Chain Management
Daily briefings and daily primers are helpful to align the staff with the practice objectives. Larger organizations often use daily briefings to keep their staff up to date on important daily activities. Businesses like hotel chains, police departments and amusement parks may gather all of their staff before the start of a shift and go over the day’s objectives and important information. There is a VIP on floor 12. A flasher has been active on Oak Street. The feral cat problem is back at Star World.
A daily primer is a point of emphasis that aligns with the organization’s objectives. Make the hotel like a home. Let’s be careful out there.[1] Nobody likes stale popcorn.
Daily briefings can be problematic for small offices, especially offices that utilized “stagger in/stagger out” scheduling. Part of the staff starts earlier than the rest of the staff. The rest of the staff “staggers in” over the next 60-90 minutes. At the end of the day, the staff that came in early “staggers out” first, with the rest of the staff following over the next 60-90 minutes. Staff may take lunches at different times, so there may not be any one point in the day when it is possible to get together for a briefing.
Something like the “Chain Card” can accomplish the objectives of daily briefings and primers by involving the entire staff one-on-one. The Chain Card starts with a dated “Chain Card” that has three parts on the front—Primer, Emphasis and Thoughts/Notes/Concerns—like this:
Front of the Card
Staff Chain Card (Date)
Primer
Emphasis
Thoughts/Notes/Concerns
The back of the Chain Cards is the End of Day Card and looks like this:
End of Day Card Dept/Date: __________________
What went well?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What went not-so-well?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thoughts/Notes/Comments
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Chain Card can be formatted to print on 4 x 6 notecards.
The second part of Chain Management is the Chain List. This is a list of each staff member, followed by a list of each department, such as Back Office, Front Desk and Check Out. At the beginning of each day, the office lead (or manager) creates the Chain Card by supplying a primer, identifying points of emphasis for that day or week and listing any other notes that the staff should know. The office manager then finds the first person on the Chain List and presents the card to them by reviewing the information and checking for comprehension, e.g. “The primer for today is, “Smiles are contagious. We need to make sure that everybody calls back their voicemail in 24 hours or less. Dr. Jones is out of the office next Thursday and Friday. Do you have any questions?”
That person then takes the Chain Card go to the next person on the list and repeats the process until every individual has been briefed on the Chain Card. The last person to be briefed gives the Chain Card to the first department on the list. At the end of the day, before the first person from that department leaves, the first department on the list would adds notes to the End of Day card. That department then gives the card to the next department for their assessment. When each department is done, the Chain Card is given (or left) for the office lead. The office lead can then incorporate the end of day comments on the next day’s Chain Card, e.g. “The back office was great yesterday in working together while shorthanded!”
Chain Management aligns the staff with the practice objectives through the use of a daily primer and emphasizing points that are important for the staff to know. Chain Management has the added benefit of building relationships between staff members, as the Chain List should be reorganized periodically. Staff members who might not work together on a daily basis can build a relationship through reviewing the Chain Card.
Jim and I initially supplied a list of primers, but after those had been used, the office lead used primers they found on the Internet. Every now and then, the primer would be a joke or funny saying. We were OK with that. The staff seemed to welcome the occasional change.