Coach Barrow

Its been 12 years now that the same phone call or email has arrived on a regular basis:

I’ve created the protocols, we arranged the training, we all agreed that we were going to do it this way - and then I find that it hasn’t been done the way we agreed.

Why can’t people follow the systems?

Why don’t they do it the way we agreed?

Why don’t they use their initiative?

So, once again, I have to remind you that if everyone in your team had 100% initiative, they would all be running their own businesses.

Armies have the Sergeant Major to train and drill the troops into repetition in the face of bombardment - and they still have to nag the soldiers to get things done.

The officers don’t do the training, the drill or the nagging.

In a dental business you have a practice manager to do that - not by SHOUTING at the team but by training them, drilling them (the dreaded role play) and nagging them.

If you don’t train, drill and nag - then the protocols will not be followed. The troops will just fall asleep in the trenches.

Your surveillance never ends - never.

How many times do I have to say this!!!!!!!

My good friend Dr Uchenna Okoye (Channel 4’s “10 years younger” dentist), requires additional help in the rapid growth of her three London-based practices.

You can read all about the business here.

Business is booming, its an exciting and challenging place to work and Uchenna is looking to recruit a manager with the following job description:

Team Leader

We are looking for someone who can join our team as a Clinical Manager. Who will be able to support the team during good times and stressful times and be able to ensure that both practices run smoothly clinically. This is a full time position based at both Goodge Street and Gloucester Road on a need by goal basis.

Attention to detail speed and efficiency is a must. The applicant must also be willing to attend monthly team meetings and other meeting as required.

Job Description

• Recruitment of team members
• Appraisals and assessments
• Maintain and update team personal records
• Holidays / overtime records
• Keep up with current employment legislation
• Employee Disciplinary and misconduct 
• Written and verbal warnings and dismissals
• Team development
• Ensure all equipment is working and maintained
• Manage the day to day running of the practices

If you know someone who could fit the bill, please let me know - chris@coachbarrow.com.

Bravo to The Coolhunter and Tor Myhren for this advert which has appeared all over New York.

It demonstrates how a picture CAN paint a thousand words:

Click here.

If you would like to see what’s current in dental web site design (in addition to “my favourites” on the right hand side bar of this blog), then you might want to take a look at the shortlist for this year’s Dentistry awards.

Click here.

The list was sent to me by Krishan Joshi as he is understandibly proud that quite a few of his designs are nominated.

I am also pleased to see some of my friends and clients right up there.

Personally, I don’t like all of the nominations on the list (yes - I did have a cruise through this morning) but it’s a good overview of what’s current in all sectors of the market, from the fancy pants cosmetic clinics right through to basic NHS.

After my usual 5.00am start in the West End yesterday, I was feeling very pleased with myself as I checked out of my hotel at 7.45am with emails all answered and ready for a busy day of meetings.

The main body of the day was invested in a team meeting that genuinely moved a business forward and, again, I emerged feeling extremely pleased with myself at 5.00pm - and on to an early dinner at Cafe Caldesi  with my good friend Dr. James Goolnik, just to catch up on what we have both been doing in the last month.

My plan was to leave the West End at 7-ish and drive over to Ealing - there to pick up my friend Michel Neray who is in the the UK for the annual conference of The Professional Speakers Association - he’s a speaker in Birmingham.

I haven’t seen Michel since I last visited Toronto over a year ago - so this would be a chance to catch up in my car as I transported him to The Forest Of Arden Hotel, on my way to Manchester.

It took me an hour to drive the 10 miles from Goodge Street to Ealing - ridiculous traffic and a constant repetition of my mantra - “this is why I live in Cornwall” - but the prospect of a good conversation with Mr. Essential Message was motivation enough.

So imagine my confusion (and their’s) when I knocked on the door of a private residence and asked for Michel - to be greeted by looks of confusion and incredulity - and no Michel in sight.

Why?

Delayed flight? Accident? Incorrect address?

A phone call to Annie reveals the simple explanation…..

I hadn’t read the instructions.

He arrives in a week from now.

Michel is sitting in his office in Toronto as I’m banging on a stranger’s door in west London.

Duh.

Oh well - a few embarrasing conversations later I found myself back on the road, facing a solitary drive back to my apartment - oh - and at 11.15pm last night I was stationary on the M6 in Cheshire with three lanes of traffic, waiting to be channelled down to one lane and accommodate overnight roadworks.

I tell you - when you’ve been up since 5, pulled that double shift, made quite a fool of yourself and find a traffic jam after 11.00pm at night - that’s when you question your professional lifestyle.

Anyways - another 5 o’clock start this morning and a busy day of meetings at IDH ahead - I’m looking forward to it - but not as much as I’m looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning.

How daft am I?

Sorry Michel - you’ll be on the train next week.

It suddenly dawned on me yesterday that, since making my career change on 1st August this year, I have almost sub-consciously been going through a process of personal re-organisation that has focused on delegation and support.

A series of separate decisions have joined together to make a big difference:

1. Back on with the running shoes and 5 days a week of aerobic exercise = peace, well-being and time to think (as well as a tightening of flabby muscle);
2. Appointment of a new virtual personal assistant to handle my busy “off-stage” life = less clutter and more time to rest when I finish work;
3. Back into personal coaching with Michael Myerscough = the fellowship of an impartial sounding board and the benefit of his wisdom;
4. A massive investment in personal organisation at my Falmouth desk - paperwork, finances and all that jazz = that lovely feeling when the job you have been putting off for ages is done;
5. A great big trip to the dump with 2 years of accumulated paper and files and brochures = an uncluttered cellar;
6. An enormous effort to improve my financial self-organisation = deeper, sounder sleeping;
7. A decision to eliminate some of my more destructive and irritating bad habits (with Michael’s help) = making myself more attractive to be around;
8. Some good conversations with people I trust, respect, like and love to resolve tolerations = well, just = good conversations!

A couple of services caught my eye in the latest issues of Wired magazine:

• I have downloaded a free trial of GoToMeeting and intend to use this quick and simple service to hold meetings on-line and also share documents in real time. 

Its early days but the service looks very easy to use, compared to some of the more cumbersome webinar systems I have tried over the years.

I’m especially interested in using the service to talk through spreadsheets with clients and practices on-line. By accessing the service, not only can we chat by typing or speak using VoIP but I can also recreate my desktop on the guests computer screens (up to 11 in a meeting) and open any of my own files to make alterations. I see this as extremely useful when monitoring productivity, analysing KPI’s and also when explaining the basis of practice valuations.

A nice way of avoiding unnecessary travel in these days of high costs in energy and time.

I’ll be trialing the system over the next month and will keep you posted.

• I wish I could tell you that I had started using Hulu but its only available in the USA - what a fantastic service - and surely the future of in-hone entertainment? 

If you are interested, there’s a good article on the development of this service here.

Out for a bit of shopping on Saturday and noticed the following “evidence” that things are not quite as bad as the media would have us believe:

• a new Starbucks has opened on the main A30 link road that runs down the Cornish peninsula
• Truro city centre was packed - my first attempt to park turned into a slow and frustrating climb all the way up and all the way down the main centre car park - not a parking spot in sight and so we had to drive to an alternative car park out of the centre - thats the first time in 4 years it has happened
• plenty of people seem quite happy to pay £3.00 for a coffee and the same again for a panini or a cake - whether its Starbucks (the other one in the county) or Costa Coffee
• Called in to the Comet superstore out of town on the way back to Falmouth. They have a wide range of plasma and LCD TV’s on special offer - notably a great deal on a 40″ Sony TV that you can read here.
• I was chatting to one of the more senior assistants at 3.00pm and they had already sold 20 of this model that day and were out of stock until a new shipment arrived early in the week - 20 TV’s at £600 each - not bad eh?

I’m using this medium to explain that if you sent an email to chris@thecoachinggym.com in the last 24 hours, it will not have reached me.

Can you please re-send or send to chris@coachbarrow.com

The reason behind this relates to the archaic systems and lack of effective customer service at Paypal, the on-line payment provider.

In this world of super-fast global web communications, you would have thought that authorising your IT consultant (the genius Kimberly Black) to make payments for you would have been a good delegation for a busy traveller like myself.

Not so with Paypal - I asked Kim to renew my web hosting service direct, gave her my Paypal access details - and as soon as they saw her trying to make a payment with my account they closed the whole bloody lot down.

Now, with hindsight, that was probably a good thing in the era of phishing - fair dinkum - but what I cannot seem to get anyone at Paypal to understand is what happened and why - or fix it.

At their request, I have:

1. written to authorise Kim to make payments;
2. sent them faxed copies of my passport and a utility bill;
3. re-entered my Maestro card details;
4. followed their instructions to re-activate my card;
5. answered 4 customer service queries in the last 10 days;
6. noted the deposits they have made in my bank account to test the system;
7. and all sorts of other minor stuff that has been the subject of emails in the last couple of weeks