Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the latest webinar in the practise Management series. This evening's webinar is, being given by somebody who probably needs no introduction whatsoever, but I will introduce him. Anthony Chadwick is the CEO of Alphabet International and is a veterinary dermatologist.

He qualified from Liverpool University, in 1990 and achieved his certificate in veterinary dermatology in 195. He set up a practise in Liverpool in 1997 and he eventually sold out in 2011 so he could concentrate on the webinar vet, which he'd started in January 2010. The webinar VET is the largest online provider of veterinary CPD in Europe and is a past winner of the FSB's Northwest Online Business of the Year and the Regional Business Awards, Knowledge Business of the Year.

Anthony's also a veterinary futurist and he's fascinated about new technology in the veterinary profession. At a futurist conference in 2016, he heard about the HoloLens and immediately set about developing Shiba, which is the holographic German Shepherd, which he demonstrated at that year's London vet show. He also enjoys strategically and, thinking and connecting teams together, and ideal quality for project managing multidisciplinary teams.

And tonight, he's going to talk about a subject which is very close to my heart too at veterinary management consulting, which is all about the vision and the culture of your practise. So over to you, Anthony. Thank you so much, Andy, can you hear me OK there?

Yep, I can hear you perfectly fine. Great, super, super. So thank you very much for all coming on.

I know it's beginning of August, it's holidays. I'm actually away at the moment myself. I come for the first time, to Austria.

Well, I've been for a conference in Vienna before, but I'm in Salzburg. My wife is a big musical theatre fan, so we're gonna be doing a bit of Sound of Music stuff. But at the moment in the Austrian Lake District, we've been cycling, high point of the day.

Today we're seeing a redback strike. I like my bird watching and I've never seen one of them before, so that was really exciting, . So really today I wanted to talk about vision and culture, and to say, you know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, so I, I kind of know what mine is, and I'm wondering if you know what yours is, and what we're gonna do is spend a bit of time.

Just trying to show how I've come to that and hopefully this will be helpful. And of course I also thrilled to be on the practise management series, Alan. Caroline Crowe, Andy have done a great job of, of sort of looking after this series over the last few years.

And we've also got some really brilliant sponsors. So we have Simply Health, we have Saint Francis Group, we have 8 Legal, and it's fascinating when I get to talk to these companies about what their vision and what their culture is. And it amazed me, I was having a chat, probably about 6 months ago with Simply Health.

And they were talking about their business and, and it sort of came up in the conversation that they give 10% of all their profits to good causes, and I knew nothing about that, and I said, gosh, you know, you're doing these things, we don't even know about it, so. I think it's also important with culture that we also put that out there and let people know about it cos it's important that people see that there are like-minded businesses trying to make a difference in the world. So.

What I'm gonna really try and go through today, now let me just see, this is sticking on me, but it should work now, is what is your own personal vision and values, you know, have you thought about that? Is that something that you actually have spent time with and maybe have written down somewhere? I think also within.

Vision and culture, you've also got to say, how do you select for people to work in the team? I know we've got Michelle on the line today who are probably pull in at some point to, to give us some of her thoughts on this as well. And I think we'll talk a little bit about putting a vision statement together, and also, talking about the values that really matter for your business, which you'll do together with your team because there's no point.

You know, and me as, Anthony Chadwick, the, the head of the webinar vet to say, here's the vision, and here's the values. Guys, get on with it, because it may not be their vision and it may not be their values, so we've got to do something that actually involves everybody in the team. Andy's very kind, with the introduction, that was really nice instruction, Andy, here I am, people say they don't realise I'm so tall when they see me on a webinar because you only see the head.

So I'm, I'm 6'6, I'm quite a lot taller than my wife who's with me at the moment, cycling, in Austria, and obviously set up webinar bets in 2010, really interested at the moment with all the 3D learning, so. Here's some vet students in Utrecht. He's a very famous vet student in Glasgow, so we've been going around the vet schools.

This is Laura Muir, the famous runner, just looking at the HoloLens and getting excited about it, and hopefully, with more time, we might be able to really start progressing with that as well. And no longer practised, I, I practised until about two years ago with my dermatology. So my practise in 2011.

But obviously practised for 25 years and, and, you know, I'm, I love being a vet. I've wanted to be a vet since I was about 8 year old, so it's very much in, in my genes, you know, to, to work. With that.

To try and help them. Pets. Anthony, I think we've lost your sound.

Let's drop off for a second. Am I back on again? Can you hear me?

Yeah, you're back on. Yeah, I just noticed it had just gone off. I obviously I'm in.

In a hotel in, in Austria, if it's still a problem, Andy, you've got my mobile number, send me a text or a WhatsApp and I'll, I'll jump on the phone. OK, no problem. Because I've got pretty good signal here.

OK, I, I see, thank you Siri. So we've got the business is an extension of you, so how do we sort of change the primary aim into what you're trying to achieve with the business, and then how do we recruit people. Who share our vision and values, because I think if we're not aware of that at the start, we recruit people and they may not really believe in what we're talking about.

So it's really important to recruit around vision and values. A lot of people talk about mission statements, and I think really we need to talk, yes about mission statements, but actually it's vision statements as well, and I'll, I'll talk a little bit about the difference between those. Talk a little bit about what is culture and, and really that's all tied in with values.

And then how do we use the team to put together our vision and our values? So, I actually, two of my big breakthrough moments in, in my professional life and and personal life as well were. In about 2003, I, I came upon a book called The Eyth, which is by Michael Gerber, and I ended up doing the three year course, which helped me in developing my own veterinary practise, but it started off before we did anything of that, it said, what are you about?

What do you want to accomplish? You know, what do you value, what kind of life do you want? It's an American package, so it talks about, you know, what legacy do you want to leave if you were at, you know, flying the wall on your funeral, what would that look like?

So what does my life look like? Who do I wish to be? And then there was a secondary sort of moment which was when in about 2010, 2011, I came upon a guy called Roger Hamilton, who ran a thing called the Talent Dynamic, and that was a psychometric test.

But what he really talked about in the psychometric test was, you know, do what you love. So you did the test and I came out as a star. And I realised that maybe sometimes when I was running my practise, I was very much a manager, I was doing all the technical stuff, all the health and safety, and I wasn't, using my skills and my, and my gifts to the best ability, and in fact sometimes I was trying to get better at my weaknesses.

And so consequently, I wasn't always very happy, because I think it's so important that. Whatever you do, you know, your life, it's, you only have it once, so you want it to be as good as possible, so you should do what you love. So that, those two moments were really important for me.

So the primary aim I spent time trying to bring that together, and we could also look at, you know, what are your principles, and there's a famous by a guy called Ray Dalio, and again, he's talking very much about who do we stand for, what do we stand for, what do we live for. And what principles do we have in our business? So all of that came together.

And the primary aim, the idea of this is then to try and bring that in and rather than write, you know, a 3 page essay on it, keep it really simple, 2 or 3 words, you know, a sentence, 2 sentences at the most. And I spent a lot of time thinking about it and who I was and where I'd come from and and what I was trying to accomplish in my life. And I came up with Love and Serve.

You know, I love people, I love animals. I actually get a kick out of helping people and, you know, that's what I wanted to do more of. So that then really .

Gave me the input to say, OK, how do I take things forward, you know, with my own business. So my own personal vision is, you know, I love people, I love animals, I care about the environment, I love being a vet. And so the practise that I set up was very much a, a customer centric practise.

I loved looking after the customers, the clients. I wanted to make sure that, The pet's got a really good deal out of it, that I was a real advocate for the pets, and for me, The purpose of the business, we love and care for your pet as if it were our own was something that I, I kind of came up with during that time. Very much set me up as a purpose led business rather than a purely profit led business.

Now, as I'll talk a bit later, clearly you can be as purpose led as you'd like, but if you make no money, then very soon you won't be a business. So clearly, you know, you have to have an eye on the analytics and the numbers. But first and foremost, you know, the purpose should lead you.

And it was interesting. I was in a hotel a couple of days ago, in the Austrian Lake District, and I was checking out, and I was talking about one of the ladies' women who'd been serving in the hotel and how fantastic she'd been. It turned out it was the, the, hotel owner's daughter, and she said, well, she's a junior school teacher, she works in the holidays here, and really, we all have the same ethos, which is the people are the most important.

And clearly we've got to make money, but. In the first and foremost, we're people, people, and we want to make a difference, we want to give them a good experience. And if you do that, if you add enough value, you know, the money probably will flow.

And Roger, and I know Carolyn Crowe, in fact, if you go on some of the webinars that we've done on, you know, make this your best ever year, Carolyn also talks about the future vision exercise, which is very much, you know, what does my life look like at the end of this year, you know, you might be overweight, you might not be very fit, you might want to learn a language, you know, what are my goals? It's amazing how many people, you know, set themselves their goals that they, they sort of drift on in life. And it's not about, you know.

Like I did this year, you know, setting myself a target to be able to do these 3 days of cycling in, in the Austria Lake District, you know, getting better at my languages, playing more guitar, relaxing more, making sure that I'm looking after myself personally, making sure I'm looking after myself, from a mental capacity, so I'm reading, but also from a health capacity that I take time out to exercise, that I watch my diet, that I try and maybe lose a few pounds that I've put on. You know, over the last years. So I think these are all really important things that, you know, we can't talk about vision and values about our company, unless we're really sure about what we believe in as an individual person.

So, you know, I'd like you over the next few days to, to really have a think about that primary aim, and I'm more than happy to share these slides. In fact, I'll put them on slideShare on LinkedIn, and obviously the, the, the, webinar will be up in a couple of days and I'll put the slides there as well, so you can look at them as a PDF. But do spend some time looking at that primary aim.

I spent a week or so when I did it. To get really clear as to what resonated in me as, you know, this is what I'm about. And, you know, primary aim could also be, I want to be a millionaire by the time I'm 30, and, you know, I'm not here to judge what your primary aim is, this is my primary aim, but I want you to, to spend some time cos I think it would be really useful if you haven't already done it, to look at it.

So Once you've got that, you can start looking at your company vision, and we'll talk about vision and mission statements and now they diff. But the company vision, you know, it has numbers, it has analytics in it. It's created by the team.

It's probably something that will take 3 to 5 years to achieve, and it is a stretch. So once you've got an idea of what you're trying to do, you know, within your, individual life, then if you have a company or, or something that you want to try and grow, this could be, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to own a company, it could be something that you want to do, you know, Cal Major has just, . Bordered around, she's seaboarded around the British Isles to sort of bring into our our attention the, the, the state of the oceans around the UK with plastic, and, you know, we're going to look at that with her at the virtual Congress in January.

You know, that is her vision then, which is maybe a bit bigger than just a personal vision, it's a more global vision of I want to make a difference, reducing plastics and plastic usage and. Increase recycling by shining a light on the problem that we have because we're all so busy, we can forget some of these really big problems that are happening in the world. So, this is our company vision and, and we came up with this, as a group, two groups in fact, and we, we, we got the two groups to put their visions in.

Obviously I'd given some sort of inputs. But then we really teased it apart and spent about 1 week or 2 weeks until we'd got it as we liked it. And so, the company vision which we, we brought in about November, December of last year was to provide the highest quality vet led content that we're always going to be really, really conscious that we want the best speakers, we want, you know, the topics to be really relevant, sometimes to be a bit off-piste because there's areas like this that I think are really important.

They're not clinical, but they're important for us to know about as busy professionals. We want to be in the next 3 to 5 years, the world's largest online battery community. Now, we think with all the surveys that we do, we just did a, a survey recently that you may or may not have been involved in.

3000 people, replying to that survey, just over 3000. And what was really great from the survey was it showed that. In their eyes, we have the best customer service.

And the quality that we produced was the best in the field, slightly above BSAV and the universities, but, you know, you can say it's, it's our survey, it's not independent. But we're at that very high level with the SAVA and the universities. So we know that, you know, the quality is there, but that's something we've got to continue with.

We know that we have a really large online veterinary community that, you know, all the companies that are having a go in online, you know, certainly in the UK and probably in Europe, you know, aren't as big as us. But we want to be the world's largest online, so we've got companies like Vin, I mean, I don't even know really how big they are, but we want to be bigger than that. And, and the reason we do that is not just cos I want, you know, to have the biggest, you know, online community, it's because I think that that will have its own energy, that people will contribute to that, we'll learn from each other, that we'll have that, community dynamic that will really, will really help everybody.

But mostly because if people are learning and they're learning good quality stuff and they're able to apply it and to reflect on it. In the best possible way, and Andy, you know, come in if you want to at this point, or, or later on. But if we do that, then we'll have really, really, knowledgeable vets.

And if you walk into the consulting room knowledgeable and you feel like you have, you know, a lot of ability, with the various conditions, then the likelihood is that you'll be much more confident going in. And that confidence will, you know, the, the clients will notice that and probably that will help you to be more successful, clinically, but probably professionally and, and, you know, from a wage perspective as well. So that's how we sort of came up with our company vision, and that was not just me, it wasn't just the senior team, it was everybody in the company at that stage who came together.

To put that together about what was important for them, you know, in their daily, in their daily life. So vision is is perhaps something that people haven't heard about as much, you know, we've all heard about mission statements and a lot of us have them and they're in schools and, and, you know, we'll we'll see them in businesses. The mission states why the business exists, what is its purpose.

The mission statement informs the vision statement. The mission is quite consistent in a way, whereas the vision will change. And I think it clarifies what and who of the company, whereas the vision really adds in why and how as well.

And the vision asks, where does the company want to be in the future. So if you look at our mission statement, this was something that I kind of put together very early on in, in the life of Webinar vet. It was very much a dissatisfaction travelling to meetings late at night.

It was how expensive courses were. It was how expensive it was completely if you considered lost opportunities because I had to be out of the practise, paying for locums, paying for courses, paying for hotels, paying for planes or trains to take me there. The dissatisfaction for me was, this is incredibly expensive for me to try and keep up to date.

And actually I used to see 35 hours as kind of a bit of a target, whereas clearly it's a minimum. And now we have many vets who do many more hours than they need to because, They like doing it, it's actually energised them, they feel more confident. They enjoy their job more, they go into the into practise with a skip in their step, and, you know, I've had vets come up to me and say, you know, you've helped, or the webinar vet has helped to get my mojo back for being a vet again.

So the mission statement was very much around that, which was veterinary education isn't accessible enough, it's not affordable enough. I want to make it not only for the vets in the UK, I want to make that worldwide because once you create a digital business, once you create an online business, it immediately becomes a global business and, you know, we've had vets from over 100 countries and nurses looking at some of our stuff. And then I found that people were coming up to me and saying, gosh, this stuff is really helping me.

I feel, you know, like I've got my mojo back. I'm enjoying my job more. But, you know, people are obviously still stressed and so on, and we have a, a stress problem in the profession.

Lizzy set up Mind Matters initiative, which was, you know, went really well, . But I kind of came to her and said, well, why don't we do mindfulness for vets as well, and we put a course together. Several 1000 have now have gone through that.

So. We're all doing a little bit, you know, the people who are interested in this, as individuals, we can do stuff by just helping people who obviously seem maybe a bit stressed out in our practise. I know Andy does a lot about this as well.

And there's lots of people getting involved, and what we all hope is that we can help to reduce stress, help stop people having breakdowns or needing medication or, or doing, you know, . Really, you know, sort of ultimate things which, there is no going back from. So that has been the mission statement.

Moving on, and Andy, are you still hearing me all OK? Yeah, absolutely fine. Anything that you, is, does any, does any of that make sense?

Is that all reasonable? Is there anything you want to sort of add in at that point just on vision and mission? No, I think you've covered it very well.

I think it, it, like you, most of the people I work with have a mission statement, but don't necessarily think about the vision and don't also link it to their values, which I'm sure you're going to come on to. I mean, it's, it's interesting as well. I don't know if you want me to chip in now about reflective practise because you know, that's one of my big things.

Well, we've talked a little bit, but yeah, no, that'd be really good if you did. But I think that as well, it, it, as vets. This is a very sweeping statement.

We don't take enough time to think about what's going well and, and where we want to go. And I think there's a lot of controversy around the Royal College introducing reflective practise into the CPD cycle, but I think just in general, we do it, but we're not perhaps doing it as systematically and as much as we should. And on that note, I think it's interesting to see, you know, the, the new Royal College Leadership programme, the Edward Jenner programme.

They are very much encouraging people there, keep a notebook, write things down, because that's the other thing, that's what we don't do. Again, sweeping statement. We don't write things down.

It's in our heads. We think about it and we do reflect. But certainly from my experience, if you don't write it down, you'll forget it, and certainly, you'll, you'll misinterpret things in the future.

So, but yes, I think having, and again, writing down your, your vision, your mission, your values. Put it on your, put it on your website, have it on your, literature, you know, I, I've literally, just this last weekend, my son was attending a driving course and, and it was done in a school and all over there, everywhere you went was written up, you know, posters, everything of the vision, the mission, the values. And I think it does just help to give people a focus.

Why are we doing this? You know, there, there are bad days, no question there are bad days, but, but if you can still see, well, we're still heading towards our vision, we're still maintaining our values, that helps. I think it's think it, it, do it, review it, and if it's on the wall and you're walking past it as we have in our office, you know, just spending some time and thinking, right, OK, that's what we're trying to do, looking at the value words as well.

You're continuing to sort of think about it, aren't you? Absolutely. And sometimes as well, you think, you know, something will happen, and unless you review it, you're thinking, have I, have I actually lived up to the, to, to my values, to the company's values.

And it's having that reminder there, really helpful. We can be too negative as vets, you know, we'll tend to think about that nasty client that was, you know, 1 out of 30. And yet when we look, and we, you know, we wonder, are we doing a great job, when we look at some of the vet future stuff, you know, we were classed as one of the most trusted professions as well, so it's, it's I don't, I don't think it's just as vets as negative.

I think it's quite widely recognised as a, as a, as a, as a whole, you know, every human being is negative kind of thing. And there's some good evidence, you know, for every 1 negative experience you have, you need about 10 positive experiences to overcome that one negative one. So as you say, you've seen that, you've had that one bad experience with the client, and that's what plays on your mind.

You don't think about all the others that you had some great feedback. The clients thought you were brilliant. You did a really good job and, and we do absolutely need to focus more on that.

And that all ties into this whole concept around the vision, the values, and reflecting on how things have gone. So Andy, thanks Andy. Moving on to recruitment policy, what has been really helpful with Webinar vet is because I'd done the EMI and I'd done Roger Hamilton's stuff, the talent dynamic.

When I started Webinar vet, it was a blank sheet of paper and I'd learned quite a lot. I understand, you know, there will be people listening tonight who have a practise where they do have people who perhaps don't fit in. You know, you might have bought a practise, you were, you inherited some members of staff who just don't buy into what you're doing, and that makes life really difficult, and we could, we could spend a lot of time, and I know legal, obviously it's an area that they look at.

I know Michelle, who's on the line, you know, would also look at that as well. But broadly, and I'll, if I can make this quite simple, but I'm happy to talk about it a bit more and we might pull Michelle in at the end, so Michelle, no pressure, . Our recruitment policy is, is quite simple.

I look at the areas in the business, where we need to bring people in, and on the whole, I, I'm not of the belief that I, I do the job better than anybody else does, and I know that is something that can be a bit of a recurring theme that you can hear, oh, if you want a job doing, do it yourself. I absolutely don't believe in that, so it's something when I'm trying to find people, I try and find cleverer people than myself. Particularly in that area of expertise, so, you know, we, we've got .

Catherine, who, who looks after all the operations, who makes sure that the promises that I make actually get fulfilled, and I know that she does that job 10 times better than I would do. Because there is detail in there and I'm much more of a, a sort of ideas person, so I don't like the detail as much. I like to, to meet people, get to know what they're thinking, try and put some ideas as to how we as a company might be able to help them.

And then bring that all together, obviously get Katherine involved at that point, but then get Catherine to help in, in fulfilling that. So, the first thing that and Richard Branson's talked about this, you know, recruit people cleverer than yourself, don't be threatened by cleverer people. We see at the moment, you know, Trump's attitude towards leadership is.

Really, you know, he doesn't want cleverer people than him because they will challenge him too much and he doesn't want to be challenged, and that's a, a different type of leadership. Certainly, I try to be as consultative as I can, and so I'm not afraid of somebody coming in and actually being better than I am in that area because that's how you make the business better and. We're trying to be world class, you know, in all areas of the business.

I think the second part is within that sort of recruitment process, that you really try and dig deep into, you know, what these people are about, what their visions are, what their values are, that they are sort of similar to what you are about and what the company is about. I get all of people who come in for an interview to the company, I get them to do the talent dynamic test. Because I know that certain types of person, you know, if I want an accountant, that accountant is probably not gonna be a star, I want an accountant who is really interested in numbers, gets excited about numbers, loves numbers, loves playing with spreadsheets.

I, I understand the importance of numbers, but please don't have me spending 3 hours doing spreadsheets, so it's about finding. The right place in the company for that person so that they can walk into work with a skip, love what they do, because if they love what they do. It won't feel as much like work compared with if you go in and you really hate your job, so.

It's important to put square pegs in square holes, not round pegs in round holes, you know, and round pegs in round holes, not square pegs in round holes. So it's important to get the right person for the right job. And I think the final point, and that this has been brought up in several books and in most of the sort of leadership books that you read, no dicks, and the best story I ever heard about this was when I went to see .

For, for the, FSB online Business of the year, we, we won in the North West, we then went down to London and we didn't win the the final unfortunately, but we won the North West region, and Richard Reid from Innocent Drinks was there, and he, he said, he told us a tale when he'd been talking to the head of Apple, head of Apple talent recruitment. And The guy from Apple said there are 3 types of people, there's an A person, a B person, and a C person. If you've heard this story before, apologies, but I do think it's a good story.

And Richard said, well, what, what do you mean, what are those people? And he said, well an a person gets your vision. Really is excited about the company.

And he's really great at the job, that's the A person and what, you know, obviously they've got everything. The B person is pretty good at the job, but actually, Hasn't got the vision, might be a bit of a kar, might be difficult to work with, but actually they do the job pretty well. And the C person.

Doesn't really do the job very well, but is very enthusiastic, seems to buy into everything that you talk about, gets the vision, gets the values and everything. And so, Richard Rees said, so what would you do with those people? And he said, well, the 8 people, you obviously, you promote them, you make them trainers, you make sure that they're telling everybody else, you know, how to get better.

The B people you sack, and the C people you train. And Richard Reid said, well, you know, I can think of somebody in the company at the moment who's a B person. If I get rid of that person, there will be a hole in the business.

And the Americans said, well, that's better to have a hole than an S-hole. And I think the problem is dicks, or, or, you know, people who just drain the energy, can, can really, you know, damage the company, you know, if they're incompetent as well, they, one incompetent person can bring a business down. And I always feel it's so important, and I wasn't great at this when I had my own practise.

But You know, it's about the people around them because if they're not doing their job well, or if they're creating a really bad atmosphere, then that will affect on the really good employees you have, and you're more likely to lose the good employees and be left with a bad employees. So training, so important, you know, somebody once said, well, if I train them they leave, and somebody said in response, yeah, but if you don't train them, they may stay, and that's it actually worse, isn't it? So.

I, that's a really important part, that if they share the values, they're more likely to be positive. And I think just encourage positivity. I know what Andy said, and I agree with him.

I really try to be positive in work because if I, as the leader of the company, I'm being negative and moody, then quite rightly, I should expect everybody else to be like that. But we'll talk about that and the values in a moment. So, I think the results of that is I am extremely proud of the team that I have in Liverpool.

We're a small team, you know, there's about 14 of us now, . But I get a real sense that it's a caring, friendly team, and, you know, some of you are listening on the webinar, feel free to agree or disagree with me. And I actually asked the guys, from the team, they'd helped me to put the vision together and and the the values and culture to just leave a few comments, for this webinar.

So testimonials if you like, about what we're trying to do. And Rich is actually head of partnerships, and head of, you know, veterinary relationships. So, you know, Richard or one of his team may have been ringing you up and talking about how the membership is going, if everything's going all right, and, you know, this is what Rich said, and I'm not going to read it out to you because you can read it, but, you know, he felt that it was so important that it came from the whole team from, You know, from, somebody who might have been in the sales team, to me, we were all involved in it.

It's really important, operations are important, the marketing team, everybody got involved in creating the vision and the values. Dawn, who, his assistant to Catherine, who just makes sure everything happens, is so efficient, it's fantastic. You know, Dawn was, we, we actually had Dawn working in, in, in the sales department, and she didn't like it as much and I could see that.

I could see that she wasn't happy. We've brought her into the operations department, she's so organised, she gets all the speakers organised for the webinars, she's just fantastic and she, Does that job so much better than I would if I was doing that job, and I think that's a real key point. Luke looks after our finances, doing all the figures, and again, you know, he sensed that that working on the culture and the, the values has made it much clearer for the team, what's expected of them, what success looks like, because if you put somebody in a job and you don't tell them how to succeed, it's a bit like telling somebody to get to somewhere but not giving them a map.

So, you know, I think this has been really helpful in, in, in, showing people what success looks like. Megan works with our vets is, is fantastic. Obviously, she's looked there and I haven't, you know, asked her, but she said she wants to create the planet's most confident vets and, you know, producing the world class content, but also the team supporting and nurturing every community member, free or paid, we want to.

Creates disservice for people so that they become more knowledgeable, better vets, and hopefully, you know, more confident in the consulting room or, you know, in the office if they're working for, for a corporate or a pharmaceutical firm. So company values, this was really interesting because obviously my primary aim is love and serve. And so when I went to the team and said, let's do company values, what they came up with, and, and you could say, you know, trying to please me, they came up with words that were very soft and fluffy.

And we actually then looked at them and said, yeah, that's great, because, you know, we are a caring business and we're a purpose-led business. But again, if that is all that you have, and there's not more analytical words and more challenging words in there, and, and HubSpot did this very beautifully in their culture, slide deck that they produced, and that's actually quite famous. So do look up, culture slide deck for HubSpot.

They said, but we're all so passionate about the numbers, we need to make sure that our company is growing so that we can do all the cool things we want to do, you know, make the difference in all sorts of different areas. So you can see that that as. As well as love and serve, I mean, really important words which, you know, I think that people should, Enjoy coming into work, they should be in an environment which is very civil.

There shouldn't be bullying in there, and if it is, it should be stamped out really, really quickly. Respect is a really important word, inclusiveness, you know, we live in a world which, Doesn't really believe in great customer service, you know, you get on the phone to a utility and half an hour later, you're still on hold. That is not the sign of a company that actually wants to serve you and is customer centric.

So, we want to exceed people's expectations, we want to do better than you expect us to do. We want it to be fun as well. But we also put in those words, you know, we're exceptional, but we put in words like analytical, Kaizen, so we will look at numbers, we will see what works and what doesn't work.

If something isn't working well, we'll stop the . The conveyor belt and won't start it again like they did in the Toyota cars until we've sorted that problem out because mistakes are allowed, you know, they are CVS are talking a lot about, let's not have a blame culture, and certainly in, in my company, I also don't want that. I want people to feel that they can go out and try things and make mistakes.

As long as we learn from mistakes, you know, if we continue to make the same mistakes over and over again, then, you know, the, the intelligent man learns from his mistakes, the genius learns from other mistakes, the idiot never learns from the mistakes. So it's important that we learn from them. So they are the words in the bottom that are in the sort of jumble are our value words.

And what we did with that was we again separated into two groups and we said, Group 1 and group 2 come up with adjectives that describe us, that are our values, that are, you know, why we get up in the morning, what are we trying to accomplish with this company, and they were the words, as well as love and serve, you know, they were the words that we came up with. Because the values are are what basically is your culture. And, and I think it's really important.

Every single company that is on the webinar today, every, you know, business that's, that's, that is, is in the, the community of Webinarves, there is a culture in each of those companies. And I think the thing is you can either lead with that as a leader, and, and, you know, we see this all the time, you know, the company where the boss is a bit of an arc. If he's not being nice to his team, how can he expect his team to be nice to his clients?

So if you have a business where, you know, oh, we have lots of difficult clients, you've got to look at yourself and say, is that something that we are actually producing? So the leadership is so important, and I need to make sure, sometimes if I'm going in, and maybe a bit down for one reason or another, it's not good for me to do that. I have to take time before I go in to make sure I'm in the right frame of mind, to, to really lead with enthusiasm.

Because if I don't do that, and if I let things ride, and oh, these two people aren't talking to each other, and I don't act on that quickly, then we end up with a culture, you know, the boss is the last to know. He thinks everything's fine, but actually it's a battlefield out there. So, I'm obsessed about a few things in life.

I just talked about customer service, that's definitely one. But culture is another as well, because I think every person who goes into work deserves to work in a place which is civil, which has a good culture, which actually they go into. Enjoying themselves and, and wanting to better and and wanting to, to, to progress in, in that profession.

So, you know, culture is this set of shared beliefs, it's values, it's practises, it all comes together. And this was a, a slide from HubSpot, you know, culture doesn't just help to attract amazing people, because I talk about the culture during the interviews. But if the culture is really good, if, if it is actually as we say it is, when they come into work, when they start working.

It allows them to grow, they're loving what they do. They will expand as people professionally and personally, and it helps them to do their best work, and we know that our productivity in the UK is poor, and I think part of the reason for that is that people are often working in sad places where they actually, They are not being creative, they can't do their best work. They save their best work for the weekend when they're a great guitarist or they collect butterflies or whatever, you know, they're, they're experts in what they do in their hobbies, but actually they put none of their passion and expertise into their jobs.

So, I think it's really important if we can get the culture right, people will work better for you. Will be more productive, but will actually be enjoying it, and actually, if everybody's more productive, you can reward people as well. And I think just to sort of finish, you know, part of the reason, and obviously looking forward hopefully to some thoughts and questions.

All all of this is, is about, you know, the business that we run, it's a small entity, but hopefully it's making a difference in the world. But as that entity grows, it allows you to do so much more, so being purpose led, you know, some of the things as an environmentalist I've thought about is, Plastics, and you know, at the next virtual congress, we're gonna have our keynote is all gonna be about plastics and how we, as individuals, but also as vets, as companies can make a difference, to try and bring, You know, the, the danger of plastics, you know, all in our oceans, you know, we see them being tossed away and not put into the landfill or, or to recycling, that, that we can do something really positive about that, because it's really important that we do that, so we can also as we get bigger, we can become a movement to try and help people to Change some of the, the ways that they lived their life, you know, and this was a small presentation I gave to, my wife's school, some of the kids, and it was fantastic to see that how passionate they were, and they actually took some of the things that we talked about in that lesson, and took that home and were then actually encouraging the parents to be better at the way that they deal with plastic. This was a picture that David Attenborough showed.

You know, a, a white stork, a beautiful bird with a plastic bag entangled on it. You know, an otter playing with a plastic bottle, that plastic bottle will take 450 years. To actually break down, so this is a huge problem that we've got to do something about.

Because we've got a fantastic world, that's my beach at home at Crosby, . And, and this is something that we can do if our vision is right, if our culture is right, we can accomplish so much more, so. That's the end of the presentation, really hoping that we've got some questions, I know, or at least I think Michelle was on.

I don't know if she's got a . I Headset that we can actually try and get her over. Let me see if I can bring her to become a panellist.

Let's do that. Cause Michelle does a lot of this stuff as well, so Michelle, I don't know, can you hear me? Let's see if Michelle's gonna come on.

She may or may not, but I'd love. She did, she did reply in the chat to say you had to finish your dinner. So she gone.

OK. Oh yeah, she says yes, she can hear you, she's chatting still if you go to the chat box, if you can see that. Oh right, OK, so let's do the chat, or I'll put you on, if you've got a headset, .

We can, we can get you to actually speak to us, but let's see, without the webinar better would not be sitting with a tablet listening to this. You have made me take on modern technology. Thank you, and I will eat my dinner quickly then.

I haven't got a headset with me, sorry. OK, fair enough, Michelle. But, you know.

Feel free to, to put any thoughts or comments down. Do you want to, do you want to take over Andy, and, any, any comments or anything that's coming through? Well, well, to start with just to encourage anybody, you've got either the Q and A box, or the chat box.

If you've got any comments or questions for Anthony, I just think, you know, for me personally, I, I, as we discussed quite frequently, Anthony, it's a big thing for me and it's certainly something I start with. When I go in anywhere with my, with the veterinary management consulting side of things, one of the things I do, because, like you, I find some people are a little bit uncomfortable with the values side of things, and it's something actually that's come from my NHS days. I get them to do what's called a Barrett's personal values assessment.

And I don't actually have the web link on me, but if you just Google, Barrett's personal values assessment, and that's literally where you just pick out a few words from a, from a, a list, and then it helps you understand yourself better, because that's, it puts it into a, a framework that that you can help understand. So certainly that's something I'd encourage people to do if, if values is something that either you feel uncomfortable about or you're not really sure what it's all about, despite the fact you've given a, a great presentation. And in fact, Michelle's just added there.

I think you've given a lovely summary, Anthony, my business and team completely turned around when I started thinking about this. That's from Michelle Lingard. We've got Debbie Robinson developing a shared vision is key to success for all teams.

Totally agree with you, Debbie. How do you recommend involving the team to develop? You know, I would just.

It, it depends, doesn't it, where, where you're at? I mean, and there are various people out there, obviously Andy's doing this as well, which is. Often The problem is people get called in and Andy, correct me if I'm wrong, but they call you in when there is a disaster, you know, when nobody's talking to each other, you know, 3 vets have just left, the owner's on his own, you know, the nurse who's, I'm sorry, not, not being disrespectful to nurses, but the head nurse who's causing all the problems is still there, and oh, how do I deal with all of this problem, rather than.

Well, we really want to grow. Let's look at this. Is that fair or am I being unfair with that, Andy?

No, I think you're right. I think most people that I go into have got an issue. I don't get me wrong, we've got some very proactive people as well who, who'll help me, you know, do something similar to your exercise, really.

That's a great exercise you've done with your team around developing the company, the vision and the values. And again, that's something that I totally encourage getting everybody involved. It's not something that comes from, from the top level.

But I think the biggest issue I find, is, is a lack of trust. And that sows the seeds of, doubt and misunderstanding and people then starting to get on at each other. And if you can work back, well, you start again, we'll say, well, well, let's start with what do we all want to do?

What's our collective vision? What are our values? Why then don't we trust each other to behave in an all, you know, in a, a, a good manner?

So I, I find it, if people aren't trusting, you know, that that's not about integrity of probably the leader if, you know, if I, and obviously, you know, far be it from me to say I'm the perfect leader because I'm clearly not, and sometimes I don't follow through in ways that I should, but I think. Broadly, I think, I think, you know, the team trust me, and so they're able to speak about things that they can't, but if you don't trust the leader and he calls everybody or she calls everybody together for a meeting, you're not going to have people opening up because they won't trust that situation, will they? So you somehow.

The trust, you're quite right, I didn't really talk about trust, but it is so important. Yeah, but it's at every level as well. Like you're right, you've got to be able to trust the leader, but you've also got to be able to trust the person that you work with on a daily, on a daily basis, and it's very often that, and it's little things, little misunderstandings, and it's interesting you do that, the talent dynamics assessment of one of that again.

Some kind of personality assessment can help people understand the differences, understand themselves, but also understand differences with other people too. I do Myers Briggs. You do talent dynamics.

I know there's, there's, there's other ones out there. Karon Crowe likes disc. Certainly it's whatever it is, I, I, you know, I don't care, just do something that can help people to understand each other better, build up that trust.

And it all goes back to the vision and the values. If people are turning up every day, they've bought into that vision and they, it's their values, then you can turn it around. If you've got that bad egg, or I won't use the phrase you used to refer to them, but you never like, you know, but if you've got that bad egg, that's the one that's gonna really create problems.

And essentially the practise, whatever business you're in, it's only as good as the worst person. Yes, in terms of culture, ethos, values, whatever, I'm not saying the worst performing person because that can be trained up and it goes back to your ABC, quote. You can train somebody up who's not performing.

What you cannot do is change the values and the culture of somebody. I mean, and it, it's really tough and I, you know, it's not something that I . Enjoy doing, but I understand the importance of it, you know, we had a lady, a woman in the business who, I quite, you know, I liked.

When I was out of the office. The things she was saying and broadcasting, you know, quite loud, were obviously very negative. Oh well, I'm not, well, this is terribly disorganised and I won't be staying very long because I'm going to start looking for another job, and, and just creating a lot of bad feeling.

And you know, people were telling me about it because people trust me, and I, I said to her, look, you know, I like you, I'd like you to, Change, you know, I, I can't have that negativity. I can't have those sort of things that you're talking about, so I'd like you to stay, but this is what I need you to do, or, you can leave and I'll give you a month, 2 months salary, and you know, have a few days to think about it. On the Monday, I'll take the 2 month salary.

Now, that was, that was a generous offer because I want, I don't want. I want to look after the people who come into the business, whether they're fit or not, because you don't always get it right. Well, you know, it, it, it, it's sort of the problem.

Catherine, who's, you know, one of my best employees, was saying, oh, you know, I'm so depressed coming in because I feel her pulling me down. And I wanted Katherine to come in and enjoy what she did. One, because I wanted to do that, but two.

I don't want her to leave. And sometimes you, you lose the best people because you don't take the action. And you're right, and that's what, you know, Clive Woodford called the energy sappers and, and it has that again, if you want to put a name to it, what you were talking about, if you come in a bit down, it's called the ripple effect.

Yeah, and it does, it ripples out. Everybody picks up on it. We've got quite a few comments coming in Antony, do you want me to go?

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. Again from Michelle. So she says my steps were one understand myself, 2.

Time speaking to the team and workshopping this with each part of my team and underpinning it with team members understanding their talents by using talent dynamics. 3, these then guide our systems and processes and protocols. 4, regular and frequent short communication with all team members to understand them and allow them to know their progress.

Linked to that, Sue Bellworthy said, what do you do when the dream falls apart before it starts, when it keeps hitting major unavoidable problems when you're left alone with just ashes. She then adds, I really admire Michelle, her perseverance and drive in what she's achieved after disaster. She's an excellent role model for so many.

For me, Webb and our vet has given me a new purpose, a new reason for living again, despite all the limitations. So thank you, Web and our vet. And thank you, Michelle, for your inspiration.

But going back to that, I mean, do you have any advice on that? What do you do when the dream falls apart? I guess that's, you know, you set a vision, but it's just not worked.

I think sometimes, I mean, Michelle, you know, is, is inspirational to me as well because, you know, had some tough times which, you know, some people may know about, some people may not, you know, but similarly, I think sometimes. We grow most in our difficult times, so I know when, you know, my difficult times came, it was time for me to reflect, and actually I grew more then than if life is, is very easy, we often don't develop as much, so sometimes, you know, that pruning that we get and, you know, to, to cut a plant small and then it grows even more vibrantly than if it was not pruned. So.

I, I, I think it's a really, you know, tough one, when things, Don't go right. I would say immediately what I've found that's been really effective for me, and, you know, again, Michelle might want to throw her up and say worth and yourself, Andy, for me it's about mentoring because if you've got a big problem and it's just you looking at it, it can look like a mountain, whereas somebody else can look at it and say, actually it's a molehill, we can sort it out together. So it's bringing in somebody with, with an expertise, it's known to get the right people, cos obviously there are, there are wrong people out there, but I do think sometimes you do need.

Help, and you know you can't do it on your own, and it is about, you know, talking to somebody like yourself who does, you know, culture and Vision or or Michelle or Caroline Crowe. And beginning to understand where that, where that comes from, because, you know, primarily you look first at yourself, but then you bring, you look further into your business and so on. But usually, you know, I always, when things are not going right in my business, I always reflect on what I'm doing in that situation and how I can make a difference and sometimes it might be, as Michelle said, you know, something happened there that didn't run as it should have done.

And the, you know, I could go in and say, oh, you know, Catherine, that was really stupid of you to do that, or Dawn, that was really stupid or rich. I tend not to do that because the first thing I do is, is there a system in place? Is it written down?

Is it, you know, is that process well thought through? Let's have a look at it. Actually, we never thought about that point.

Let's put that in. That will solve that problem, it won't happen again. Now if we do that, and people aren't following processes, then clearly I can.

Take them to one side on their own and say, mm. This is not optional. We don't want you to do it the Dawn way or the Katherine way.

We want you to do it the webinar that way. And, you know, if you don't really want to do that, well, maybe you need to go somewhere elsewhere, they'll allow you to do it however you want to do it. So if it becomes a group thing, if it's the webinar that way, then that's the way I want things doing.

I don't know what you think, Andy, or, or . I'd agree with that. I've just seen Michelle has found a headset.

She doesn't know how good it is. So I don't know that you can arrange or or Anna can arrange to get her on. We've also had a comment, another comment from Debbie.

Thank you. Debbie Robinson agrees trust is a key factor. Talent dynamics can help understand each other and develop trust in a team.

Understanding each other and having each other's backs is paramount. And again, yeah, just to reiterate, obviously talent dynamics is one way. We've got the disc, we've got the MBTI, there's other things out there, but certainly if you're having issues, I'd recommend some kind of group, analysis for going back, going back to your point, you mentioned about having a mentor, I think sometimes it can even be simpler than that.

You don't necessarily have to get, somebody in from outside, just talk to somebody. Yeah, you know, an old university college, college or whatever it is, just a, yeah, just go out for a beer, whatever it is, and, and talk it through. Share it, share it with somebody else.

Yeah, and again, I think, you know, obviously we've got multicultural webinar that, but as Brits, we're not great at talking about things, are we? And, so I think that just, that will help as well, . I think I've unmuted Michelle.

I don't know whether, Michelle, do you want to speak? Can you hear me OK? Oh, loud and clear.

Sorry about that. Don't apologise. No, that, that's been really, really good, Anthony.

It's been a fantastic summary. And it, it just made, I don't know, it's made me go back and just think through, you know, through stuff that I've kind of worked through over the last few years. And I think what really resonated was when you were talking about Sometimes it is the difficult things, and it might be, you know, difficult on just a bad case or it might be difficult on, you know, the practise wheels fall off for reasons beyond your control.

But I think I, I kind of, I've certainly learned to, to feel very much now that they are opportunities, To kind of go back to grassroots, to look at, OK, so what went wrong? Sometimes it's nothing went wrong. I can't control that.

It happened. So what, what can we do to move forward from that? And I think that, because it happens every day in veterinary practise, you know, there's so much stuff that's almost beyond our control.

And trying to guide the team to look at it in that respect, you know, OK, yeah, that happened. So as you said, what system wasn't there for us to deal with it, or perhaps if it wasn't a system, so there is a system in place, then you know, who needs what training, how can we help and support so that that doesn't happen again. And I think having that kind of language coming into the practise has been a huge turning point for us.

So, you know, now it is very much a, it, it's not about the person, it's what happened, what, what system problem. Was there and what training might be needed, you know, to move forward. And, and that does take away some of that blame.

It takes away the personal blame that so many in our profession are very good at, you know, Oh, it must be my fault. And I think those kind of changes can make a very big difference to the way a team can work together. Or, oh, you have these people who, who sort of shout at people and, you know, it's just not.

It's just not fair to be in a place where somebody feels that that's appropriate, is it, you know, when, when actually it's a process problem and it's, it's because they've never set up any processes. And usually the shouting comes from anger or an inability to know how to be able to verbalise, you know, you know, how, how to sort that problem out. But also, I, you actually, again, you mentioned addressing things as they happen.

And that's another big change in our practise, that we try very hard now to be able to take someone aside and almost say, You know, can you perhaps see or how do you think that person felt when, you know, you just yelled at them, or, you know, you yelled in their presence or you made some side comment. Obviously linking it back to vision and values. You know, we've got them plastered on walls around the practise that they've been workshopped by the team in the same way.

And they know them. And I've only got to look at them and kind of go, so how are we, how are we fitting with that? And I've only got a glance in the direction of them, and they know what, where my head is, and they'll kind of go, Oh yeah, OK, we're not on track.

So it's a nice little way of kind of drawing people back to the moment. It fits with your mindfulness stuff. It's coming back to the moment to, to be able to go, OK, what do I need to do to control that emotion to fix the problem now.

I'll just chip in with a couple of extra comments. I, I just disagree with everything you've said, really. I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly.

Kair says behaviour breeds behaviour, well spoken. We have one from Amanda who wants to be cheeky. I'm sure we can be cheeky, Amanda, and says good luck to all the SVNs that are waiting longer for their results this year.

So good luck to them. And then we've got an anonymous, comment, which reading it, I can understand why. I want to agree that a culture of blame does exist among the veinary community in the UK and it's extremely toxic.

I'm always amazed that a simple feel good story in the popular vet press will inevitably result in a deluge of negative comments from vet colleagues questioning clinical judgments. This simply doesn't happen in the vet community in at least two other jurisdictions where I've worked. So again, Michelle, maybe, how do you Try and prevent a blame culture.

What, what do you think's key to that or, or either of you I'm sorry. Come on, Michelle. OK, certainly, I think the biggest, the biggest thing that we've, that we've tried to do is to have people understand each other.

And certainly, whatever form of profiling you choose to use, and I know we keep harping on about that, but I genuinely believe it is so incredibly important. So the team will understand why they think and behave differently. So that when someone does something that you look and you go, you know, what an idiot.

It's turned from an accusation to, it'll now be, you know, Anthony, please excuse the star reference here. We've got one star who, you know, will just go off on a tangent and has to be reined in regularly and, and. And, and we can, we can now joke and say, Paul is being a star, or she's But she's, she's in Star mode.

Will someone go and drag her back in, please. And it's just, again, it becomes a language thing where, you know, we could have turned around and said, you know, you're being an idiot, don't like the way you're doing that. Why are you speaking to me like that?

It can turn around and be, actually, I get why you're doing it, but I'm fine. I'm not comfortable with that because I'm actually I'm completely opposite to you. Can we just change this language?

And they will, you know, they do seem to get it. It's not to say that, you know, they're sweetness and light to each other all the time. None of us are, but it does turn it into, at least we're acknowledging when, when perhaps not quite behaving the way we should be.

So I think it, it is an understanding of each other that really is the standard at all. I, I think Michelle, you know, and Andy, there's a couple of things. It's great to see somebody like the Royal College saying we don't want a culture of blame and we're changing that around, so even if.

You know, and obviously people can be negative about the Royal College, but The fact that the regulator is starting to talk in those terms, I think is really important. And, and then we just need to do it in our own, you know, we can't effect what somebody says in the veterinary press. We can only do it in our own practise.

So, you know, Michelle, you're doing fantastic work in, in your practise, Andy, you're going out to practises and saying, Negativity doesn't work, you know, if you've got negativity in the practise, you have to get rid of that. That's almost the first thing. I mean, I think somebody was asking there about, you know, how do you get together and, and do the culture thing, but there is a really nice exercise for the vision, which I thought I'd brought to Austria with me because I was gonna put it into this, but I hadn't.

But I will add that into . The, the webinar, it might be a week or two, but I, I'll, I'll send something out so that that's in there. But I almost think the first thing, that I did was, was look at the values, because the values underpins everything.

You can't really talk about a vision if you're all on different pages. So the, the value exercise is really easy. It's, it's about coming together, you know, coffee and cakes or whatever, creating a nice environment, you know, the leader.

That perhaps you don't have regular meetings. I mean, communication is important, that you're having regular small meetings, but that, you know, the, the leader comes out, this is what I want to do, and then follows through on it, because you can say it and then never do it. But actually follows through on it.

Break into small groups. What are the words that, you know, you would like a client to come in and say, do you know what, practise ABC is really loving and caring practise, and I always feel that it does more than they say they will, it exceeds expectations. I recommend them to friends, you know, it's almost, who is that ideal client and how would they talk to their friends about you.

And, you know, you may be well short of that, so. You, you may say, well, we're nothing like that practise, but that is then something to aspire to. And you then start saying, I think Benjamin Franklin had 13 values that he worked on once a once a year, you know, one month of the year, he would look at a value and say, I'm gonna really try to be more charitable or, you know, more loving to people.

I can't remember what his 13 values were, but they become part of your life if you think about them and you say, You know, I want to be more loving, then you try to do that. So that's reflective practise in coming because you can think, did what I do today, live up to my values. Exactly.

I think the values is the is the first thing. Have you done something similar to that, Michelle, with the value exercise? Yeah, I, did something very similar to what, what you've described.

We call ours, we have a practise promise. And again, this was almost decided by the team because they were finding some of the language uncomfortable. So we actually discussed, well, what feels right for you guys.

So they wanted a practise promise, you know, this is what, what we're gonna come in and what we're gonna do, and this is why we're here. We have a vision, And then we've taken it a step further, a little bit like your words scattered around, what we started with the words, we turned them into into actions and again I did this because I've got two sites. We, we had to do this at both sites, come up with kind of an overview, and then, you know, I said, Are you happy?

I meshed the two together, and I put everybody's ideas together. And they've come up with what they call their standards. So in other words, it's their personal standards, as in how are we going to behave and how do we want others to behave when we're at work.

And they, they do refer to those. We all, we all refer to those. And every year we we workshop them.

So that's due September, October time every year, and we sit down and we go, well, OK, what's still relevant here? What's changed? Has much changed?

Do we like the wording? And they, I think that would probably, we're on our 3rd year of doing that now. And that has become very much just part of our language, the same as you said, it's introduced at, it's part of our, you know, job application process.

It's discussed at interview. And then, you know, it's discussed in all the early stage meetings with anyone that's new. We go, we go through it.

We, you know, kind of, is there anything that you don't feel comfortable with here? And it just becomes part of life, which I think makes a very big difference. I've got a quick question.

Well, a couple of double barrel question for both of you actually. Do either of you use values-based interviewing questions? And what do you do?

I mean, I think this is quite relevant now that certainly from my experiences, people are finding there's a shortage of vets and vet nurses applying for roles, and sometimes your pool of, applicants is quite limited. Do you have like an induction programme for people who maybe you think maybe haven't bought into the vision so much or or do you just not, do you just not go there? I wouldn't employ somebody because I think it's the old, you know, you're better to wait to get the right person, which, you know, I understand, you know, you, it's a veterinary practise, you need 3 vets in, you've only got 1 or 2, you know, you'll take whoever's got a, you know, MR CVS, but.

I don't know. I think if, and I'm not in practise now, so maybe it's better to ask Michelle, but, you know, I'd rather run a two vet practise slightly differently than run a 3 vet practise where you've got somebody who, you know, is a bit off the wall and and doesn't, doesn't share your values and is not nice to the nurses or whatever, I'd rather not have that vet in the practise, I think. Yeah, Michelle, what do you reckon?

Yeah, certainly in answer to the first part of that, I, we've, we've developed some questions that are very much value-based questions, . And, you know, just trying to work out where someone's head is, you know, do they exist? I don't know, if we use the above the line, below the line adage, you know, do they exist above the line, or are they, you know, rock bottom or are they somewhere hovering in the middle?

So we've got questions to try and draw that out. How do you deal with the fact there's not much to choose from, I kind of it with that, that's a really tricky one. But I do, I, I certainly have very much moved to employing for, the, or trying to select based on values rather than skill, and I would prefer to train the skill in.

It, and, and that's actually been a team decision that they've kind of said, look, If they can't spay a bitch, we'll live with it, just if we need someone that's like a normal person that wants to be part of the team that isn't gonna create havoc, isn't gonna run around giving all this to people. I think we may have lost Anthony. I think we've lost Anthony.

In that case, I'll just finish with, well, a, a, a comment and a question for you, Michelle, and thank you so much for being on, because that's really helped save me right now. Again, another comment from Debbie Robinson. Thank you, Debbie.

Personal values are often the hidden force behind the decisions we make, and they frequently serve as our primary motivators and sources of inspiration. Yet most people aren't aware of their important personal values and it's key to selection. Totally agree, Debbie.

As I say, I've already mentioned the Barrett's personal assessment. There are other, values assessments out there and certainly something to explore at interview with people. I don't really you want to add to that, Mich Michelle, but we've got one final question as well.

Go on, go on. No, I was, I was just gonna say, I agree totally, so I, I'll just let you move on. So final question then, and thank you everybody for your comments and questions.

How do you know when someone's causing trouble behind the scenes? Personally, I think if the team structure is in place, the, the is ideally a feedback system, so, you know, a, a team leader or somebody that is reviewing that person's progress regularly and will feed that back. That's certainly made it much easier for me to understand because I'm, I don't do much clinical work, I'm often not in the practise, but most stuff gets back to me still, .

So I think it's having the team structure in place, because if it's in any other way, then it can become a bit of an excuse the language, but, you know, what you don't want is people bitching about each other. So it's kind of having the team structure, so there's actually a recognised feedback mechanism that allows people to, you know, share when there's a problem. Yeah.

OK. I mean, I would add to that, certainly in a few places where Where I've been in, it's sometimes the questions other people ask. There might be, you know, there might be an issue around people taking the break or, you know, doing something, forging.

I've had one like forging overtime stuff, and it was just simple questions from others about, so what's the practise policy on overtime? What's the practise policy? And sometimes those innocent sounding questions from other members of the team can actually highlight that there's somebody somewhere.

Not sort of towing the line and, and causing problems in the background. Have we got Anthony? Ah, yeah, excellent.

We have Anthony on the phone, I believe. I think we're just about to wrap up actually, Anthony. I don't know if you've got any, final.

Comments you want to make. No, just thank everyone for, for coming on on an August evening and you know hopefully the recordings that what I will do is I will put up the the the way that we went about our vision because there was a bit of an exercise. If anybody's got any particular questions they can email but obviously also you know yourself, .

If, if anybody wants to speak to Andy because Andy does this sort of full time. I mean, I'm just passionate about it for my own. Business, I just want to get it right because I want the people who Work with me to enjoy what they're doing because I think if, if I look after them then I can let them look after, you know, my clients and and you know, everyone else, so you know I'm happy to to help out but obviously I know Michelle you do bits as well but I mean Andy you're doing this, you know, a lot, so if anybody's interested, obviously email webinar that we can always pass on.

You know, Andy's or Michelle's email address to people. Yeah, thank you very much for that, Antony. And one final comment again from Debbie, I think in answer to that question, I assume about people causing trouble behind the scenes is develop a code of conduct or rules to live by with the team so that they're accountable.

Absolutely. And I think that, and again, that follows on from having set your vision and your values. It's like, right now, let's have a code of conduct.

So great, thanks for that, Debbie. So we just, just on the, just thank the sponsors again because obviously this makes it possible for, you know, us getting some of the great speakers that we've had this year, so 8 legal Saint Francis group and and simply Heal the the. You know, they're really great.

They're really support as well and obviously think in a similar way to us as well. Absolutely, yeah. So, yeah, thank you very much to them and thank you everybody, as Anthony said, for attending on a nice summer's eve when we could be doing other things and I look forward to seeing you on the next practise webinar and thanks again, particularly to Michelle for chipping in as well.

That was a great help. Thank you, everybody. You have a good evening.

Thank you. Good night, everyone. Bye.

Good night.