Episode 506: The Fundamentals of Operation Manuals + How to 2.0 Them!

Question: Need to start putting together your operations manual? Need to upgrade it? Have a listen…

If you hate working on operations manuals … We get it. Been there, done that. In this episode, Kiera walks through what it takes to create a basic version of an operations manual and why it’ll help your practice by leaps and bounds, as well as how the Dental A-Team can help. She then goes into how to go the extra mile with your manuals.

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Transcript: 

0:00:05.6 Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner and I have a team of traveling consultants, where we have traveled over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental, and I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I could help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress and create A teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team podcast.

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0:00:51.5 S1: Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and you guys, let's talk about a topic that I hated. Legitimately hated as an office manager, and that was operations manual. But this is gonna be operations manual 2.0. So the reason I hated this as an office manager was not because I actually didn't want an operations manual, it was because I actually did want the operations manual. I did wanna have peace of mind knowing if somebody was out sick... Which happens, guys, we are all human, we all get sick, we have family things that come up, we literally wanted to have all of that peace of mind and security, but what happened was, I just felt it was too daunting of a task to get done. It felt like, "Where do I even start?" So you guys, I've done so many podcasts, if you wanna go check them out, head on over to the dentalateam.com, click on our podcast tab, and you can search for any podcast topic, so you can look up operations manual. We also have done operation manual events, we did Workshop Wednesday where we helped you guys build your operations manual, and basically the key fundamentals are we need a job description, for every single position, we also need to have...

0:02:01.2 S1: So after you get that job description, you are going to wanna make sure that you also have your work flow for every position, meaning what do they do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. That's gonna be a good skeleton. Once you get that done, I love to put end of day checklist, monthly one-on-one checklist in there, plus I wanna take all of those daily workflows and create How-Tos for them. Okay, so that's a one and a half minute quick synopsis of what an operations manual should look like. I didn't even know how to do that, so I have a massive passion for helping you guys jump start them. If you struggle to get your operations manual done, 'cause guys, sometimes I don't execute, [chuckle] I have all the best intentions and it sounds like a great idea, but then the schedule falls apart, and then I have a team member who's out sick, and then I have a team member who quits, and then I have doctor coming in that they heard a podcast and they want me to now implement Modento because Modento sounded awesome. And then our new patient count is down low, so that way I've got to hurry and quickly fix the new patient count. Oh, and then our overhead's high, and therefore our operations manual never gets done.

0:03:03.8 S1: This is definitely one of those projects that requires carved out time, so a lot of clients will actually call us to simply help them get this operations manual done. So if that's you, be sure to reach out. Hello at the dentalateam.com, we do an operations manual intensive. We also can help your whole team just execute. [chuckle] And we're really good at motivating them, helping them figure out how to do it, and we break it down into simple sections. So if you need help and you don't have an operations manual, then either go snag ours on the dentalateam.com, you can just purchase it, we already have the bulk of this built out for you, you just need to edit it for your practice, or you can also utilize us to help coach your team and get your whole team on board.

0:03:40.7 S1: Now, that's if you're not a good executor. I literally, as Kiera Dent as an office manager would have done anything [chuckle] to have somebody be able to coach me through this operations manual, because just like I listed off, I was struggling to get all those things done, plus trying to get this operations manual. Well, in my team meetings, guess what? They would get hijacked by the current issues, because I was acting in a reactive state versus a proactive state. So I just want you guys to know that is what it's about, that is the piece of what an operations manual is, this is why it usually doesn't get done. And then for me, I also felt like, What am I gonna do? Have this huge hunk out of paper sticking on a back shelf, I go to some offices and they have all these manuals done, but they're not actually putting them in operatories or at the front desk, so that way team members are utilizing it.

0:04:29.0 S1: So that's even more discouraging. I'm gonna put all this time, effort and energy, and then people aren't even going to use it. So I actually shift it and I have it where all of my operations manual is broken down into simple little books, you can call it a guide book, you can call it the Bible, you can call whatever you want to do for that position. So the Bible for front office, the operations manual guide book for this portion, but you literally take that huge chunk of operations manual, break it down into a very small booklet that is in then given to each position when they're hired.

0:05:02.6 S1: Then what you can do is every quarter or twice a year, take those little booklets and transfer them to another team member. So front office goes to back office, back office goes to front office. And I give them two or three protocols that I want them to try and do. So for example, dental assistants could try and use the step-by-step of how to submit a claim. Well, one, that's great cross-training, two, they're gonna find areas that don't make any sense. Three, it's just fun for the whole practice to try and do this. So this could actually be a team meeting in the end of the year, that way you could figure out what protocols we need to update and change. Okay, so that's basic overall practice of how you're gonna get that operations manual completed and what it should look like. Now, I'm gonna teach you how to 2.0. So this is gonna be a higher version than that version. Alright.

0:05:48.0 S1: Hey, Dental A Team listeners. I'm so jazzed to invite you guys to Dental A Team's virtual team summit. That's right, guys. April 22nd through the 23rd, we are doing a virtual team summit. If you missed it last year, you missed out, guys. We send you guys team swag boxes, we have your entire team involved all day with this Friday, they get CE, and then Saturday this year, we're doing all things leadership. This year is all about optimization and execution, so guys, increasing your case acceptance, improving your schedule, also helping your hygiene team ramp up, even though we've lost team members, and it's been hard with COVID. So guys, if you're ready to optimize and you're ready to execute, take massive action today and join us at Dental A Team virtual summit, April 22nd through 23rd, head on over right now, guys, get your tickets today, don't wait. We made it ridiculously cheap, so you and your entire team can get the CE and optimize this year. Head on over to the dentalateam.com, and I will see you April 22 and 23rd.

0:06:50.2 S1: So first step's first, I wanna make sure you have a 30, 60, 90 day onboarding schedule for all of this. Meaning there's the entire job workflow, but what do you want this new hire to do in their first 30 days, 60 days and 90 days? Okay, so building out a 30, 60, 90 day job evaluation. You could even 2.0 this a little bit more and break it down into a first week, second week, third week, fourth week, then 60 days, then 90 days. Sometimes 30 days is too long before we have a check-in. So what do you do is you break down all of those protocols, simplify it into a checklist. Yes, the Dental A Team has created that, it's part of our operations manual, so if you guys want to see that, you want a sample, let me know, email us Hello at the dentalateam.com. But really, you wanna build this 30, 60, 90-day plan out. Then what you can do, this is where we're getting into all sorts of crazy awesomeness 2.0 is now we're probably going to wanna make video content for it.

0:07:45.6 S1: So the video content would mean we're actually gonna take our iPhones and we're going to record how do we set up for a crown procedure? How do we set up for an implant procedure? Guys, videos are so fascinating, and I don't know if you know, but [chuckle] I was scrolling Instagram. I haven't been on Instagram in almost a year, guys, and so I was on it the other day, just quickly, I delete it, I literally deleted it off my phone because for me, I just found I was just wasting so much time actually, I would just scroll for hours. So I decided to take a challenge and just not be on it for a while, but it was interesting as I was scrolling, not being on it for the last year, the still pictures were boring, and I was constantly just scrolling to find more videos. That's shocking. This is a society we live in. We're in a very fast pace, we wanna just GSD, have it at our fingertips, instant gratification. So videos are probably going to be a faster, easier way for you to actually train future team members. So the dental team, what we did was I had everybody in our company build out their workflow, so what do they do? Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly.

0:08:47.7 S1: We have written protocols, so you click on this, you do this, you do that. Then what I had them do, is we actually utilize this software called Loom that was really easy, and that you guys could use your iPhones, whatever you wanna do, but for every single task, if you will, on these lists, I had my team create videos. Loom, I love because it's a screen share that you can do. You do need to have audio on your computer, otherwise it will just be a video of your screen, so make sure your computers have audio, but what it will do is it will literally show a picture of you or just a picture of your screen, but it's a really fast easy way to show them how to make appointments. How do we attach continuing care? How do we submit a claim? How do we do insurance verification and input it correctly? And what's cool about Loom is if you use the free version, it only allows you to do five minutes. So I try to have all of our team do less than five-minute videos because let's be real, I will not watch a video that's longer than five minutes and also though, I'm gonna put it on two times the speed, which Loom will allow you to do. So for anybody doing that, make sure you've got set parameters, we want these videos to be less than five minutes long. I promise you guys do it, on social media, the standard is typically 30 seconds or less.

0:09:58.6 S1: Otherwise, people will swipe to another video. So if you can do it even faster than that without missing detail, that's great. I had a team member who left and I was super, super, super grateful for her. She left me a bunch of videos before she left for her position, which was great. But her videos were 30 to 45 minutes per video. Do you think I watched any videos? The answer is, I watched a few [chuckle] 'cause I needed help on a couple of them, but the bulk of all those videos she created, I did not watch because they were too long. So what you do is you take your entire task list. So the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. And then we start to create videos for all of them, what I did because we're a virtual company, and for you guys, this would be operations manual 2.0, we run our entire company on Google G-Suite. That's as of today, who knows there might be another software out there that might be better in the future, but that's currently what we're running off of. So what we did is everything sits in the drive, so I have folders that have all the videos in there, but what we did is we took our daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually for every position, and we hyper-linked a video for every single one of those. So like when you go online and there's a table of contents and you click on it and it takes you to the video, that's how you're gonna 2.0 your operations manual.

0:11:09.9 S1: You will literally have a hyperlink and a video for every single thing in your practice. Now, do you have to update this? The answer is yes, but great news is a video is exponentially faster than written content, so much faster. I think that there is beauty and a need for both written and video. Video is great because it's faster, it's easier, especially for how do we set up a crown prep. But written is easier because if I need to go step by step, that's a lot easier for me to follow than trying to rewind a video, look to see where did I put cotton forceps in that articulating paper versus being able to just have a picture that I could then follow. So I think that there's a need for both. So I'm a huge proponent of having written first, video second. You guys might disagree with me. Totally fine. My reasoning for that is, if it's written, I can hand that to somebody tomorrow and they could flip through that. Also for an office, if they're needing verbiage, I don't want them watching a video, I want them reading a script. So I think there's a beauty and benefit for both. So I say operations manual 1.0 is all there written and the screen shots and the pictures.

0:12:13.4 S1: Operations manual 2.0 is video content. This way, when you're onboarding somebody in that 30, 60, 90 day, you can actually hyper-link all of these videos in there, and I will tell you at the Dental A team, we are bringing on new hires, and I have my little guide books per position and I hyperlink the videos, because it's so much easier for these people to come on board to see the videos. Also I do have a hyperlink to written content, if that's the most appropriate path to go. So my team now I can hire them anywhere in the world, I could have them train remotely before they even come to the practice. So guys, that's how you can start spurring your mind on this operations manual 2.0 of how to start creating that video content and guess what, it's the same thing as a written content. Divide and conquer, have a deadline and make sure you utilize the entire force of the team. I was at this as a quarterly goal, if it was my practice and I have all those videos done. Guess what? Our team did it in one quarter, lots of offices get it done at one quarter.

0:13:08.9 S1: So I would challenge you, number one, if you don't have your operations manual done, get it done, that's step one. If you do, I would challenge you to 2.0 that operations manual. Make sure it's uped and current. Guys, there will be a 3.0, that's probably gonna be where it's in the cloud and people do... I don't know, artificial intelligence, and we do virtual training and we have to speak it into a microphone, and that's how we're going to actually train for everything. Honestly, I would love to create that, so if anybody out there is super geeky and loves technology, you don't have to be geeky to love technology, I shouldn't say that in passage. If any of you wanna geek out with me on technology, I would love to. I would love to chat with you 'cause I'm looking for somebody who's awesome with technology and could help me create this. That'll probably be 3.0, and we'll build that for you guys. But I need somebody, so if any of you know anybody, please connect them with me. Hello at the dentalateam.com. Alright guys, go get that operations manual 2.0, and as always, thanks for listening. If we can help you in any way, please, please, please reach out and thank you all for helping us reach our mission of positively impacting the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible.

0:14:13.6 S1: The way you guys are doing it is by leaving us Google reviews, [chuckle] by leaving us reviews on the podcast, by downloading the podcast and sharing it. You guys know we're on a mission to break one million downloads this year. So download a guide, share it with your friends, help us out, help us become one of the top most elite dental podcasts out there. We already are. And we wanna maintain that. And it's up to you guys to make that happen. So if you've done so, thank you, I give you a high five, a hug, just appreciating you. And if you haven't, I would just ask you as a friend, genuinely to help our podcast grow, leave us those five stars, that way we can rank higher. Download it, share it with a friend. Whatever you do, will help us out. Thanks, guys for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A team podcast.

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0:14:54.7 S1: And that wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A team podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.