Culture Focused Practice

 Hey. Hey, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper here, and you were listening to the Culture Focused Practice podcast. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for being here. Welcome back, or welcome for the first time.

Let's get into this, shall we? This is a three part series. You're listening to the EOS Bootcamp series, EOS aka Entrepreneurial Operating System.

Created by Gino Wickman, who's awesome. This whole series, the focus of the entire thing is to give you a clear and practical introduction to the entrepreneurial operating system or EOS. Basically, my goal is to show you that you can create structure, accountability, and sustainability in your practice without, you know, feeling entirely overwhelmed or burnt out or exhausted.

This is the third episode in a three part series. Episode one was EOS 101, what it is and why your group practice needs it. Episode two was all about vision and traction. Two pieces of that EOS pie. This episode, episode three, is Right People, real Problems. How EOS helps you solve the shit that actually matters.

Man, if there is any one thing EOS has done, it has helped clarify exactly how to solve problems and to do it in a super efficient way. Incredible. I know you have felt this way before where you can't figure out one, you might not be able to figure out what the hell is going on. Two, you keep thinking like, I feel like there's something off with this person, but I don't know what it is. I don't, I just have the sense, I have a feeling that my spidey senses are tingling.

I feel sort of confused when I ask what's getting done and like I'm given the runaround, but also is work getting done and I can't tell. And I don't know. Sometimes your people are problems like they are the problem. Sometimes they are not the problem. What EOS is good at, when used well, when used accurately, I would say, it's good at helping identify what the actual problem is.

So if we're talking about an agenda, there's a few key items for today. One is context, just why this matters. I think that that's so obvious, but I still wanna talk about it. Two is we're gonna, we are gonna do just a real quick like recap, primer on the EOS components.

I'm not gonna get into depth with any of them. Three is we're gonna talk about right people, right seats. So excited. Four is we're gonna talk about issues. So solving what's real, solving what's actual. Five, we'll talk about the marriage between the two- people and issues. And the last thing is just action steps.

So let's keep going.

Context. Why the fuck does this matter? You tell me why. You know why it matters. We spend so much time as group practice owners as leadership- historically anyway, once you get something like this implemented, you might not spend as much time, but I would say before you have a good system in place, we spend an inordinate amount of time spinning our wheels on surface level bullshit.

What is the problem? We're gonna solve this, but it ends up being a bandaid fix and we don't actually know what's wrong 'cause this thing keeps popping up. We haven't articulated what it is. We haven't identified, we think it's a person, but then that person's gone and the problem's still there. It's just messy. It just is messy.

EOS can help you get to the root, especially whenever you're using it. Well, like I said, I keep saying that so I won't keep saying that the entire time. But when you are using EOS in the way that it is intended, you can clearly identify when you have people issues and when you have system issues, and maybe when you have some of both. 'cause sometimes it's both.

A lot of practice. Chaos boils down to three sort of core things. One is you have the wrong person. We are all human. We all bring on people who maybe aren't the best fits, so you might have the wrong person. Two is, you have the wrong seat. Something about the seat is off. You have the wrong seat. The third piece is that you're solving the wrong problems, and so you're not actually able to get to the root cause of whatever the problem is to solve it for good. That's the point in working through issues, is to solve the problem forever. Really, that's the goal. You know, solve it forever.

If you can't identify the root cause of an issue, you're not gonna solve it forever. It's just gonna keep popping back up. That's why it matters. It matters because you deserve clarity in your business. Your team also deserves clarity. Everybody should be looking at this with their eyes wide open. They see it for what it is, and it's very clearly defined and well put together. That's what you deserve. That's what everybody deserves. That's context. That's why it matters.

So let's do the primer on EOS. Again, this will be real fast 'cause we've talked about this for a couple episodes. Now, if you're tuning in for the first time, it might be news. But if this is not your first time tuning in, if you listen to episode one or two, you'll have a little more of an understanding of what I'm about to say. So, EOS, if you think of it as a giant pie, it's divided into six equal slices.

Those slices are vision, people, data or data, depending on how you say that. Issues. Process and traction. Last time we really got into, oh my gosh, vision and traction, and again, this time we're gonna focus more on people and issues. When we talk about people, we are specifically talking about right people, right seats.

When we talk about issues, we're going to expand and talk about an issue solving track. We're gonna talk about IDS. We'll get to that in a little bit. So let's start with

right people, right seat. When I say right people, and this is the start of where traction starts to, in the best way possible, sort of fold in on itself. It's like layer on itself.

There is of course, there are metrics related to people, you know, are they hitting their numbers? Are they performing at the level that we want them to be performing at? So there's something that's performance and data driven with regard to metrics and a job being completed or a job being lived out.

So that's one whole component. What often goes unassessed or maybe just, I don't wanna say unnoticed 'cause that's painful to think about, but maybe unnoticed or maybe it just is harder for people to put their fingers on- it's values. It's culture, it's a cultural fit. So when you have a right person, what we're talking about is someone who's really values aligned with the practice.

You cannot assess this if you don't have clear core values. So when I talk about the whole vision component of E Os, that very first piece is core values. We can, we talked about that last episode. If you need to go back and listen, please do. But the very first component is core values. If you don't have clearly defined core values, you cannot do this assessment. You can't get a sense for whether or not this person is right based on values.

So it starts with having clarity and understanding on what your values are, and not only like operationalizing them, defining them, what they mean, but also giving some examples for how they live, how they can be lived out. Then when someone is in alignment, you know that's the right person.

So right person is really, is this person a cultural fit? And you're, you're not making it, you know, you're not doing it based on how it feels. You're doing it based on objective, as objective as possible, maybe multiple points of feedback about this.

So it's not just based on how you feel. You're doing this in, in multiple ways to assess values alignment.

The second piece is right seat. So this is broken down into two parts. One is that you have to have a clearly defined seat. So something called an accountability chart in EOS. I'm not gonna get into it, but ultimately there is a role or a seat at your practice, and each seat, there are multiple seats, for the record. Each seat has five like main broad responsibilities.

This is not a position description. It is. It's not a position description, so not all of the responsibilities need to go into the seat. It's, it's very thematic. It's very broad with the responsibilities.

So we have to have a clearly defined seat that is absolutely one piece to right seat. The second piece is right seat in terms of the person being in the right seat, meaning do they have competency, do they have desire, and do they have capacity?

So when we assess people and seat, when we're assessing people in particular, we're gonna do something called a values analysis. This is where you take your core values, you create a baseline for those core values. I'm not gonna get into the weeds with this, but ultimately you have a baseline for, you know, you set the bar, you set the tone, what is the minimum score that people can achieve, and then you assess each person.

If you have clearly defined values with very clear examples of each, it's so much easier to assess whether or not someone is a values fit. So much easier. You're taking the, as much as possible, the subjectivity out of it, and you're making it about behaviors. Do the behaviors align with our expectations around how we show up and engage with each other, which is what values is about?

So the right people piece is. I'm gonna say simple might, might not be easy. 'cause you know, even creating values and operationalizing them and coming up with examples can be, um, it can be hard for people. It can be a little overwhelming for folks to do, but it's simple in that you have values and then you assess people based on those values.

That's a simple part.

The right seat piece. One again, is that you have to have the right seat defined. That is something that can evolve as you go. Accountability charts just evolve as companies grow and expand, and so that seat might evolve over time, but ultimately, let's assume you have a right seat, you have it defined well.

If that is the case, then you are going to assess people based on something called G. G as in gets it. W as in wants it. C as in capacity for it. So G gets it. W wants it. C, capacity for it.

So assuming that you have a clearly defined role and responsibilities for that role, you would take those things combined with a position description and you would assess whether or not a person gets it, wants it, and has the capacity for it. It meaning the job.

And so G WC. In essence, getting it is about do they understand? Do they understand what's expected of them? Do they understand how they are embedded into the system? Do they understand what their responsibilities are, how to fulfill those responsibilities? Do they get it? Do they, do they understand, basically.

W is wants it. This one is, hmm, this one is hard to build if it's not there. In the Ideal Team Player, Patrick Lencioni writes about three key components for I ideal team players. Being humble, hungry, and smart. Hungry would be the equivalent of wants it.

So is this person willing to do what they need to do to be good at their job? Are they interested and willing? Are they, do they want it? You know, based on not only the role itself, but fair compensation, based on the structure of the system, based on where they're placed in the system, based on just all the factors associated with this role.

The third piece is capacity for it. This one is harder. I think this one is really about emotional, logistical, cognitive, financial. All the factors. Do they have just life circumstances? Do they have the capacity to do this job? If this is a 50 hour a week job, just as an example, this is extreme. I don't have anybody working that many hours at my practice, but let's say there's a 50 hour a week job and a person said, I absolutely want this.

I totally get it, and I believe that. And then he said, but I can only work 25 hours a week. They don't have the capacity. That's just a no. It's not like, oh, damn, I really wanna hire them. It's. Man, that sucks. This isn't gonna work. I need this many hours a week. You only have capacity for this many. That's GWC.

So again, GWC is a way of assessing the right seat, assuming the seat is clearly defined. The values analysis is a way of assessing the cultural fit, the right person. It is so much cleaner when you have a way to assess if this person is right for your practice and if they are right for the seat that they should be in.

Here's some really common traps that people fall into. It might be where, and by people, I mean group practice owners, and maybe even leadership. You have soft spots for people. I have, I am a softie. I'm, I'm just a softie at heart. I love people. I like, I, I'm just a softie. So, but they're really nice. Might be something that you say they're really nice.

They, they're, they're trying really hard. Trying really hard and being really nice doesn't mean that they're a people fit, and it doesn't mean that they're a seat fit. They could try really hard and be really nice and still be really shitty at their job. That's expected of them. They might not get it no matter how much you've trained them, no matter what you've implemented.

This is assuming you've sort of exhausted your resources in terms of trying to help them get it. They might be that they don't and that is an answer, even if it's not one that you want. Another one might be another sort of group practice trap, so to speak. Well, they've been with me forever. Oh man. This is also really painful.

Someone being with you forever doesn't necessarily mean that they will continue to stay with you forever. And I don't like saying that out loud. I think it feels shitty. I think it is shitty. It just sucks all the way around, you know? But the reality is that as a business evolves, the needs of the practice, as the needs of the business evolve in terms of the seats that are required, in terms of the expectations for the roles, in terms of the culture of the practice.

Once you get a little more clearly defined with culture, for example, if your core values become more clearly defined, you might people, you might see, people start to almost like drop off. So it's really interesting anecdotally, and also I, I've heard this from a lot of other group practices.

Once they start to implement something in the way of accountability, you see some of your, almost like it's a changing of the guard. You see some of the old guard lose interest and so I it, which is fine. No. No shade, no anger, no, it's just, it's kind of the nature of the beast. That's the way that it goes.

Where they might have really liked the way things were going and the idea of formalizing structure and in a lot of cases streamlining it and trying to achieve uniformity and get more clarity. They, some of those folks start to taper off. They're less interested in being a part of that type of practice. Totally fine. No hard feelings.

So that they've been with me forever. Again, doesn't mean that they're going to be with you forever because things change and also doesn't mean that they get it, wanna have the capacity for it, and it doesn't mean that they're cultural fits. I someone with me for a very long time, and in retrospect had we implemented EOS sooner, probably wouldn't have stayed with me for as long as they did because they were not a, they were not a culture fit.

Okay. Another thing, like a group practice trap you might fall into. Again, we're talking about assessing people and seats and so we're still in the umbrella of right people, right seat. One other thing is, I don't wanna hurt their feelings. I just feel you so hard on this. I do not like being the bearer of bad news.

I, it sucks. It just sucks. It still has to take place, but it also sucks. And so I don't mean to poo poo your feelings in this regard, but the reality is that ownership and leadership is about creating vision and ensuring alignment as much as it is about holding boundaries for that vision and to stay in alignment, which often means having really shitty conversations, really hard conversations with people that you might care about deeply.

That's just it. Like that is literally just it. It's just the sort of a constant state of tension. You just have to be in that space. So I have nothing to say to make you feel better. It just kind of sucks. One of, one final thing I'll say about this though is that all those things, like they're nice, they've been with me forever, I don't wanna hurt their feelings. That's all fine.

But the reality is that when you have misalignment, it's going to cost you somehow. It's gonna cost you somehow, probably culturally speaking, and I assume I sort of make the connection between culture and then employee health and engagement and ultimately profit for the practice.

So sustainability and it's gonna impact performance. So if there is somebody, let's say you have a team of 10 and nine of them, they get it, they want it, they have the capacity to do it, and then you have one person who maybe doesn't really want it and you're not really sure if they get it either.

Everybody notices that one person. They might not really care 'cause they only half own it. They think, well, I won it, but they're not really showing any evidence to support that. The rest of your team notices that. And so that ends up having an impact on your entire team, with the exception of this one person who, if you could duplicate, you wouldn't hire again. So something to keep in mind.

So let's shift from right people, right seat to issues. I love the issue solving track. I said that already of EOS. That pie, that, that slice in particular is just one of my favorites. It's not uncommon that owners, practice owners or leadership will identify people as issues.

They say, well, this person's just an issue. In my experience, the issues are usually process or systemic or lack of clarity or leadership issues and they're trickling down and then it's showing up in in this person, but it's not actually them. That's the issue. So as an example, this is a recent example actually, we don't have an maternity to leave policy at my practice.

We haven't had anybody really go on leave in the past however many years. And so we've never had a need for a maternity leave policy. With regard to how communication takes place, not only internally but also externally, like in terms of the clients, about the timeframes, about how long maybe the physical office space will be held, like what timeframe we allot for, whether you can come back part-time or full-time.

We've had nothing in writing. We haven't had to, and so it hasn't been something that we really tended to. Not smart, but you know, there, there we are.

So what happened recently is, you know, there was a little bit of frustration at lack of communication with regard to something related to maternity stuff at my, at my practice.

And I, you, I think you all know at this point, I, I don't care about feelings. I mean, no, I mean to say I love feelings, but I don't care if- it doesn't phase me. If people have unpleasant feelings, like I assume that my team, my employees, my leadership team. I assume people will be annoyed with me or frustrated with me randomly.

And so if it's flipped and I'm frustrated, or if my leadership team is frustrated, it just happens like we're all human. You know? We work together closely, so there's some frustration. So my leadership team is frustrated by lack of communication. And really what's happening is that we haven't communicated anything.

And so it seems like, well, this person isn't being communicative, but the reality is that no, we haven't been communicative. We have not been clear about what we expect, what we need, who should be the point person on anything related to maternity time leave or time off or anything like that.

It's on us. It's on leadership. That's not a people issue. That's a systems issue. It's a process issue and it, that's seemingly small, so to speak. I mean, I, I think also that just can highlight how even small issues related to people aren't necessarily about people. It's really, they really can be broader, really can be about, oh, we just need something in place about this.

No huge overhaul, no huge glaring issue. We just need to clean this up a little bit. Very, very simple.

How we can do something like that and how we identify this is via an IDS framework. So when you have issues, what we then have to do is use IDS to fix them.

So I is identify the issue, and so this might be something like the identification is, you know, no communication about maternity time, about taking time off, something like that.

Okay. So that's the identified issue, but the reality is that. That's not the core issue. And so between I and then D, which is discuss and debate, we have to get to the root cause of what the core issue is. And we need to talk all about it. Figure out, okay, what's actually the problem? How do we solve it?

And then, and then we shift into how do we solve this forever. S is solve. Solve it forever. Solve it so that it goes away for good. We're never gonna hear, hear about this again.

That's what IDS is. What is the issue? And I say issue with quotes. I'm gonna say issue with quotes because people get worried about that term or they say, well, it's not really an issue, but it doesn't have to be an issue. It could be a fucking idea. It could be a concept, it could be something you're excited about that you just wanna share. It could be something you're offering more clarity on.

The purpose of spending time doing IDS is to collectively get to the root cause of the issue. It's not for the person bringing the issue to have it figured out when they bring it up.

So saying communication around maternity stuff is the issue. But the real issue, once we again talk and get to the bottom of all the real issue is that we don't have anything figured out on our own end. Leadership hasn't clarified any processes or systems, so. That's the issue.

And so from there, the solution might be, of course, streamlining this process, getting more clarity on the communication that needs to take place, both internally and externally.

The expectations around leave all of those things as well as specific to dos with, okay, this person needs to follow up directly with X employee and. Share this, share what we clarified, and then get some details from them. And then this person needs to communicate with the team about this new system in place, or this new process, even if it doesn't impact most people- just being communicative about that.

A lot of people really suck at IDS because they think that they get to the heart of the issue, but they haven't. This is where, man, it's both, uh, probably a blessing and a curse. I, it's hard for me to leave any stone left unturned. I really feel like I tend to ask why until I've exhausted every resource. I want to fully understand something.

Sort of the question you might start to ask yourself is if you've identified what you think the issue is, you might ask what else could possibly be going wrong to influence this and why it's showing up right now? And is there anything else that could explain this thing?

If it's not a person, is it a system? What system might it be? Have I seen any evidence of this otherwise? What else could be going on? What could better explain it? What are the ways in which I could seek to solve this forever?

And so you could start to ask these questions to try to develop this really full picture of the quote issue. And from there, once you get to the root cause, the solution presents itself. Almost always the solution presents itself.

I always think about data with this. You can't figure out the type of data analysis you wanna do until you know the type of problem you're seeking to solve. That you don't say, I'm gonna do this analysis and then you go down and figure out what the problem is. You have to get to the heart of the problem. And from there, that type of analysis expresses itself. It's the same here. It gets to the heart of the issue. From there, assuming you've exhausted all the sort of resources, overturned all the rocks, the solution will express itself.

So, one final thing about this is a very simple question to ask. If you're seeing a person come up, a question I like to ask because I might lean into, it's probably systemic rather than it's people. A little more than some others. Something that I've gotten in the habit of saying, and that we use as a pretty common reframe at our L 10 or weekly meetings and when we're talking about issues.

We say, is this specific or is this global? Is this a people thing or is this a practice thing? And it's a waste for us to right away figure out, okay, is this, is this one person which might indicate it's more people issue versus. This is actually like multiple people that this is happening to, or that are involved in this recurring problem that would indicate it's a practice issue, it's a systems issue.

Okay, let's marry these two, let's marry these two. And then we're gonna, we're close to wrapping things up, how issues and people work together. So you cannot solve issues without the right people. If you don't have the right people, what you end up having is a lack of ownership. You have a lack of investment, you have a lack of follow through, you have a lack of engagement. You have lack of anything.

The culture is off. The people seem a little like, I don't know. I don't know if I wanna do that. You see people that aren't really taking initiative to seek to solve whatever the issues might be. So if you are running into a recurring problem, maybe in leadership, for example, where you're trying to solve issues and one person keeps trying to shirk what seems like should be their responsibilities, or they keep trying to push back on some of the solutions that involve them doing some of the work, or they don't seem super invested or engaged. You might start thinking, okay, this is a people issue, but it's a leadership team, specific people issue.

And so when you have a person who is consistently disrupting the flow, you might start to look at people related issues with that person.

Additionally, you can't support the right people without solving the right issues. So if you have the right people in place, but you're solving all the wrong issues, you keep doing bandaid, bandaid fixes, you're not bringing clarity to the table, you're not bringing clarity to the processes or systems. You are likely not being communicative about things.

And if you're not communicative about things, you also can't set clear expectations. Or maybe you have an expectation, but it's not backed up by anything in writing or any sort of verbal communication or written communication and so people are dropping the ball. They're not supported in what they need to get done because we're not actually solving key issues that we need to be solving.

When you have both of these things dialed in, I can't emphasize this enough, when you have the right people and you're solving the right issues, your practice is literally a self-contained, healing, organic growing entity. It, it will. You'll proactively see problems. You'll have people that are solving the right issues effectively and quickly.

You'll see stuff go away forever, like actually go away forever. You'll see systems that get implemented that are clean or maybe a process where you're like, damn, that really cleans things up. You'll see people take initiative. They're proactive rather than reactive. It's a self, I, that's why I say self-contained almost like this.

Um, self-fulfilling this, this closed feedback system in a really positive way, and the healing, the solving of the issues, all of that is inside the system, but all it does is helps the system expand to contain the growth. Your vision is clear, you're moving in the right direction, you're solving the right issues. You'll see this thing seems really complex, but it boils down to a few key things, issues, people, data, vision, et cetera.

Whenever you ignore people issues or you keep bandaid fixing issues, it's, I'd say it's gonna be a dumpster fire. But I mean, I. It will go to shit. It's just gonna go to shit. And you might think, no, it's not that bad. Like, I've got it under control. For now, you might, but at some point it's gonna be too much.

A lot of people, you're solving things with band-aids, you're not solving issues for good. You're not putting tasks and responsibilities where they belong because you don't have clarity on who owns what. So having people in issues. Clear, streamlines everything for everybody not having it turns into a fucking mess.

So here's a takeaway for you. Something I want you to start doing. Well, there's a couple.

No, let's just do one, actually, let's just do one. Audit your team. So using the concept of right people, right seats, let's assume, let's assume a couple things. I'm going to assume you have clearly defined roles. I'm going to assume that you have clearly defined core values. If that's the case, I want you to go through your entire team and rate them on a one to three point scale for each value.

Three being always present, two being sometimes there sometimes not, one being not really present at all. And then assess them using GWC. Do they get it? Do they want it? Do they have the capacity to do it? It being their role, their job, and the answer can only be yes or no. You find yourself, well, sometimes they seem like they want it- that's a no. If it's not a yes, it's a no.

So go through. I want you to audit your team. That's what I want you to do, right people, right seats, using a values analysis and assessing, using gwc.

Lastly, call to action. A call. Arms. Three things. Of course, I like things than threes. Three's just a really nice number.

One, subscribe to the podcast if you're nodding along with this. If this resonates with you at all. There's just more of this coming at you, so make sure you subscribe. Make sure you stay in tune with everything. Go back and listen to the rest of the episodes if you have it, especially for the EOS bootcamp, EOS bootcamp excuse me. And stay tuned with everything else coming out in the future. That's one thing.

Two, join my free Facebook group totally free. No questions asked. Well, technically there are questions to get into the group, but those are easy to answer. Www www.facebook.com/groups/eos collective. This is a Facebook group for group practices who are seeking to use e os in their world. So The E OS Collective for Group Practices.

Three, sign up for my EOS mastermind wait list. It's a waitlisted thing, so I do it twice a year, twice live. I. Monthly trainings and twice live monthly working meetings. Portal, of course, with all these resources, random recordings that are EOS related and a private community.

The whole intention for this EOS Mastermind is to help people integrate EOS into their practice. I'm not an EOS implementer. I have not, I hope I have not ever purported to be that because I am not at this point in my life, even though that is a future goal. And I really fucking love EOS, and I really like helping people integrate this because I know how impactful it can be. It's an incredible thing to implement.

So sign up at my website, www.taravossenkemper.com. Hover over work with me, and then EOS Mastermind and you can join the wait list there.

It's been great seeing you. I hope this has been helpful. If you have any questions, follow up with me. Like I said, make sure you subscribe to stay in tune with everything and otherwise, thanks for making this awesome.

Seriously, would not be awesome without you. I'll see you next time. Bye.