SUPER BOWL LEVEL LEADERSHIP. Russ Krengel Strategic Consultant & Former Home Health Executive.

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1 SUPER BOWL LEVEL LEADERSHIP Russ Krengel Strategic Consultant & Former Home Health Executive

2 SUPER BOWL LEVEL LEADERSHIP It was A year earlier I had purchased a shell of a home health agency that was nothing more than 2 patients and a Medicare number. Barely compliant, our initial challenge was simply survival, getting the agency cleaned up before the next survey so we could maintain our license. RUSS KRENGEL Strategic Consultant & Former Home Health Executive With expertise in Leadership, Finance & Sales, Russ Krengel understands the challenges faced by agency CEOs, presidents, and administrators in today s economic and regulatory climate. Twelve months later we had gone from 2 patients to almost 200 patients. Like most fastgrowing businesses there was a lot of pain and learning along the way as the people and skills that are needed with a small organization are different from the people and skills that are needed in a larger organization. Some of the stress fractures rearing their ugly heads included: Team fragmentation, Inside employee v. outside employee conflict, Conflicted ideas as to the purpose of the company, Challenges recruiting and retaining talented employees and Highly variable levels of effort/ motivation between team members. This quagmire of issues was the ripe field for change, but how? My partner introduced me to a top executive at Texas Instruments (T.I.) whose sole job was to develop High Performance Teams. As I vented to my partner about my challenges, he encouraged me to reach out to the T.I. executive to see what I could learn. After several conversations, I invited the T.I. exec to attend our first formal board meeting. As the President of my location, I prepared a suite of information including financials and clinical results. I asked my leaders in Marketing, Administration, and Clinical Care to attend and present the state of their departments. Of course, lots of PowerPoint presentations were shared as we all did our best to impress our guest. Ultimately, we finished with a flourish of conservative estimates for potential growth and profits. Of course we were conservative, as managers the safest thing you can do is be conservative. Under promise and over perform; isn t that the way you keep your job? After dutifully listening to our presentations, issues and projections, the kind executive from T.I. made a simple statement. He said, I like football analogies and what you and your team just described

3 is the equivalent of an NFL Football coach telling all the fans and the owners that the team goal for the year is to go 8-8 (eight wins and eight losses). In effect, I was being told that my management team and I were setting our goals for being average. Average is not a goal. What happens when you reach for average is that you achieve mediocrity. I ll never forget the moment the T.I. exec said, I don t know about you but I want to create teams that win SUPER BOWLS!. That statement hit me like a ton of bricks. Here I am running a company responsible for the livelihood of my employees and care of our patients and my team is striving for 8-8; to be average? Needless to say, I needed a new game plan. I needed to learn what it meant to become a Super Bowl Level Leader. Over the next several months I began to take on the responsibility of Leadership, which at its essence is coaching. As my role evolved from President to Coach, I took the following steps that turned our company from a group of employees into One Team on a mission of Making You Better with Values and a Formula for Success. It is my deepest hope that you consider how you might use these steps in your organization to become the Super Bowl Level Leader you, your team, and your patients deserve. Sincerely, RUSSEL S. KRENGEL Strategic Consultant Former Owner of Reliant Home Health San Antonio Sold to Vanguard Health (Parent company of the Baptist Hospital System)

4 STEP 1: WHAT IS YOUR WHY? THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE, MISSION & VALUES We always start with Why. Why does this company need to exist? Why is this company important to customers? What value does this company bring to the community? Understanding your why will be the first step in defining and differentiating your business. Now it s time to turn your why into your mission. Don t bother creating a mission unless you plan to live by it. Words are only words unless they are acted upon and incorporated into the day-to-day experience of your team. I prefer short missions that are clear and understandable to both employees and customers. Ideally your mission can be turned into your tagline so you can share it with everyone on business cards and stationary and signs in the office. The goal is to bring the mission to life through action. Your mission is also your key opportunity to differentiate your business. In a highly commoditized service like home health, differentiating your business will be critical to your success. Now that we understand why the company exists and that why can be simply communicated in our tagline mission, it s time to turn our attention to creating the guard rails as to how the organization does business by creating company values. Think of the company values as the guideposts that your team will use to make decisions when there is no one to ask. EXAMPLES: Mission Our mission is in Making You Better. In its simplest essence, we are committed to doing our best to make our patients better, make our referral source partners better and to make ourselves, our team and our company better. There are many benefits from creating a set of company values. I highly encourage you to include your entire staff when creating your values. An easy way to do this is to have someone make up a list of potential team values and then create a survey where everyone can vote on their top 3 values. Take the top 5 vote getters and make them your company Values. By including your team in the creation of the values you will get a much higher level of team buy-in to living by those values. Other benefits of setting company values include: Attracting the right kind of employees. When a company is bold enough to share their importance of their values to a potential new hire, the new hire will have a clear understanding as to what is expected of them. I like to say Hire to your values and fire to your values. If you get your values correct then you ll never have to fire anyone again. Instead employees who violate the company values will understand that they will have fired themselves.

5 Values Service Are you willing to serve our patients, our referral sources and your other team members? One Team Are you a good team member and not just out for yourself? Respect Do you treat others like you wish to be treated? Integrity Honesty is the only way. Do you see like more as black and white than grey? Quality Do you always do your best, putting in the effort to obtain the results, simply because you can t imagine doing it any other way? Fun You only live life once. Do you bring you with you to work? Growth Are you committed to growing as a professional and to helping your team members and the company grow? STEP 2: GOALS, BUSINESS OBJECTIVES & CONNECTEDNESS Company goals, also known as Key Business Objectives (KBO s), are the manifestation of what needs to be accomplished within the framework of the team values in order to accomplish the team s mission. Goals define where you are going and what it means to be successful. If we don t have specific goals how will we know if we are ahead, behind, or on track? A lack of goals allows complacency to creep into an organization and once infected with complacency it will take a concerted effort to stamp out this miserable disease. Goals also allow the opportunity to rally the troops and to celebrate victories (I encourage you to celebrate often). Again, I like to include my entire team when developing goals as a way to maximize buy-in. It doesn t mean I need an all hands on deck meeting to discuss goals, but by asking for input through a quick survey or soliciting input your team will feel valued because you are listening to them and connected to the improvement process. Key Business Objectives Note, when developing goals or Key Business Objectives (KBO s) it s important to make sure that your goals are such that every employee in every department can identify a goal in which their efforts make a difference. Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs), as described in the book Good to Great, can be critical in achieving top performance. If you were coaching an NFL football team you wouldn t begin the year by turning to the owners and to the players and writing on the chalk board 8 wins & 8 losses as your goal. Of course not, you would aim for the Super Bowl! Aiming for average might make someone feel safe but today s safe is tomorrow s dead and gone. People want to be associated with winning teams so what is that BHAG that allows you to rally the troops, inject the organization with excitement, strive to improve ourselves, improve the product, improve our clients and our world? Pick a mountain to climb, grab your flag/banner and start the process of taking everyone in your organization on a mountain top experience. Customer Service Care Quality Census Growth Teamwork Accountability

6 STEP 3: DEVELOPING HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS GOING FROM BOSS TO COACH Why is it that no one likes to be bossed around but most people like a good coach? I believe the difference between bossing and coaching has to do with who is to benefit. When a leader is bossy, they are trying to get an employee to do something to help the leader. However, when a leader coaches, the leader is trying to get an employee to do something to help themselves. But how do you make the change when performance is so critical? The first step to becoming a coach is to get to know the different gifts and talents your team brings to the table. Effective ways to achieve this are through inviting everyone to participate in a personality survey. When team members get to know each other s strengths and differences and how those differences can be used to create effective teams they will start celebrating uniqueness as a strategic advantage. The next step is to find out what your team members want out of their jobs. It s much easier for a leader to be a boss and tell someone how to do a job in order to receive a paycheck. It s much harder to get to know someone and what they want out of their career and why they are willing to share their time and effort with an employer to achieve their goals. An effective way to better understand the goals of your team members is to hold one-to-one meetings. In these meetings the focus is on what the team member would like to achieve in their current position and where they would like to go in the future. Do they want to make more money? Do they want to work with smart people? Are they trying to build skills to move into a different position? Only by asking someone what they want to achieve can we understand their motivation and if the current position is appropriate for their talents and objectives. By taking the step to move from being a Boss to being a Coach, a leader now has the privilege of helping teammates achieve their goals. This may require a coach to work with a team member to determine what resources are needed to meet a team member s goals. This may require a coach to determine what roadblocks need to be knocked down for a team member to move forward in their career or increase their job satisfaction. Ultimately, by moving from boss to coach we can solve issues like motivation, we can improve hiring and we can take full advantage of unique talents. And when performance review time comes around, it s much more fun for a coach to ask a team member, how are you doing in achieving your goals? than it is for a boss to ask what have you done for me lately?

7 STEP 4: ALIGNMENT, KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS, PRODUCTIVITY & ACCOUNTABILITY A ship doesn t move fast if it is pulled in two different directions. This is the same result a company experiences when team members are asked to achieve conflicting goals. To achieve alignment between departments in an effort to meet company goals or KBOs, a company must work with all departments and ultimately all team members to make sure that their goals or Key Performance Indicators (KPI s) map and support the accomplishment of the company goals or KBOs. This is accomplished by making sure the goals set for each employee support a specific department goal (KPI). Then each department goal should, in turn, support a specific company goal (KBO). If this concept of alignment is achieved, employees will know how what they do affects the success of the organization. Of course, it s nice to have all these fancy goals written down, but it doesn t matter unless everyone is productive and accountable. Clear expectations of what it means to be a productive team member is the bedrock for effective communication. Measurement is the ultimate determination of productivity. STEP 5: HAVE FUN!!!! You know what s fun? Winning is fun! Exceeding goals is fun! Growing a profitable company is fun! Working in an environment of growth and excellence is fun! Ultimately this type of Super Bowl Level Leadership provides a framework for a workplace that is highly rewarding for all involved. So in short, if a leader can create a company with a Dynamic Culture starting with understanding your Why and turning it into Clear Mission, Values and Goals where people are Coached and Empowered with the necessary resources to do their job well and where all departments are Aligned and employees are Engaged in an environment that respects Productivity and Accountability then you ve earned the right to be called a Super Bowl Level LEADER. It s not easy work but the rewards are great. When a leader understands how they can use their position to touch the lives of employees, customers, vendors, etc. in a positive manner; then you can then grasp the great reward that comes with being a great leader.

8 ABOUT US Kinnser Software, Inc. is the complete online Point of Care, administrative and billing home health software solution delivering clinical and business results to its clients. Hundreds of home health agencies and therapy companies nationwide use Kinnser s SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions every day to increase revenues, decrease costs and improve care collaboration. For more information about the complete home health software solution, visit or call toll free