From Office Manager to Business Leader: Driving Performance Across Every Location

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Dental Operations Unpacked. I am your host Jake Larson, here with my co host Clint Barry and a friend of ours. Uh, she's actually been on the podcast before for just a little sliver, uh, a little moment of our dicoma episode last year. But this is uh, Katie Robinson. Katie, thank you so much for joining us. We're really excited to have you on today.

Speaker B: Thanks, Happy to be here.

Speaker A: Katie. Uh, when we first met her she worked at Lightwave. Uh, a lot of great people at Lightwave, great things that uh, people learn there. And Katie is now taken on a new role in the last six months. She is the director of operations of Cook Dental Group. We'll let her share her story in just a moment. But she's been able to take some of those skills and things that she learned that light wave to a little bit of a smaller dso, um, and brought a lot of value to that group. So we're excited to um, share this topic with a lot uh, with our listeners today because sometimes the topics that we discuss can be uh, maybe higher level, you know, 30,000 foot view and some of the things that we're going to get to talk about are really actionable things that operators could really take today, um, implement and um, improve their, their operations. So uh, the topic today I will introduce. And then before we dive into it though, I want to give Katie an opportunity to just introduce herself. So the topic today is from office manager to business leader, driving performance across every location. So the office manager role, super important. We're going to talk about how we can um, help office managers to be leaders rather than um, office managers. But before we get into that topic, Katie, let's just start by a quick introduction. Tell us about you, where you are today. Um, and one thing we love to ask people is how did you get into dentistry? We think that that's always a fun little discovery too. So tell us about yourself.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I've been in Dental for 23 years. Uh, it was accidental. I finished my bachelor's degree and wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do next and uh, applied for a job that I assumed was front desk at a dental office. And um, very quickly was cross trained to be a clinical assistant with that dentist, a small single doctor location. Um, and I stayed in sort of that sole proprietorship model for about 14 years, both doing front desk and clinical assisting. Uh, I then sort of switched gears and uh, I went back to school, got a master's degree in healthcare admin. Uh, and I joined Lightwave in 2019 uh, as an office manager and grew with that organization over about a six year period. Learned so much about multi, uh, site operations and lots um, of lessons, lots of great mentors in that space that uh, taught me a lot. Um, and now I'm with Cook Dental and I'm their uh, director of operations.

Speaker A: I love it. It seems like it's a very common path where people don't necessarily uh, set out to be an executive at a DSO and they work their way up. It's one of the reasons why we love dental. Right. It just creates so many awesome opportunities for so many people. Um, which is fantastic. Okay, well let's dive into this. Um, I talked about the topic from office manager to business leader, driving performance across every location. I think it's pretty um, universal. Right. Because uh, people oftentimes are an office manager and then grow into a leadership role, whether that's a regional, whether that's a director like you, um, maybe even more than that. And so they don't necessarily come from a place where they've had that leadership training. They're just, they're just an office manager. Right. And I shouldn't say just enough. They're amazing people but they haven't had that exposure to multi site operational leadership. Um, and so what we're going to talk about today is how though people in that seat that have been an office manager can kind of take uh, maybe uh, reflect and say okay, how am I being an office manager or am I being a business leader in creating vision and direction across the organization. Um, so Katie, in your experience, how would you define the office manager role today? Like uh, just scheduling, staffing, handling day to day issues. Like how would you kind of phrase that people or frame it for people?

Speaker B: I think really good office managers sort of sit at an intersection in a dental practice where they are um, interacting with people, operations, patient experience, financial performance. Um, and so the strength of the role really determines on how scalable and sustainable the growth can be. So an office manager could um, be someone that uh, sits in that seat and is really good at all those things, you know, really understands where he or she sits, understands sort of that they are either the single point of failure or the, you know, collective success of the group. Um, but I think a lot of times we do see office managers who are really just front desk coordinators, um, or they're just there to sort of supervise the team that's at the front desk. Um, maybe they've been in the role or been in the practice for so long, they just sort of naturally evolved to the role. So I think there's two groups that we can see in most dental offices. Either those who really excel at being that um, you know, successful, um, person that's sitting in that seat who can see all of these different things that they influence, or this person that is potentially just a really, a supervisor of the front desk.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: What I find fascinating about this, Katie Clinton. I've had the privilege to be able to scale uh, some companies and I've seen it even outside of dental where people will grow into a leadership role because they were really ah, a top performer, really good at um, managing their, their area. Right. But there's a transformation that has to happen where you can step outside of the day to day and just keeping things afloat and now stepping into a leadership role, you got to have vision, you got to have direction where you're, you're not just keeping things going how they are, but creating a vision and becoming a real leader. So I totally get what you're saying. Where if people are just, if they've just been office manager seat, they're really good at one thing but they, it could become a bottleneck to growth, right. Because they gotta step back and be more of a leader in order to take that next step. So what's getting missed in this? When an office manager doesn't have that leadership mindset, that visionary mindset, what's getting missed and how is that becoming a bottleneck to growth and scaling, uh, a DSO if uh, we're missing that from the office manager seat.

Speaker B: So I think, you know, a lot of times office managers are rewarded for task completion over leadership, right. So they're just really focusing on um, being in reaction mode. Right. So they're putting out those daily fires that are happening. Um, hey, somebody called out sick. I've got to go do this or I've got to find someone to cover them or I'm dealing with, you know, the last three patients of the day canceled. And that's what I have to focus on right now. Um, and I think they just really, when we reward that sort of task completion over leadership, it's very unintentional, right. Because there's day to day chaos that you know, those of us who are not in the practice everyday, boots on the ground, we forget that's how it is. And so there's an unintentional training of behavior that's rewarding the task completion over leadership. So they're missing things like long term planning, team Development, um, maybe financial understanding, um, and I think really ownership of the outcomes of the practice are being missed on the whole.

Speaker C: So is that how you take it to the next step? Is it focusing on those outcomes? Is that how you take people and help guide them?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I think, you know, really teaching them to own those outcomes, um, and really balance that sort of day to day chaos with the more um, sort of long term strategic ownership of outcomes. There's got to be a balance there. And I think training office managers to be that business leader is, is where we bridge that gap.

Speaker C: Do you feel like in some cases that. Do office managers feel overwhelmed already, maybe with just the day to day? And how do you handle that situation where it's like, oh, you're now asking me to do more on top of me handling all these fires every day.

Speaker A: Like what?

Speaker C: You know, I don't. That's kind of putting you on the spot because we haven't discussed that or put that in any agenda or anything. But how would you handle that if that came up?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, uh, understanding that you have to train soft skills as well as hard skills with an office manager. Right. So we have to train them on delegation. What can I take off my plate and delegate to one of my front desk team members? M. I think soft skills like time management and um, you either plan your day or your day runs you. Right. So things like that where we're. I've seen success where soft skill training is very foundational for an office manager, where um, you know, he or she isn't coming to the office, just like, okay, what am I going to get into today? Right. They, they have sort of the training and the ability to tackle those um, the soft skills as well as the hard skills that come with being an office manager. So um, I think that's where we start and I think that's a good foundation for them.

Speaker A: I think that's super insightful because like if you think about the. As you define what the OM role typically can be, and it stems from someone just being really good at keeping the office running. Right. So they come in every day and that's what they're used to. And it's hard for people to see beyond what they've just been good at for the last five, 10 years or whatever it is. So they need that guidance from someone like yourself. Right. And um, from a regional, from a director or whatever to help them see beyond what they know and what they've been good at and feel comfortable delegating. I love that Word that you use, like, you got to delegate, you got to empower the other people around you, so then you have that time for these other things that you're talking about. So that shift in manager mindset, right. I'm not just the one that keeps the office running every day, but I'm a leader and now I've got to delegate to keep things running so that I have time and to do these other. Other things.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: How can you tell when, if, if an office manager is making that transition? They're, I mean, do you go, do you go like, does someone go and like help train them like on site? Like, are you with them and like helping them learn on site? Is that how that works?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think one of the, the easiest ways to do that is just to spend time with the office manager. It can be a little bit of, um, tricky because, you know, when leadership is present in the office, things are always going to run a little bit differently. Right. It's to, you can't be a fly on the wall all the time. But I think just sitting and sort of, um, you know, working with them and seeing how the flow of the office goes and then just sort of seeing how they naturally, um, are tackling issues that come up. Um, you know, we can talk more about this in detail, but I think, you know, helping office managers understand decision making frameworks, what am I allowed to decide? Um, and really helping instill in them the confidence of this is a decision that I can make as an office manager. This is where I need to go to my regional, you know, this is where really creating sort of that standard of, um, you're allowed to decide this. And I think you see that play out in sort of how often are they coming to you with issues and when they come to you with the issues, is it, here's what happened, here's what I decided, just letting you know this is what I did. Or is it every single thing that comes up that they're coming to you for advice and for a solution? I would prefer my office managers to be more solution oriented and to come to me with here's the problem and here's what I think our solutions are and here's what I think will happen if we make those choices. Um, that's what I like to train my office managers to do. And it takes time, it takes experience, um, but you can get them there.

Speaker C: Okay. I like to hear that, that you're training them to do that. I think that's awesome because I think like you said, some people don't understand what the role entails. And so hopefully it's not just like, ah, oh, they're not this way. We need to find a different office manager, which is kind of sad. They don't really get an opportunity to grow as much as you would hope. So it sounds like you teach them, like, hey, this is what I, this is the expectation I have. Like, we want to get to this spot where you don't just come to me with problems, you come to me with solutions, and we work through it together.

Speaker B: Yeah, totally.

Speaker C: Okay. I love that.

Speaker A: I think far too often, even outside of dentistry too, it's like people, um, when performance suffers, one of the things that people just immediately go to is like, well, this isn't the right person, or they're just not doing good at their job, or they're lazy, whatever it might be. And oftentimes it's the fact that they just. They. People generally want to do a good job. They want to work hard, they want to be successful, they want to put the work in, but they're not receiving the support and training to help them progress. Uh, so I think that's amazing what Katie's talking about, especially where these office managers, oftentimes they haven't had leadership opportunities before and they need someone to help them get away from running the practice and stepping into that leadership role. So, Katie, can you give us any specifics? I mean, I'm putting you on the spot here a little bit, but like, tell me about these trainings. Like, what are the, Are there systems? Are there. Can you give us some specifics? You mentioned some of these software, um, skill trainings, but like, ah, is it all in person? Are you using some sort of like, training tool? What are some.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, understanding the mix of, um, of the options available when you're training someone, everyone learns differently. Right. I spent a small amount of my time at Lightwave, um, in HR doing learning and development. And so I did a little bit of just learning on how everyone learns. Right. Some people, um, learn more hands on, um, you know, I think, you know, training them how to do it, having them teach you back, and then they, they're a little more successful. But there's different modalities, I think, of the training. Um, you know, we just onboarded an office manager at one of our locations in the last couple months, and what I think has been very successful is that we partnered her with other successful office managers in our organization and she spent time with them and she went to their location to see what they were doing. And so, you know, it's one thing for a regional or someone in my seat to come in and, and with a checklist of a training plan like this is your onboarding and this is how we're training you. It's something different to have that person go sit with someone who is also doing that job. Um, you know, I'm really an advocate of sharing of best practices and one of the office managers that we had her go sit with is really great at rcm. She's really great at keeping clean claims and her, you know, her AR is very good and so that's a piece that I needed her to know and so we had her go sit with her for a few days. Um, so I think really training the office manager, it comes in different ways and it's everyone's different and you have to be able to use your abilities as a leader to discern what's the best way to train this person. Um, are they going to do better one on one with me? Are they going to do better with me working with them for a week? And then some people just want you to just let them go. And um, you have to follow through obviously on those kinds of folks, but just understanding everyone learns differently and being prepared. You know, some people want to sit down and have videos in front of them. They want to sit down in front of their computer with training videos that have been recorded. Hey, this is how you do this. And there's a video they can watch. Other people I can't learn that way.

Speaker A: Um, so yeah, sounds me personally.

Speaker B: No, thank you. So um, I just think you've got to, you've got to use your discernment as a leader and try to um, use training that that's going to work for that person.

Speaker A: Have you found a need, Katie, to like, ah, clearly create a more clearly defined role so that when people step in as an office manager, like this is at um, Cook Dental Group, like this is what it means to be an office manager.

Speaker B: Yes. We are actually in the process right now of documenting um, our SOPs across the business, not just for office managers, but for business team members, dental assistants, um, our clinicians. So I think one of my mantras, and Dr. Cook would tell you, I say this to him a lot, you can't hold people accountable for a standard that you have not clearly communicated. And so for an office manager either who's in the role that you're having to train up to a leadership seat or who you're bringing in as a new office manager, um, you have to be able to communicate. What are you owning? What are my expectations of you? Um, and then you can hold them accountable. Um, and so we're doing that across our business. Um, and I think a lot of the time operational issues are simply a lack of clarity. Uh, an office manager is not performing to the standard that you think she should perform to or he should perform to. It might be because you haven't actually communicated to them what you want them to do. Um, and what does that communication look like? Well, it has to be thorough and repeated. Right. And you can't just say, well, I told them to do it this way six months ago. Okay, well, you told them to do it. Did you write it down? Did you document it? How did you communicate it? Was it in an email? Was it on a phone call? Was it a team's message? Um, and so I think a lot of times we think we have communicated. Um, but an office manager may be just sitting there going, well, I didn't know that you expected that of me. Right? So just creating that very clear communication. Um, and I think that goes for a lot of the roles in the dental practice. Right. If I had an office manager, we talked about delegating, and if the office manager said, well, I can't trust them to do this, um, or I can't delegate this to them, I think a lot of times we can always go back to, well, do they know the standard for their role? Do they know what their job is? And so we see that with office managers, too.

Speaker C: I love this. Um, yeah, there's so much to unpack here. But. So, um, do you meet with every office manager and say, okay, here's like, the most important KPI or key performance indicators that we're looking at, and here's kind of like where we want you to be. Do you get down to the number level?

Speaker B: We do. Um, that's sort of. That is part of the leadership training. Um, once we get to that point where, hey, I'm training you to be the business leader of the practice. Yes, I do think it is very critical for office managers to understand their KPIs. Um, I think they need to know the why behind the KPI. I think they need to understand where to find the information. Um, our office managers are very strong at that. Um, we actually just switched analytic platforms, and this is a good example. The previous one we were on just the numbers were not accurate, and the new one has much more accurate numbers. And now we're. They're going, wait a minute, this doesn't

Speaker C: Name, names, name, name, name, names.

Speaker A: Clint wants visit after. Once we hang up, she can tell us, okay, sounds good.

Speaker B: But you know, I want an office manager that, who knows the trends of her KPIs and can say, wow, this, something doesn't seem right here. Um, so yeah, understanding KPIs is a big piece of it. Um, and then just sort of, you know, they, they need to understand,

Speaker A: um,

Speaker B: not only the outcomes, but how to influence the outcomes. And that's, that's the piece that ties it together is, well, what do you want my hygiene PPV to be? And if it's not there, I, you know, he or she needs to understand, well, what can I do as the office manager to get it there? Um, you know, if collections are lagging, what am I doing as an office manager to, to impact the result?

Speaker A: I want to just kind of insert, uh, uh, some thoughts here from going back to the title of this episode, right. Like we're talking about people that are office managers that haven't been necessarily accountable to numbers before. They've just completed tasks and it's this mind shift, mind shift that has to happen that they, they, they become a leader and owning all the different components that are leading to these numbers. Right. So there's an accountability that sets in that maybe they haven't had before. Um, and how important this is because without that, like you mentioned at the very beginning, we're just completing tasks and there's no long term planning and there's no training. There's no um. Oh, there, there's. Right. Like I, it makes so much sense what you're talking about, of this mindset shift that has to happen in these, in these people, um, which uh, if it doesn't, it truly is a bottleneck and you're not going to be able to scale successfully. So I just want to uh, as you're talking about numbers and key uh, KPIs and things like that, I think that brings it full circle where you're, you're literally sitting in a leadership role and you're having accountability to the results coming from your practice and learning. How do I influence these as a leader? What training do I need to do? What are the outcomes that I'm responsible for and everything down. And I can't be the one to put out the fires all the time anymore because I have to be able to shift to owning the whole uh, all the KPIs coming from this specific location.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I liked what you said, Katie, and how you have them sit with other office managers. I think mentorship is so huge when you're helping train. And that just reminded me like when we hired new engineers at weave, we would assign them uh, another engineer that had been in the company for at least a couple years and as their mentor. And um, I can't remember where I got that idea. I mean it's so simple. But when we got the idea, it just made a huge difference in onboarding new employees. And I can only imagine that that helps so much. Like you said, she's one officer, is really good at revenue cycle management. That and then you have other office managers sit with her and have her be a mentor. That's gotta make a huge difference.

Speaker B: Yeah, it really does.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. What, what would you say you've seen be the most impactful thing as far as helping office managers shift their mindset? Teaching the office manager to understand and influence the practices performance overall. Is there anything in particular you'd say the this one thing or two things or three things has been most uh, impactful in helping office managers become leaders?

Speaker B: Um, you know, I think uh, like we've talked about really just training them on the KPIs, the benchmarks of the organization. Um, you know, we sit with our office managers and we are, we are currently in the process of teaching them how to read their P and L. Um, that's very important to us. Um, you know, my regional and I can't be the only ones who are responsible for the financial performance of the practice. We're not there every day. Right. I can't look at staffing costs every single day across the business. I need clear leadership on folks who are looking at this regularly and understanding what it means. Um, so you know, those are a couple things that we're focusing on. Um, really owning the schedule, owning the outcomes of the schedule. That's huge for an office manager. You know a lot of offices have treatment coordinators or hygiene coordinators who are owning a fraction of the schedule. Um, but the whole of the schedule, you know, someone has to be accountable for that. Right. So we like to train on that as well. Um, and, and not just the office manager. Everybody in the, in the business and the in the practice needs to understand how that schedule efficiency looks. You know, if we're scheduling to goal, if we're block scheduling, um, those kinds of things. Um. Is that kind of what you were looking for?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's great. Making everyone learn how to read a

Speaker C: profit and loss statement is uh, it's

Speaker A: going to be valuable for their life.

Speaker B: It truly is. It Truly is actually just left a training meeting a couple weekends ago. Um, and a lot of the organizations of the same size and sort of staged similar to my organization. Their office managers are joining the monthly financial review with leaders of the organization and they are presenting their, their P and L for the month. Um, and we, we're going to be moving our office managers into that, you know, in the next couple of quarters here. Um, and I think that that really just ties into the ownership aspect of it. Right. Um, it's not management by intimidation. Like, we're not trying to throw you on a call with people that you don't know and, and make you answer to the, the performance of your practice. But what we're doing is, um, helping just to tie those pieces together to say, oh, if my profitability was lagging last month, where did I lose it? Was it in revenue? Which expenses was it in? Um, because they need to know what buttons and levers to push and pull during the month to get the outcomes that we're looking for.

Speaker A: You're describing a business leader at that point, right? They have transitioned from just being a day to day task manager to someone that's running the business, which is. Yes, exactly. We're talking about.

Speaker C: So cool.

Speaker A: Well, Katie, thank you so much for joining us. Uh, there's, there's so much more to unpack, but we'll maybe we'll have to have you come back another time and share as she's six months into her time at um Cook Dental Group implementing a lot of this actively, maybe we'll do like a check in and see how all the work's going and, and share some results later. But it's, it's been awesome. Before we let you go, Katie, we'd love to just finish with one closing takeaway for our operators listening to this. If someone's sitting there, they're regional, or they're sitting in a similar seat to you and they're trying to figure out, how can I empower my office managers to do more, to take more accountability, to own the results. What would be the big takeaway that you would leave our listeners with?

Speaker B: I think it doesn't have to be very complicated and complex. We're not asking you to, um, train your office managers to be someone who presents with an mba. That's not what we're asking, but what we are asking for is, um, you know, setting clear expectations of your office managers, following through with the training and accountability, supporting them. It's going to drive consistent execution across your business. Um, like I said, the office manager can either be your single point of failure in your practice, or they can be the leader of success in your practice.

Speaker A: It's fantastic. Well, Katie, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, everybody, for listening to today's episode. And, uh, as always, please, like, subscribe, share these episodes. We want to reach as many operators as we can. Share these insights, help people to run their practices better and do more. And we're grateful for people like Katie who take their time with us. So thanks again, Katie.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks, everybody, for listening. We'll catch you next time.