Dr. Rich Post-Covid Week In Review
Week of August 31st
How Caste and Hierarchy Impacts Business

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Dr. Rich: Hello, everyone, Dr. Rich Castellano here, The Smile Dr. For my weekend review video today, I'm gonna share with you this book that I've been going through, very powerful book, and I wanted to share with you how this has been impacting my practice and how it can impact your practice as well.

And in this video, I'm going to give you four tenants of a caste system that will impact your practice, but there's a deeper message here. A lot going on in today's world, we need a lot of healing, and this book, I feel, very well articulates what is going on, the roots of where we are, and how, more importantly, how we can get through this together and build our world.

So "Caste" written by Isabel Wilkerson. I listened to the audio book, I also have the written book, I like to refer to both. It had Oprah's Book Club. And so what am I gonna talk about? Four areas that how the caste system can be defined and help your practice, and this will also relate to society at large and the greater good, so let's jump right in.

Now as a caste system, let's just say there's three types of castes, for simplicity's sake. There's good, there's not good, and there's middle of the road, neutral. Maybe there's just two, good and not good, but let's divide it up into three. Now we have a feeling for what may be a bad caste system, but let's define a good caste system.

A good caste system, rank of levels, different ranks of people. We're always gonna have ranks, whether it's age, finances, knowledge. Of course we know about race ranks, the caste, famous caste system, in India, but a good caste goal would be, number one, that you grow, right?

That's a caste system where you're allowed to grow and progress. Another, a second goal for a good caste system, is that you're happy. And the third goal would be that others can grow and be happy. And that is the foundation for a caste system, in general, and also for the caste system in your business because your business very clearly has a caste system.

And if you're not aware of it, now's a great time to learn because that caste system is determining behaviors in your business. So you want it so that you can grow, so that you can be happy, and that others can grow and be happy as well. And you're not taking, you're not growing at the loss of others. That's a critical definition of a caste system.

Now there are some core behaviors that we use in my office to define and sustain a good caste system. So number one thing we need for a great caste system in our office is protocols, a written protocol. How do your team room patients? How do they take a history? How do you have a sales process? How do you do your marketing?

You may know these things, or you may rely on a person to get something done, but a caste system works best, and behaviors work best, when you have a written protocol to allow others to follow that. Secondly, we need daily training, which we definitely do in my office. We have our weekly meetings that we can say, "Here's our protocol. Here's what happened."

This defines the flow of authority, and it also shows you where your system is breaking down. "It says, well, the system says this, but I can't do it that way because of this." So, great. So these are important ways to define what is going on in your office. Without the protocols, you're in the dark. You're just kind of doing it, making it up, and you're not really sure what's going on.

And the third part of these core behaviors of a good caste system are measuring. What are your metrics? How many phone calls were made today? How many consults were booked? How many consults were seen? How many inbound calls did you have? How many leads are you going through? How many videos did you create? How much marketing are you putting out?

And again, you can have protocols for each one of these. Now just to take a little pause, "Wait a minute, there's no way I can put protocols on everything I can do." I get it, but just understand, you already have protocols, and those protocols, if they're not written down, they are in the mind and brain of your team members and they're walking around, and if they don't show up, there's no protocol.

Or someone else has to make it up, or if you're training a new person, then you're starting from scratch. So this defines the caste within your office, the hierarchy, who knows what, and it's important to put it out there. So if you don't have all your protocols together, that's okay, just start somewhere. And little by little, you'll put your protocols together and create and define the caste system that you already have so that you can move to a caste system.

Flow of authority, rank, flow of communication that you want. So protocols, training, and following those metrics. A good caste system will also require professionalism. Now how am I gonna define professionalism for a caste system? As we go through, and I'm recognizing how I interact with my team and I expect them to follow on their job description, their protocols, I have to manage my anger and frustration.

I think this is the biggest area where a caste system breaks down. When I'm angry or frustrated, my team no longer wants to follow the protocols. They just want to avoid my anger and frustration. And then they're gonna hide things from you. They're not gonna always tell me the truth. Whereas, I don't want them to hide anything from me. I want them to tell me everything. I want them to do what's on the protocol, but they're not gonna do that if they're gonna think, oh, it's gonna make me angry.

If I get really angry, they may not have a job. So I must manage my anger and frustration and always go back to, "Oh, was there a problem? Let's go to the protocol." It's nothing personal. "Oh, we didn't go..." "Oh, we missed a step here." "Oh, well, I see it's really hard for you to make that step. Well, let's... How can we support you so we can make this work?" And then we're going to train on that and it's never gonna be perfect, right?

So my professionalism is I must manage my anger and frustration because, do you get angry or frustrated in your workday? I know I do, very frequently, but I've got to manage that well. Second category of professionalism that makes a caste system work: calendar everything you do. When you put your time on a calendar, that means you're planning and preparing, that you know what your tasks are, not, "Well, I can't put it on the calendar 'cause I gotta be free just in case something comes up."

That means you're not preparing enough to make sure that you are spending enough time to get the tasks done. "But there's no way I could do that. I just gotta be ready. Anything could come at me." I get that, but you've got to start by setting aside your planning time, setting aside your practice time. You set aside time for patients.

You can't go and tell patients, "Sorry, I can't see you now 'cause I gotta go do this, make this phone call." Sometimes you do that because, "Sorry I'm seeing you an hour late," but that's not good professionalism. So live by the calendar. Make it a goal to calendar everything that you do. If you're not there yet, just improve it a step at a time. Calendar 50% of what you do, then get to 75%, but get steps that you must calendar what you do because then that allows others to follow the caste system.

Otherwise, your caste system is the teams looking at you saying... They're expecting you to be unpredictable, that you might be an hour late, that you might go here and there, and that is not a caste system that you want. Once you master your professionalism with anger and frustration and calendaring, then you've calendered things, you've really got to work to be on time.

And that is a beautiful part of when you have a caste system that is on time, things happen when you expect them, amazing beauty and magic happens. You're predictable. You're consistent. That is a sign of your integrity. And so this is a level of authority, a caste system that gives you a, it's your brand, right? So in your professionalism, manage your anger and frustration, put everything on the calendar, and be on time.

And the last part of a good caste system in a business is the personal touch. Maybe it's not the last, maybe it should be the first, but with my team, I wanna have a personal touch because I want them to have a personal touch with my patients, which means I wanna know about my team's family. What are their kids' names? What are they doing? What did they do over the weekend? Talk to them personally, sometimes as a boss, or you're high up on the hierarchy, "I'm your employer."

You don't wanna know all the personal details, but you need to know some, because when you get to know them, they feel cared for and valued and they don't want to be, "Oh, it's just a system, this caste I got to go through and be a robot, a number." Personal touch.

Second, make sure your team eats. Sounds simple, but lunches may be late, or they need to take a break, but check in, "Did you get something to eat?" Simple to do, easy to overlook, very important. When others know that you're, like, "Oh, well, they're making me go eat," or the opposite of that is, "I went the whole day, I didn't eat, and nobody even knew." Those things may happen because things can get busy, but make it an effort to make sure your team gets lunch. Check in on them. "You got some lunch? Okay, good, here we go."

And then the third personal touch is ask your team how they're doing. "Hey, how are you doing? Is everything okay? Really? Is it okay? You seem a little tense." Ask them. Some people say, "I don't wanna know. Too much information. What if they're gonna dump on me and tell me everything's bad?" You'd rather hear that than them hiding it. So these personal touches allow, A, if you have a good caste system in place, for it to run smoothly, efficiently, and effectively.

This is what I do in my office every day. Nobody does it perfectly. Do it the best that you can, and just do it. Don't get overwhelmed by the process. Take it one step at a time. But these steps of identifying what a good caste system is, growing yourself, being happy, growing others. Core behaviors of a good caste system: written protocols, training, having metrics.

Number three, professionalism of a caste system: manage your anger and frustration, follow a calendar, put yourself on a calendar, and be on time. It's one thing to have a calendar, but it's hard to be on time. And then the personal touch. Check in on everyone's families, make sure people get lunch, and ask them how they're doing. Because when you do those things, "How are you doing?" you're checking those smile scores, right? That smile score matters. You want your team smiling as much as possible.

So please know your caste system in your office. We all follow a caste system. The caste system predicts your behavior. It is your program. It is your protocol. Whether you're following unconsciously, if you're doing that, or if you have your written protocols, great, because wherever you are, you wanna take it to the next step. If you don't have protocols, write out some protocols, and make them what you want them to be.

If you have protocols, review them, make them even better. How can you improve on that? Please read this book. We all need healing. We need healing in our businesses. We need healing in our society. Now you're watching these videos because you want to improve your business, so that's where I started, but we do have a greater obligation and responsibility to heal our society as well.

A thank you to Isabel Wilkerson. This is a very powerful book, should be required reading for everyone. And if we implement this into our offices, it gives us an example. It builds our character to implement it in other places in our life. Thank you for listening. I'll see you in the next video.