to unlock more time. The second was the front desk framing of how that's integral in helping the operational excellence. And then thirdly, the strategic time, what you actually do, which we've just gone through. So if we just come back to point two, which is around the front desk framing. I think this is a really interesting one, and I'd love you to expand and explore this in more detail, because if I'm hearing you correctly, a lot of practice managers feel like the front desk time is some version of inferior.

Bec Clare: Lower level.

Ben Lynch: Lower level to the strategic time, the time in the back office doing some other work. Talk me through how you've reframed that, educated your team and by extension, the practice leaders community to think about front desk time differently.

Bec Clare: Look, almost no practice manager is going to actually say to you, Hey, the front desk is low level work. Because they're still really proud of the fact that they look after that. It's probably just something that is in the back of their mind that will, Hey, there is a higher degree of value by being off the desk. And that's part of my promotion, if you like. Look, reframing it, it comes down to, well, what does your front desk stand for and how can they impact that for it to be operationally excellent. The front desk directly influences first impressions that then might result in your Google reviews, conversion of inquiries, Rebooking rates, payment compliance, cash flow, and client lifetime value. Now, if all of those are operationally excellent, well, you have got a very, very nicely oiled clinic.

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Bec Clare: Okay. That's going to be working really nicely. And what I see is that practice managers potentially overlook the power of actually being part of those handful of things. to go, I want to be working on strategic direction of the clinic when this is strategic direction of the clinic. Like our clinic doesn't exist if we can't convert inquiries into bookings. We then don't have anyone to help. What are we here for? To help our community. Yes. First impressions, it builds a brand and it builds awareness and it builds trust. That's strategic direction. So I think we often just overlook because they seem simple. We go, they're just not important anymore.

Ben Lynch: So then what becomes the barrier? Because that makes sense. I can still hear the practice managers going, but yeah, Bec, I need to get to all this other stuff. Like I realize it's important. And I can see the impact on the clients, but I'm just not getting enough time to work on some of these other things that the clink director's asking me to work on. How do I start to skew my week or change my week so that I can do both really well?

Bec Clare: That's been the exact conversation we've had in the clinic at the start of this year and my response has just been, we as a clinic are quite transparent with our numbers and for some clinic owners that's okay and for some that makes them a little bit uncomfortable or they're just not at a point where they want to do that yet. So we just outlined the budget and said, look here, here's our revenue and here's our current investment admin. Yeah. For us to get more of that time, we need firstly for the front desk to operate more independently from you. Yes. That's going to be the first bit of unlock for you of freedom of time. And the second is, well, here's a revenue marker that's going to unlock an investment of more hours.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: So what are some of the actions that are on your list that are going to help drive that additional revenue? For us, it's been point of care calls and closing some loops on some cancellation scripts for our team. That's a really, that for us was low hanging fruit that has allowed us to unlock more revenue and more investment in admin time. So we've just been really quite transparent. Hit this goal as a group. It's never the practice manager's sole responsibility to do that. Yes. Let's drive towards that as a group to unlock that for you.

Ben Lynch: Just expand on point of care goals.

Bec Clare: So point of care calls are calls for clients who have our cancellation script hasn't been successful, so they have ended up cancelling. And our point of care calls are for clients who then remain on that cancellation list and haven't rebooked. So the classic, um, I don't have my roster. I'm sick. No, I don't know what time I want to rebook yet. So ensuring that we are able to nurture those clients, because essentially that's what it is.

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Bec Clare: nurture those clients and find out whether they still require our care and getting them back into the diary with our practitioners. That's income we hadn't or revenue we hadn't seen in the books.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: Um, so at the moment, our calls are getting around, um, 12 to 15% return, which is pretty good as far as I see it. You know, clients have cancelled. We've tried our best at the time to get a reschedule and then even still getting a hold of those clients. Yeah. Somewhere between 12 and 15%. So we're really happy with how that's tracking.

Ben Lynch: One of the impressions I get in speaking with a lot of practice managers over the last 10 years is that they put a lot of focus on their task list. And I think maybe at the expense of actually knowing what success looks like or the outcome, and I'm not saying the task list doesn't matter because they're often the things that are driving towards the outcome, but the emphasis is much more on ticking off a list or the fact they haven't ticked off a list rather than how am I driving kind of your outcomes. What are some of the important outcomes that you like to anchor so that they can structure their week and then structure their task list to prioritize effectively? They choose the high value things more often than not when the opportunity presents. So what are some of the key outcomes that you like to frame up for practice managers or practice leaders as what, quote, success looks like in their role.

Bec Clare: Yeah. For us, it comes back to some of those key actions that I spoke to from the front desk perspective. So driving cancellation rate, if it is a challenge in your clinic, equally your non-attendance rate. Yep. So ensure, and front desk has a huge amount to do with preventing non-attendance. Whether that be the way that appointments are confirmed or ensuring that the client's aware of them and helping the client be enthusiastic about coming to those. Picking up on any clients who might, you know, be vulnerable to a non-attendance. So definitely cancellations. non-attendance rebooking. So if a therapist comes out from an appointment, they're doing their transfer of trust triangle, being part and present with that and ensuring that we follow through with the recommendations of that therapist. I see time and time again, a therapist will approach the front desk and say, look, I'd like to see Ben. Uh, twice a week for the next two weeks and then has a rebooking pattern clearly laid out. The front desk gets busy. So the admin team goes, look, let's just book the next couple. And then when you come back in, we'll book some more in. Yes. Let's follow through on exactly what the therapist has prescribed for that client. It might seem easy at the time. Let's just book a couple. Let's book the whole treatment plan. That is the role of the front desk is to get that in the diary. So we're really looking at those key markers like we are with our therapists. It's really no different.

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Bec Clare: That's where I see, I guess, a lot of clinic owners think that they've got to reinvent the wheel around what metrics are important. As a clinic, we're all driving for the same thing. Yes.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, keep it as simple as possible. I often find myself saying that admin have a great impact on keeping the books full in particular. Obviously, there's the new client inquiries or new client bookings, but of what is booked or what is meant to be booked, maintaining that, that's really key. Obviously, the therapists are driving those recommendations. that are clinically relevant for the patient. The admin is to try and kind of keep that, okay? If that they were the recommended appointments, let's make sure we maintain that. So you're speaking to cancellation, right? Did not attend and then rebooking as measures of how effective that is. Does that mean that you use those collectively for the entire admin team to know how they're going as a group? For instance, we share with the admin team, the collective DNA rate, cancellation rate, rebooking rates, so that they understand how it's trending or are those things that you keep maybe just for the practice manager?

Bec Clare: Oh, our whole admin team would be very well across what those numbers are as a group. Yeah. We would actually love to be able to get to a point where those were able to help team members know where they can elevate or where they're doing a great job. on those individual metrics. That's how far I'd like to drill down, but at the moment there's just not necessarily the capacity to do that. You know, how well are we shine a light on those admin team members who can convert phone calls and how are they doing it and why is it, what is it about them and their scripting? That's the level I'd love to drill down to. our whole team, whether it be practitioners, operations manager, finance, everyone in our group understands where our metrics are currently sitting because as I said, Ben, we're all driving for the same thing. Those numbers, they're not just numbers, they're the story behind what we're doing and that's how we really talk about them in the clinic is what story does this number tell us if our non-attendance rate is really high? Then while people aren't brought in, we haven't spoken to them about the rules of engagement for a clinic. If our cancellation rate is really low across the board or low for particular practitioners, well, what, what story does that tell us as well? So it's, it's about using the numbers to help unpack the story and using the numbers to highlight where you can improve, but also highlight what you're doing really well. you know, towards the back end of last year, our non-attendance rate spiked. So we made some key changes to operational things and concentrated on some areas of excellence. And now it's well below what the benchmark says. So we're also able to celebrate the changes. And I think that's important. I see practice leaders and owners using or leaning to numbers when the numbers are not good.

Ben Lynch: Yeah. Only bringing them up when they're not working.

Bec Clare: Yeah. Only bringing them up when they're not good. Yeah.

Ben Lynch: Yep.

Bec Clare: Rather than- We need to improve these cancellations have gone through the roof. Yes. Let's also shine a light on the weeks that we do really well. Yes. Whether that be number of new patients we've welcomed into our community. Has our non-attendance rate gone down? How can we use it to help tell our story about what we do?

Ben Lynch: How do you support then that practice manager who has time blocked or they've done an ideal week? How do you coach them through not getting too rigid and committed to that? Because I've also seen a lot of folks go, all right, I've structured my diary. I'm really clear on what I'm going to do, when I'm going to do it. Monday mornings is for new client inquiries and Tuesday afternoons for payroll and rostering. Invariably, the week, you know, you get thrown these curveballs that take you away from that. I think it's easy to feel certainly frustrated that right now I was meant to be doing X, but I'm doing Y. How do you support practice managers adding those layers of structure, intentionality to their day, to their week, to their task list? whilst also maintaining a degree of flexibility that, hey, you can't have every minute scheduled. That's not reality.

Bec Clare: There's a few ways, there's a sweet spot is what I'd say, is we see a lot of people wanting and seeking a lot of rigid structure, which is every minute is time blocked and some who don't time block enough, therefore things are not consistently actioned. There's a real sweet spot where you go, okay, if I got through this list, I would deem that a really successful week. And what are the priorities? Allocate those, therefore you've also allowed for some flexibility in your week. Uh, personally, what I do is I also allocate on a Sunday, a whole lot of other items that, gee, if I happen to get to those, they're like bonus tasks. So if the week is going really smoothly, I can slot those additional things into my bonus time. And if it's not, if the wheels have fallen off of the week, I've still gone. I'm going to have a successful week based on what I had originally scheduled.

Ben Lynch: What I'm understanding here is it's kind of expectations management in the sense that if I expected to do, you know, 27 things this week and I got done two, then it's, it's going to feel pretty unsuccessful. And some of those things perhaps absolutely need to be done. So there's always context. But one of the questions that we ask every day in our daily huddle here at CM is what is your priority? Not priorities. your priority, the singular, the one thing that matters most to get done today. And I've often found that when that's just really clear, you almost feel, again, coming back to expectations of like, this is the one key thing to get done. Everything else kind of feels like a bonus, an extra, a win on top of. So there's a version of how you start to balance what you're committing to, your priority, and the expectations of your day and week and how it plays out. Because I think people expect a time block this day or this week to happen in a certain fashion. It doesn't. Some degree of resentment or frustration comes in. And this is an incredibly dynamic role, the practice manager. You kind of owe things to all people in the clinic. It takes quite a talent, actually, and a craft to develop it. In the mix of all of that, perhaps one of the things that I see across the board in practice managers especially, but I would see this in clinic owners a lot as well, is so often they're adding and not subtracting. And so they actually create more plates to spin, which makes it even harder. And they don't actually do a stock take to figure out, actually, there's a whole bunch of stuff here that's legacy from decisions that we made or systems that we set up that maybe if we took a morning to delete it, remove it, whatever, we could actually find a lot more time moving forward. How do you, you spoke to this in your audit that you mentioned earlier and the assessment of like eliminate, delegate, automate or dominate. Just talk us through how you help people through the eliminate section, because I feel like it's one of those ones that people feel is too precious to touch. I couldn't eliminate that. How do you go through that? Cause that could be the key to finding and unlocking a lot more time.

Bec Clare: Absolutely. I think it comes from how regularly you complete this audit. We recommend doing it every six months as a bit of a check-in. The more you get the reps in, the better you become and the more ruthless you become over like, why are we doing that task? The question I always ask around any task is for what purpose? How important is this? Have we outgrown that task? Have we shifted focus? Which means that we just don't need to do it anymore. Can a piece of software now just do it for us? That's often where I see the, it's probably less of a delete and more of an automate.

Ben Lynch: Yep.

Bec Clare: That's more what I'm seeing trending more now is the factor that we've just got so much at our disposal that can help us automate stuff that we were doing, which essentially is then deleting it off of your plane.

Ben Lynch: It's a really great point. There are some incredible tools now to help with it. One of those questions, yeah, for what purpose? I love that. The other one that to go straight to the heart of it, we've asked a few different versions of this over time is like, what do you really loathe in your role right now? That's like quite blunt. Another version of that is what takes. too much time in your role that you continually get frustrated, or you think, why does this take so much time to do? Or, it takes so much time to do this, and if I didn't have to spend this much time, I could do something else. At least, I think that prompt, that question, opens the conversation for us to say, well, do we even need this at all? Or, if we stopped it, what would break? And then maybe if we keep it, what's the streamlined or simplified version that we could do for the purpose, as you said, that we're actually trying to achieve?

Bec Clare: And I see so many tasks on role audits, even our own in our clinic, that are just legacy. You go, okay, we've done it, but it's on the list because we've just always done it. And then when I ask a team member for what purpose, they're like, oh, because we've always done it, therefore it should stay. I'm like, not a good enough reason. Tell me how this impacts the drive or the goal that we've got for this quarter, this 12 months, this 120 days. And if it doesn't align with that, it's got to go.

Ben Lynch: One of the great sort of things we've discussed on the pod over a period of time has been constraint-based thinking or constraint-based questions. And even if it's just a bit of an extreme exercise, if you were to look at a task list and say, okay, you have to identify the 30% of these task list items that you would need to delete. that we could get rid of and still maintain client satisfaction, maintain operational excellence, dah, dah, dah, dah. Even if you find, okay, we can delete 5% of it, the stress test of going to a much bigger number really forces people to think, is this absolutely necessary or is there a version of this that we can really simplify? This comes back to me, kind of the coaching and mentoring of admin teams. One of the key things I think practice managers have the opportunity to do is be a mentor or coach. You spoke about the advice monster for the reception team. What are you seeing in some of the best clinics that do this really well? How did the practice managers actually approach coaching or mentoring, training, supporting the receptionists on their team? Because we do it so well, typically in a therapist sense, for practitioner training and CPD and mentoring and supervision. Broadly, I don't think the same is true in an admin team sense. So tell us what you're seeing and hearing, how you're helping the best clinics change the structure in how they support their reception team through coaching and mentoring.

Bec Clare: You're so right there, Ben, in that we have a structure readily available for our practitioners. CPD is all carved out. We have this time where everyone comes together, tools down, let's elevate one another. Logistics of doing that for an admin team are really significant. You might have very part-time team members, casuals. It's sort of a little bit more fluid if you like. What I see the best doing is creating some form of asynchronous training, whether that be their Google site. What I see the absolute very best doing now is A11y.

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Bec Clare: A11y is having their admin team go through modules in A11y. They're able to acknowledge that they've been completed. You can add some more in, you can add playlists. Personally, we've just started doing it. Massive elevation.

Ben Lynch: So it means people can watch it, read it, consume it on their own time or at their own time.

Bec Clare: Like when you've got some time away from the clients, there's always, and the thing about the admin team is that there are always bits of downtime. You are not a hamster on a wheel for every hour and every minute of the day that you're open as a clinic. There are little pockets and it's about creating really concise training that can be absorbed in three to five minutes. That might be their only downtime. It's searchable, so that you're not expecting admin team members to go away, learn this thing and be able to retain it. Particularly if you've got part-time team members or casual team members who might be students, they need somewhere where they can go, get a quick reference and know where to find it.

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Bec Clare: So that's where something searchable comes in. Um, and really those asynchronous rhythms to be able to upskill as a group.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: Without needing everyone in the same room all at the same time.

Ben Lynch: You've spoken before about shared experiences with admin team members. I don't know if it was Hagues that you were speaking about. This is moons ago. Whether you can actually do that, because what I'm hearing is you might have a lot of part-time or casual team actually getting people to sync their diaries could be really hard. where possible you could do a live experience together of a couple of different places. In the absence of being able to do that, perhaps just sharing experiences that they've had around good and bad experiences so that they can unpack the standards, the operational excellence that you're talking about. Can you just elaborate on how you frame that up so that you can get this quote, buy-in or engagement of the admin team to say, yeah, I absolutely want to be operationally excellent. Because I bet there's a bunch that are like, I'm just here to do my job. And practice managers are like, you don't know who I'm dealing with over here. So how do you get them to actually be part of that process of going, yeah, absolutely. I feel that we can do that here at our clinic.

Bec Clare: It does. It comes from shared experiences. We actually, in our recruitment and our onboarding, we ask people to, part of our interview questions is tell us about an amazing client experience that's not related to healthcare and see if they can ascertain it. Why were these things important? What element of that could you bring into your role? Also tell us about a pretty ordinary experience and what would that look like in healthcare? Because sometimes it's easier for us to see the anti-value of things. A couple of other things that we do is every team member, including our admin, come on board, they get a copy of Unreasonable Hospitality. And that's part of what we do as a clinic is we read that and we elevate together and strive for that. And to your point, Ben, around, I've just spoken a lot about asynchronous training. Some shared experience is really helpful. So setting your calendar up so that your team days mean that you get as many of your admin team there as possible. Something that we've done for the last two years is our team days we spend the morning together as a whole group and then we split off. Practitioners go and do some really intensive CPD together because we're multi-site so they don't often see each other and our admin team split off and we just do operational excellence for the afternoon. So that happens three times a year and it just It just lights their fire again to be like, this is what we're here to do. Let's practice it. Let's unpack some shared experiences. Maybe we'll go and do a tour of the Hakes factory as part of that. Um, so it's still having some live component is really helpful. I mean, CM crew, we're all getting together in a couple of weeks time being still face to face while we're virtual.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: Intermittently is really, really nice.

Ben Lynch: So in preparing for this podcast, you said perhaps this is how to get done on the front desk, even if you're a manager. Is there anything that we've missed here that's super important? Because we know how tough this role is. It is quite dynamic. It involves a lot of different things at a number of different times from finance to systems to HR to client experience. The juggle is real. Is there any, any other key things that you've helped practice managers focus on or install so that they can navigate this tension?

Bec Clare: I think it's actually about becoming comfortable in the tension. If I'm to be completely honest, there is always going to be that tension. And I think for a lot of practice managers, they love lists and they feel really good and they feel really accomplished once the list is complete.

Ben Lynch: Yeah.

Bec Clare: Let me tell you, the reality is that that list is never going to be complete. It's life. No list ever is. But you're also in a dynamic clinic that is striving to be better every day. Therefore, your list is going to get added too.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Bec Clare: But isn't that fun? And I think it's around, really, it comes down to the mindset. Someone who thrives in that environment, who understands the tension. And in preparing for today, I really thought about what is that tension? And I think the tension is that The front desk is seen as potentially lower level and taking away from strategic time. But what I'd love for practice managers to lean into is that that time on the desk with your team is about actually, it's not about stopping strategic direction. It's actually understanding strategic direction.

Ben Lynch: Yeah. And the implementation.

Bec Clare: You can only understand what it means to drive in your role and for your team and for your clinic if you totally get what's happening at the front desk.

Ben Lynch: I love it. I've worked on the front desk a number of times as a practitioner and I actually feel like you can influence and implement things you've been thinking of or test things really quickly. So maybe as a practice manager, you're thinking, oh, there's some systems or changes that I might want to make in the next few weeks or next few months, but before I sort of, you know, write up this process or policy, um, you know, in the back office, I'm actually going to maybe do a bit of a test of it myself. And that will inform how I write it or formulate it. There's a great way to kind of experiment maybe before you roll out changes without, cause a lot of admin teams are here, this, you probably, there's a lot of very resistant to change, like another new thing, or you've changed this three times now. So what a great opportunity actually to trial some things that you're thinking of doing or rolling out for the rest of the team when you're on the front desk. So, Bec, we're going to continue down this theme. There's a number of added elements to supporting practice managers. as a very key role in growing clinics so that they have the tools, resources, the references that they need to make good decisions and support their admin teams and ultimately create great client experiences. Well, we'll put a bow on this episode. Folks can head over to clinicmastery.com forward slash podcast for all the show notes and previous episodes, and we'll be on in another week's time. Thanks so much, Bec.

Bec Clare: We'll see you soon.

Ben Lynch: Bye-bye.