Exiting daily operations in home care is possible! AND, you don’t have to sell everything you have built just to make the pain of being trapped in daily ops end.
There are five steps every home care owner can do to make exiting daily ops a reality and that is exactly what we are going to discover in this article.
Are you ready?
I thought you might be.
Every home care owner I have met wants to exit daily operations at some point in their journey through what we call the “Home Care Owner’s Continuum.” The most common questions Clint and I get are:
The truth is, there are no magic revenue numbers to hit or a certain number of office staff to make it possible for an Owner to be able to walk away with confidence, knowing that their team will do an excellent job maintaining and growing their business. What it comes down to is influence.
That sounds too simple? Well, good news…IT IS JUST THAT SIMPLE.
When you increase your influence as a Home Care Owner, you can decrease your presence. What determines your level of influence is how you show up, how you delegate, and how you lead your team. The reason most owners never achieve a reduced daily ops footprint is because we do what owners do best: Everything all at once.
It isn’t about doing it all; it is about doing it all at the right time. To best lead your team, you must determine what you are currently doing in your role as a leader and owner.
Remember I said there were five things an owner needed to do to make exciting daily ops possible? Well, get those pens ready because as promised, here they are:
In our Home Care Operators Community on Facebook, we see thousands of owners each week, posting how they feel stuck; not just in their business, but in the DOING.
Maybe you can relate?
If taking action was all it took to succeed, you would be winning big! You feel like you are always doing; always working, yet for all your “doing,” nothing ever gets DONE, and you’re always on the brink of burnout.
The linchpin for doing is found in what we call “intentional action.” There is a simple truth in business: When you take intentional action, you get intentional outcomes.
So, how can you get “unstuck” and exit the “doing” phase?
The answer is found in our next step: Teaching.
When we coach owners and operators on how to reduce their daily ops footprint, one of the first questions they need to answer is “How can you teach someone on your team how to do what you are currently doing?
Don’t stop there.
Just because they have been taught the task doesn’t mean they can replicate your outcomes. Once they learn the task they are expected to do, you then train them on the desired outcome and intent of your actions.
That is why our next step is Training.
Training is teaching in action: they watch what you do, you watch what they do, and then you evaluate the outcomes together.
And the next step is Coaching.
This can be the scary part of being an Owner. It’s when we step aside and allow the team that we have taught and trained to run point without our supervision. Yes, sometimes they will fail, make a bad call, or not get the intended outcomes…and that is okay. That’s when coaching comes in.
Rather than you running in as the Chief Executive FireFighter and saving the day, sit down with your team and ask the right questions:
Being a leader is not about having all the right answers; leadership is about asking the right questions and always being able to say “and the next step is…”
At the end of the day, the power behind these five steps is that they are just that: steps.
We never take all the steps at the same time—that is called jumping. The danger in jumping is that we aren’t sure of where or how we are going to land. We may want to be at the coaching phase, but if we haven’t taken the steps to get there, then we will not have the trust or confidence to allow our team to “learn” and “do.”
By focusing on each step and allowing ourselves to be truly present, we provide space for our influence to become the driving force in our business. The more influence we have, the less our presence is required to see the intentional outcomes we desire.
Now that you know the five steps for reducing your daily ops footprint, what is your next step? What intentional actions will you take to make your agency run without you?
