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 improve the value of your continuing professional development. We're diving into how to better align CPD with practitioner and practice goals. And trust me, you'll want to hear Hannah's process for deciding on what gets approved. Plus stick around for when we discuss how to get a return on your CPD investment.

Hannah Dunn: So proud that in an interview I can say to someone that our PD budget is unlimited.

Ben Lynch: You are framing up, even in CPD, the standard of, we need to think about what are the impacts.

Hannah Dunn: We need to have seen it implemented in the clinic. We need to have evidence that you have used that PD. We want to have had it fed back to the team.

Ben Lynch: because so many clinic owners are frustrated that their team don't step up.

Hannah Dunn: Really having scripting around this, and I know directors are feeling like I couldn't possibly take anything away from my team, but watch me. But I think it's about what is the trade-off? Let's not just take something away, what are we actually giving back?

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. 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 353. I'm again joined by Hannah Dunn, Director of DOTS, an OT service in Melbourne across three sites. team in the thirties headcounts and ever expanding, which is pretty cool. You've just been in the flow of doing your cyclical reviews with your team. How's that all going?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, it's been so good. I was saying to Mel Webber the other day, like it's the first time that we really feel like we haven't had any surprises or anything. And we put that down to the fact that we actually had We were always giving different team members opportunities to mentor. And then we went, no, we've got to just pull it back to two people. And we've now got to our team leader and a secondary team leader doing everyone on the team. And it just has meant that we feel so much more connected and understand team members so much better. And so it's been, yeah, just a real joy to do them at the moment.

Ben Lynch: How interesting. I know we covered that on a previous episode when we were talking about sort of leadership hours and the mix of those. How many people are offering that leadership support, mentoring support, and then how many hours are they doing? And you're sort of reining it back for a number of reasons. So it's also good to hear like the second and third order positive consequences as well come review time that we're not seeing as many surprises, which is really good. you probably haven't caught it just yet, but the episode with Sarah just dropped today as we're recording this, and we talked a little bit about that. So I'd be interested to see your take on that one, and perhaps we can go down another rabbit hole of your review experience. But today, we thought, let's tackle CPD. Why most CPD doesn't actually change clinic performance when people establish their CPD calendar and establish their CPD budget. I think if we just tee this up, most clinic owners understand the importance of continuing professional development, CPD. They'll often advertise it when they're recruiting and say, we've got great CPD packages. And then they emphasize it during their week or their month with often team time where they do case studies or they review the latest evidence. They often send their team to courses, conferences, and workshops throughout the year, and they'll often spend in the thousands of dollars on weekends doing CPD, and perhaps what I want to illuminate today as well in conversation, because you did it fantastically when we're talking about leadership hours, is what's the actual cost of the internal CPD that maybe you quote, didn't pay for, but you're paying people to be offline. And then perhaps more importantly, When we zoom out six or 12 months later, the question I think is, what actually changed? Did utilization improve? Did therapists become more confident with different cases? Were they able to see a greater variety of cases now they've built some competency? Did clients actually get better outcomes or did we just tick the CPD box? Like, yep, done. We fulfilled our hours. Let's stay compliant. So, when you look at CPD across clinics and even in your own experience, where do you think clinic owners get it wrong?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think we get it wrong from having experience of every clinic offering a thousand dollars CPD and that's what they do externally. And then I think that we see clinic owners overcompensating sometimes internally and feeling like they need to give, give, give. And I think that they are the two things that we see where they're like thousand dollars, but we don't understand the why of why we're sending people externally and what we're sending them to and how it relates back to goals and what they will need to do to then be able to attend another one, for example. Um, and I think also internally it can be a bit reactive sometimes, but also, um, I think just, you know, wanting to be able to say that we are doing it about not necessarily having the structures in place to do it well.

Ben Lynch: You've touched on so many important variables in all of that. I want to double click on a few of them. There was like one there which is almost like a trigger for the next one. Okay, you've gone to this one but then what criteria need to be met in order for you to do the next session or if it's over and above perhaps the budget that we've got for this calendar year or financial year. Just let's go back to the thousand dollar example that you gave, which is a typical sort of number that we do see a lot, right? It's like you got a thousand bucks to spend on a course. Okay, so how do you go about determining what's worthy or what you'll approve in where that budget goes to? It sounds like you've got some version of assessing, is this right slash what is this going to lead to for you, therapist A?

Hannah Dunn: Yes, and we absolutely haven't always had a process in place. We have been guilty of sending six people to the same PD. All of us have. Yeah, the value back. I am so proud that in an interview I can say to someone that our PD budget is unlimited. We don't set a limit. We really look at what the goals are around attending the PD. and around what does that look like? How will that impact the rest of the team? What are the goals that you're working on? So every one of our therapists sets goals with their mentor and I'm sure everyone does in their clinics or I hope everyone does in their clinics so that they know where-

Ben Lynch: of what those goals look like or what your standard is for how that needs to be articulated, documented, the sort of structure or depth of detail that's in that.

Hannah Dunn: Yes, so we have different areas that we expect them to set goals. So we have professional development in regards to what are your clinical professional development goals that you want to work on. And then that might be, you know, like I want to increase my understanding of physical clients. And then we also have a marketing or professional engagement goal. So maybe it's a, I want to reach out to a number of physios because I want to build my physical caseload. And then they have, it's just getting up there. That's all right.

Ben Lynch: So if I'm hearing you, you've got goals and they're broken into like maybe a clinical focus and also a professional focus or are there times where it's you pick one or the other or you've always got both on the go?

Hannah Dunn: All our clinicians do two professional learning goals. one professional engagement, marketing or improving clinic life goal, and one professional practice. So the difference between professional practice and professional knowledge is professional knowledge is around those clinical skills. Professional practice are those skills that every allied health professional needs, like their note writing, their communication skills, those sorts of things. So then they write out what their goal is, what the strategies are that they're going to use to achieve those goals, what the outcomes are that we're hoping for. And then as they work on that goal, they record what the evidence is that they've worked on that goal. And then we, in our reviews with them or in their mentoring sessions, they talk about whether it's achieved or not achieved or ongoing.

Ben Lynch: And how often do those goals reset? Is it just until they're achieved or is it a monthly or quarterly cadence? Just give us an understanding of how that fits into your overall cycle.

Hannah Dunn: It's formally every 12 months with me that we review them in the 12-month review. It's informally every six months and it's in their dashboard and their dashboard is what they pull up at the start of every day, they should. and it has everything they need in it. It's got their financial data, but it's also got their goals in there. So we want them to be front of mind. And then when they apply to do professional development, it needs to relate back to one of those goals. And that has meant that we've reined in what people are doing because as second and third and fourth year clinicians, that's when we see, oh, someone else is doing this and someone else is doing this. And I want to do that and I want to do that because everyone wants to know everything. everything yesterday. And so we do really say, okay, let's take a breath. We know that there is so much out there, but what is it specific to you and your goals? And then in regards to like, let's say they've just done one, how do we know when they next do one? It's, there's some criteria around, we need to have seen it implemented in the clinic. We need to have evidence that you have used that PD. We want to have had it fed back to the team in some capacity, whether that is doing a recording of a video, creating a handout, something that allows the rest of the team to learn from that. Maybe it's a quick summary at a team time. And then we want to know that so that they've implemented, we're seeing change in the clinic, they've fed it back, and then we can look at what the next PD is.

Ben Lynch: That's really great to hear that there needs to be evidence that this workshop course, CPD, has been applied in your practice. And that can look like a variety of different things, if I'm hearing you correctly. It's like a resource for the team or a resource for the clients that's come up off the back of this, you know, that could be a training, could be maybe understanding the clinical protocol or assessment or pathway for this specific condition or methodology, treatment intervention that I've learned. Yes. How do you look for evidence that it's improved either the capacity of that therapist or the outcomes of that therapist. Because I think broadly, we're always looking at, okay, in an ideal world, I want my therapist to be able to see and serve more people or do more impact hours in your term over the course of the week, that they're able to maintain or even increase the patient satisfaction that we get out of it as well. So we can see more, but not do the other. So we're looking for both of those things to happen. Is that something that you look to measure? regardless of the CPD, regardless of the goals, just help me understand how you tie the evidence piece to increasing my capacity and increasing the satisfaction of clients.

Hannah Dunn: When they're applying for the professional development, they need to tell us what the goals are of them doing the professional development. So what is it that they will expect to get out of that professional development and how will it impact their day-to-day clinic. So what's their professional learning and how does this relate to the PD? And then that gives us some sort of ground to sort of say, okay, well, did we achieve this outcome and what does that look like? It might be that They are then saying in a mentoring session, you know, like I did DIR floor time, it really gave me more strategies to use with X client and this is the goals that I set to use with that client. And so maybe that client, um, you know, we don't have any concrete feedback from the client around it, but we know that if the therapist is feeling more confident, if the therapist is engaging in strategies that are working, we're going to retain that client longer. And if they're able to articulate it well, then that helps us in understanding that they know what they're doing as well in those sessions.

Ben Lynch: Nice. There's a really great distinction. So they've got their goals that they're working on broadly across the year. And then when it comes time for CPD, you're saying, okay, you're essentially applying for a CPD investment and we need you to articulate how this CPD course or workshop, seminar, whatever it is, relates specifically to your goals. And that requires almost goals within that course, like what are your intentions to use this and how would we know that you've implemented it? And so is that like a little document or template that you have them complete and then they submit it to you? Just talk us through some of the process there that you then use for that approval.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, it's a Google form that comes through and then Belinda and I meet once a week, our team leader, and if there's anything in there, then we will review that at that time. So that has been, yeah, really effective for us. And we just are getting so much more PD given back to the team because previously we were just saying, oh yeah, you've still got $400 and this is $400. Yeah, you can go and do that. Um, but it wasn't really looking like we were like, yeah, okay, I can see how it relates, but there was never any flow through to the follow up. And that's what we were really lacking, I think.

Ben Lynch: Did you do kind of part A first or part B first? I'm interested, was it like you added the structure around approval for CPD?

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Ben Lynch: You know, tell us what you want to get out of this and what would be evidence that you've used it? Or did you do the other part, which was we started with the goals overall for the year and then that made the CPD stuff happen? Just how did that all play out for you?

Hannah Dunn: We have been really good at writing goals as a clinical team for a number of years and we've had our PD for a number of years. We just haven't linked them well together. And so we haven't had processes where we definitely had mentoring where we would pull it up and say, okay, where's the goal that links? And we weren't asking them to articulate it. Whereas now we've just sort of merged those things together better and really we had no process for feeding it back. Whereas now, because it's coming through the leadership meeting, we want to also say, okay, well, where are we also going to look at getting this fed back?

Ben Lynch: And when you say fed back, you mean like, how's this like coming back to the team in resources or other training? How are they helping say, hey, here's what I learned at this course. Now I'm translating that over to internal CPD.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. How are we going to get a return on investment for beyond that person going and doing that course?

Ben Lynch: Yes. Fantastic. And the form to fill in, like, is it pretty short or do they have to write a Harry Potter novel?

Hannah Dunn: No, really short. It's just like they're agreeing to those things and that they say that they, what's the course, they put a link to the course, how many hours it'll be, whether they need to take specific leave for it and how do they expect to feed it back to the team and what's the goal and what's the professional learning goal that it relates to. And have they discussed supervision or mentoring is another thing they have to tick off.

Ben Lynch: Okay. And so to what degree do you, I don't know, add the boundaries around the goals that they're working towards? Is it just what the therapist or team member states, these are the goals that I have in my overall yearly plan? Yes. And we sort of say, okay, fantastic. Let's work with it. Or do you have like a framework of these are the potential goals you could adopt, select, and then we'll work with them? Just talk about how that comes to be where you land on a goal, a set of goals.

Hannah Dunn: I would hope that through our recruitment, we have people that are coming to us who say, these are my goals and this is what I want to work on. And that we are clear on that. Yeah. I mean, we're an OT practice. Our goals are pretty similar. The differences being that, um, some people want to specialize in certain areas or some people feel like there's certain areas that are weaknesses. One thing we do do is there is some PD that we like everyone to have done. There is some of those professional development, you know, like I really like pediatric OTs. It's like DIR floor time where you learn so much from the way in which you follow a child's lead, essentially, and the way that you engage with that client, as well as things like around, um, traffic jam in my brain, for example, which is around sensory processing and the language to use. And it just is a really good way to explain it to parents. So, there are some of those that we like everyone to do, but in saying that, we also have summaries or videos of those of other people presenting those back to the team. So, it sort of depends on where people are at.

Ben Lynch: You brought up an interesting one, specialty areas, just before. I think in a previous episode, Peter Flynn and I had sort of talked about this, because I realize there are some therapists have like really niche interests, and there's not that many clients perhaps that they would see. but it's something they're really passionate about and they want to learn and they want to help. Maybe it's a super complex or challenging client that, yeah, there aren't great supports and they feel really compelled to be the one that could help. How do you make those trade-offs and decisions around, okay, we can see how this relates to your goal, but You probably get this client like once in a blue moon or you've only got one of these clients in your overall caseload compared to the other 90 or 95%. How do you think about those sorts of trade-offs in supporting therapists, even if it is part of their goals, but it's such a niche part of what they actually do?

Hannah Dunn: We actually had an example where we've got a client who has a really rare genetic condition and there was a day of a conference that was a rare genetic disease conference that the parent had asked the therapist to go. The parent had said, hey, would this be something that you would invest in? And I think sometimes it's the human side of stuff where we say, you know what, there's no other therapist out there. Like, yes, we're probably not going to see another client like this, but there are so many crossovers with rare genetic conditions that crossover with other rare genetic conditions. And imagine the impact this is going to have on this mom to feel supported. It's $400. Is that going to really impact us, um, not in the longterm. And so we really do, there's not much that we would potentially say no to. I guess with Thriving Kids, like we're really focused on upskilling our team in the physical space more so than the sensory and neuro space. I think they're excellent in those areas. And so I think it also is about, yeah, you've got to consider what clients are around. The one thing that does limit whether we'll send someone to a PD or not, like let's say there's another, there's so many PD services out there and let's say they're running a session on toilet training. Now, we've got a team of 25 OTs and between us, we have enough expertise in toilet training that we probably don't need to send a new grad to a toilet training PD. We probably need them to watch the resources that we've already created. And so there's areas like that. that we just say, we've got, if we've got the expertise within the team, we'd prefer to invest the hour with you two sitting down together rather than a full day. And then we'll keep closing that gap.

Ben Lynch: on the in-house CBD point. So often clinics will have maybe somewhere between a weekly and a monthly rhythm. They'll sort of say, for this hour or maybe several hours, the team come together, no matter the size, and we're going to talk through certain case studies or different tools, equipment, techniques, insert whatever, so that we're on the same page.

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Ben Lynch: How do you think about the structure of your internal CPD rhythm in particular where we're taking therapists offline, they're not seeing clients during that period of time? Just talk us through that side of things as distinct from perhaps some external investments, external courses and workshops.

Hannah Dunn: For the way we've structured our days, we tend to have one hour a day, which isn't necessarily impact our build. And maybe that's three over a week or four. So we do see that as an opportunity where we can create a pathway where we can provide professional development for an hour. And we were doing it once a fortnight last year. And that rhythm changed between a journal article, a client case, and a topic. And I think we see this in lots of clinics where they'll say we do weekly for an hour. But the other side of that is that is an hour where the team can't be flexible with their clients. The team can't use that hour. there is every single person who would have had a billable in that time is going to take that time off. So is that frequency too much? Is that frequency not enough? Because the ultimate goal is that ideally we're trying to provide professional development that's going to return have a return on investment. So people are going to get their notes done faster. People are going to have a greater understanding and be able to pick up a wider caseload. And so we want to make sure that those goals are being hit because it is a big investment and we can't forget about if this was a billable hour or an impact hour, what the cost of that would be. And so this year there were some things that team wanted. They said to me, We really want a cleaner every week at the clinic. Previously, we had made the decision that they wanted more PD and that they were happy to do the tidying of the clinic themselves. And I said, that's fine, but we're going to have to look at where that money can come to. And so we made a decision that that would come from that PD time that was every fortnight. We're now in a position where we have really experienced team and some really younger team and not a lot in the middle. And so when we're thinking about whole team training, we're actually very divided on what would be most relevant for the newer and older team members. And so we said, you know what, it's actually not serving us as well as it was fortnightly. What we're going to do is move it to monthly. and really having scripting around this. And I know directors are feeling like I couldn't possibly take anything away from my team, but watch me. But I think it's about what is the trade off? Like, let's not just take something away. What are we actually giving back? And then the way in which we framed it, I think this is important, is that we're not taking away professional development. We're taking away the structured time once every month, which we're leaving one a month in there. But you know, we have a whole library of resources online. What we want you to do is we want you to be guided to go and choose to do some of that or choose to read a journal article. And we want you to tailor your own learning in that opposite fortnight and vice versa. You can also see a client in that time if that works better for you and you can choose to do other PD at another time. So we've created a bit more flexibility. People are being more targeted in their learning. People are also getting more creative in saying, putting a post out saying, hey, two of us are having a chat around a particular client and client group, anyone welcome to join us. So we're seeing a lot more specific targeted in-house training at a lower cost from a business perspective to us.

Ben Lynch: I really love that distinction of the targeted training and it makes so much sense that it's backed by this goal setting that you have over the course of the entire year. And it's a way more personalized approach rather than just, well, we're just covering these sets of conditions and tools and techniques, you know, on this cadence, whether you need it or not, but that's just kind of the CPD plan that we've built. So I love the sort of a trade-off. context that you added there, that we're actually trying to make our CPD more personally impactful for each team member. And these are the changes. I'm interested to know then, how do you use the team days? Like we've called them different things at different times. I'm not sure what you call them, like a half day or a full day. team day, culture days, people call them different brand names, whatever. How do they fit in to CPD? Do you see them as training opportunities or are they something different entirely?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. Depends what my goal is at that moment. So, for example, last year we, or two years ago, I can't remember, we transitioned from one client management software to Sploce. And so we made the decision that that is what our team time training was on. So we weren't bringing anyone extra. Well, we actually did have Sploce come and do the training, but, um, you, we make a decision on what is relevant. So the last team time was just about us having time together. We didn't do, what we actually did was just. got the resources. We just said to five people, go and pick a resource out of the resource room and we want to hear about how you use it in different ways. And we gave them the heads up. So it's a bit of professional development, but it's not about us paying someone to come in and do that. And that is the feedback we get that those sessions where it's really practical is way more powerful, not necessarily way more powerful, but very powerful and not devalued compared to paying someone to come in. We do get the occasional person saying we'd like to have more external PD coming in as a whole team. And we have done MAT evaluation training two team times ago where we spent the whole day doing physical training. And so that was relevant to everyone on the team. And so we just sort of make decisions as we go. We feel like our next team time, which is in May, is a time in which we're having feedback from some of the younger team that they don't know some of those basics that they're having to follow those things up. And the older team saying, we actually want to provide PD to our team. And so we are thinking that we will go more in depth around some of those key areas that we can share that knowledge. But sometimes it's not, sometimes it's just about, we need some connection. Sometimes it's about, we've got a lot of changes we need to run through with you. I really think that we need to make sure that we're serving the business before we're serving the team in a thoughtful approach. I think that's a mistake people make sometimes, like we're closing the clinic for the day and it's going to be so fun because I'm fun mum director and I just want to be fun mum instead of like, I want to be really considered and we need time to have feedback and we need time to connect as a team, but we also need time to really nut down these procedures that aren't happening.

Ben Lynch: It's a really great point of putting the business first. Ultimately, it's got to fund all of the people that we employ. It's got to be able to provide the resources for us to reinvest in the client experience and their outcome. So that's a really important point. tell me about your evolution in arriving at that. Have you always operated from that principle or did something shift for you to make that leap? Because as you know, working with so many clinic owners, that's not the case. You've nicely articulated Most people feel like they want to be kind of the fun boss, the fun leader. Like I promised my team CPD and we're going to have some of the best CPD and that's what I use to kind of recruit people over. So well, I better deliver on it, which is really cool. But then they find themselves maybe doing a lot of training and not seeing a lot of benefit. So just what's your journey towards making that distinction between the business first so that it can do those things?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think it's always been a mix of both for us. We've always done it as a whole team day. It didn't actually before, back when I was smaller, it used to be after hours and I'd provide dinner and we'd do PD. But then it sort of grew into a team meeting and then grew into getting a bit more specific around when we had multiple sites that time of coming together. Um, I think one of the things I'm so angry about that I used to do is we'd go to an external venue and I'd be spending all this time looking for an external venue. And like, I just felt like if we came to Werribee, our biggest clinic, that, um, it wasn't as central and that we'd have to sit on the floor cause we didn't have enough space to have tables and chairs and that we needed tables and chairs. And then we had a time in which a venue canceled on us and we couldn't find something. And we were like. let's just squeeze in to Werribee. And the team's like, oh my God, this is so much better than going to a venue. We had all the parks. We could like lay on the floor. We could, and I was like, oh my gosh, why have I spent all this money going to all these venues and providing all this catered lunch and no one even wants to do it. And now for our team times, we have a roster, different people bring in the morning tea. We still provide lunch. We still order lunch in. But it's cut down the costs so much and we enjoy seeing what other people bring too. And our team feel cared for because we've got gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free and people really consider those things. So it's a nice bonding moment too. But I just think sometimes we have ideas about what others want that actually are totally wrong.

Ben Lynch: So interesting in the episode with Sarah recently, we're talking about engagement surveys and what questions you ask your team to get feedback and being very purposeful about what questions to ask and specifically what not to ask. based on your goals or intentions, as you put out. And I love your point there when I asked about, yeah, how do you see the team days? It's like, well, it depends on what goal I've got at that moment or through that period of time. It's all coming back to goals for me, which in one sense, I would assume from what I see, a lot of folks will use clinically with their patients, like they'll be used to thinking through what are the goals and the treatment plan for this patient to get their outcomes and how are we going to assess their progress. But then it's almost like… they don't use the similar process for supporting their team to make progress in their career. It's like the same style of thinking. So I love that you've translated that across. I do remember what I was going to ask you about because you just subtly put it in, which was, about collaboration. And if I'm picking up what you're putting down, it was something along the lines of, we might have a Slack channel or a communication channel, literally like a Google chat or a Microsoft teams, whatever you're using, where CPD is discussed and people can collaborate, share things, or even look to meet up. Firstly, is that correct? If not, just expand on how you get the team to collaborate in a more asynchronous sense.

Hannah Dunn: Yes. We have a channel called PDP, which is our Pediatric Development Program, and that is where people will post to say, I'm meeting up with this person if anyone wants to jump in. But also, we do have other channels that are around online resources where people would just share their resources. Yeah, professional development in general, where people share flyers and things that come in as well. I think it's been a long time building and it's a lot of feedback. We asked the team, so as you said, I've been doing our check-ins with our team and it's been six months since I last checked in formally. And one of the questions on there is, what would you like to see at DOTS in the next 12 months? Is the culture like, and is there anything that the leadership team could be doing better to support that? And in those two questions, we often hear, and we have heard over the last couple of days, we want more time together as a whole team to do fun things, and we want more whole team trainings. But I think as long as we can explain the why behind it, it does create that space to be able to say the reason why we haven't done it is what I explained before, there's such a variance in You know, and we have done it. We had someone only in November, but it's just about, you know, it's not every single time. It's about what is the value you can add. And so we definitely get feedback from the team. The team also know they can tell us about what they are missing. And then we also think about what are our goals from a direction perspective. So we absolutely want to work more with physical clients. So we've done, as I said, lots of PD there. There is some of the. other PD that sometimes I think, oh, it's probably not what my goal would be, but I can see the value it would add. And we'll give that a go and trial it with one person. If it works, then we'll keep it in.

Ben Lynch: So, if I'm hearing you, you might have suggestions or requests from team members and you're like, I don't really see the line of sight to where that impacts your goals or the collective goals, but maybe you increase the surface area for serendipity or impact. You're like, we're going to have a crack at some different things at different times because it might just unlock something.

Hannah Dunn: Is that it?

Ben Lynch: You sort of leave room for a bit of variety.

Hannah Dunn: Yes. And if they can justify it, like they're never, no one's coming to you and saying, can I do PD? And you say, why? And I, I don't know. Like they're always got a reason. It's just about understanding what their reason is. Sometimes the paper doesn't translate that. So sometimes you need to check in with them and say, okay, quite getting the link here. And then it's, oh yeah. Okay. I can see that. Yeah.

Ben Lynch: And what I love about this in particular on like a real sort of meta level is the standard that you're setting for outcome driven actions, if that makes sense. And maybe you don't phrase it just like that or impact was probably more on brand word for you, but like impact driven decisions and actions. Because so many clinic owners, right, you hear this, I hear this, are frustrated that their team don't step up or they don't uphold the standard that they would want to see or that they have of themselves. They're often talking to us about, my team aren't accountable, they're not following through. And so much of that comes back to standards. And what I love is like, you are framing up, even in CPD, the standard of, we need to think about what are the impacts? of doing this CPD on the rest of the team and on the clients. And we'll absolutely say yes, provided that's really clear and aligned with your goals. So I love this kind of inclusion of outcome or impact-based thinking, even in CPD.

Hannah Dunn: Yes. And you just prompted me to think about our last team day in which I presented our values that have been reworked back to the team. Now I can, you know, I know from working with other clinic owners, they're like, the team don't care about our values. Like they just want to know what they are. Like, you know, I feel like I'm taking up their time for, you know, half a day talking about our values. But it's about, well, why do you have them and what is it that you want from your team and what's in it for them? And so being able to shape it to be like, okay, well, these are our values. And then having a conversation about what does that mean in the day-to-day of the clinic? What does that mean for you? What aren't we doing well and what can we do better around this? That is all professional development as well for you and for them and to create opportunities where you can get more out of what is missing from your clinic. And so I think we just, when we're thinking about, oh, I need to present this to the team and I don't think they're going to want to hear it, I think if we stop and say, what is in it for them? What is the value of what is in it for them? If it wasn't valuable to them in one angle or another, we wouldn't be doing it. So we need to just think about ensuring that that angle is presented that we're not lecturing as I am lecturing now, I feel like.

Ben Lynch: It's such an interesting one because I often find myself coming back to it and being humbled when I've overlooked it or missed that step as well of with them, you know, what's in it for me, that's always what the other person is thinking, or at least it's a good way to start because then perhaps you don't meet resistance immediately. Because you've been able to articulate, well, here's how it matters, why it's relevant and important to you. Okay. That's really neat to be able to hear how you're connecting the dots and connecting the dots. The impact piece I think is super important and if I was understanding you correctly in the value sense to just go down that rabbit hole for a moment, I think a lot of clinic owners will come up with their values and perhaps the key missing piece often when we do those like days where we help articulate the values. is how are we going to apply these, anchor back to these, and reference these regularly moving forward from examples like, okay, in our CPD application. there's some question around impact because, you know, however you've articulated impact is one of our key values or in our mentoring focus sheet that people fill in prior to their supervision or mentoring session, they're reflecting on the core values that they've lived out recently and, you know, sharing a little anecdote or story or in our team shout outs channel where we recognize and appreciate a contribution of team members made. We're using you know, want to shout out Hannah for this core value when you helped, you know, Sally Jones do A, B and C. So I really like that piece of like, how are you using these things? Otherwise, there's no point just coming up with them.

Hannah Dunn: And that was one of the questions we asked about how we see these on our day-to-day, which was, yeah, really impactful.

Ben Lynch: Yeah. Great action to do. Well, as we put a bow on this episode, any other final remarks or notes about CPD being more impactful for clinics and practitioners and ultimately the patients that they then serve?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think just really thinking about what is the actual true cost of those days to you? How can you ensure that that investment, which it is an investment, is going to come back to a return in whatever shape or form that can look like?

Ben Lynch: Yeah, really well done and I love the framework that you've got there. I can imagine a lot of people taking heaps of notes and going, we're going to run a playbook just like that or refine the playbooks that we've got for how we do CPD at our clinic so that it's more impactful. Well, thank you so much for sharing. Those listening in can head over to clinicmastery.com forward slash podcast for this recording, the show notes and previous recordings as well. Well, we'll catch you on another episode very soon. Thanks, Anna.

Hannah Dunn: Perfect, thanks. See you.