As Tony the Tiger would say, Indiana was Grrrrrreat!

Hello Again,

What a great time I had speaking to the members of the Indiana State Management Association and a big thanks to my sponsor, Royal Canin!!!

I had a chance to visit the Broad Ripple Animal Hospital and it’s Administrator, Brenda Tassava.  You should see this operation!  It’s not too often that I have a chance to identify such clear evidence of an empowered, respected and motivated team.  If you’ve never been to Broad Ripple, it’s more of a campus than it is an Animal Hospital.  To point, as we tooled about the suburbs of Indianapolis, it seemed like Brenda was pointing out yet another side branch of Broad Ripple’s remarkable care facility.  Our first stop was their administrative building, just a few steps from the Broad Ripple Animal hospital itself.  As soon as you walk in, you see a cozy room outfitted with about 40 chairs, a large screen and any number of posters, work sheets and motivational slogans from meetings past.  Immediately one is aware that this is an animal hospital where meetings generate the input of all; where employees are looked to for solutions; where goals are clear and progress tracked. You know those angry signs you see at practices?  ALL LAB FORMS MUST BE INITIALED BY THE PERSON TAKING THE SAMPLE.  KEEP THIS AREA CLEAN!!!  Well, you don’t see those here.  These walls attest to a team that is respected, loved, coached and relied upon for its talent. 

Once we left the Admin building (Brenda pulled me away from a welcoming bowl of chocolates she keeps on her desk…a friendly invitation to sit down, talk and be comforted), she took me to their Day Care Center. 

Day Care Center?   I’m getting this tour at 730 am.  My coffee hasn’t kicked in.  I’m wishing I would have pocketed a couple of chocolates to last me through the remaining walk and now she’s taking me to the…did she day the Day Care Center?  Is that code for animal boarding or…

Oh my god…they have a Day Care Center!  Not for the four legged companion animals…the two legged ones…the kids of the staff.  They have a whole building dedicated to providing care for the children of the staff that work there!  I’m shocked.  I pass a counter that has four high chairs all ready to go, that will be covered in cheerios no doubt in the next 10 minutes.  There’s a back yard play area.  There’s two nanny’s, or trainers, or nurses…I don’t know what you call them.  I wasn’t raised with that luxury.  Whenever my mom couldn’t look after me, she sent her sister over and she liked her drink, if you get my meaning.  “Hey kid, want Aunt Franny to show you how to make a high ball?”  That was my experience with day care.  But here, they got not one, but two staff members whose sole job is to take care of the staff’s children.   I’m just blown away. Brenda broke all the rules of what we are supposed to do when running a practice, saw a need for child care, created the program and then had it licensed by the State.  Now, staff members can return to work sooner…or, as is the case with some… have a chance to work at all…something they would not be able to do had Brenda and her team not thought of this remarkable benefit.

So next we enter the lobby of their warm, urbane hospital.  Everyone is ‘Hi! How are you? Great to see you!’  Are they laying this on because Boss Woman is with me or is this for real?  When you see as many practices as I do, it goes with the turf that a few members of the crew are going to be toxic.  But I don’t see that demonstrated here.  This crew is positive and happy.  I know how long that takes to achieve.  I know that this team is the product of a long, steady effort to improve, mold and manage excellence. 

They take me back to their carefully designed and beautifully styled treatment area.  Even the colors of this practice have been thoughtfully reviewed.  While the exam rooms are done in quiet, soothing tones, the treatment area is done in a bold blue and Halloween orange.  The exam room and public areas say, “It’ll be okay.  Can’t you see you’ve come to a sophisticated and caring place?”  The treatment area says, “All right, guys, let’s go!” This AAHA accredited practice had SEVEN anesthetic procedures scheduled for their day. One surgeon and three techs and a deadline to finish by 3pm.  I was impressed. 

Back in the admin office, I got ready to go to the hospital that was hosting our talk.  While I rummaged through my bag, I noted one more important aspect of this practice.  Laughter.  Lots of it.  Not goofing off, clowning around laughter.  Happy laughter.  Laughter that was an outward expression of people enjoying their environment, their work and their day.  In the talk that I do, I make reference to a ‘Well Managed Study’ and I wondered if those who conduct it ever considered using this kind of  laughter as one of the qualifications for such a designation.

The quarterly meeting was held at The Circle City Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Hospital and is a beautiful state of the art facility.  We had an excellent turn out and I did a thorough talk on Pricing and Key Performance Indicators.  I like this talk, especially with a group of managers that are of the caliber attending this kind of function.  These are your high-end managers who enjoy digging deep into the software and statistics for ways to improve.  It’s a little geeky of me, I admit it, but I love it and it seemed like they did to. 

So what were some of our cool take aways?

About four members of the group have completely given up advertising in the yellow pages and saw no drop in their business at all.

Some veterinary facilities share a great deal of financial information with their team.  Others felt that sharing percentage change with their group was sufficient. 

Some had the nerve to admit their discounting might be out of hand, but we talked through ways to track their referrals from such discounting as a way to determine if their practices were paying off.

This was a cool thought:  Is your online pharmacy currently being managed by a third party?  Why not negotiate their margin on your prices so you can provide product at competitive prices but still keep hold of YOUR margin? Attending managers said it was possible so let the phones start ringing! (Oh, God, Vetstreet is going to kill me for saying that…you did NOT hear it from me!  It wasn’t even my idea!  Some other blabber mouth brought it up!  Don’t give them my name, dang it!)

For more information on this lecture and ones coming up in the future, or the location and place of the flogging I’m bound to get from any number of vendors, give me a holler!