The management of any successful clinic obviously has many components, but managing our staff, our associates, our billing personnel, and our key partnerships is often the most challenging part of our overall management tasks. Our ability to recognize the fact that our human resources are the most valuable asset our business has (and yes, that means more valuable than even us – as the treating doctors) will take us far in eventually creating a stress free, busy and financially successful practice.
The egotistical doctor that takes his staff for granted will forever deal with turnover and internal sabotage. And yet the all-too-forgiving and gets walked-all-over doctor will never get the results out of his staff that are essential for a truly efficient and successful practice. Finding and maintaining a balance between these two extremes is our challenge.
As well, even if you have an office manager to whom you pawn off all the daily management of employee issues, you will still need to manage that person, and most likely the other key partnerships that make up most businesses and clinics.
One tactic that I basically stumbled upon on by accident early on was the use of the good cop/bad cop scenario. I really hate to use the term ‘tactic’ here because the first thing one might think is that I am implying overt manipulation. However, most of us naturally use this in one way or another – we are just attaching a term to it.
Consider the mother/father combo. Is the good cop/bad cop scenario not about the most used, and most effective, method of getting children to comply with an overall goal that both parents have? If one parent appears staunch and steadfast and the other caring and sympathetic (and this naturally flip flops depending on the situation), are the parents not often able to get what they really want eventually, being a compromise somewhere in the middle of the issue?
Let me back step here explain the concept just to make sure we are on the same page. In the classic good cop/bad cop scenario one police officer enters the interrogation room with the scared suspect or potential informant anxiously wondering what is coming his or her way. The cop gets right up in his face, taunts him, and threatens him with how he will put him away for years to come unless he tells them what he wants to know. The suspect is terrified of this person who is obviously the ‘bad cop.’ The ‘good cop’ then enters the room and tries to calm down the bad cop and appear to be more on the side of the suspect. He is of course taking the role of the more compassionate one, almost like a friend to the suspect. This back and forth scenario continues until the good cop gets the bad cop to leave the room after which the good cop continues to be calm and understanding to the suspect, gets him a soda, a smoke, or whatever endears the good cop to the suspect. The good cop will then go on to say something akin to…
“…listen [bad cop] is serious here, he will nail you to the wall…let me talk to him, I bet I can get him to agree to ________ if you will agree to help me out by doing _________. What do you think, will you let me help you with this?…” and so on.
However, all along the end result is known by both the good cop and the bad cop. Outside of the justice system, this same method in similar situations is highly successful.
Now, obviously in a clinic or employee management situation you are not ‘interrogating’ anyone and you are not trying to evoke emotions to the level of extreme fear or mental breakdowns. We are not dealing with murderers or drug dealers after all. Nonetheless, the scenario can work very well in trying to get others to comply with what you feel needs to be accomplished as well as be of great assistance to you in your negotiations.
Let’s consider first the roles of good cop/bad cop in your situation. Of course, ideally a business partner on equal footing with you regarding management duties would be your cohort. I have found it best to alter between being the good cop/bad cop depending on what the situation is as it relates to the management roles we most often gravitate towards.
In one clinic of mine, for example, I had a 50/50 partner who happened to also be the practicing doctor in that clinic. Obviously he had to spend day in and day out with the staff so it would not be in the clinic’s best interest to have staff disliking him. On the other hand, this particular staff considered me ‘the boss’ or ‘the money guy’ so I was essentially expected to be more of the quintessential ‘hard-ass.’ Not that I like this role at all, but it was what was needed at this clinic, at this time (given the unique issue that regularly arose), to effectively accomplish our goals.
Essentially when the practicing doctor had an issue he would first bring it to me and we would discuss the pros and cons of how to appropriately handle this with the staff in order to arrive at our desired outcome. Often, the practicing doctor would mention that “…Dr. Troy is pretty upset about _________…” Then I would follow up with a call or email stating the same discontent. The practicing doctor would make sure the staff member absorbed the information as we intended; made sure they realized their mistake and would console them with how he would talk to me and smooth out the situation. Problem handled. The issue was not belittled, it was handled with authority, yet the daily operations of the clinic were not interrupted by interoffice politics – a situation that festers stress and decreased productivity.
If you are without a traditional business partner consider the roles of a spouse who may be involved in the clinic operations, office manager or other high ranking employee such as a billing manager to be your temporary good or bad cop. I do use the term ‘temporary’ because no one wants to, nor should they, always be the bad guy. A clinic should strive for all members of its team to be liked and to work together as a cohesive team. These temporary issues will come and go and, in time, by switching from the bad cop to the good cop your likeability quotient will remain in the black. Any person in your organization with an authority role will work for either role. Consider using this not only in situations involving employee mistakes, misconduct or inter-employee grievances, but also in pay or benefit negotiations.
