The Rant

What drives a manager absolutely crazy?….the kind of crazy that makes you wonder why you even bother sometimes…

Veterinary Practice Managers are somewhat unique from the rest of the world of management in that we all probably started in the field because we wanted to work with or be around animals. I think that makes us a little more caring and feeling than managers in some other fields, but I realize I am biased in this regard. As a caring and feeling manager, I usually do my best to keep my practice owner happy, and the members of my staff happy. What I’ve learned in the past 12 years is that you can’t make everyone happy all the time. I realize that and accept that. My issue is when you’ve tried your best to make everyone happy and you have a few people who not only aren’t happy, but they just can’t keep themselves from spreading their unhappiness around. You know what I’m talking about….the telephone game….GOSSIP! The bigger your staff gets, the worse this problem becomes. Even when it’s not intended as gossip, the telephone game can lead to devastating morale issues in any veterinary practice.

In this week’s staff meeting, we played a team-building game to try to curb negativity and gossip in the workplace. I called the game, “The Glass is Half Full”. I gave everyone a blank index card and instructed them to write down one negative thought about our workplace. I then collected all the cards and passed them back around, asking everyone to take one making sure it wasn’t their own negative thought. They were then asked to write down three positive comments about this negative thought. Some staff members found this part of the exercise to be particularly challenging. Once everyone was finished, we started reading them aloud. The first few went something like this:

Negative thought: “I never know my schedule from week to week because our shifts are all over the place.”

Positive comments:

• “We have flexibility in our scheduling, which makes it easy to plan for classes and personal activities.”
• “We don’t have monotonous, boring schedules.”
• “We get to work with different members of the team on a flexible basis, getting to know one another better.”

When we had read almost a quarter of the responses, the next negative thought that was read was: “I don’t like our review system and that we haven’t had raises in two years.” At this point, I had to have a little rant….right there in front of the entire staff…and yes, it looked like my head was going to pop off.

You see, we changed our review system and the way we administer raises a little more than two years ago. We no longer tie raises to reviews. Annual reviews are geared towards reflecting on performance in key areas, along with setting goals for improvement over the coming year for individuals. Raises are now tied directly to the financial performance of the practice, which is driven by the entire team’s ability to increase production and keep costs under control.

Raises are given in July of each year, with a percentage increase given to every support staff member based on the practice’s financial performance relative to that particular year’s goals. Despite all the “gloom and doom” and recessionary economy, I was quite proud to have NOT laid anyone off, AND to have been able to give everyone a small raise this year. That raise was given less than a month ago and someone actually said “we don’t get raises”….

Thankfully, I was able to nip this one right away and set the record straight in front of the entire staff. My worry is, how many other distorted, negative statements are left hanging because no one is there to set the record straight? We continued with our exercise, and I gradually calmed back down to my normal demeanor. At the end of the meeting, we discussed that when co-workers make a negative comment, it is so important to find something positive to say in order to keep morale up and help one another get back on track. It ended up being a very productive learning experience for the team.

Am I sorry I lost my cool and went on a “rant”? Absolutely not! I expressed my feelings, supported by the facts of the situation without singling anyone out. Was I passionate? Yes! Was I demeaning or accusatory? I don’t believe so. Since that meeting two days ago, I’ve had three people come and apologize to me personally for not being as positive as they could have been in the past few weeks. I had another half dozen people tell me it was very positive meeting, and express their appreciation to work in such a great practice. Those nine people validated the job I had done as their manager this week. I don’t have to make everyone happy….but, I can keep trying.