April 8, 2025 • 35 mins
What if the key to solving complex problems was something visual?
In this episode, Justin Sirotin dives deep into the power of visual mapping and systems thinking to reveal hidden problems and streamline business efficiency. He shares how mapping techniques can be used across industries—from business and healthcare to education and entrepreneurship to enhance team collaboration, decision-making, and organizational development.
Key Takeaways:
- How visual mapping uncovers blind spots in problem-solving
- The role of systems thinking in making better business decisions
- Why team collaboration is essential for innovation & efficiency
- How to practice problem-solving in low-risk environments to build confidence
- The power of empowering teams to take ownership of solutions
If you’re a business leader, entrepreneur, or problem-solver, this conversation will give you actionable strategies to improve efficiency and develop a smarter approach to tackling challenges.
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Learn how a Virtual Rockstar can help scale your physical therapy practice.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
In today's episode, we have our guest, justin
Sirotin.
He is the CEO and founder of acompany called Octo O-C-T-O and
he is a problem solving master.
People go to his company tohelp solve big, overarching
problems, so we're going to betalking today in depth about
this thing called problemmapping.
This is a solution, maybe thesolution to helping you resolve
(00:32):
any and all problems in yourbusiness, as well as helping
teach your team to buy intothose solutions that you're not
like creating a solution andthen selling it to them.
This episode is short butpowerful.
If you're having any sort ofstruggle that you're stuck in,
this is the episode for you.
Enjoy the show, all right.
So, justin, problem solving isa real issue in any business
(00:54):
owner's path, whether it'sentrepreneurial for physical
therapy, either healthcare orany business owner.
So let's talk about yourexpertise in problem solving.
You have a unique approach tothat.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
We do so just to set a little bit of a foundation.
The business that we're in is avisual business.
The world that I come from is avisual world.
I come out of the design fieldand the vast majority of the
team here is coming out of thedesign field, and one of the
(01:28):
things that we've started torecognize at least probably 10
years ago, is when we reallystarted to understand this more
is that people who don't comeout of the visual space have
this impression that they can'tvisualize things.
And when you visualize things,it emerges patterns that then
you can use to your benefit tosolve problems.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
So one of the very first exercises- Visualization
of patterns patterns that youuse to solve problems.
Got it Exactly right.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
So one of the techniques that we use with our
customers is a customer comes inand says we have problem A and
we will map problem A.
We will just say this is whatthat problem looks like, if I
just break it all apart.
So I'll give you a reallyspecific example, love.
That Customer comes in the doorand says we're trying to tell a
story about a very complicatedidea that we have.
(02:21):
So think of this like a pitchdeck.
We look at the pitch deck andwhat we do is, instead of
looking at the pitch deck oneslide at a time, we take the
pitch deck, we put the entirepitch deck now we're using
digital tools.
We use to print them and putthem on the wall but you look at
the entire pitch deck all atonce.
(02:41):
You look at the whole thing andthen you move the parts of the
pitch deck around to try tobuild the story arc that you
think you have told.
So you think you're telling acustomer here's my problem,
here's my solution, here's whyI'm unique, here's what I'm
asking for, here's the nextsteps.
That's my story that I'm tryingto tell.
So you take that deck, you putit on the wall and then you move
(03:02):
the parts around and you veryquickly see.
You put it on the wall and thenyou move the parts around and
you very quickly see hey, younever told them X and you can
see it right away.
because they look at that andthey go, oh, there's no slides
in the problem area, and thenthey just go OK, so now we need
to tell that.
We need to tell that otherwiseor opens up problems that you
(03:28):
otherwise can't see becausethey're hidden.
Usually we look at theseproblems in forms that don't
show all of the areas where wehave gaps and we apply it
effectively to every problem weconfront, whether that's a
software technology problem orit's a spatial problem or it's a
(03:49):
storytelling problem.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Interesting.
So mapping it out gives theentrepreneur an idea of helping
break down the overwhelmingcomponents of the problem into
its elements.
And then you map that to helpcreate solutions.
And this is something you dowith your clients, but you've
done this in your own businessworld as well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, we're actually doing it right now.
So one of the things that we'reworking on is our business is a
pretty complicated business totell.
Our story is hard to tell.
We're an unusual business inthe world that we live in.
Yeah, we live in two modes.
We live with our feet plantedto the ground, where we have to
generate revenue for our clientsthrough products and services
that we build.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And then we have to have our head sort of up in the
clouds for how we tell a storyto a relatively broad audience,
and we have to do those at thesame time, oftentimes, sure, so
telling that story becomesreally challenging.
So what we did is we mapped.
We just made a giant map of whoare we talking to.
Where do they consume theirinformation?
What's the story that they'recurrently being told by others?
(04:47):
What's our story and how do webreak our story up so that those
people that we're trying tofind find it where they are
already looking, and they findit in bites that they can then
consume and share.
And so, once you draw that out,it becomes very evident that
being on a podcast like this isvaluable.
Yeah, because now there's a waythat I can get to an audience
(05:11):
with a long form that we can cutup and we can place it right in
their lap where they're tryingto find, where they're looking.
And that mapping exercise doeswonders to align a whole team of
people who work here aroundwhat we're trying to accomplish,
why and for whom.
And so we use it for ourselves,we use it for our customers and
(05:33):
I actually use it for my kids.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
That's an interesting application, you know, because
as you're talking, I'm hearingeverything from you know,
outpatient medical perspective,and this is you know.
It's funny because I also coacha lot on recruiting and I never
considered it a mapping term,but it is mapping.
When I take a client I'll say,okay, who do you want to hire?
Let's say recruiting is theproblem.
It's like let's define who youwant to hire and then determine
(05:58):
from that where they go online,real life, and then what's our
message to them, what's ourvalue proposition?
Exactly?
And most of our owners, most ofthe owners that are listening
to this, are so busy they don'teven know that they can do this
mapping activity.
And it is applicable to allstages of business.
But tell me about how thatlooks with your kids.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So one of the things that I did with my kids was we
were trying to explain this wasyears ago.
We were trying to explain tothem how money works in the
house oh, wow.
So instead of talking inabstract dollars, we just made
piles of stuff and we just said,ok, here's the pile, here's how
much stuff, here's the moneythat lands at the beginning of
(06:40):
the month.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
This is how much of that pile goes to this.
This is how much of that pilegoes to this.
This is how much of that pilegoes to this.
This is how much of that pilegoes to that, and this is what's
left at the end.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
So you asking me for whatever and me telling you no
isn't me telling you no becauseI don't like you.
It's me telling you no becausethere's a set of rules that we
have to run our home by, and inorder for you to understand that
our home needs to run by somerules like I, need to tell you
no.
And so it's very easy for a kidto understand hey, this started
(07:13):
as a block of 10.
And when I'm done, there's onlyone left.
They don't have to know howmany dollars are in the block.
They can just see that theblock's small and then they go.
Oh OK, I get it.
They can just see that theblock's small and then they go
oh, okay, I get it In theeducational terms.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
they call that providing mass, giving someone a
visual or tactile input toteach a concept.
And it's so powerful becausewhat I'm learning is mapping as
a solving problem methodologycould also be an educational
tool to help people understand.
Educational tool to help peopleunderstand.
So you know, mapping, mappingat its core, feels like it's
(07:47):
about understanding anysituation at its, at its root
cause, or its or its root level.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Absolutely.
And and there's a theory outthere that you can kind of dig
into the weeds on.
That's a, the, the.
The theory was built in the Ithink it's the 1920s by a bunch
of academics and they call itsystems thinking.
And so systems thinking is thisidea that there's no
independent action happeninganywhere.
All actions are connected toanother action, they're all
(08:13):
related, they're all connected.
So if you map theinterconnected actions, the
interconnected attributes ofwhatever solution you're looking
at or problem you're trying tosolve, it identifies where, if
you make change A, you have aconsequence in area B.
So use a physical therapy spaceas a great example.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
You were talking to me before this call you were a
patient.
I was a patient Disc in yourneck, so you saw this in real
life.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I saw it in real life .
So I was asked as a part of myphysical therapy, I had to pick
up I can't remember the amountof weight, but I had to pick up
two dumbbells and I had to carrythem around the space for a
period of time, like I don'tremember it was 20 seconds or
something like that.
So it was a big clock on thewall and the clock.
(09:04):
There was two problems.
One, the clock on the wall wasin one wall.
There's only one clock, so asyou're walking and now I have a
neck problem, so as I'm walkingI can't turn my head to see the
clock If you just had threeclocks, one on three walls and
they're all synced, you canalways see it, then you're never
doing that to that patient.
But the bigger problem was thepath that I was walking by
(09:27):
definition meant I walkedthrough other people's therapy
space.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
What are you doing?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
And so if you map that, if you just drew that out
and you said, okay, we need toprovide this therapy, this
therapy, this therapy and thattherapy, how do we make them so
that they're both good for thepatient and good for the
caregiver, so that the caregiveris not having to avoid other
caregivers acts in the way thatthey deliver their care?
And I can see you know there'sno way around it.
You're sitting in this spaceand you're just looking around
(09:56):
and you can literally watchpeople walk into the same zone
and then have to do something toavoid one another, simply
because nobody charted this in away that you could say, okay,
well, let's have the walkingpath, just be a walking path,
and then let's have a care path,be just a care path or care
location, and let's notintersect those two things.
(10:16):
And that would have they hadplenty.
It wasn't.
This wasn't about how muchspace they had.
This was about how they mappedthe space Right and the care was
great.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Let me just be clear Like they did a wonderful job of
getting my whole neck and armoperational without surgery, but
it could have been moreefficient and it's one of those
where, like, it's so funnybecause this is like a literal
and metaphorical analogy of howwe operate our business, because
you have, like, in that worldwhere you're crossing paths with
(10:46):
other people, there's like thatmoment of hesitation.
You're pivoting, you're havingto, like, do the dance before
you move around each other.
That causes inefficiency.
You could have walked furtherin that amount of time, you
could have gone.
So you know, this is true forany system.
You know, I love this analogyof a physical therapy clinic
mapping out a problem because,again, you're using visual
(11:06):
information to help create flow.
It reminds me of McDonald's andthe movie the founder.
Have you seen that movie?
I have seen that movie.
Yeah, sure, there's that scenewhere the McDonald's brothers
their biggest like invention wasthe easy flow.
The easy flow system thatcreated, where they would
literally, on chalk, draw outthe kitchen and that's how they
(11:27):
created fast food is like, okay,they mapped it out, just like
you're talking about.
They mapped out the kitchen interms of all its elements and
then they would like pretendlike they were cooking burgers
and fries and as they werelooking at the elements, they
would constantly reorganize thedifferent elements, variables,
the different elements of thekitchen to where they maximized
its efficiency, and that is whatMcDonald's is successful at.
(11:48):
The burgers taste like theytaste, but it's the speed that
they created that revolutionizedthe food industry and it sounds
like that's what you were.
You know, kind of in a similarway, the PT clinics.
If they would just take a timeand map out their gyms and map
out how patient flows work, butthen go to their billing systems
, they could go to recruitingsystems, all those different
(12:09):
systems.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, and I mean we, you know we do this a lot with
channel mapping, where you'remapping the.
So again, let's come back tothe physical therapy, and I'm
not an expert in that space.
So so, if I, if I, miss, I'll becorrect me, but if you, if you
think about the channel, so howdo you get your message out to
an audience?
How do you sell things,services, products, whatever
(12:36):
other components you're tryingto sell as a part of your
practice?
If you map a business in thatway where you say, okay, our
revenue comes from here, here,here and here, what are the
overlapping channels?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
that we can play in.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah, for revenue from here, here, here and here.
What are the overlappingchannels that we can play in for
revenue from here, here, hereand here?
How do we maximize the amountof money and time that we spend
in order to get the most volumeout of the least amount of work?
Because we have channels thatare overlapped.
If you never map those, you'regoing to spend time and money
voicing an idea to the sameaudience through two different
(13:11):
campaigns, through two differentstrategies.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You're doubling your effort with half the impact.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And so every business I don't care if you're a one
person business or you're 10,000people.
This act of mapping what you'redoing and forcing everyone
involved to confront wherethere's gaps, where there are
opportunities for improvement,by definition means you're going
(13:38):
to be more efficient and you'regoing to do it better.
And it happens literally everysingle time.
I can't, we're not and we'renot magicians, like we didn't
make this up, it's just you justapply it.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Well, this is what you've adapted to your business
that we're sharing with theworld is this idea of like
mapping as an educational tool,mapping as a problem solving
skillset, and I don't thinkpeople even realize it can be
used to even be some to upgradeperformance of anything that's
even working well and it's youknow, for example, one.
A real analogy of this is thatwhen we we did something similar
(14:11):
a couple of different ways inmy PT business.
The first that comes to mind isthat we had we were getting
busier, we had more patientsthan we have therapists, which
is a real common problem in ourspace, because recruiting is
what it is Very few PTs relativeto the industry, and so what we
did was we started looking at apatient care visit and we
mapped out the differentcomponents.
(14:32):
There was a time spent talkingto the patient about connecting
and reviewing.
There was a warmup session,usually on a bike of some sort
or treadmill that would gettheir heart rate going, get
their tissues warmed up, andthen there'd be stretching,
exercising.
There'd be a hands-on component, and what we found was is that
(14:53):
if we warmed people up and wentstraight to the manual portion
of their visit and then spentthe remainder of their time
doing exercise, that we wereable to free the therapists up
front-loading their visits withthe hands-on so that they could
spend time adjusting the planand doing their note, which was
a real bottleneck for any partof our industry.
And so this dramaticallyimproved the amount of
efficiency in our business, tothe point where PTs were
starting to go home with lessnotes because they broke them
(15:14):
down.
And what was really smart of mewas that I didn't do it myself.
I had better.
People smarter than me, like myclinical directors, work
together to go.
How can we maximize a visit?
And you know this was a touchysubject because you know, justin
, people in our space,especially PTs, they don't want
to be told how to treat.
But when we worked with them tohelp them see that like, hey,
listen, the order of things,we're not asking you to change
(15:37):
what you do.
What we're saying is can you doit in this order?
Because for you it's going tofree you up, right, and then
they would buy into that.
And that's when we started tosee some maximum gains.
And so, yeah, I mean that wassomething like in our world,
that like we were doing reallywell at, but then when we
changed that.
It freed up all this time.
It was a.
Really it's a powerful thing inthat regard.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
You're touching on another point that you and I
didn't talk about beforehand,which is the act of mapping, is
an actual cross-functional teamexercise.
I see.
It's not a pretend one.
It's not one where you bringteam members into a room and you
(16:18):
give them the ability toquote-unquote buy in to an idea.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, it's an activity to get them to buy into
it, because you already knowwhere you want to land.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Right, it's not that it is an activity that by
default, you can't map the wholething.
No one person can map anybusiness's entire solution, set
or ecosystem or flow of patientsor flow of customers.
So by default, you need theinput from the entire team.
As soon as you get the inputfrom the entire team, they now
(16:54):
own the solution that they comeup with and that is a default.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, by virtue of default is that because they
help contribute, they buy in.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
They own it.
They own it and by owning itthey are much more equipped.
They're better equipped tosolve the problem, whereas
typically in largerorganizations even larger, even
in my small companyorganizations someone comes up
with a, with a policy, a plan,an idea, and then they drive it
through the business and halfthe people think it's dumb.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, they don't understand how he got there.
They're just like why are wedoing this?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Why am I doing this?
This is stupid.
You clearly don't know what Ido all day.
But if you flip that over andyou say, okay, I don't know what
you do all day, Right.
Write it down.
And then they write it down andthen everybody gets to look at
it and say, OK, see, that looksto me like that thing that you
do for this amount of time couldhappen over here.
(17:50):
And they say, oh yeah, it could.
And then you're not the onetelling somebody you're doing it
wrong, they're tellingthemselves I could do it
differently and then it would bebetter.
That act is as powerful as anyother part of this, because you
(18:13):
get contributions from peoplewho know the details really,
really well, and that act ofmapping is a forcing mechanism
to evaluate those details in atotally different way in the
context of things going onaround them.
And then you end up with thesecompletely different results and
it changes and it it changesthe way people think about any,
any problem that you're tryingto solve.
You just, you just immediatelysee it differently when you put
it up in front of everybody andthey all have to look at it all
(18:35):
at once.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Well, and I think there's something to be said
about this offloading.
You know, one of the mainthemes of my show is to free you
.
I want people who are listeningto learn tips and tricks that
are going to take the burden ofowning their business off their
shoulders and put it onto a teamwhere it's many hands is light
lifting.
And this is something that I'mjust now realizing as we're
(18:56):
talking that when I've solvedthings in my business correctly,
I was mapping it and didn'tknow it, and I think there's
something so powerful abouttrusting the team.
I think it's weird.
And I think there's somethingso powerful about trusting the
team.
I think it's weird.
It's almost counterintuitive,justin, because people who are
constantly worried aboutoverburdening their team feel
like if they're taking bigproblems in their company and
asking them to help solve themis like they're asking for help
(19:18):
and it's extra work, but it'sactually the opposite.
Opposite.
We're building trust in ourpeople because they see and hear
us, first of all, transparently, as human beings who don't know
all the answers, and thenwhat's really weird is that when
the thing is finished, theyactually seem to give us more
credit for being smart enough toinvolve them.
So perfect example.
(19:40):
One situation came to mind as wewere talking about this value
of like leveraging more minds tosolve one bigger problem.
I had the courage to ask my, myteam, when I had about 50
employees I had four locationsin the physical therapy world.
I asked them.
I said what's the worst part ofworking here?
Yeah, what do you hate about it?
What's what's the worst thing?
(20:00):
And overwhelmingly for my, frommy providers, my PTs or my OTs,
they would say we can't taketime off.
I was very generous.
We gave four weeks plus, youknow, halt paid days.
So it turned out to be five,six weeks of vacation.
They would have every year, butit didn't matter.
They couldn't take it offbecause we had such limited team
(20:20):
members.
If one person left, peoplewould drown.
So I remember like not knowingwhat to do and feeling super
overwhelmed.
And this is where normally wejust get stuck right, justin.
We're like, hey, we don't knowhow to solve this problem.
So I accidentally landed onthis mapping idea.
What I did was I pulledeveryone together on a Tuesday
night and I provided dinner andI said, hey, guys, we're going
(20:41):
to solve the biggest problem inour company together and I'll
never forget standing there,just being like super vulnerable
, being like guys I don't knowwhat to do.
I want you guys to all have sixweeks off, but if you can't
take it, then you're going toburn out.
I mean, this was scary for mebecause I'm acknowledging that,
like my fear that I don't wantthem to leave the company, which
, if I hadn't said thisironically, that's probably what
(21:04):
would have happened.
But what was so amazing is thatI started facilitating their
ideas and it was a technicianthat said well, what if we went
to four tens?
That would give all of us anextra day off, and if you're
willing to pay time and a half,that might incentivize us to
start covering each other'svacations.
And then it bled into this ideaof like yeah, and it was really
(21:26):
tricky, justin, because we wereseasonal in Arizona, right, we
had two thirds like 60% of ourbusiness was done in the first
four months of the year, right.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And so we needed a whole extra one or two full-time
equivalent.
Yeah, didn't need the rest ofthe year or two full-time
equivalent.
Yeah, Didn't need the rest ofthe year, Right, right.
And so someone suggested whycan't we go try to find a
part-time therapist that wouldbe full-time for the first four
months and then the rest oftheir year?
Their whole job was to covervacations, that's a great idea.
This took about two hours, yeah,and at the end of the two hours
(21:58):
we had this plan, I went outand recruited and found this
therapist and I will neverforget, a year later, having
that meeting going all right.
So how's it going?
And they were all like, manwill, that was so smart of you
to come up with this idea.
It was.
They always gave me more creditand I just said, guys, no, no,
like I'm not trying to be humblehere, I literally have no idea
how we were going to solve that.
You guys solve the problem.
(22:20):
But here's the the thing.
If I had come to them, justin,and said, hey, I've got the
solution Right, we're going todo four 10s and you're going to
cover, they were like no, butbecause they were doing it for
each other, they were like no,I'll cover one, I don't mind
covering.
You know, if they had a day off, if they were doing four 10s,
they had one day off every week,covering that Tuesday.
You know, as long as I'm notfeeling burned out and that's
(22:41):
exactly what they did.
And they got paid time and ahalf, which gave them more
revenue.
Yeah, like it was so cool.
I mean it was.
It was almost like there was noway one of us even if I had
been smart enough to come upwith that idea there was no way
I could have gotten their buy-inyeah.
If I had just like rolled it outand taught.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
That that's a great representation of that technique
and I think some of the thingsthat you know we come across in
our business, which is obviouslywe are fundamentally a
problem-solving company, that'sour job is we solve problems for
(23:18):
a living of using you know wesay this internally.
I'm comfortable saying itpublicly that when our clients
come up with the solution and itcomes out of their mouth, and
all we've done is built thefoundation, planted all of the
seeds, so that our client saysthe thing that is the idea, says
(23:45):
the thing that is the idea.
Those are the projects that goabsolutely swimmingly, because
it's not us doing what you said.
Here's the four tens is theplan.
It's not this group coming infrom the outside telling you
what to do.
You've laid the groundwork andyou've just all you've done is
created the conditions for theanswer to the question to be
very obvious.
But you don't have to answer ityourself.
(24:07):
You let someone else answerthat question and then
immediately it gets implemented.
And there's an art to that andthere's a humbleness to that,
where you are willing to notalways get credit for the thing
for the good idea and I thinkthat's where really good leaders
that I've come acrossespecially in large corporations
(24:30):
, ceos that sit back and wait,put the groundwork in place and
then have their team come upwith the brilliant idea and then
have their team come up withthe brilliant idea and then they
give them credit for thatbrilliant idea are wildly more
successful than those that sitin a meeting and say, okay,
everybody, here's what we'regoing to do, yeah, and it
(24:51):
retains better talent becausethe employees feel seen and
heard, they're being developedas leaders, they're given a
chance to have a voice.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I remember people telling me about like I was like
what do you like about here?
And they're like, oh, you giveus, we have a voice.
And I'm like well, what doesthat look like?
And they're like well, do youremember when you helped us
solve our problem on taking timeoff?
It was so like, wait a minute.
I gave you guys a problem thatI had no idea how to solve.
You guys figured it out.
And now you give me more creditthan I deserve and you're
(25:22):
saying that's one of the reasonsyou like it here is because I
gave you my problem to solve.
Like it was so bizarre to me.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
But it happens all the time.
It happens all the time.
It's very common, it happensall the time and you know, what
you experienced is not out ofthe ordinary and it's just about
, I mean, I think, the thingthat you described and the way
that we operate as a company,it's cultural and it's process
driven.
It's not an accident?
(25:50):
You don't stumble into this andyou can practice this.
You can start with small things.
So you got.
I don't know all the contextbehind the story you told, but
you got a little bit luckybecause you took a big thing the
first time.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
And you went for it.
The best way to act on this isstart with something relatively
benign.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Got it.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Right Like start with something that is so.
I'll give you an example ofsomething we're doing in our
company.
Starting last year in December,we sort of periodically get
together as a team.
We sort of talk about wherewe're headed, what we're doing.
We're a pretty open company.
In December we ran a workshopan internal workshop about
designing our service.
What's our service?
(26:36):
What's the service that ourcustomers should get when they
work with us?
How can we design our serviceso that our service is better?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
And we bucketed it into a bunch of places.
So pre-project, project,discovery, project execution,
post-project, I can't remember.
We sort of had a bunch ofbuckets, we had a general one
and then we just the whole teamjust layered in okay, here's all
the things that we can do,here's all the touch points that
we have with the customer.
Then we just pulled out eachone of those and we said, okay,
(27:06):
this is one we can affect, thisone we can affect, this one we
can affect.
And then what we started a weekago was the second follow-up to
the workshop was we pickedthree, and we picked three that
we all agreed were easy.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
And we just said, okay, let's just get those dealt
with, let's get the easy onesstarted.
So we build a little bit of a,we build a little practice to
this and then we're going tolayer on the harder and the
harder, and the harder and thenour rhythm will get better and
better.
And so often what I see incompanies is it's the hard.
Problems are hard for a reasonand if you haven't got, if you
(27:44):
don't have a mechanism and aprocess and a practice to solve
them and you tackle those first,you are predestined to make
your lives miserable and youwill just stop because they're
hard.
It's the idea.
If you think of a sports analogyand you say, okay, if I want to
be a good basketball player,I'm not going to start shooting
(28:05):
from the circle, I'm going toshoot layups.
First, I'm going to learn toshoot a layup, then I'm going to
shoot from the free throw line,then I'm going to step out to
the three-point line, then I'mgoing to stand back at the
circle and I'm going to hitshots from the circle, you would
never in your right mind go theother way.
In your right mind, go theother way.
(28:26):
But in business we oftentimesstart in the circle and we say
this is the thing that's goingto move the needle for our
business.
Let's go fix it.
And you haven't gotten themuscle memory of what it's like
to solve on the regular,everyday things that are going
to move.
They're going to move the bar alittle bit at a time and then,
once you've done that a fewtimes, then you drop the big one
in the middle and you say, okay, this is really what's going to
(28:47):
change the business.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
I love that idea that it's something you practice,
it's a skill that you develop.
So, as my listeners, rock stars, as you're listening, I want
you to think of something reallysmall that you can use to
practice.
Benign was the word that Justinused.
Something small that you canuse, a practice.
You know, benign was the wordthat Justin used, something that
might be big enough to beimportant to people, but not
such a big deal that you'reworried about getting it wrong.
Right, well, that could besomething as simple as vacation
(29:11):
coverage or well, in my case,that was a really big one.
But you know, something smallin your world might be just how
do we max or take somethingyou're already maybe doing good?
Can say how can we do it better, because that way it doesn't
come across as anything otherthan just the process of mapping
.
Yeah, rock stars, as you'relistening, maybe it's like,
let's say, your percentagearrival is doing really well and
(29:32):
you're like 90.
Hey guys, I have this visionthat you know we're doing so
good on this.
Let's build on our strength.
Let's figure out together whatwe could do to go from 90 to 95%
.
If we do, I'll celebrate withsome sort of reward.
But let's break down thecomponents, together with the
front desk and the providers inthe back office and the billers
let's look at.
(29:52):
Can we look at this from everyangle?
Because I believe two heads arebetter than one and five heads
are better than two, so you getto get it.
It's just like it just walkthrough the components of it and
like to make this better.
I love that, justin, becausebuilding momentum around the
skill in an area where maybeit's benign or somewhere they're
already doing well teaches themthat muscles that later they
(30:14):
can come in and go all right,here's a rock in our business.
We have to move and everyone'salready trained to get their
side of the rock and theyalready know how to lift.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, because once you've built that practice and
you understand that because theprocess to solve a really big
problem, the process to solve areally small problem, they're
actually really similar.
The difference is how long ittakes, how complex the
organization needs to be tosupport the solution, sure, and
sometimes how much money itcosts.
(30:42):
Yeah, I would add one how muchmoney it costs.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, I would add one more the emotional connection.
Like you know, the bigger theproblem, the more emotional like
at risk there is.
So I get that like wanting topractice in a less emotionally
viable area becomes a great wayto build that muscle.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah, and most people humans are naturally resistant
to change.
They're naturally uncomfortablewith the next thing, even if
the next thing is wildly betterthan the thing that they have
they're uncomfortable in justtaking that step to the next
thing.
So if the next thing is arelatively low risk thing,
(31:22):
you're much more likely to getpeople to step into it.
Then if the next thing is a bigrisk, like I might lose my
bonus, I might lose my like.
If we get this wrong, whathappens Right, and too often you
know, as I said, businessowners, chief executives, chief
operations officers they lookand they can see this is what's
(31:42):
totally screwing us up.
Let's go do, let's go make thatbetter.
And they're ignoring the factthat that change, the act of
that change, is part of thereason why it won't be
successful, not the changeitself.
And you know there's techniquesthat there's a lot of
(32:03):
publications out there in thissort of space around how mapping
ideas, using a systems approachto solving a problem, gives you
better visibility so that youdon't create unintended
consequences with your decisions.
You create a framework thatallows people to really see what
the solutions could be beforeyou act on them.
And getting buy-in I actuallyreally dislike that term Getting
(32:29):
ownership of the solution.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Because the people who came up with the idea will,
by default, own it and havepatience if it's not the right
solution.
When we bring these things tothe team, it automatically is
inherently taught to them.
We're piloting this ideabecause when it's our idea and
it fails, we've let them down,but when it's our idea and it
fails, that's a learning step.
So, Justin, this has been trulya phenomenal episode.
I think it was so great that wewere able to have some time to
(33:01):
talk about how to solve problemsfrom a macro level, because I
think, as we drove in, we'vebeen able to share various
examples of how it applies tomedical practice owners.
But, beyond that, how we can dothat to educate how we're able
to use this in our homes, how wecan do this in our own lives,
like if it's a dietary thing,let's break down the components,
let's get other people's input,like anyone who touches that
(33:23):
with us, like our family.
I just think there's so much tobe said about this that this is
exactly the type of episode Iwant to teach my audience,
because I want people to walkaway with some clarity and tools
that they can immediately apply.
And I know this is one of thoseepisodes where it's like oh
yeah, I know everyone's donethis by accident from time to
time.
Of course you have.
Yeah, so if people wanted toget a hold of you, justin, how
(33:44):
can they do that?
If they have questions for you,if they want to learn more
about your company?
Speaker 2 (33:48):
The best way to find me is just on LinkedIn.
Justin Sirotin is my name.
I guess you just search mine.
I am literally one of the veryfew with that name combination
in the entire United States.
That's cool so so that'sprobably the best way is you
find me on LinkedIn and connect,and I talked to a lot of people
(34:09):
about problem solving every day, all the time, so happy to
happy to connect.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Justin, thank you again for being a guest on this
show.
This was truly phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, I appreciate it .
This was really.
This was really fun, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Guys, thank you for taking time to listen to today's
episode.
If you found today'sinformation to be useful, could
you take a minute and help me?
I would love it if you couldleave a podcast review in your
app so that other people who arelooking for this information
can find it.
Plus, my dream is to have thelargest network of medical
entrepreneurs and leaders in theworld so that together, we can
change healthcare to make itbetter for all.
(34:42):
So, in addition, if you canthink of anyone that you can
send this to, not only wouldthat mean a lot to me personally
, but it would build thisnetwork so that we can make
healthcare the way that we wantit.
In today's episode, we have our guest, justin
Sirotin.
He is the CEO and founder of acompany called Octo O-C-T-O and
he is a problem solving master.
People go to his company tohelp solve big, overarching
problems, so we're going to betalking today in depth about
this thing called problemmapping.
This is a solution, maybe thesolution to helping you resolve
(00:32):
any and all problems in yourbusiness, as well as helping
teach your team to buy intothose solutions that you're not
like creating a solution andthen selling it to them.
This episode is short butpowerful.
If you're having any sort ofstruggle that you're stuck in,
this is the episode for you.
Enjoy the show, all right.
So, justin, problem solving isa real issue in any business
(00:54):
owner's path, whether it'sentrepreneurial for physical
therapy, either healthcare orany business owner.
So let's talk about yourexpertise in problem solving.
You have a unique approach tothat.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
We do so just to set a little bit of a foundation.
The business that we're in is avisual business.
The world that I come from is avisual world.
I come out of the design fieldand the vast majority of the
team here is coming out of thedesign field, and one of the
(01:28):
things that we've started torecognize at least probably 10
years ago, is when we reallystarted to understand this more
is that people who don't comeout of the visual space have
this impression that they can'tvisualize things.
And when you visualize things,it emerges patterns that then
you can use to your benefit tosolve problems.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
So one of the very first exercises- Visualization
of patterns patterns that youuse to solve problems.
Got it Exactly right.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
So one of the techniques that we use with our
customers is a customer comes inand says we have problem A and
we will map problem A.
We will just say this is whatthat problem looks like, if I
just break it all apart.
So I'll give you a reallyspecific example, love.
That Customer comes in the doorand says we're trying to tell a
story about a very complicatedidea that we have.
(02:21):
So think of this like a pitchdeck.
We look at the pitch deck andwhat we do is, instead of
looking at the pitch deck oneslide at a time, we take the
pitch deck, we put the entirepitch deck now we're using
digital tools.
We use to print them and putthem on the wall but you look at
the entire pitch deck all atonce.
(02:41):
You look at the whole thing andthen you move the parts of the
pitch deck around to try tobuild the story arc that you
think you have told.
So you think you're telling acustomer here's my problem,
here's my solution, here's whyI'm unique, here's what I'm
asking for, here's the nextsteps.
That's my story that I'm tryingto tell.
So you take that deck, you putit on the wall and then you move
(03:02):
the parts around and you veryquickly see.
You put it on the wall and thenyou move the parts around and
you very quickly see hey, younever told them X and you can
see it right away.
because they look at that andthey go, oh, there's no slides
in the problem area, and thenthey just go OK, so now we need
to tell that.
We need to tell that otherwiseor opens up problems that you
(03:28):
otherwise can't see becausethey're hidden.
Usually we look at theseproblems in forms that don't
show all of the areas where wehave gaps and we apply it
effectively to every problem weconfront, whether that's a
software technology problem orit's a spatial problem or it's a
(03:49):
storytelling problem.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Interesting.
So mapping it out gives theentrepreneur an idea of helping
break down the overwhelmingcomponents of the problem into
its elements.
And then you map that to helpcreate solutions.
And this is something you dowith your clients, but you've
done this in your own businessworld as well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, we're actually doing it right now.
So one of the things that we'reworking on is our business is a
pretty complicated business totell.
Our story is hard to tell.
We're an unusual business inthe world that we live in.
Yeah, we live in two modes.
We live with our feet plantedto the ground, where we have to
generate revenue for our clientsthrough products and services
that we build.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And then we have to have our head sort of up in the
clouds for how we tell a storyto a relatively broad audience,
and we have to do those at thesame time, oftentimes, sure, so
telling that story becomesreally challenging.
So what we did is we mapped.
We just made a giant map of whoare we talking to.
Where do they consume theirinformation?
What's the story that they'recurrently being told by others?
(04:47):
What's our story and how do webreak our story up so that those
people that we're trying tofind find it where they are
already looking, and they findit in bites that they can then
consume and share.
And so, once you draw that out,it becomes very evident that
being on a podcast like this isvaluable.
Yeah, because now there's a waythat I can get to an audience
(05:11):
with a long form that we can cutup and we can place it right in
their lap where they're tryingto find, where they're looking.
And that mapping exercise doeswonders to align a whole team of
people who work here aroundwhat we're trying to accomplish,
why and for whom.
And so we use it for ourselves,we use it for our customers and
(05:33):
I actually use it for my kids.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
That's an interesting application, you know, because
as you're talking, I'm hearingeverything from you know,
outpatient medical perspective,and this is you know.
It's funny because I also coacha lot on recruiting and I never
considered it a mapping term,but it is mapping.
When I take a client I'll say,okay, who do you want to hire?
Let's say recruiting is theproblem.
It's like let's define who youwant to hire and then determine
(05:58):
from that where they go online,real life, and then what's our
message to them, what's ourvalue proposition?
Exactly?
And most of our owners, most ofthe owners that are listening
to this, are so busy they don'teven know that they can do this
mapping activity.
And it is applicable to allstages of business.
But tell me about how thatlooks with your kids.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So one of the things that I did with my kids was we
were trying to explain this wasyears ago.
We were trying to explain tothem how money works in the
house oh, wow.
So instead of talking inabstract dollars, we just made
piles of stuff and we just said,ok, here's the pile, here's how
much stuff, here's the moneythat lands at the beginning of
(06:40):
the month.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
This is how much of that pile goes to this.
This is how much of that pilegoes to this.
This is how much of that pilegoes to this.
This is how much of that pilegoes to that, and this is what's
left at the end.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
So you asking me for whatever and me telling you no
isn't me telling you no becauseI don't like you.
It's me telling you no becausethere's a set of rules that we
have to run our home by, and inorder for you to understand that
our home needs to run by somerules like I, need to tell you
no.
And so it's very easy for a kidto understand hey, this started
(07:13):
as a block of 10.
And when I'm done, there's onlyone left.
They don't have to know howmany dollars are in the block.
They can just see that theblock's small and then they go.
Oh OK, I get it.
They can just see that theblock's small and then they go
oh, okay, I get it In theeducational terms.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
they call that providing mass, giving someone a
visual or tactile input toteach a concept.
And it's so powerful becausewhat I'm learning is mapping as
a solving problem methodologycould also be an educational
tool to help people understand.
Educational tool to help peopleunderstand.
So you know, mapping, mappingat its core, feels like it's
(07:47):
about understanding anysituation at its, at its root
cause, or its or its root level.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Absolutely.
And and there's a theory outthere that you can kind of dig
into the weeds on.
That's a, the, the.
The theory was built in the Ithink it's the 1920s by a bunch
of academics and they call itsystems thinking.
And so systems thinking is thisidea that there's no
independent action happeninganywhere.
All actions are connected toanother action, they're all
(08:13):
related, they're all connected.
So if you map theinterconnected actions, the
interconnected attributes ofwhatever solution you're looking
at or problem you're trying tosolve, it identifies where, if
you make change A, you have aconsequence in area B.
So use a physical therapy spaceas a great example.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
You were talking to me before this call you were a
patient.
I was a patient Disc in yourneck, so you saw this in real
life.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I saw it in real life .
So I was asked as a part of myphysical therapy, I had to pick
up I can't remember the amountof weight, but I had to pick up
two dumbbells and I had to carrythem around the space for a
period of time, like I don'tremember it was 20 seconds or
something like that.
So it was a big clock on thewall and the clock.
(09:04):
There was two problems.
One, the clock on the wall wasin one wall.
There's only one clock, so asyou're walking and now I have a
neck problem, so as I'm walkingI can't turn my head to see the
clock If you just had threeclocks, one on three walls and
they're all synced, you canalways see it, then you're never
doing that to that patient.
But the bigger problem was thepath that I was walking by
(09:27):
definition meant I walkedthrough other people's therapy
space.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
What are you doing?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
And so if you map that, if you just drew that out
and you said, okay, we need toprovide this therapy, this
therapy, this therapy and thattherapy, how do we make them so
that they're both good for thepatient and good for the
caregiver, so that the caregiveris not having to avoid other
caregivers acts in the way thatthey deliver their care?
And I can see you know there'sno way around it.
You're sitting in this spaceand you're just looking around
(09:56):
and you can literally watchpeople walk into the same zone
and then have to do something toavoid one another, simply
because nobody charted this in away that you could say, okay,
well, let's have the walkingpath, just be a walking path,
and then let's have a care path,be just a care path or care
location, and let's notintersect those two things.
(10:16):
And that would have they hadplenty.
It wasn't.
This wasn't about how muchspace they had.
This was about how they mappedthe space Right and the care was
great.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Let me just be clear Like they did a wonderful job of
getting my whole neck and armoperational without surgery, but
it could have been moreefficient and it's one of those
where, like, it's so funnybecause this is like a literal
and metaphorical analogy of howwe operate our business, because
you have, like, in that worldwhere you're crossing paths with
(10:46):
other people, there's like thatmoment of hesitation.
You're pivoting, you're havingto, like, do the dance before
you move around each other.
That causes inefficiency.
You could have walked furtherin that amount of time, you
could have gone.
So you know, this is true forany system.
You know, I love this analogyof a physical therapy clinic
mapping out a problem because,again, you're using visual
(11:06):
information to help create flow.
It reminds me of McDonald's andthe movie the founder.
Have you seen that movie?
I have seen that movie.
Yeah, sure, there's that scenewhere the McDonald's brothers
their biggest like invention wasthe easy flow.
The easy flow system thatcreated, where they would
literally, on chalk, draw outthe kitchen and that's how they
(11:27):
created fast food is like, okay,they mapped it out, just like
you're talking about.
They mapped out the kitchen interms of all its elements and
then they would like pretendlike they were cooking burgers
and fries and as they werelooking at the elements, they
would constantly reorganize thedifferent elements, variables,
the different elements of thekitchen to where they maximized
its efficiency, and that is whatMcDonald's is successful at.
(11:48):
The burgers taste like theytaste, but it's the speed that
they created that revolutionizedthe food industry and it sounds
like that's what you were.
You know, kind of in a similarway, the PT clinics.
If they would just take a timeand map out their gyms and map
out how patient flows work, butthen go to their billing systems
, they could go to recruitingsystems, all those different
(12:09):
systems.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, and I mean we, you know we do this a lot with
channel mapping, where you'remapping the.
So again, let's come back tothe physical therapy, and I'm
not an expert in that space.
So so, if I, if I, miss, I'll becorrect me, but if you, if you
think about the channel, so howdo you get your message out to
an audience?
How do you sell things,services, products, whatever
(12:36):
other components you're tryingto sell as a part of your
practice?
If you map a business in thatway where you say, okay, our
revenue comes from here, here,here and here, what are the
overlapping channels?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
that we can play in.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah, for revenue from here, here, here and here.
What are the overlappingchannels that we can play in for
revenue from here, here, hereand here?
How do we maximize the amountof money and time that we spend
in order to get the most volumeout of the least amount of work?
Because we have channels thatare overlapped.
If you never map those, you'regoing to spend time and money
voicing an idea to the sameaudience through two different
(13:11):
campaigns, through two differentstrategies.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You're doubling your effort with half the impact.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And so every business I don't care if you're a one
person business or you're 10,000people.
This act of mapping what you'redoing and forcing everyone
involved to confront wherethere's gaps, where there are
opportunities for improvement,by definition means you're going
(13:38):
to be more efficient and you'regoing to do it better.
And it happens literally everysingle time.
I can't, we're not and we'renot magicians, like we didn't
make this up, it's just you justapply it.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Well, this is what you've adapted to your business
that we're sharing with theworld is this idea of like
mapping as an educational tool,mapping as a problem solving
skillset, and I don't thinkpeople even realize it can be
used to even be some to upgradeperformance of anything that's
even working well and it's youknow, for example, one.
A real analogy of this is thatwhen we we did something similar
(14:11):
a couple of different ways inmy PT business.
The first that comes to mind isthat we had we were getting
busier, we had more patientsthan we have therapists, which
is a real common problem in ourspace, because recruiting is
what it is Very few PTs relativeto the industry, and so what we
did was we started looking at apatient care visit and we
mapped out the differentcomponents.
(14:32):
There was a time spent talkingto the patient about connecting
and reviewing.
There was a warmup session,usually on a bike of some sort
or treadmill that would gettheir heart rate going, get
their tissues warmed up, andthen there'd be stretching,
exercising.
There'd be a hands-on component, and what we found was is that
(14:53):
if we warmed people up and wentstraight to the manual portion
of their visit and then spentthe remainder of their time
doing exercise, that we wereable to free the therapists up
front-loading their visits withthe hands-on so that they could
spend time adjusting the planand doing their note, which was
a real bottleneck for any partof our industry.
And so this dramaticallyimproved the amount of
efficiency in our business, tothe point where PTs were
starting to go home with lessnotes because they broke them
(15:14):
down.
And what was really smart of mewas that I didn't do it myself.
I had better.
People smarter than me, like myclinical directors, work
together to go.
How can we maximize a visit?
And you know this was a touchysubject because you know, justin
, people in our space,especially PTs, they don't want
to be told how to treat.
But when we worked with them tohelp them see that like, hey,
listen, the order of things,we're not asking you to change
(15:37):
what you do.
What we're saying is can you doit in this order?
Because for you it's going tofree you up, right, and then
they would buy into that.
And that's when we started tosee some maximum gains.
And so, yeah, I mean that wassomething like in our world,
that like we were doing reallywell at, but then when we
changed that.
It freed up all this time.
It was a.
Really it's a powerful thing inthat regard.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
You're touching on another point that you and I
didn't talk about beforehand,which is the act of mapping, is
an actual cross-functional teamexercise.
I see.
It's not a pretend one.
It's not one where you bringteam members into a room and you
(16:18):
give them the ability toquote-unquote buy in to an idea.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, it's an activity to get them to buy into
it, because you already knowwhere you want to land.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Right, it's not that it is an activity that by
default, you can't map the wholething.
No one person can map anybusiness's entire solution, set
or ecosystem or flow of patientsor flow of customers.
So by default, you need theinput from the entire team.
As soon as you get the inputfrom the entire team, they now
(16:54):
own the solution that they comeup with and that is a default.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, by virtue of default is that because they
help contribute, they buy in.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
They own it.
They own it and by owning itthey are much more equipped.
They're better equipped tosolve the problem, whereas
typically in largerorganizations even larger, even
in my small companyorganizations someone comes up
with a, with a policy, a plan,an idea, and then they drive it
through the business and halfthe people think it's dumb.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, they don't understand how he got there.
They're just like why are wedoing this?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Why am I doing this?
This is stupid.
You clearly don't know what Ido all day.
But if you flip that over andyou say, okay, I don't know what
you do all day, Right.
Write it down.
And then they write it down andthen everybody gets to look at
it and say, OK, see, that looksto me like that thing that you
do for this amount of time couldhappen over here.
(17:50):
And they say, oh yeah, it could.
And then you're not the onetelling somebody you're doing it
wrong, they're tellingthemselves I could do it
differently and then it would bebetter.
That act is as powerful as anyother part of this, because you
(18:13):
get contributions from peoplewho know the details really,
really well, and that act ofmapping is a forcing mechanism
to evaluate those details in atotally different way in the
context of things going onaround them.
And then you end up with thesecompletely different results and
it changes and it it changesthe way people think about any,
any problem that you're tryingto solve.
You just, you just immediatelysee it differently when you put
it up in front of everybody andthey all have to look at it all
(18:35):
at once.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Well, and I think there's something to be said
about this offloading.
You know, one of the mainthemes of my show is to free you
.
I want people who are listeningto learn tips and tricks that
are going to take the burden ofowning their business off their
shoulders and put it onto a teamwhere it's many hands is light
lifting.
And this is something that I'mjust now realizing as we're
(18:56):
talking that when I've solvedthings in my business correctly,
I was mapping it and didn'tknow it, and I think there's
something so powerful abouttrusting the team.
I think it's weird.
And I think there's somethingso powerful about trusting the
team.
I think it's weird.
It's almost counterintuitive,justin, because people who are
constantly worried aboutoverburdening their team feel
like if they're taking bigproblems in their company and
asking them to help solve themis like they're asking for help
(19:18):
and it's extra work, but it'sactually the opposite.
Opposite.
We're building trust in ourpeople because they see and hear
us, first of all, transparently, as human beings who don't know
all the answers, and thenwhat's really weird is that when
the thing is finished, theyactually seem to give us more
credit for being smart enough toinvolve them.
So perfect example.
(19:40):
One situation came to mind as wewere talking about this value
of like leveraging more minds tosolve one bigger problem.
I had the courage to ask my, myteam, when I had about 50
employees I had four locationsin the physical therapy world.
I asked them.
I said what's the worst part ofworking here?
Yeah, what do you hate about it?
What's what's the worst thing?
(20:00):
And overwhelmingly for my, frommy providers, my PTs or my OTs,
they would say we can't taketime off.
I was very generous.
We gave four weeks plus, youknow, halt paid days.
So it turned out to be five,six weeks of vacation.
They would have every year, butit didn't matter.
They couldn't take it offbecause we had such limited team
(20:20):
members.
If one person left, peoplewould drown.
So I remember like not knowingwhat to do and feeling super
overwhelmed.
And this is where normally wejust get stuck right, justin.
We're like, hey, we don't knowhow to solve this problem.
So I accidentally landed onthis mapping idea.
What I did was I pulledeveryone together on a Tuesday
night and I provided dinner andI said, hey, guys, we're going
(20:41):
to solve the biggest problem inour company together and I'll
never forget standing there,just being like super vulnerable
, being like guys I don't knowwhat to do.
I want you guys to all have sixweeks off, but if you can't
take it, then you're going toburn out.
I mean, this was scary for mebecause I'm acknowledging that,
like my fear that I don't wantthem to leave the company, which
, if I hadn't said thisironically, that's probably what
(21:04):
would have happened.
But what was so amazing is thatI started facilitating their
ideas and it was a technicianthat said well, what if we went
to four tens?
That would give all of us anextra day off, and if you're
willing to pay time and a half,that might incentivize us to
start covering each other'svacations.
And then it bled into this ideaof like yeah, and it was really
(21:26):
tricky, justin, because we wereseasonal in Arizona, right, we
had two thirds like 60% of ourbusiness was done in the first
four months of the year, right.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And so we needed a whole extra one or two full-time
equivalent.
Yeah, didn't need the rest ofthe year or two full-time
equivalent.
Yeah, Didn't need the rest ofthe year, Right, right.
And so someone suggested whycan't we go try to find a
part-time therapist that wouldbe full-time for the first four
months and then the rest oftheir year?
Their whole job was to covervacations, that's a great idea.
This took about two hours, yeah,and at the end of the two hours
(21:58):
we had this plan, I went outand recruited and found this
therapist and I will neverforget, a year later, having
that meeting going all right.
So how's it going?
And they were all like, manwill, that was so smart of you
to come up with this idea.
It was.
They always gave me more creditand I just said, guys, no, no,
like I'm not trying to be humblehere, I literally have no idea
how we were going to solve that.
You guys solve the problem.
(22:20):
But here's the the thing.
If I had come to them, justin,and said, hey, I've got the
solution Right, we're going todo four 10s and you're going to
cover, they were like no, butbecause they were doing it for
each other, they were like no,I'll cover one, I don't mind
covering.
You know, if they had a day off, if they were doing four 10s,
they had one day off every week,covering that Tuesday.
You know, as long as I'm notfeeling burned out and that's
(22:41):
exactly what they did.
And they got paid time and ahalf, which gave them more
revenue.
Yeah, like it was so cool.
I mean it was.
It was almost like there was noway one of us even if I had
been smart enough to come upwith that idea there was no way
I could have gotten their buy-inyeah.
If I had just like rolled it outand taught.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
That that's a great representation of that technique
and I think some of the thingsthat you know we come across in
our business, which is obviouslywe are fundamentally a
problem-solving company, that'sour job is we solve problems for
(23:18):
a living of using you know wesay this internally.
I'm comfortable saying itpublicly that when our clients
come up with the solution and itcomes out of their mouth, and
all we've done is built thefoundation, planted all of the
seeds, so that our client saysthe thing that is the idea, says
(23:45):
the thing that is the idea.
Those are the projects that goabsolutely swimmingly, because
it's not us doing what you said.
Here's the four tens is theplan.
It's not this group coming infrom the outside telling you
what to do.
You've laid the groundwork andyou've just all you've done is
created the conditions for theanswer to the question to be
very obvious.
But you don't have to answer ityourself.
(24:07):
You let someone else answerthat question and then
immediately it gets implemented.
And there's an art to that andthere's a humbleness to that,
where you are willing to notalways get credit for the thing
for the good idea and I thinkthat's where really good leaders
that I've come acrossespecially in large corporations
(24:30):
, ceos that sit back and wait,put the groundwork in place and
then have their team come upwith the brilliant idea and then
have their team come up withthe brilliant idea and then they
give them credit for thatbrilliant idea are wildly more
successful than those that sitin a meeting and say, okay,
everybody, here's what we'regoing to do, yeah, and it
(24:51):
retains better talent becausethe employees feel seen and
heard, they're being developedas leaders, they're given a
chance to have a voice.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I remember people telling me about like I was like
what do you like about here?
And they're like, oh, you giveus, we have a voice.
And I'm like well, what doesthat look like?
And they're like well, do youremember when you helped us
solve our problem on taking timeoff?
It was so like, wait a minute.
I gave you guys a problem thatI had no idea how to solve.
You guys figured it out.
And now you give me more creditthan I deserve and you're
(25:22):
saying that's one of the reasonsyou like it here is because I
gave you my problem to solve.
Like it was so bizarre to me.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
But it happens all the time.
It happens all the time.
It's very common, it happensall the time and you know, what
you experienced is not out ofthe ordinary and it's just about
, I mean, I think, the thingthat you described and the way
that we operate as a company,it's cultural and it's process
driven.
It's not an accident?
(25:50):
You don't stumble into this andyou can practice this.
You can start with small things.
So you got.
I don't know all the contextbehind the story you told, but
you got a little bit luckybecause you took a big thing the
first time.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
And you went for it.
The best way to act on this isstart with something relatively
benign.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Got it.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Right Like start with something that is so.
I'll give you an example ofsomething we're doing in our
company.
Starting last year in December,we sort of periodically get
together as a team.
We sort of talk about wherewe're headed, what we're doing.
We're a pretty open company.
In December we ran a workshopan internal workshop about
designing our service.
What's our service?
(26:36):
What's the service that ourcustomers should get when they
work with us?
How can we design our serviceso that our service is better?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
And we bucketed it into a bunch of places.
So pre-project, project,discovery, project execution,
post-project, I can't remember.
We sort of had a bunch ofbuckets, we had a general one
and then we just the whole teamjust layered in okay, here's all
the things that we can do,here's all the touch points that
we have with the customer.
Then we just pulled out eachone of those and we said, okay,
(27:06):
this is one we can affect, thisone we can affect, this one we
can affect.
And then what we started a weekago was the second follow-up to
the workshop was we pickedthree, and we picked three that
we all agreed were easy.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
And we just said, okay, let's just get those dealt
with, let's get the easy onesstarted.
So we build a little bit of a,we build a little practice to
this and then we're going tolayer on the harder and the
harder, and the harder and thenour rhythm will get better and
better.
And so often what I see incompanies is it's the hard.
Problems are hard for a reasonand if you haven't got, if you
(27:44):
don't have a mechanism and aprocess and a practice to solve
them and you tackle those first,you are predestined to make
your lives miserable and youwill just stop because they're
hard.
It's the idea.
If you think of a sports analogyand you say, okay, if I want to
be a good basketball player,I'm not going to start shooting
(28:05):
from the circle, I'm going toshoot layups.
First, I'm going to learn toshoot a layup, then I'm going to
shoot from the free throw line,then I'm going to step out to
the three-point line, then I'mgoing to stand back at the
circle and I'm going to hitshots from the circle, you would
never in your right mind go theother way.
In your right mind, go theother way.
(28:26):
But in business we oftentimesstart in the circle and we say
this is the thing that's goingto move the needle for our
business.
Let's go fix it.
And you haven't gotten themuscle memory of what it's like
to solve on the regular,everyday things that are going
to move.
They're going to move the bar alittle bit at a time and then,
once you've done that a fewtimes, then you drop the big one
in the middle and you say, okay, this is really what's going to
(28:47):
change the business.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
I love that idea that it's something you practice,
it's a skill that you develop.
So, as my listeners, rock stars, as you're listening, I want
you to think of something reallysmall that you can use to
practice.
Benign was the word that Justinused.
Something small that you canuse, a practice.
You know, benign was the wordthat Justin used, something that
might be big enough to beimportant to people, but not
such a big deal that you'reworried about getting it wrong.
Right, well, that could besomething as simple as vacation
(29:11):
coverage or well, in my case,that was a really big one.
But you know, something smallin your world might be just how
do we max or take somethingyou're already maybe doing good?
Can say how can we do it better, because that way it doesn't
come across as anything otherthan just the process of mapping
.
Yeah, rock stars, as you'relistening, maybe it's like,
let's say, your percentagearrival is doing really well and
(29:32):
you're like 90.
Hey guys, I have this visionthat you know we're doing so
good on this.
Let's build on our strength.
Let's figure out together whatwe could do to go from 90 to 95%
.
If we do, I'll celebrate withsome sort of reward.
But let's break down thecomponents, together with the
front desk and the providers inthe back office and the billers
let's look at.
(29:52):
Can we look at this from everyangle?
Because I believe two heads arebetter than one and five heads
are better than two, so you getto get it.
It's just like it just walkthrough the components of it and
like to make this better.
I love that, justin, becausebuilding momentum around the
skill in an area where maybeit's benign or somewhere they're
already doing well teaches themthat muscles that later they
(30:14):
can come in and go all right,here's a rock in our business.
We have to move and everyone'salready trained to get their
side of the rock and theyalready know how to lift.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, because once you've built that practice and
you understand that because theprocess to solve a really big
problem, the process to solve areally small problem, they're
actually really similar.
The difference is how long ittakes, how complex the
organization needs to be tosupport the solution, sure, and
sometimes how much money itcosts.
(30:42):
Yeah, I would add one how muchmoney it costs.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, I would add one more the emotional connection.
Like you know, the bigger theproblem, the more emotional like
at risk there is.
So I get that like wanting topractice in a less emotionally
viable area becomes a great wayto build that muscle.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah, and most people humans are naturally resistant
to change.
They're naturally uncomfortablewith the next thing, even if
the next thing is wildly betterthan the thing that they have
they're uncomfortable in justtaking that step to the next
thing.
So if the next thing is arelatively low risk thing,
(31:22):
you're much more likely to getpeople to step into it.
Then if the next thing is a bigrisk, like I might lose my
bonus, I might lose my like.
If we get this wrong, whathappens Right, and too often you
know, as I said, businessowners, chief executives, chief
operations officers they lookand they can see this is what's
(31:42):
totally screwing us up.
Let's go do, let's go make thatbetter.
And they're ignoring the factthat that change, the act of
that change, is part of thereason why it won't be
successful, not the changeitself.
And you know there's techniquesthat there's a lot of
(32:03):
publications out there in thissort of space around how mapping
ideas, using a systems approachto solving a problem, gives you
better visibility so that youdon't create unintended
consequences with your decisions.
You create a framework thatallows people to really see what
the solutions could be beforeyou act on them.
And getting buy-in I actuallyreally dislike that term Getting
(32:29):
ownership of the solution.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Because the people who came up with the idea will,
by default, own it and havepatience if it's not the right
solution.
When we bring these things tothe team, it automatically is
inherently taught to them.
We're piloting this ideabecause when it's our idea and
it fails, we've let them down,but when it's our idea and it
fails, that's a learning step.
So, Justin, this has been trulya phenomenal episode.
I think it was so great that wewere able to have some time to
(33:01):
talk about how to solve problemsfrom a macro level, because I
think, as we drove in, we'vebeen able to share various
examples of how it applies tomedical practice owners.
But, beyond that, how we can dothat to educate how we're able
to use this in our homes, how wecan do this in our own lives,
like if it's a dietary thing,let's break down the components,
let's get other people's input,like anyone who touches that
(33:23):
with us, like our family.
I just think there's so much tobe said about this that this is
exactly the type of episode Iwant to teach my audience,
because I want people to walkaway with some clarity and tools
that they can immediately apply.
And I know this is one of thoseepisodes where it's like oh
yeah, I know everyone's donethis by accident from time to
time.
Of course you have.
Yeah, so if people wanted toget a hold of you, justin, how
(33:44):
can they do that?
If they have questions for you,if they want to learn more
about your company?
Speaker 2 (33:48):
The best way to find me is just on LinkedIn.
Justin Sirotin is my name.
I guess you just search mine.
I am literally one of the veryfew with that name combination
in the entire United States.
That's cool so so that'sprobably the best way is you
find me on LinkedIn and connect,and I talked to a lot of people
(34:09):
about problem solving every day, all the time, so happy to
happy to connect.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Justin, thank you again for being a guest on this
show.
This was truly phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, I appreciate it .
This was really.
This was really fun, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Guys, thank you for taking time to listen to today's
episode.
If you found today'sinformation to be useful, could
you take a minute and help me?
I would love it if you couldleave a podcast review in your
app so that other people who arelooking for this information
can find it.
Plus, my dream is to have thelargest network of medical
entrepreneurs and leaders in theworld so that together, we can
change healthcare to make itbetter for all.
(34:42):
So, in addition, if you canthink of anyone that you can
send this to, not only wouldthat mean a lot to me personally
, but it would build thisnetwork so that we can make
healthcare the way that we wantit.
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