Let’s take a peek at Typical Animal Clinic to see the day-to-day operations from an owner/manager/leader perspective! Dr. Control spends his days doing what he loves….caring for pets. But, he’s got a lot on his mind because he also happens to be the practice owner. To help him run the practice, he has a Practice Manager, Frustrated Frieda. Frieda spends her days putting out fires and running every decision by Dr. Control for fear of making a mistake and/or to make sure he approves. Meanwhile, Typical Animal Care continues to wallow in the throws of constant staff turn-over, searching for the next “perfect Associate”, and the person who appears to be running the show is Gossiping Gail from the front desk. How do we inject a little leadership into this practice? Read the rest of this entry »

This spring, I took the plunge and bought my ten-year-old papillon, Kobe a Thundershirt. It wasn’t exactly an impulse purchase, as I’d researched it before, just never taken any steps towards purchasing one of these “anxiety-wrap” shirts. His thunderstorm phobia has gotten progressively worse each spring, and I had been dreading this year’s onslaught of storms. I wandered into Moochie & Co. one day, on my way to see a movie and saw a display of Thundershirts with a sign exclaiming “money-back guarantee”. I figured, what did I have to lose?

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If you could work really, really hard at something you absolutely LOVE for 20 or 25 years, then could put people in place to keep things growing and prospering without you there, would you do it? I think it’s something we all work towards, but very few people achieve early enough in their lives to truly start a second chapter and enjoy it to its fullest. Today, my boss made that leap all the way to the west coast of the country. He moved to California, leaving me and my right-hand Medical Director, along with an aspiring group of leaders at the helm of his 30-year-old veterinary practice. I believe he has taken “long distance management” to a completely different level.

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As managers and team leaders, we’ve all been faced with “no call/no show” situations with our team. So, how do you respond when this happens? Are you kept in the loop, or do you hear about it hours or days after the fact?

A year ago, a close friend and colleague shared a very scary situation with me. She experienced a “no call/no show” from a dependable team member who had been with the practice a few months. Her instincts kicked in and she had a nagging feeling that something was wrong. She got in her car and drove to the home of the team member, only to find she had passed away sometime over the weekend. It was a horrible, but very real situation that made me realize….if something happens to a team member, who will miss them and find out what has happened? Read the rest of this entry »

Today is Administrative Professionals’ Day! Yes….I know, I know….another Hallmark holiday, right? Not so fast! In today’s world, it is all too easy to forget to show your appreciation to those that mean so much to you, on a regular basis. I appreciate these little “holidays” as a simple reminder to honor those around me and say a simple “Thank You!” at the very least.

Some veterinary practices use this day to recognize their office manager and receptionists (or client service representatives). In our practices, we do things a little bit differently. In October, we always participate in National Veterinary Technician Week and use the entire week to recognize and thank our eleven Registered Veterinary Technicians for everything they do. The week prior, we celebrate Client Service Appreciation Week and do a similar “Thank You” and recognition program for our Veterinary Assistants and Client Service Representatives. Somewhere in the middle of all that hoopla is “Bosses’ Day”, where the staff have a tradition of sharing their thanks and appreciation for me (Hospital Administrator) and the Practice Owner.

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Staff meetings, team  meetings, departmental meetings….whatever you call them, how are they working for you? Are they really necessary, or just a big waste of time and money? After all if your practice has email, an Intranet of some sorts, and maybe a monthly newsletter, your bases are covered….right? Not so fast!

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Today is my first day at my desk in a little more than three weeks! The middle of March kicked into high gear with a visit to Fort Lauderdale to consult with a group of four practices. Upon my return, a key member of my management team was out with major surgery, shifting some additional duties to my plate. Then my local managers’ group, the Veterinary Management Association of Indiana hosted our first quarterly workshop of 2011 with national speaker and consultant Bash Halow, CVPM of Halow Consulting as our keynote speaker. As one of the organizers, I was busy whisking Bash around Indianapolis for his whirlwind 22-hour tour of Midwest hospitality! Then, I found myself off to San Francisco, immediately followed by the a trip to the windy city for the VHMA Legal Symposium. I made it home promptly at midnight last night….whew!!

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On November 1, 2009 our practice opened an employee daycare. Since we happen to be in the business of taking care of pets, most people assume it’s a daycare for our employee’s pets. Every time I mention that we have a daycare, I get a “double-take” from the person I’m talking to….”you mean the employees can bring their dogs, right?” is the question that is almost always asked.

Our daycare is for human children! We like to call is BRAC Buddies, since we refer to Broad Ripple Animal Clinic as “BRAC”. Most people are amazed that a small business can pull this sort of thing off. In the end, a little ingenuity with a dash of luck, and the blessing of our practice owner resulted in a free-standing, fully-licensed private childcare facility that is just steps away from where we do our daily work of caring for the pets of Indianapolis.

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Yesterday, I overheard one of my managers comment to another, “How did we ever function without BRACpet Connect?” She was referring to our intranet which I built on a Ning platform approximately 18 months ago. With this platform, we are able to communicate to the entire team in a single place that is searchable and dynamic. This is important to us because we now work out of five buildings spread out over a one mile radius in Indianapolis.

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If you’ve been using Facebook for at least six months, you should be well aware that Facebook is an ever-evolving, ever-changing work-in-progress. This can be frustrating to many people, as it seems just when we get used to how something works, Facebook changes it up on us.

This week, we saw some major changes for Facebook Pages. These Pages are the business pages we all use to manage our practices’ social media presences. The exciting thing about these new changes is that Facebook has addressed many of the most common frustrations we, as administrators, have voiced. Read the rest of this entry »