Office Magic Online

January 2006
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In This Issue
-- First Law of Managing People
-- Leadership and Accountability Institute
-- 3 Magic Words for Difficult Feedback
-- See You in Chicago!

Greetings!

Not all staff turnover is a bad thing. You have to look at who is leaving. Some turnover can be healthy. Too often, however, we hear from doctors after a top performer leaves and the poor performers are left at the practice reigns. That's a problem. In this issue, some help.

Office Magic's First Immutable Law of Managing People
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Office Magic's First Law of Managing People:

It's the 21st century. People change jobs. Spouses get transferred. The question is, are you doing all you can to retain your best people, or are you suffering from avoidable and unhealthy turnover?

If you're losing good people, the first question you have to ask yourself is a difficult one:

If you're spending your time putting out fires that never should have gotten started in the first place, you are not managing proactively and driving performance.

Staff management is all about helping your employees develop the right habits. When you ignore a performance problem or choose not to address it immediately, you send a very strong message to your team that poor performance will be tolerated. You build a culture of slackers and you run your top performers out of the practice.

Think staff management is all "touchy-feely" and doesn't impact the bottom-line? Think again.

Save Yourself Up to $96,259.80 at Office Magic's Leadership and Accountability Institute
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When you consider the cost of turnover, you can’t afford not to manage your staff well. And we're not talking just about being nice. We're talking about being firm.

When you tolerate poor performance, when you think you're being "nice," or you feel at the mercy of a mediocre employee because of your local labor market, your top performers -- the ones you most want to stay -- will leave.

Losing a top performer can cost your practice up to three times that employee's annual salary - We’ve seen practices where an A-level team member leaves and it costs the practice upwards of $20,000 per month.

According to the Academy of Dental CPAs (ADCPA), the average (50th percentile) dental office team member in a medium town earns 17.63 per hour. Based on a 35 hour work week, the average employee’s annual compensation is $32,086.60. Three times that figure is $96,259.80.

You simply can’t afford not to manage well. Learning how to get out in front of performance and lead your staff down the right path will pay dividends for years to come.

Office Magic's Leadership and Accountability Institute

3 Magic Words for Difficult Feedback
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One thing the lucky participants in our Chicago Leadership and Accountability Insititute will work a great deal on is how to hold their people accountabile. Here's a simple tip you can put to use right away -- three magic words that will help you keep your cool in any difficult conversation:

See You in Chicago!
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If you know you can benefit from real training in managing people, register for Chicago before you get shut out. We look forward to seeing you there.

Have a great February,

Pat, Lorraine, and Ginny