#926: Update Your Ops Manual Without Breaking a Sweat

Dental A Team Podcast

Tiff and Dana discuss updating your operations manual in a way that doesn’t completely stress you out. They dive into details about each of the following steps:

1. Establish an ops manual point person

2. Schedule regular updates

3. Delegate sections

4. Set due dates

Just because it’s a big deal doesn’t mean the process can’t be fun and effective.

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:01.615)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners I am so excited to be here with you again on this beautiful day. I have Ms. Dana here in the house with me. That literally feels like she's in my house. I wish she were here, but we are houses apart. Dana, how are you today?

Dana (00:18.36)

Damn pretty good, how about you?

The Dental A Team (00:20.703)

Good, good. We are over here at the time of recording this just getting prepped for the holiday season. Like we're well into it at this point. I feel like holidays have began and parties and gosh, I feel like everything, so many things are going on and I only have one kid. I see this all the time. Dana's got a slew of children over there in her household and her husband and all of these things and Dana, you have just been running around like crazy. You went to a...

a recent event where we were very excited for you. Tell us how that went and we did you did was it PBR the bull riding? How did the kids how much do the kids love that?

Dana (01:00.131)

Yeah.

Well, they loved it. It's something about too, I think of bull riding, right? The goal is to say it on eight seconds, right? So my kids can all pay attention for eight seconds, even the littlest one. So it's something that they will like, we'll all enjoy it. They all pay attention the whole way through. Sometimes it requires snacks for the littlest one, but it was great.

The Dental A Team (01:11.591)

Yes!

That's fair.

The Dental A Team (01:22.959)

I love that. That is a very good point. I feel like we all need to remember that because I don't know how much better our attention spans really get. I know they say like for anything that you post on social media or for for you guys for doing marketing engagement, things should be able to grab someone's attention and hold it within that first like three to five seconds of looking at something. And so I just don't know that our attention spans have gotten any better than that eight second, you know, time frame. So I think the PBR is for everyone.

I think that is such a good point of view. I know when we went before my sister and I had gone and I was like, holy cow, they were only up there for like three, four or five seconds. I'm like, it felt though like a long time watching it. I'm like on the back of this crazy animal. Like this is this feels like a long time. So kind of plays into that too, where I know I have practices that

I'll work with and I'm like, you know, you've got to be on time. You to your patients back on time. Like if they're here 20 minutes early and you're taking them back on time, if you haven't notified them they were here early or kept them engaged while they were here, they feel as though you're late. And so if they've been here even five minutes earlier on time and you're five minutes behind, it makes such a difference. And sometimes I'll have...

practices where we're just so heavily focused on that patient interaction, that patient experience that I will make them do wall sits. They'll be like, yeah, whatever, Tim, you're crazy. And I'm like, cool, let's do this. We're going to do some wall sits. And I don't know if anybody's done a wall sit recently. They are painful.

that really puts into perspective how long a minute is. think normally we get to like 25 seconds and people start dropping out. It's a difficult one. So I love that you said that, Dina. That was such a good perspective to add there. PBR is so much fun and it's just the time of the year where we're just like prepping for everything and having so much fun with our families and our friends. And we have our holiday party for Dental A Team coming up, our virtual party. And it's just such a time of year to really

The Dental A Team (03:24.851)

look back on all of the things that we've accomplished and we've done so far. I know for me, I've been looking at okay, what did what did I set out to accomplish? What did I actually accomplish? And what did I miss along the way? And a lot of those pieces, I think we miss those goals along the way, because we really didn't have a good plan. I know for me, I miss personal goals or work goals constantly, because I just didn't have enough plans set in motion. I didn't have enough

trajectory and I didn't have enough laid out of responsibilities and like really how I was going to accomplish that thing. And today talking about Dana, I pulled you in always for operations manual, but really looking at how we can update the operations manual next year. And when we were prepping for this today, you mentioned really splitting it out and making sure that things are broken apart. And I think that is a huge space that we miss.

on the operations manual build out. I have practices, I just talked about practice last week that was like, I don't know, Tip, how do we do this? And we go listen, anybody can do it. You can do it in three months, you can take a year to do it. Anybody can do it in any amount of time as long as there's a plan set in place to get it done. And that plan has to be set in place before the day that you're gonna go start it so that you can see that progress. So taking time out of your day now.

to prep and plan for what it might look like to either create from scratch or template. We have our templates, your operations manual if you don't have one or getting it updated for next year. And Dana, you work with practices a lot. I you've actually done operations manual intensives and things like that. You work specifically with practices to build out their operations manual. whether again, we're building it out or we're updating it, what do you see as some of the key points that

need to be hit on in order to be successful in the build out and to really feel like gosh this is done for now because it's a work in progress it's always in motion so it's done for now what do you think are some really great tips that they could take away to really get that going for next year?

Dana (05:35.584)

Yeah, and I like what you said, first of all, planning and preparing for it because it is a massive project. So one, if you haven't started it or you don't have one, it is a massive project. making sure that you have somebody, you'll utilize your full team to build it, but you're gonna want someone there that is kind of your accountability person or who is spearheading it. So they're setting due dates, they're checking in on team members, they're making sure that...

Progress is staying on track or adjusting if we get off track. And they're making sure that time is set aside each week or each month, however you're dividing it. So I think first of all, have your person who's going to kind of spearheaded or they're going to be responsible for it. And then because it is such a big...

The Dental A Team (06:03.065)

Uh-huh.

Dana (06:18.602)

document or a big project, it is also like a living and breathing document. So we have to update it as things change in a practice because what works for us today may not always work for us and get us the results that we're getting from it today. So also when it comes to updating, planning your updating and who is ultimately responsible for making sure it happens.

The Dental A Team (06:39.585)

Yeah, I love that. And that's that space, you guys, that we talk about all the time of that responsibility and practices, owners and doctors and leaders are constantly saying like, gosh, Tiff, Dana, like, how do I hold my team accountable? I don't know how to hold accountability. And I think that's the key to the accountability. The reason we struggle holding people accountable is because we don't actually know what we're holding them accountable to. We're holding them accountable to like some phantom thing that we said was going to get done. But if there's not a person,

tied to that thing. There's not a date, there's not a timeline, there's not actionable pieces. It's really hard to feel confident and comfortable in holding someone accountable to it. So if you want to get an operations manual done or updated or what have you, maybe your office manager is responsible for ensuring that it gets done. Now that does not mean that he or she has to do the manual. It means that they need to help parse it out.

and they need to help find more responsibilities, delegate out what needs to be done within it, and then they're tracking it they're making sure that it's actually getting done and that those deadlines are being met. And when they're not met, we're revamping and we're saying, okay, fantastic, how do we get back on track? What needs to happen to get us back on track for this? So I think Dana, that's a huge piece of what we miss just in general with a lot of pieces. I know I was just in a practice not too long ago, a few weeks ago.

And I was like, great, fantastic. Like, who's responsible for what? And then he said, No, my front office, they don't like that. They like to just like everybody does everything. And I was like, cool, I want everyone to know how to do everything hands down. If you work in the front office, I want you to know how to do it all. But when I don't have confirmations done, who do I go to? He's like, well, it's like whoever can get to it.

So then what doesn't actually happen? Confirmations, right? So if we don't have someone, if I don't know that it's specifically my job, I don't know to prioritize that because I've got other things that are coming in. So when we have specific items, whether it's a daily to do, whether it's this operations manual, getting these updates done, if I'm not specifically responsible for something, when other things come into my day, it's really difficult for me to say what's more important.

The Dental A Team (08:52.631)

Where does my time need to go? What should I be doing first, second, third? It's difficult for me to prioritize my to-dos, let alone my time. And one of the biggest complaints I get from leaders and from doctors is...

a waste of time. They don't know how to prioritize their day. They don't know how to time block in their own schedule. We're trying to learn time blocking in our schedule, but my manager can't time block their schedule. Well, they can't time block their schedule because they don't know what the priorities are. When nothing is a priority, right? When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. So because everything has now become a priority, because we've got a million things to do, we're just like picking the things that are the easiest, the things we can see the path on.

I know I talked last week with an office about procrastination, right? And procrastination is really just things you put off to the last minute because you don't actually feel confident in carrying it through. Studies have shown that it's either missing information or you just, you truly just don't feel confident. You're like, I think I have all the pieces, but I don't know how to do this. It's not easy. And so we push it off to the end, which I think Dana is a huge piece of that operations manual.

The operations manual gets pushed off to the end because we don't actually have a clear picture of how to complete it. We don't know what done looks like. We don't know how to get there. And it's this huge undertaking that everybody's like, cool, go write your protocol. So it's like, what? I have like 30,000 things I do in a day. How am I supposed to write all that down? So I love that you said really someone responsible. And so when it comes to updates data, you're saying the same thing, like someone is responsible.

And then how do you suggest that that person really delegates out those pieces that need to be done?

Dana (10:37.004)

Yeah, and I think first of all, I do usually recommend, go through the whole thing yearly and look for updates. So if you're looking for a cadence for this yearly, and I think this is a great time as we're planning and prepping for next year, if you haven't done it for this year, add it to your goals for next year, get it on the calendar. And then with that,

The Dental A Team (10:42.765)

Yeah.

Dana (10:56.962)

having that person utilize your team, right? You can assign one person to go through each section. You can divide and conquer and say, okay, you you're gonna review and make sure all setups are correct. You're gonna review and make sure, you know, all of our lab tracking and all of that is correct. And you can break it up that way. But basically assign team members to a section of the operations manual and kind of go through it in my checklist is.

Do we still do that thing? Do we have, is there a protocol in there and is that thing updated? Do we still do it that way? And if it is updated, great. If it isn't, then if you're the one to review it, you're the one to being responsible to update it. So usually just kind of setting that standard, break it up amongst the team. A lot of times it'll be the team leads that do it or.

The Dental A Team (11:40.568)

Yeah.

Dana (11:48.674)

you know, just somebody who you know has the capacity to do it at that time. And then just setting the standard that if you review it and it needs updated, you're also the one to update it. And then again, you can set due dates for those things. So, you know, hand me three updates each week, every Friday, until all of our updates are done or all updates done by an assign a date there. And then two, besides just yearly, right?

Because we've taken time to get everything in writing and we've written all of these protocols, oftentimes once you have that project done, setting the standard that when we update anything, we are also updating the written version of it as well so that when you get to this year mark and you're going to do your updates, it isn't so cumbersome because you have along the way when you've updated things or added things, made sure to get those pieces in writing throughout the year.

The Dental A Team (12:30.639)

Mm-hmm.

The Dental A Team (12:45.121)

Yeah, I love that idea. think that's brilliant. And one piece you talked about there was really saying like this number done by every Friday. I know in my in my work, when we're doing projects and content creation and things for Dental A Team, something that really helps me so this could be for doctors and team members like alike, something that really helps me is okay, I've got to have three updates, five updates done by Friday. So which ones am I going to update? So if I have a list,

So you guys within the operations manual templates have.

really that table of contents, right? So I would go through the table of contents myself if I knew that was my goal was to have X amount done by Friday. And I would say awesome this week, I'm doing these five. So I would piecemeal out the ones that I'm doing to make sure that it gets done because I feel like for me personally, going into it with that secure of a plan and that like narrowed in, it makes me

my brain just works differently, it's easier for me to see how to get to the end and I bust through it a lot faster. Whereas if I just go there and I'm like, I'll do five today, I'm like, this one, well, this one. so honestly, the time that it takes when I get there to figure out which ones I'm going to do, slows me down from getting them completed and then I end up behind. So if I just take a couple minutes, maybe 20 minutes to just dive into it and say, okay.

for the next four weeks, these are the five I'm gonna do each week, makes it much easier to like, just get them done as they come up. And making sure we all know where that living breathing document is and everyone has access to update it. That's huge, I know. We're talking about, know, creating and updating these new scorecards for all of our clients so that 2025 just is all wrapped in this pretty, bow.

The Dental A Team (14:37.763)

But I thought this morning and you just reminded me as well, like, gosh, we have a protocol for scorecards. So what happens right is we'll onboard new team members into a practice or into the Dental A Team or wherever we onboard a new person and then we're like, wait, shoot, that's so old. Like, please do not use that. Or they'll come ask a question and they're like, hey, I don't see this anywhere. Like, this is what the protocol tells me to do. But I'm not finding this program. Is this that's happened to me where I'm like,

we don't use that program anymore, just disregard. And then it's like, great, well, now how much of this can I trust as the person learning? Like, okay, well, if this piece of three, if one of three is wrong, now I'm probably subconsciously at least doubting the rest of this. And so I'm confused, I'm not remembering which ones I'm supposed to use, not to use. So making sure we go back and do those things is huge. And we do that even here in our company.

I know as we go through and things will pop up as you guys are onboarding new team members, which you will if you're growing, you're going to onboard new team members. And we know in this market, we're going to onboard new team members. So those things will come up. But I think Dana, your point to making sure that it's prepped and it's planned, setting a date maybe as a team to really get together and say, okay, guys,

we're going to delegate these out. So who's responsible ultimately for the operations manual getting done, setting an appointment, a meeting to say, okay, we're going to delegate all of these pieces out and then really having that just dates set in place. I think if it's updates, Dana, maybe I'm crazy, but I think if it's updates, you can probably get that done in like 45 to 60 days at the longest. And then Dana...

Just like maybe January, I'm like, shoot, is the time, guys. We're doing our freaking operations manual. This is going to be it. I typically will say to clients, let's be realistic and let's say like six to eight months, maybe even next year, and we'll help you to get these delegated out and like timelineed. What are you saying, as well with your clients, a good timeline for people to be realistic with?

Dana (16:28.75)

Thank you.

Dana (16:51.342)

I agree with you. think can it be done in three months? Yes. But it's like we are putting a lot of effort and a lot of time dedicated to that. So if we don't have a lot of time that we can block or dedicate to that, then I say realistically six to eight months. And even then it's still a lot of, it's still a lot of dedicated time.

The Dental A Team (17:10.103)

Yeah.

Dana (17:10.682)

But I feel like that is you can kind of build that into some downtime you can build that into so maybe those days where doctors at CE and team has some some time to fill or some Project time so I think ideally Realistically plan on spending six to eight months because it's a big project to tackle well worth it, but it's a big project

The Dental A Team (17:28.655)

It is.

Totally. I love that idea you just said of like CE, where doctors are out and that's oftentimes there's so many team members that want to still get the hours in, especially dental assistants, even that there's not always a lot for them to do. For the front office, it's very easy to say, okay, great, these are the calls, are the end of year benefit letters I want you to send, these are all the pieces. But that's a great space for hygienists and dental assistants to really be able to have some downtime. Because I do think being, you know, having that dedicated time to get those things done.

is beneficial. So I love that.

So I think you guys really just looking at what needs to happen within the operations manual and prepping and planning for it. Make sure you've got that meeting on on deck for it. Make sure you've got someone responsible for it and you guys have a plan built out. I would honestly if it were me, I was the office manager. I knew this was coming up. I probably have a plan built out before I got to the meeting and not just like, guys, this is what we're doing. It's we're building it together, getting the buy in from it, but making sure that you're not asking them to build out the plan because that'll be a much longer.

meeting. So make sure you've got it built out, you know what you want, you know what your expectations are, and then going into the meeting of can we meet these expectations, is this something we can accomplish together, will help to get that done. 45 to 60 days I think is plenty of time for updates and I think six to eight months is usually plenty of time for creation, but remember done is better than perfect and with the operations manual I am here to tell you

The Dental A Team (19:00.579)

There is no perfect. Okay, guys, there is no perfect. And there is never a done. There's a done for right now. And then there's an update later. It is a living, breathing document. So just keep that in mind. Don't be too hard on yourselves and make realistic goals for your teams. Dana, thank you so much. I think this is a huge, huge piece for them to really get prepped for next year. And you guys, I want you to take these notes. I want you to take these pieces and just go have fun with it. Figure out what needs to happen.

Make it fun, make it a big deal and get that sucker done. Q1 2025.