My friend, a therapeutic professional and part of my athletic training recovery program, was accused by his boss of delivering below his sales quota. He said it didn’t seem right: a simple calculation of his number of appointments times bill rates added up to much more than the business performance reports credited him.
The result was uncomfortable conversations between himself and the operations manager, an owner of the business. You know the kind: “Earn your keep or else.”**
A few weeks later, I’m opening my mail and there’s an insurance claim notification for his office. I notice it says the treating clinician is another practitioner in the clinic, whom I’d seen when I started going there.
After I think about it for a while, I decide maybe there’s a correlation between the accounting discrepancy and the clinic’s sales reporting. I call. Almost miraculously, he answers the phone. I explain what I noticed.
He looks in the CRM system, and he finds 20% of his patients are assigned to other clinicians. His appointment and resulting sales numbers are off by 20%. Numerous clients are misreported. Since one of the clinicians is a clinic owner and a primary marketer of the business, no one thinks twice about the fact that his sales are higher — until the operations manager blames other staff members for not pulling their own weight.
All’s well that ends well, as long as someone is managing the details.
Results
- My friend gets to keep his job.
- The accusations die down.
- The front desk now updates the client records so treating clinician is the one who’s actually treating the patient.
- The clinic is now correctly reporting to the insurance company.
Opportunities For Consideration And Action
- Could you or your company use some help identifying the root cause of unexplained discrepancies in your results?
- Where are your results not meeting expectations?
- Have you looked into the details?
- Where’s the incentive to overcome the hurdle, and for whom?
- How far outside your zone of influence or comfort have you gone to overcome the problem?
- Who is rewarded, and who is hurt, by continuing things as they are?
- What are the costs of achieving a breakthrough?
- Are you ready for a breakthrough, or is status quo good enough?
- What’s the safe choice, and where are the risks, and for whom?
- What values are reflected in the status quo, and what values would be reflected in the case of a breakthrough?
- Live your values.
- Get to the bottom of it!
**Quotes in this article are not exact quotes from the conversations. They are representative of the spirit and content of the conversations, as I recall them.
