Episode #383: I Hate Teams, with Andre Shirdan

You’ve got the tech, the license, and you’ve bought your practice—now what? Now you need the most important component—the people. Kirk Behrendt brings Andre Shirdan on to the show today to discuss why he “hates” teams. An expert coach, trainer, and motivational speaker, Andre explains how to create an environment where your employees will flourish. To learn about what it takes to build an effective team, listen to Episode 383 of The Best Practices Show! 

Main Takeaways:

• Have a crew, not a team.
• Always keep the Four Ps in mind: People, Process, Product, and Philosophy.
• Figure out who you are and what you want.
• Whatever you are, be good at it.
• You want your employees to succeed—be happy when they decide to move onward or upward.
• “Rice, not cotton candy.” You want something substantial and sustainable for your practice.
• You live on your reputation—strive to be the kind of person that others seek out.

Quotes: 

• “I’ve been to hundreds of team-building events—I ran the youth group at my church; I took them to these team-building events, and there was this real big high until they got on the bus home. It was this real big high in the employees that I took on these events, and then the ride home. And I never saw the sustainability of that idea of “together everyone achieves more.” And the way that I have always illustrated it is, in offices—any office we’ve ever worked in—the lotto goes to $500 million, and everybody buys a ticket. So as an office we go out and give somebody a dollar each and they go buy the tickets. What happens if they all hit? The doctor is the only person coming in that Monday morning, because everybody else is at the state capital collecting that check. So is it really a team? Did everyone achieve more, or did we do it individually?” (03:20—04:22)
• “What I realized is that you could be 5’2” or 6’2”, and when you get in that boat, you row at the same pace as everybody else, or you get off that boat. And what I find is that we hire people for whatever reason, and expect them to row, not realizing that they have bad days, they have good days, and we should be able to say, ‘Hey, you know, you’re having a bad day? Get off the boat today—no problem—but you can get back on tomorrow.’ But everybody should have a safe word—you know, call you up and say ‘Kirk, you know, I’m having a bad day, can somebody fill in for me?” But then we have to make sure that everybody in the office is trained to be able to fill in that gap. Man down, but not the practice. And that’s okay, but we have to be able to hire to that end.” (05:10—06:02)
• “I believe in the four pillars of a business, which are people, process, product—and for us, that’s productivity—and then philosophy. And again, philosophy is that glue, philosophy is that thing that weaves through everything that we do.” (13:08—13:21)
• “When I talk to doctors and they say, ‘Hey, should I buy CAD/CAM?’…And I go, ‘Does it fit into your work process (Process), can you afford it (there’s the profitability part of it), will your people use this if you buy it, and does this fit into your overall philosophy of care?...Can you tick those boxes? If so, let’s go find the money to get it.’ And it’s really all about…I tell people, ‘Just stop asking questions and go back to those four things. Can your idea stand on those four pillars, and if so, move forward.’” (13:49—14:23)
• “I need the philosophy to be really clear—the elevator pitch. Can you tell it to me on the ride down on a short elevator trip? If you can tell me that, then we can package it and we can give it to everybody else in the office. And when somebody deviates—again, safe word—I can say, ‘Hey, are we off track? Are we off process? Are we down staff? Are we out of our financial range? Are we off message?’ And then we can circle back.” (16:53—17:22)
• “Let me know what you want to do and then we can figure out how to make the practice work so we can get out of here to do that thing. Because the practice is just a vehicle to get to where we’re going. Treating your patients, if you love doing that, let’s figure out how to do more with that dynamic, and let’s figure out how to make your life happy while we go through this practice, because it’s a 40-year journey.” (18:34—18:53)
• “You’ve got to enjoy this life, and you’ve got to figure out how to enjoy the practice and the people in the practice, and a lot of it is: practice the way you love, keep going to CE until you find the guru or whatever you want to follow, but mix all those things, because there is no one correct path—there’s just paths.” (21:08—21:28)
• “I think most people think teamwork sustains, and I think teamwork is cotton candy. It’s just that hit that we need every now and then, but it’s not sustainable. CREW, or the idea behind CREW, is rice. It’s the thing that’s just substantial all the way through life. It’s not cotton candy, it’s something where we can revert back to that every day, and everybody has each other’s back in that process, but it has to be baked in. It has to be something where we all understand it, we all realize it, and there is no ‘When Sally’s out, nobody posts checks.’” (26:11—26:49)
• “I really believe that we’ve got to break this top-down mentality and start thinking a little bit more about how we run the practice as owners at every level, because if staff doesn’t understand that their paycheck is part and parcel of that production that we do, then that disconnect happens…An associate coming into a practice where that top-down is happening—it’s probably not going to change, and no matter what we say is going to change it, but they’re going to be part of that culture long-term. See if they can make it happen, see if they can get through that mire and make that practice different for them, because, again, if they’re coming in, at the age of my kids, and I know my kids are coming into businesses now looking for ‘How do I become part of this culture?’ Not just ‘How do I get a job? Where’s my desk?’ They want to be part of that culture. So, you’ve got to change the culture when you come in if the culture’s not there.” (32:06—33:11)
• “The person who lost [Linda Miles] as an employee gave her to the world. And that’s what we all have to think about as we build up these people. Our team is the next-gen for whatever we’re doing.” (38:21—38:34)

Snippets:

• 01:15 Introduction.
• 02:16 Andre’s background.
• 03:05 Why does Andre hate teams?
• 04:53 Thinking differently.
• 07:00 Asking hard questions.
• 09:20 Building a process.
• 10:32 Team size.
• 12:05 Fitting core values and purpose into a team.
• 14:43 Origin of the Four Ps.
• 15:40 Start with Philosophy.
• 18:53 Examples.
• 21:41 Alternatives to bonuses.
• 24:20 Wanting your team to succeed.
• 26:03 What people get wrong.
• 27:49 Learning from meetings.
• 29:02 Communication and your huddles. 
• 30:48 Encouraging dental students and associates. 
• 35:11 Forming relationships.
• 38:34 Final thoughts.
• 40:13 How to contact Andre. 

Reach out to Andre:

Andre’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shirdan

The CREW Process website: https://www.thecrewprocess.com/

Andre Shirdan Bio:

Andre is an inspirational and motivational speaker, executive coach, and certified trainer. Since 1989, Andre has worked with thousands of practices helping to create systems for treatment planning, staff training, goal attainment, internal and external marketing, and computer systems integration. Andre founded Systems Practice Management, Inc., a dental practice management, training, and consulting firm.  He created Building Blocks Scheduling, Countdown Confirmation, SELL Training, and the PracticePar Analysis.  He co-created the non-surgical periodontal protocol Stat-Ck.

Andre is best known for creating The CREW Process - a better way to define practice philosophy, bring consistency to treatment, and get the entire office in alignment. Practices working with Andre have found great personal success while getting to know his genuine, frank, and devilishly funny personality.