Top Management Story

Writen by Jeffrey Davidson

One of the most frustrating experiences for team leaders is when they assemble the right people, establish the right action plan, and still find that progress isn't anywhere near what they envisioned. You've got to stay loose, and be willing to turn on a dime.

Flexible team leaders finish first. Inflexible team leaders are still trying to figure out what went wrong. Adopt the mindset that setbacks and mistakes that you make along the way are inevitable, and they also represent opportunities for learning, redirection, and growth. If you convey to team members that mistakes won't be tolerated, you'll force your staff to play it safe, proceed with caution, and not do any more than is asked of them. When fear prevails, your role becomes even more challenging.

Mistakes Happen, It's What Happens Next that Counts

Create an environment that says "we strive to do our best, but sometimes mistakes will happen." When team members know that you won't blow your top and can handle some of the inevitable bumps in the road, they're more willing to:

* take appropriate risks,

* accept responsibility for any mistakes that they do make,

* learn from them, and

* move on.

The more challenging the project, and the tighter the time frame and more restrictive the budget, the more likely mistakes will occur. Seek to have everyone acknowledge them for what they are, and ascertain if there are any opportunities as a result of a mistake.

The knowledge and even wisdom that team members gain as a result of their mistakes, shared with the whole group can sometimes benefit the entire project in ways that you might not have imagined. When team members receive support for assuming responsibilities for the mistakes they've made, they find it far easier to critically self-assess their own performance. That tends to make them even better employees than they were before.

How Am I Doing So Far?

People at all levels of experience prefer to be held accountable for the work they do. They also want to receive regular feedback as to how they're doing. When you give them appropriate feedback, they know what they're doing right, they know what they're doing wrong, and they can learn and improve. If you go too long without giving people feedback, they begin to wonder if you're noticing at all, or if you even care.

Some team leaders make the mistake of not giving feedback, especially to highly competent staff, figuring they already know they're doing a good job, so why bother with excess verbiage? Like partners in a loving relationship, people want to know on a continuing basis that their partners still want them above all else. So too, your team members want to hear from you, even if you only offer performance feedback as little as once a day.

When Conflict Arises

Even if you have the knowledge and skills of Peter Drucker Ph.D., the premiere management guru of the 20th century, conflict between you and team members, or between team members themselves, often is unavoidable. Too many team leaders regard conflict as something that is to be avoided at all costs. But that is not a necessarily sound approach to team leadership. When conflict is left untouched, it can fester, grow at an alarming rate, and ultimately upend a team's progress in ways you'd prefer not to experience.

The Basic Types of Conflict

It's best to identify conflict as it emerges and generally, you'll encounter two basic types of conflict. With the first type, a single team member has problems relating to someone else on the team, or the entire team itself. Such conflict can result in jealousy, hostility, mistrust, disharmony, or withdrawal.

The other type of conflict you're likely to encounter has to do with a particular task or assignment, the appropriateness of a particular procedure, or how the group itself is managing its resources. Since this type of conflict is not based on personalities of team members, conflict may have resulted regardless of who is on the team.

Antidotes for Each

Fortunately, with both types of conflicts, there are antidotes. By allowing underlying issues to emerge, a team can sweep away some of the barriers early in a project, while they're still relatively easy to deal with, and hence help to establish an environment that leads to project success.

In the case of conflict between individual team members, by surfacing the issues and having both parties air their grievances, the entire team can benefit. Sometimes you're able to identify and dislodge other issues that would have come up even later.

Now, in a climate of exploration and of mutual understanding, you can deal with the conflict. This opportunity wouldn't have emerged in a climate of passivity or ignorance.

In addressing the second type of conflict, recognize that it can be constructive, energizing, and even motivating. In some instances, this type of conflict actually acts to fuel progress rather than thwart it. You can help members to recognize that they share some deep-rooted values and common aspirations. Sometimes it's best to take time out from the overall project, perhaps have a half-day retreat, and give team members the opportunity to join together in an atmosphere of cooperation and trust.

The synergy that you derive from holding such sessions often more than pays for themselves in terms of team member's increased energy and renewed commitment to the project.

Jeff Davidson, MBA, CMC, helps organizations and individuals overcome the relentless burden of information and communication overload. Visit http://www.BreathingSpace.com or call 800-735-1994 for more on Jeff's keynote speeches and seminars including "Managing Information and Communication Overload" and "Prospering in a World of Rapid Change," and his books Breathing Space: Living & Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Sped-Up Society and The Sixty Second Organizer.

Writen by Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Time management is still one of the most frequently searched times as a solution to improved performance. A Google search (September 2006) indicates 19,200,000 hits. There appears to be a lot of individuals seeking answers from training such as workshops to purchasing tools such as PDA's in their ongoing quest to improve performance specific to this limited, fixed, constant.

During the last 10 years in my performance improvement and executive coaching work, I have consistently asked the following simple question to even the busiest of CEO's, entrepreneurs, small business owners, executives and front line employees: Do you waste 12 minutes a day What is surprising is the consistency of the answer at all levels: Yes! This consistency suggests that individuals at all levels need to better self-manage their activities so that they can achieve the results being demanded of them.

Businesses understand the economic impact of wasted time. Those 12 wasted minutes each day translate into 1 hour per week or 52 hours per week. Using an average salary (without benefits) of $30,000 amounts to a minimum annual loss of $576.92 per employee. Since most organizations in this country are considered to be small businesses with less than 500 employees, then using 100 employees creates a negative impact of loss profits and productivity or performance of $57,692 for just wages alone.

However, wasted time is not just a performance problem such as the lack of personal self-management, but also can be a greater symptom of significant organizational leadership issues. The question needs to be asked: Why is there wasted time? In many cases, the wasted time can be a direct result of some of the following leadership problems:

• Lack of organizational direction from not knowing what to do next to not knowing the overall business goals
• Micro management that is waiting for leadership approval to proceed
• Poor interpersonal skills from communication to poor decision making and problem solving skills
• Poor processes, policies and procedures
• Accountability (Disconnect between performance and results)

Now, let's assess a dollar impact to each of these problems facing the employees. For 100 employees who have had one of these problems each and every workday is $100 per day. This $100 daily loss grows to $26,000 annually. When combined with the loss wages, the hit to the bottom line is almost $100,000. If the company has 250 employees, this loss of wages and performance would increase to over $200,00. A company of 500 employees would experience a potential profit loss of over $410,000.

A recent national survey by Salary.com suggests that most employees waste 2 hours each day not just 12 minutes. Also, many employees face more than one problem each day. These facts suggest that poor time management potentially contributes to far greater loss of profits than the $100,00 to $400,000 as previously computed.

To reverse this drain on the profits requires management to truly assess their problems and change their beliefs that time management is just a "personnel" issue, but instead is an organizational issue that demands effective leadership.

Writen by Michael Russell

If it seems that the FA0 specifications go on forever, they pretty much do. In this medical billing installment, concentrating on electronic billing of claims using NSF 3.01 specifications, we'll be focusing on FA0 record fields 48 through 55.

FA0 field 48, positions 224 - 230, is the obligated to accept amount. If this sounds like strange English then a little explanation is in order. When billing a medical carrier or payer such as Medicare, most doctors are what are called participating providers. This means they participate in the universal Medicare program. As participating providers, one of the things that they are bound to is the fees set by the Medicare administration for each service provided. By accepting this agreement, when sending a bill to Medicare there is what they call an obligated to accept amount. This means that regardless of what the doctor wants to charge for the service, this is the amount that he agrees to receive from Medicare when payment is made. This is the amount that is transmitted in this field.

FA0 field 49, positions 231 - 237, is the drug discount amount. For claims where there are drugs or medications involved, this is the amount of discount that the patient is entitled to for that particular drug. This field is not used too often but it is available and functional.

FA0 field 50, position 238, is the type of units indicator. This is an indicator that is also seldom used to show how the units are being billed, whether it be box, carton or single unit.

FA0 field 51, positions 239 - 245, is the approved amount. When all is said and done, this is the amount that is approved by the payer, whether it be Medicare, Medicaid, or a private payer. In most cases, this is the amount that will be paid to the provider or the patient.

FA0 field 52, positions 246 - 252, is the paid amount. This is the amount for this claim, if it was billed prior, that was already paid. In most cases, this will be an initial claim and this field will go over with all zeros. It must be filled in and cannot be left blank or the claim will be denied.

FA0 field 53, positions 253 - 259, is the beneficiary liability amount. This is where things get a little hairy. If a claim is not paid in its entirety and there is an amount that needs to be paid by the patient and the patient is no longer living (patients do die during procedures) this is the amount that the patient's beneficiary is responsible for paying. This gets into legal areas that we won't touch here.

FA0 fields 54 and 55, positions 260 - 273, are the balance billing limit charge amount and percentage fields. This also gets into an area that is beyond the scope of this article. Let's just say that it is rare that these fields are used so let's just leave it at that.

In our next installment on medical billing of electronic claims, we'll pick up with FA0 record field number 56.