The Learning of a Growth Culture

The Effective Action Approach

So, after all, training was about a culture of learning where everyone feels comfortable enough to contribute to the effort to improve. It was a culture where everyone on our Team wanted to understand the most impactful ways to use their time to accomplish the outcomes our patients wanted.

By supporting the Team this way, we made their day-to-day job easier, and the success that came from predictably exceptional performance rewarded them with the job security and growth opportunities that come from growing your patient base.

We made no bones about admitting that doing better means that more money is being made.This reality, discussed openly,  provided a shared and consistent motivation across the full Team, both staff and owners, and allowed us to talk more directly about what was happening in the practice and where opportunities existed to improve.   

We also recognized that, consistent with our values, only our patients could tell us what worked and what didn’t. What we wanted the team to do only mattered if it was what our patients wanted them to do. So we shaved off our corners and became part of the team inside that feedback loop and a prime mode of leadership became supporting the team by interpreting the patient feedback they collected.

 
By looking at our results we would know how we were doing, and would lead and organize the effort in support of our Team with their collaboration. This gave us the greatest freedom of all: instead of the “road construction” method, where training is disruptive, we could simply focus on trying to achieve results, measure the outcomes, and constantly adjust and adapt toward more and more predictable success.

 
What initiatives were practicable and which weren’t? Which made the most impact and which didn’t?  From these ongoing experimental efforts we found our 80/20 causes; the relatively few things that were responsible for the most important outcomes. This is where our efforts began to bear fruit: we began to identify the Effective Actions that mattered most.