Frandsen Dentals Tiffany Fleisch has seen how strong systems can lead to transformational growth.
For Tiffany Fleisch, both individual and organizational growth has meant leaning into, rather than avoiding, frustrations. I think frustrations lead to breakthroughs, said Fleisch, Director of Operations for Utah-based Frandsen Dental.
Leaders must be OK with trying something out, and if it doesnt work, going back to the drawing board. I really dont have a problem in just throwing an idea out there and testing to see how it works.
That mindset helped Fleisch when she jumped from being a dental assistant to a practice leader (office manager) during an economic downturn. It helped as her organization completed two mergers a decade ago (six weeks before she had a baby). And it has been key in navigating a disruptive marketplace over the last few years.
Fleisch isnt afraid of frustration because shes got a secret weapon to combat it - systems. She is a big believer in using systems to try out new ideas and concepts to see how they could make things better for team members, clinicians and patients. I dont do things the same way I did even two years ago, she said. Theres always so much more to learn, do, implement and try.
In a conversation with DEO Magazine, Fleisch discussed how she measures success beyond numbers, and how systems have led to incredible gains in efficiencies for her clinicians and team members.
DEO Magazine: As a Director of Operations, how do you measure the success of your organization?
Fleisch: We like to look at what we did in the past, because if you investigate today or the future, youre going to constantly feel like theres too much to do. I have lists and ideas for days of all the things we need to do or whats not perfect yet. But every quarter when we get together with our team, we look at all the things we were able to accomplish, even minor things, and thats been helpful. You dont realize how impactful those accomplishments are until you come back and reflect on them. It gives us more steam to know that were on the right track.
I look at profitability more today. For example, our revenue hasnt crept up the same year-over-year that it has in the past, but our profitability is the best its ever been. That is a success, because were actually getting smarter and leaner with our expenses. You must be patient enough to hang tight to see that what youre doing is working.
DEO: Youve talked in the past about the benefits of using systems to help your organizations cultural growth. But what about the overall benefits?
Fleisch: I love systems. Systems is my love language. You want to plot an Excel sheet and show me a system? That makes me really happy.
Today, were constantly trying to simplify our systems. How do we make them easier for the end user, my team members? For my team, I want it to be an easy part of their day. I dont want to stack a bunch of things on them. When we create a system, how do we take 20 steps and cut them down to five? Were constantly trying to look for efficiencies in our systems that make it easier for the team overall. You can always shiny new things to stack on, but what I get really excited about now is, what can I take off?
Doing that with automation helps combat brain fatigue and decision fatigue that my team has to deal with all day long. How can I automate processes and make it easier for them?
Youre never done. When we first started this journey, I thought it would take a year to build our systems. That was eight or nine years ago. Some of the foundational systems we still have are ones I come back to and ask myself, How do we make that better? How do we take out some of that noise? So, I think when you realize its never over, that makes it fun to go back and do it all over again. We get to blow it up and we get to put it back together in a nice, pretty bow.
DEO: What areas have seen the most improvement over the last few years?
Fleisch: Weve done really well in helping our practice leaders identify their problems on their own. Instead of me having to be the one to say, Hey, your numbers arent where they need to be, theyve been able to come to our weekly meetings and say, Heres where my problem is and heres what my solutions are, and what I want to go do and try. So thats been one great thing about the systems.
The other area is training and onboarding. Whenever we have something new that comes out, whether its a new software or technology, were constantly asking How do we roll this out to the test with part of the team? How do we roll this out to our entire team? Where does that go in our onboarding and training and development?
These systems have created a way to plug and play information in different places, and then also have resources for team members when theyre not in training and they need to just quickly grab that information. They have it at their fingertips instead of having to go dig for things.
I think now my team is used to me challenging the systems. Weve been able to take certain systems and Ive been open enough for them to give me their feedback and show them that, when they do give me that feedback, Im not going to push back on them because its my system. Im going to agree with them, and Im going to push them even further to say, Hey, shrink it down even more.
I get asked all the time how my team is constantly coming up with new ideas. Well, theyre just used to a lets try it mentality, because they know if we try it and it doesnt work, Im open to scrapping it and moving on. My team has been amazing at implementing and giving feedback of whats working and whats not.
Last year, we started to reduce our PPOs, the insurances that we were in. Were constantly monitoring our insurance reimbursements. If were jumping out of insurance or taking fewer PPOs and that is raising the fees in our practices, were trying to find ways to make it more affordable for our patients. So, we are looking at different patient financing options. We dont want to become a bank, but we also see that people need payment plans if theyre going to be able to complete their treatment.
And there is always the tech stack. Whatever tech we can find thats going to help reduce noise for the team, not just add another software. It must have an end goal and save the team on efficiency, not just be new, cool and shiny.
DEO: How do you create benchmarks for evaluating technology?
Fleisch: Ill get the information from the company and, instead of rolling it right out, I put it on the shelf for a minute and then come back to it later on and ask, Is it as exciting to me now as it was the day I did the demo? Then we may roll it out a practice or location at a time instead of just throwing it on the entire organization.
Youre always going to get a salesperson whos trying to sell you on all the great things that it does, but are they going to open up the curtain and tell you the things it doesnt do? So thats one of the questions I always love to ask, What are the capabilities that your software cant do?
What did the tech replace for my team? Does it actually save them time? If it doesnt, then were able to cross that one off the list. We dont roll it out. Or well look at our current software that we have and find out, do they have features in there that were just not utilizing?
It comes back to feedback. We will ask our practice leaders with new tech, where is it working and where is it not working? Then evaluate from there.
DEO: What do you think are some of the biggest challenges for dental group practices? Whats keeping leaders up at night as we head into 2024?
Fleisch: Theres always the unknown when things start to slow down. I became a practice leader in 2008 because of the economic crash, and it felt like it happened almost overnight. I was a dental assistant and then all of a sudden, we didnt have patients. Today it has been working through all the different things with inflation and trying to compete with peoples dollars.
But you cant lose sleep over the unknown. You just must keep pushing forward and asking, Are we doing the things that are really going to create the most impact? Are we helping out the patients? Are we helping out the team?
Am I making it easier for my patients to do something, whether its consent forms or payment plans? Am I making it easier for my team to have fewer steps? I think those are the things that are going to help us in the end. But yeah, what keeps us up at night is always that unknown of whats coming into next year.
We still have lots of burning fires. If everything was rainbows and unicorns, that would be amazing, but I think a few burning fires are kind of fun. It keeps it spicy. You dont get bored. You can say to yourself, All right, lets put on our parachute, jump in, and go fix it.
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