What's up guys? I hope that all is well. I wanted to come on and tell you guys a quick story that happened actually last week with my kids. Many of you guys know I have two teenagers, a 13 and a 14 year old and quite frankly, we've been having some challenges with getting them to get up on time, to get their breakfast on time and to leave the house on time and it's caused a a lot of frustration on my part as well as my husband and caused them to leave the house, I'll say this, in not a great mood. I'm not sure how many of you guys have teenagers but it's not always easy.
But an interesting thing happened a few weeks ago where Sarah on my team, she actually does coaching with office managers of our inner circle. Anytime they are having any challenges or any time they need help with anything, they just box her and she jumps on calls and she works directly with them. There was actually a doctor that tends to want to stay really late in the practice and her office manager was actually struggling with it. He said, "We're staying really, really late and I want to make sure that number one, I'm getting home on time with my family but that the doctor is as well." Sarah gave them a suggestion to actually set an alarm clock where five minutes before ending time, the alarm clock would go off and the office manager would just pack up and say, "Okay, I will see you tomorrow. Have a great night."
It's really interesting because after about two to three days, the doctor caught on and said, "Is that alarm clock for me?" The office manager said, "Yes, we discussed that we would both leave at a certain time to get home to our families and Sarah said that this is a great tool to hold us both accountable." And the doctor smiled and they went home and I thought, this is really, really interesting because I'm looking at my kids and every day they're struggling to get downstairs on time to get their breakfast which means that ultimately that they're rushing and they're frazzled to get out of the door. Sometimes getting to school a few minutes late.
What we decided to do was to basically implement the same system and we set, having to set an alarm for the time they had to wake up, the time they had to get downstairs and the time that they needed to leave the house. Now, one thing that I can tell you, I've not been good with, nor my husband is having written down rules. I think most parents you don't actually have checklists for your kids but we actually decided to that. We've made very clear times of the time that they need to again, wake up, get downstairs and leave the house. And we said, "If you are not leaving the house on time, that means that you will have no electronics for the night. No TV, no phone, no computer, nothing. And if happens twice, the same thing will happen, plus there will be no activities on the weekends. Meaning, no get togethers with friends, no parties."
Everything was written down, it was very clear. We also wrote down that some additional guidelines would be that their clothes would need to be laid out the night before, their schoolbags would need to be packed. Everything would be done and we put the specific time of when that would have to be done. We also wrote down their bedtime, the time that electronics had to be downstairs. Very, very clear. Nothing on the paper was able to be in a form of an emotion. It was just something that was written down, written guidelines.
The interesting thing that happened is that after a few days we actually printed it out, we realized my daughter actually taped it into her bathroom so that she could see what the new guidelines were for getting up and the interesting thing is that this has been going on now for six days and they have gone downstairs, had breakfast, versus trying to scramble to eat breakfast quickly. They've gotten to school on time, they've been a lot happier and it's just been really, really good.
It really goes to show the power of having tools for accountability. Again, just setting clear little timers and having a written down process as well as very clear consequences if the guidelines were not followed. Going back to our practices, it's so important when we are wanting to have specific guidelines for our practice and a lot of times I hear from doctors, "Well our team is getting to work late." Or, "Our team is not getting to the morning huddle." Or, I hear all of these different things and it's so interesting because again, you have to start looking back at yourself just like I did with my husband, and I said, "The reason why all of this frazzleness is happening is because we haven't created processes. We haven't given the kids tools to be successful."
And once we took time to create again, something that was written down, something that had very clear, specific times, once we had again, consequences, there was not room for discussion. There was no room for disagreement. There was no room for argument. It was just a rule or a guideline. Again, I just really wanted to just tell you guys the story. Hopefully, it inspires you to think about things are happening in your practice that are not going exactly how you want and start to think to yourself, is there a document that could be written down that makes things clear? If there's something that you keep repeating over and over again or something that's frustrating you in your business, is there something that can be written down? Are there tools that you can use for accountability?
Again, timers, clocks, using Asana, using some sort of systems that's going to, Asana's one of those task management softwares. I talk about that a lot. If a task is not done by the date that it's set, it turns red. Do you have these processes in place again, with clear guidelines? I hope that again, this inspires youto think about creating some processes in your business and perhaps in your family as well because it's not a great situation when you go through the day and you started off frazzled. It's really super important.
All right guys, that is my tip for today. I hope you guys took some value out of that and we'll chat again really, really soon.
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