Coordinators meet with practice administrator/manager prior to the next staff meeting. Practice administrator/manager clarifies the role of the coordinator and addresses concerns individuals may have. This is a heads-up meeting to plan and prepare for the first zone meetings, which are to be held during the last half of the staff meeting next week. The outcome needed before the first zone meetings is:

 Select a scribe to record what takes place during the meetings.

 Identify two choices of times that zone team can meet.

 At the first all-staff meeting, the practice manager shares the "zone systems" and coordinators' roles with the team again. They then break up into zones for a fifteen-minute meeting to accomplish the outcomes needed per the published agenda. Teams also decide what they are going to allow on the agenda for the next meeting. Any concerns or challenges encountered during the meeting, "warm hearts and cold noses" will be applied, and new problems/positions will be recorded on the next agenda. These items will be what they discuss at their next meeting.

 The coordinators meet after the zone meeting. The zone members can return to regular work while coordinators meet. The coordinators will repeat the same process that the zone members did in their meetings. Their agenda will be made available to post topics for their next coordinators' meeting. Topics discussed are:

 Concerns and challenges of overlap issues and involve more than one zone.

 Outcomes needed from practice leadership.

 "Cold heart, warm nose" issues.

 Coordinators' meetings are not limited to these once-a-week sessions. As the team progresses through the respective "Staff Zone Training Sequence", cooperation and support between and among zone coordinators will be needed. See Figure 23.

Figure 23. Using the VCI® Signature Series Monographs Orientation & Training

Stages of Learning Revisited

As we discussed early on in this text, adults learn when there is a "teachable moment". The most effective training occurs when the material is "packaged" in twenty-minute, one-on-one, experiential events. Effective trainers develop teachable moments by capitalizing on "discoveries" within the daily operational flow of the zone. The leadership skill "Effective Teaching" is diagramed in Appendix B, Building The Successful Veterinary Practice: Leadership Tools, and is shown on the Leadership Pocket Card published by VCI®. To review:

 The basic premise is the practice recruits the best, pays appropriately, and hires based on attitude. Good attitude can always learn skills and knowledge, but good skills and knowledge does not guarantee a good attitude or team fit.

 Job descriptions are only the practice's commitment to a ninety-day orientation and training program to meet the respective zone's standards of performance, which are outcome based.

 To ensure retention of a new concept, seven exposures in the twenty-one days following the introduction is usually needed for adult learning to occur.

 Teaching/learning is used in healthcare to ensure competency (excellence) in the skills and knowledge. There can be no "grades" of less than excellence after teaching/learning has been completed.

 Self-directed training techniques does not mean trainers are not available. It only means the learner must approach the trainer, when the learner is ready to assimilate new knowledge and/or skills, or be credentialed as knowing the material/process at the practice-established competency level.

 In effective teaching, failure in the application phase means that the trainer needs to review the training system and determine where the learner's needs were not met. Referral to another trainer may be needed, if there is a communication challenge. Candidates are recycled until competency is attained, or the candidate is assigned to a position of lesser responsibility commensurate with the candidate's skill and knowledge level.

 Veterinary medicine is doubling in knowledge every twenty-four months, and healthcare delivery must be a dynamic and continually improving process by a team of committed individuals. CQI overlays all quality assurance and quality control, so next week will be better than this week in each zone, and next month will be better than this month in each zone.