Culture Focused Practice

Hey, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper here, and you were listening to an episode of the Culture Focused Practice Podcast. Thank you for being here. Welcome for the first or fifth, or hopefully hundredth time.

Today we're talking about the perception of laziness. So if your team is underperforming or the dragging their feet or just not taking initiative, it's probably not laziness. It's fog, and that fog is actually a leadership issue.

So today's episode is titled, Your Team Isn't Lazy, they're just foggy. The Real Cost of Half Clarity.

If you ever spend time wondering why your team doesn't follow through, even though you thought that you were clear. The reality, a very likely reality is that half clarity ends up feeling like micromanagement to you and then confusion to them.

So we're gonna talk about how lack of clarity masquerades is poor performance, how not being clear on wow, any number of things just feeds into people not being able to do the job effectively or even having a real sense for what the job is or what the expectations are around the project.

We're also going to be talking about what you're probably assuming that your team should just know. I'm totally guilty of this. I wish people could read my mind. That would be incredible. Sometimes it would be incredible. And then also we're gonna talk about how to use E OS based tools to create direction without babysitting.

So if you are stuck in the dreaded loop of repeated reminders and issues with deadlines and underwhelming results, then this episode is for you.

Before we go further, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. You can do that easily in any number of ways. Additionally, sign up for the EOS Mastermind wait list, which launches very, very soon and waitlist gets first access and there's limited number of spots and some are already taken.

Go to www.vosskemper.com/e os - mastermind, you can find information there.

Okay, here's our agenda for the day. Number one, lazy is the symptom. Number two, where half clarity sneaks in. Agenda item number three, what real clarity sounds like. Item number four, how to reset without micromanaging I ab hor micromanaging, I fucking hate it. And lastly, building a culture of clarity for long term. And I guess technically number six would be like a call to action. So we'll do that as well. Alrighty, let's begin, shall we?

Like I said, agenda item number one, lazy is the symptom. If lazy is the symptom, then fog is the root. That's the actual problem.

Often something looks like disengagement, and again, I'm not gonna say a hundred percent of the time, I'm gonna say often, like, let's assume that you bring on people that you're enthusiastic about and they vibe with your culture and they, there's a lot of good moves that you've made.

You've, you've cleaned up a lot of things with regard to hiring and the people who are at your practice. Cool. We're gonna operate from that assumption, like that's the baseline. If that is the case, then what looks like disengagement is typically ambiguity. And what I mean by that is it might look like someone is checking out, but the reality is that they just aren't really sure what's expected of them.

And so they're left in this a little bit of like a limbo state. Like, uh, I guess I'll just wait here to be told what to do. You know, they're sort of looking around like. Waiting for the boss to give them the go ahead, to move in X direction or to get Y done or to start on task Z, whatever the thing might be.

So it's just ambiguity, it's unsureness about what to do and how to move forward. They want to succeed. I mean, if you have the right people in place, again, we're making that assumption for today's episode. The reality is that the team wants to succeed. Your team wants to succeed because if they do, the entire group does.

If you succeed, they succeed. And if they succeed, you succeed. And then, you know, it has this whole ripple effect as well. Your team can't succeed if they don't understand the target or the rules. So I might want my son to win at dodge ball, but if he doesn't know how to throw a ball or what the rules of the game are, or where the bounds of the game is, there's no way he's gonna succeed.

Like there's no chance that it's, it's not going to happen. It's the same for your team. If they don't have a sense for like, what's the outcome again, we'll say target or expected outcome, and then what are the rules of engagement or the, the rules or expectations around achieving this thing? It, it's, it's just not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. Period.

So really when we have this like fuzzy communication around things, when we don't have clear expectations or targets or outcomes or rules or whatever language you wanna use, it kind of doesn't matter, it's all the same.

If we have fuzzy communication, we erode trust. That's one thing, because we are not being clear about something, and so they learn that. They can't really trust what we say.

Reworking things is another, that more than one person maybe has to do the same task to get it done or has done the same task because things weren't clear. Or one person has to redo a task that they thought they did accurately because there wasn't clarity in the first place.

I, I'm immediately thinking of my, one of, one of the people at my practice who's been with me for a very long time, and she, historically it's much less so because we've just been through so much and talk so openly that we've evolved together.

There are absolutely moments in our history, in our relationship where she has said you tell me to do this thing and then you step in and you do something else with it. She's right. I for sure have done that and that was a little bit more pre EOS for the record, but still like it happened.

I was doing that, I was saying, well, you do this, and I would get in there and get my hands, you know, dirty with something that shouldn't have been something I was fucking around with in the first place. It shouldn't, it wasn't mine to own and I just didn't have the, the systems or the accountability chart and the processes in place in order to respect that she has territory to oversee.

So with clear target, with clear outcomes, and with clear rules, now she can clearly own something and say to me, Tara, you need to, you need to chill out, man. Like back off. Let me have this, and I can say, oh yeah, my bad. You're right.

So my point is she would either have to rework something that I wasn't clear about and slash or I would step in as she was working something and then come up with something that she had to then adjust what she was doing, and it was a pain in the ass.

Another cost of fuzzy communication is burnout. So ultimately I would say the trust erosion and the rework feed into this, but it's burnout. Like if it just continues to happen over and over, if I kept stepping on her toes, if trust kept being eroded between me and the people around me, they're gonna burn out.

I'm gonna burn out and they're going to burn out. So I would say that's a big cost. There's a lot of costs, but those are some, and the burnout is a major one because it's much harder to come back from full fledge, like full on burnout than it is from, we've had a mishap or two.

So moving on, let's move on from lazy as the symptom.

We're gonna shift to agenda item number two, which is where half clarity sneaks in. I love this. I mean, I guess the short version is that it sneaks in in a lot of different ways. One is if there is a vague vision and slash or unclear priorities, and then the caveat to the unclear priorities is that if you keep changing your priorities, they're not priorities, they're just the new flavor of the quarter.

Your priorities and your most important things to get done in the next 90 days or over the course of the year, should be a part of your either one year plan or three year picture, or 10 year target. Everything should be intentional.

And so if they keep getting changed, they sort of, um, I'm, I'm gonna say lose their luster, but I don't think that's the right language because luster would imply something like shiny and new.

They lose their significance. I think that's actually the best way of saying it, is that they lose the, the weight that they should carry. So that is the unclear priorities and slash or if the priorities keep changing. But the flip side, like I said initially, is that big vision piece. And so if you don't have, if you don't really have a sense for like, oh, we're going there like that, that's what it's gonna look like.

That's just where half clarity comes in. Because if I'm rowing there and my person thinks we are actually going 20 degrees the in the other direction or like, you know, that direction, but slightly over 20 degrees. We're going in different directions. Initially we might not feel that hit, but if we've traveled 500 miles at a 20 degree difference, that's a major, major difference in destination.

So we don't want vague vision. Another thing that ties into half clarity sneaking in is when job roles are implied but not defined.

This can really sneak up. If you start to move people into. Like leadership based positions where you move somebody from, let's say a, uh, like an admin level position or a clinical position, you move them up to some sort of leadership or just you modify what it is that a person is, how they are employed, their, their job title is literally changing. They have a different seat now. They're sitting in a different seat.

I think it's more common than not that people will do that and then they don't follow up with a new position description. Or a new like, here are the responsibilities for this role. So then people have sort of this vague sense for, oh, I'm in this new role and I think these are the important things, but there's not anything in writing or there's not anything that is followed up with them, like maybe there's an email that says like, we're gonna have you do this instead, and then it just ends right there.

Or maybe there's a new position description, but it falls flat there and there's no new access to folders or resources or tools required to do that job effectively.

That's one, a huge pain in the ass, but that's again, ties into this half clarity, sneaking in piece where we're sort of like moving in this direction, but we're not actually following through entirely.

It's like, I think like in throwing a ball or in pitching or in bowling, like or in tennis, or you have to have a follow through. You don't swing and then stop once your bat hits the ball. You don't throw a pitch and then stop as soon as the ball releases your hand. There's a whole follow through. Your body continues through with this motion.

We need to be thinking in the same way when we are moving people into different roles or bringing somebody on into a role. Of course. Okay.

Another way that Half Clarity sneaks in is. This is the bane of my fucking existence. Meetings with updates, but no outcomes or decisions or tasks. Ugh. I just can't. I literally just can't. It drives me crazy. Waste of my time.

I love my people. I'm not here to just, I don't want a status update. I wanna work through issues and I wanna figure out what do we need to do next? Where are we going? How are we moving there? I am not interested in just random updates on everything.

So if you are hosting meetings on a consistent basis, and you are not walking away with specific outcomes, key decisions, clearly owned tasks or to-dos, something that's going wrong with your meeting. That's gonna be where half clarity, sneaks, sneaks its way right in.

And then one last piece where half clarity can sneak in is with SOPs, standard Operating Procedures that exist exclusively in your head.

They take up all the space, all your mental space, but they're not anywhere written down. This might be fine if you're an independent practitioner, but if you're running a group practice and you need people to be doing various roles, and at some point you're gonna step out of the thing that you're doing, you're gonna need those bad boys written down.

I don't like SOPs. My preference is just to record core processes. So typically what I will do is I might train somebody to do the job if, if I am the one doing the training, which at this point I'm not really that person, but if I was the person training the one doing the job, which used to be me, I will train them to the do the job and then I have them start recording the steps that they're taking.

So they end up being the one who is writing out the SOPs because that's not a strength or interest of mine. And so you don't have to necessarily be the one to do this. You would need to be the one to train a person thoroughly in order for them to write out the SOPs, or dictate in to chat GPT and have it generate the SOPs for you, do anything. So just get them outside of your head, whether it's via training somebody and having them, writing them down, writing them down yourself if you are that person, dictating them into some transcription software, do something.

That way there's a very crystal clear idea for what is expected, what are the SOPs for whatever this role is.

Okay, so that's wrapping up where half clarity sneaks in. We're gonna transition into what real clarity sounds like.

I love this. There's just three things here. One is clear expectations. So what does done look like? If you, just a quick call back to earlier in the episode, we talked about a target and rules. Target would be what does done look like? When this thing is entirely, entirely complete, what does it look like?

Secondly, related to what does done look like is who owns it, and then by when. So what does done look like? Who owns it and by when? That is very, very clear. It would be very difficult for someone to say they didn't know what was expected or by when. So that's real clarity.

Um, a second component for real clarity is a shared vocabulary for a variety of things, but specifically priorities and decisions. I always think of relationships as ending up, having shorthand ways of communicating. So I might just make one comment and my husband has a whole backstory. He has a whole chain of events between us that fills in the gaps.

When you have a system of operating, you are sort of forcing the shared vocabulary. So when I say something like Drop it to issues, my whole team knows what that means.

If you're not familiar with e os, you might not have any idea. Or if I say, let's put that on the VTO, they know what that means. We have a shared system and a shared way of being with regard to the structure and vocabulary for that structure.

And so it allows us to be very, very crystal clear with each other. And when there's not clarity, we have a space in the issues list where it might go. If I say, Hey, I've been saying this, but I'm not sure that we're all on the same page now. We talk about it, we get clarity. Everybody leaves on the same page, and then we go from there.

The last piece to what real clarity looks like is having your vision and values actually show up in conversation. So these things should not just be written down. They should be a part of how you are discussing your future, how we exist together, when you're talking about people, employees, each other, you might reference your values.

Not just, you might reference your values, but you should reference your values. You should be thinking and talking actively about how we exist together in terms of values, as well as where are we going?

Well, this is what we're going for. This is why this is important. Okay, cool. That's right. I need to get back on my rock. I've been falling off lately. I need to refocus. I know where we're going. I know why it's a priority. I understand why I own it.

Everything is sort of crystal clear and being able to actively and openly talk about vision and values as a way for ensuring that it remains crystal clear.

So that's where that real clarity piece really, you know, comes to life.

Okay, so two more agenda items. Agenda item number four is how to reset without micromanaging.

A few key things here. One is the role of a weekly leadership team meeting for rhythm and feedback. So you've heard me talk about L 10. If you've heard any podcasts before, you've probably heard me reference L 10. L 10 is a leadership team meeting. It's a weekly, 90 minute meeting with a very set structure and agenda.

In that meeting, this is where the rhythm and the feedback loops come in. One, the rhythm is the weekly meeting, the cadence, the timing. It's literally the same time, same day, every single week. No exceptions unless we all collectively agree to change the time and day. So we know exactly what is expected.

Additionally, there are key items on the agenda that we work through, and we do it in a matter of, you know, there's time limits on on certain agenda items, and the feedback loop component in L 10 for an example is we are giving feedback on our rocks, our quarterly priorities. We're giving feedback on our to-do items from the previous week. We are giving feedback on our scorecard by nature of entering data and then deciding if we wanna take anything to the issues list and we are actively processing through issues and then setting new to-do items to follow up on the next week.

That's what a feedback loop looks like. We're closing all of our gaps and we're staying tuned into the vision and moving forward in the direction that we are trying to move forward in.

Additionally, with L 10 meetings, there might be stuff that comes up on the issues list that can't be solved right then, and so it could be where I. If there's a people related issue, for example, maybe my, the visionary, me or my integrator, or my DCO, my director of clinical ops, maybe one of us needs to go to another person to solicit more feedback.

So the other thing it does is that it gives us opportunity for further exploration with our team when and as needed. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. This has happened countless times where it's like, Ooh, actually we need to follow up and ask more about this. Like let's schedule something with that person.

Or even resolving an issue related to somebody is there's gonna be a follow up for that person. So feedback for me is gonna be bi-directional. Either we are seeking it from somebody else or we are seeking to give it to another person.

A second way to reset without micromanaging is documenting decisions so that you're not just trying to remember all the shit that you are deciding to do. I, I know that I'm not gonna remember things. So this for me is like I have to have it in writing and even then I might forget that it's in writing, but I trust myself to document, or I trust myself to bring up that we need to document and so at this point, I trust that most things are documented.

I can tell you that my group, and I'm not saying this is standard because I don't, honestly, I don't know. EOS talks about having core processes documented, which is great 'cause they should be, and so theoretically what I'm about to say is sort of an alignment with core process being documented, but we have processes documents for all of the various meetings, and sort of like broad roles that we have.

For example, we have a clinical handbook that is probably the most robust aside from our, you know, employee manual. We also have a marketing processes document. It's something that's not relevant for an employee manual and it's not relevant for a clinical handbook, so we created a marketing processes document.

We have an ops team processes document. So billing client care, there's, they have a place where they, when they make decisions or when they come to outcomes, they realize this isn't documented anywhere. We need it in writing. So they have their own processes document.

And we have a leadership team processes document. So when we decide things as leadership about how we're handling something or why we're doing something one way versus another, that's not relevant for any of the other documents. It's gonna live in leadership processes, document.

This might feel like a lot, but the reality is that once you start to document some key like decisions and processes, it doesn't continue with the same frequency. It's like having a few of the core ones down. It starts to like pitter out from there, if that's the word, pitter. It starts to like slow down. It's just not as intense sweeping with leadership team processes, document. I don't think we've added anything. Um, fuck.

It's probably been months, honestly. So we might add something once every few months at this point. I think same with ops, I think same with the marketing processes document. Absolutely. Same with the clinical handbook. I mean, things just aren't added as frequently because once it's created, a lot of the stuff is just referencing back what we have created to see what we decided and why.

Additionally, do not confuse a process document with an SOP. Hell no. They're not the same thing. Not for us. They're not the same thing. I have zero interest in document in every single step of leadership team decisions or how we're gonna do whatever the thing might be.

This is a broad processes document, so it might be vaguely or broadly about how we made a decision or the process we decided to use consistently in order to make key decisions. It's gonna be something broad like that. It's not gonna be granular, like that's not the the point of it.

Oh, the other thing I created is, uh, it's a document for the entire team to have view only access to, and then leadership team can update. And so ultimately I wanted a place where we could clarify things that we may be streamlined or tweaked, or policy updates or strategic decisions or tabled conversations.

I, I just want them to have access to some of the bigger moves behind the scenes. Even if it doesn't directly impact them, I like the idea of that level of transparency.

Not a process document, literally just a way of like cataloging decisions. And I break it down on a quarterly basis. So the current quarter is always at the top, and then it's, you know, going backwards from there.

I think the point in all of this with regard to documenting decisions and processes is that we don't wanna be reliant on memory because we're gonna forget. And I know if you ask me one thing and then I'm hungry and tired and just got off five meetings. I'll give you an answer, but if you ask me that same thing when I'm well fed, well rested and have had a full day of no meetings, I'm probably gonna give you a different answer.

Like, I don't want my mood or my team's moods to show up with day to day decisions. I, I want things to be consistent and so having something in place just to document is really, really helpful. It might seem like a big bite, but it's not that hard to maintain, which is nice.

Last component to resetting without micromanaging is making space for quote, I'm not clear end quote, without weaponizing it against people. So this is something that I would encourage you to say if you're feeling unclear or if you hear it. To encourage the feedback. If I'm not clear on something, I know for a fucking fact nobody else is around me.

And I, I, I just know if I'm fuzzy about something and I, if I feel unsure or confused, I know that people around me are either feeling the same way or they think they're on solid ground, but they're not looking at the angle that I'm looking. And so then I end up bringing them down with me. But from that, we discuss and we troubleshoot and we figure out what's going wrong or on and how to achieve clarity.

If I hear that from somebody, I don't take it as defensiveness or resistance or laziness or anything. I take it as, oh fuck, cool. What did we miss? Like tell me your understanding, and then I'll help fill in the gaps. Or they're gonna ask questions that we haven't thought about. And so they're inadvertently poking holes in something that we have developed, which only serves to help us shore up more what we developed.

So I like when people feel confused and if they say I'm not clear about something, I mean, I don't like it for them. I, I know I don't like that feeling for them, but I like what can happen from that process.

So those are ways for resetting without micromanaging.

Our last agenda item is building a culture of clarity long term. So I would say this is, I mean vital. It's like a vital organ or something. You know?

One is normalizing, revisiting, and refining roles as your practice grows. I know when, when we started the accountability chart and then the evolution from there, we probably changed quarterly for, I don't know, three or four quarters in a row. It was something ridiculous.

My point is your accountability chart. As an example, might evolve every 90 days. Every time you go to look at it for the next year and a half, you might be making changes. The changes should be reflective of the organic space, the organic evolution and process that your group is in.

It shouldn't be forced change, but my point is it's normal. And so I'm gonna not only internalize that, but when I go to make these updates to my team, I. I'm also gonna try to normalize that with them, where I might say, Hey, I know we keep making little tweaks and changes to the accountability chart.

Here's why. Here's what's coming up. Here's how this is happening. I want them to know that this isn't a sign of strain and this isn't an issue, but this is a healthy process of an evolving and company that's seeking to continue to streamline and be efficient and grow and scale with intention. So that's one thing.

Secondly I, we need to tie clarity to autonomy. So in my mind and I, I think this is just sort of broadly true, you may disagree, which is fine. One, clarity is kindness, period. Two, clarity creates freedom.

If we can create clarity around expectations and rules and target and roles and all of those things, we are helping people relax into the structure and thus feel a sense of autonomy within the role that they are fulfilling or within the project that they're building out.

That's what it does. Clarity is not only kindness, it also helps to create a sense of freedom and autonomy. People feeling like they have some autonomy is very important to me.

The last thing for building a culture of clarity long term is I think getting in the spirit of using EOS.

So there is a lot of structure in EOS, but I would not say that you should use it like a set of rigid tools. Instead, it should be used as a lens to help you consistently clean out the fog over time. It might be your first time implementing your first quarterly, your first two day, your first L 10 meeting, your first full team rollout, whatever the fuck it is.

It might be that the first time you do this, everybody notices less fog, but it's not all gone. That's totally fine. That is fine and normal. The reality is that by continuing to implement something like EOS and maintaining that structure. You have baked in a way to continue to air out the room via the issues list, via the VTO, via the people's analyzer, the processes component.

I mean, the entire thing is intended to help clarify where you're going, who you are, how you're getting there, what's important, how we deal with problems, et cetera, all of those things.

Don't get stuck on it needing to be done rigidly. The flexibility is that there's a structure in place and how you exist within that structure is sort of yours to own.

There is some autonomy within structure the same as what I just said. Clarity is kindness and it also equals its freedom and autonomy. EOS is a structure that creates a lot of clarity and with it a sense of agency, freedom, autonomy.

That sort of does us for today. So all that we covered today, you know, this is the stuff that we will troubleshoot inside the EOS Mastermind.

If you are fucking tired of the fog and you really wanna build a culture of clarity, structure, accountability. And success. I'm sorry I couldn't help myself. If you want that culture, clarity, accountability, et cetera, just join me for the next round.

Doors are gonna open very soon. There already are some spots filled, so I would say you need to join the wait list, ASAP, you can do that at www.taravossenkemper.com/eos-mastermind. I say join the wait list, ASAP because they get first dibs access when the doors officially open.

So it's been real, it's been fun, and I will catch you on the flippity flip. Alright, see ya. Bye.