Stephen Shawler, Essilor: Performance Management and Partnerships
Stephen Shawler has traveled to 47 countries and has two children. His son attended medical school and his daughter has a doctorate from Berklee.
Korea dispenses more glasses than any other country in the world. Acuvue contact lenses were the first disposable contacts in the US, in 1989. Stephen was on this team.
Feedback is the process of presenting to individuals their observations and understanding of what they have done, how they did it, and what they achieved in order to improve their performance. There are two types of feedback. One is receiving, which is listening, writing it down, making eye contact, and saying thank you. People want to help and can tell what you put in—you should always give 90% rather than 10%. The second type of feedback is giving. When someone does something nice, go that extra mile to repay them says a lot about your character.
“People won’t reach their full potential without feedback.” Constant reinforcement is necessary. Even if you receive 5-6 pointers, you should still usually ask on how you can still improve even more.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, for example, is expressive and talks with her hands. Think about how you can express yourself with nonverbal behavior; your first impression is only 15 seconds long. Consider the relationship of positions of power. You want to be open and natural. Express leadership every time you are in the room.
On average, people need about 5 pairs of glasses. It is the responsibility of the doctor to determine this based on health and needs. The five types are: 1) sunglasses, 2) day-to-day, 3) specialty/computer, 4) sport, and 5) dress. Many countries believe this should be greater facilitated. About 25% of people in the United States wear contact lenses and need a backup pair of glasses.
There are three requirements for leadership: 1) good health, 22) satisfactory personal life, and 3) commitment to lifelong learning. The biggest challenge facing leadership is not managing yourself well. Manage yourself as well as managing your team. It is important to be a mixture of a manager and leader, depending on where you are in life. A manager is more of a classic good soldier while a leader is their own person. Remember to match your management level to your needs. Consider the commitment of the employee and their capability. These considerations help put your team into place.
The different types of employees in a model on managing are: 1) high capability/high commitment, 2) high capability/low commitment, 3) low capability/high commitment, 4) low capability low commitment. Among these different types, we spend 30% of our time on type 1, leveraging their abilities; 35% on type 2, assisting them; 25% on type 3, engaging them; and 10% on type 4. But in reality, we may spend more than 50% of our time directing type 4, which can be a waste of time. It is important to always encourage and listen to those with an optimistic mind, as often we do not listen enough. Zig Ziglar stated that we don’t train our employees like we should. Spend less time on problematic employees and more time on employees who are motivated and able to give more back to you.
Understanding your key metrics is the most important thing to stay in business. Money leads to cash flow and revenue. You must have cash to make things advance.
It may be shocking, but doctors do not make decisions on what lenses they dispense in the majority of practices. They tend to turn it over to their managers. Another way to help your business is to be mindful that it is important to have a second language available for patients.
When it comes down to the total money coming into the practice, it is helpful to look at it in the following model: Money or revenue is typically generated in the following breakdown: 44% prescription eyewear, 16% contact lenses, 21% the eye exam, 17% medical care, and 2% other.
Only 17% of doctors have a written budget. It is important to track and measure it every month and update it once a year. The best practices for expense management are: writing an annual budget, tracking measures against budget, comparing performance to benchmarks, and selecting one area at a time to focus on.
Revenue drives everything. It is necessary to constantly increase patient flow and capture rate. If you don’t make money, you can’t help anyone. Average revenue for an eye exam is about $300. The median capture rate, or the number of people who stay and buy things from your practice after each exam, is about 61% in the US. Private doctors don’t do a good job on educating about brands and other aspects of glasses, leading to miscommunication. It is important to have a variety of products available for different patient needs.
About 60% of doctors think that they can manage expenses on their own, but this can only take them so far. Consider the idea of partnerships and who you want to partner with. Essilor puts $211 million into research, are the company that invented Transitions and Varilux lenses, spend $55 million on marketing to reach out to more consumers, and have driven more than 800,000 patients to more eye exams. Essilor’s number one concern is independent optometrists. There are 12 million children in the US who need and lack eyewear due to lack of access and affordability. Additionally, only 0.2% of people buy eyeglasses due to lack of patient education compared to 2.8% on dental, 5.1% on medical, and 2.6% on other consumer products. This year Essilor is celebrating 25 years of Crizal.
Consider John Maxwell’s three things that successful people do: know your purpose, grow to your maximum potential, and sow seeds that benefit others. John Foley said to inspire greatness in teams.
Simon Sinck proposed the idea: start with the why. Why do we do what we do? Often times we tend to start from what, then move on to how, and then finally why. Consider starting from the why and moving the other way. Make a personal mission statement: Why do you do what you do?
There are now five generations in the workforce, but there are two things that influence all of them: innovation and technology, and parenting. Remember to think of these as you build your practice.
