In this episode, Ash welcomes Dave Rosenberg, a leadership expert with decades of experience in both the military and the business sector. They discuss the difference between team accountability and individual performance, highlighting how true accountability is built into systems and processes rather than just expecting team members to do the right thing. Dave talks about his background in leadership and engineering to explain the importance of clear job descriptions, formal training, and standards as the foundation for a culture where employees consistently meet expectations.

The conversation covers how leaders can shift their approach from assigning blame to focusing on process improvements and how modeling the right behaviors sets the tone for the entire team. They also discuss the distinction between responsibility (responding in the moment) and accountability (ability to follow and assess the process), using real-world examples to make the concepts practical for dental practices and other businesses. Dave also talks about the need for leaders to actively solicit feedback to ensure that intent is truly understood by the team.

Key Topics

1. Building team accountability as a system, not just a people issue
2. The differences between responsibility and accountability
3. Why clear job descriptions and formal processes are essential
4. The role of leadership in setting and modeling standards
5. Creating a culture where mistakes lead to improvement rather than blame
6. How to solicit feedback to confirm understanding of intent
7. Common gaps in mechanical processes within leadership teams

For our listeners, Dave is offering a complimentary 30-minute coaching debrief following today’s conversation on Radical Accountability™.

The session is designed to help practice owners identify where accountability is unclear, where decisions slow down, and what adjustments will create more consistent execution from the team.

You can book your free session here: https://lockedonleadership.com/debrief.

Welcome to Beyond Bite Wings, the business side of dentistry, brought to you by Edwards and Associates PC. Join us as we discuss how to build your dental practice, optimize your income, and plan for your future. This podcast is distributed with the understanding that Edwards and Associates PC is not rendering legal, accounting, or professional advice. Listeners should consult with their business advisors before acting on any of the information that is shared. At Edwards and Associates PC, our business Your business is the business of dentistry. For help or more information, visit our website at enassociates.com.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Beyond Bite Wings. My name is Ash, and in today's episode, we have a very special guest. His name is Dave Rosenberg, and he specializes on talking to executive leaders and leaders all across the world on how to make your business or your clinic more effective with the team members that you have. And, you know, to have someone like Dave on our episode, I figured why not do an episode where we talk a little bit about team accountability? I think we all know, especially who's in our industry, the dental world, that a lot of how the practice does depends on the team, right? Whether they're effective, efficient, or how they go about their day, right? And a lot of it trickles down from the leader. So why not talk a little bit about that? So without further ado, Dave, how are we doing today?

Well, I can only speak for me, Ash, but I'm doing fantastic. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. Thank you. So for our audience out there, would you mind telling a little bit about yourself before we get into our subject matter? Sure.

So I've been in leadership roles for over 30 years. I started as a naval officer. I was backseat of F-14. So if you saw the movie Top Gun, I was Goose, but I lived. And out of the military, I ended up in leadership in businesses and running 4 different companies as president. I've been in operations. I've been in sales. So I've kind of done everything through my career.

And for the last 10 years, I've been working with companies across the country, helping them create what I call a culture of radical accountability, where people willingly do what they need to do when they need to do it with pride and precision.

So to start us off, what problem were you seeing repeatedly in organizations that led you to, you know, even write an article on your website on team accountability as a system rather than a people issue.

Well, when I first got into business, my first managerial role in the private sector was in sales. I was a sales manager. And it started off because I would have salespeople who I would train then come to me with questions that I had already— they should know because we had gone over that in training. And it was sort of like, how come you're not just doing this on your own? That was the problem. In the military, people have their job, they have their role. And they take ownership of getting it done. And, and it— I wasn't seeing that in the private sector. Everybody was pushing everything up.

And so that really started the path. And, and I discovered pretty quickly that, you know, the training I was doing wasn't adequate. And it wasn't adequate because I was doing it ad hoc. You know, what do I think you need to know? And so when I started formalizing the training, I started writing things down. Developing a system. My degree is engineering, so I'm very systematic in the way I approach things so that I could iterate and improve. Because the only way you could improve anything is to first have a process to follow. And then once you start following it, you start finding the weaknesses, and then you iterate the process until it gets better and better and better.

And as my career progressed, I saw this pattern repeat over and over. And so now I started going into companies, you know, as I got promoted in different goals and just doing that right from the start. And so that creates that baseline. If we talk about accountability, what we're really talking about is the ability to account for, to follow a process and talk about that process and do it consistently. And that's how you get consistent results, right? So, that's how it started and then it kind of grew from there.

So, from the top down, basically, that's why we were talking about team accountability rather than, you know, individualizing a person?

Well, you know, people in my world, from my viewpoint, conflate personal leadership, meaning self-leadership, I should say, with accountability. You know, people say accountability is when you do what you say you're going to do. To me, that's self-leadership. Accountability is being able to talk about and understand the process. So it usually comes up when things go wrong. And you say, okay, what did I do? What were the steps that I took? And, you know, team accountability is really no different than personal accountability except for there's more of you. But it's about— that's about creating a culture where everybody does it, where you stop blaming others. Oh, you know, I didn't contact this patient the day before because I got inundated with other work.

Okay, well, that's an excuse. Okay, okay. As opposed to Um, you know, I didn't contact this patient the day before because I didn't look at my calendar like I'm supposed to do. Now it's like, okay, I didn't follow the process. And when you take ownership of things and when you create a culture where people take ownership without blame, it becomes self-correcting.

Yeah. How do we get team members to that point where they feel like they should do that? Hold themselves accountable at work?

Yeah, so there's 3 elements to create this kind of culture, and they're pretty basic. I already mentioned one of them. It's what I call the mechanics. So mechanics are the policies, processes, procedures, training, sort of the structure you put around so that when somebody comes to work for you, you sit them down, you say, here's your job. This is— and it's an accurate job description, right? Many of us have been to places to work where the job description says one thing, but the reality of the job is another. That causes stress, right? Because now people, what is really expected of me? You hired me saying you need, you expect me to do A, but now you want me to do B. And so what do I, what's my real account? What am I really supposed to do? And then you train them how to do that. You tell them how much of it you want to do, you want them to do.

And in the training, you test them. So it's formal training. So you, they know and you know they can produce whatever it is you've hired them to do, whether if they're a bookkeeper and they're processing payments so that you don't have receivables that are more than 5 days overdue or a week overdue, whatever that number is for you. The number isn't as important as you have a standard and you set that. So that's the base level. It's the mechanics, making sure people know this is the minimum standard. The second element is mindset. People have to understand how their work matters, right? So why does the company exist? Why does your practice exist? What is it you're serving? And it may be obvious, and it needs to be stated over and over again.

We're here to serve the patients. We're here to ensure people have good health. Here's what happens when people's teeth are bad. And here's how it helps their lives when it's good, right? That needs to be constantly reminded to people so people know that. And you want to hire people who get excited by that. Now, dentist industry is a little different than a lot of other because people don't go into dentistry because they just need a job. There's something about it they enjoy, but don't take it for granted. And then understand how, like, for example, the front office How does their actions affect everybody else? How does the hygienist's actions affect the front office? How is it all interrelated? As human beings, we don't want to let each other down.

We really don't. And if we understand how our actions affect others, we tend to step up. And then the last— and this is— you, you've sort of alluded to this a couple times now— is model. The leadership needs to model the behaviors they want from others. Your team will never behave any better than you do. If you're constantly late, your team's going to be late. If you are not organized, your team's not going to be organized, right? As a dentist, you go to school, you learn procedures to do things, you follow those procedures, or hopefully you do. There's dentists— I remember reading a story of a dentist in Pennsylvania got shut down for bad hygiene practices.

The way we do one thing is the way we do everything. So make sure you are leading by example because if you don't, nobody else will.

Yeah, you also described accountability as an operating system, not an HR initiative. What does that distinction change for executive leaders in practice?

So it goes through everything. So what is the job of a leader? And I'm just going to throw that to you, Ash, if you don't mind me putting you on the spot. What is the job of a leader?

Well, to set an example, to provide direction, uh, or— I don't want to use the word subordinates, but people that are on your team,

uh, but within the team structure, the leader is a very specific job, and they need to do all of those things, but all of those things are in service of what their primary job is, which is to remove The barriers that prevent success. Just sit on that for a second. And what does that mean if there's something in the way of the team being successful? Because the team's the one who's actually— I mean, in a dental practice, obviously the dentist has a role in operations as well, right? But their role, even as a dentist— and, you know, I speak as a 64-year-old man who's, you know, gone to a dentist at least twice a year, more times now 'cause I have some, you know, issues. So I've seen the dentist a time or two, right? The dentist's job is oversight, right? The hygienist does the cleaning, the dentist comes in and does that sort of final check. Think of that for the whole practice. It's oversight. Your job, do I see something wrong here that needs some fixing? And so if the dentist's job, if the leader's job is to remove the barriers from success, and they see a problem and they don't address it, they're not doing their job. Now, I said a minute ago, your team's never going to behave any differently than you do.

If your job is to remove the barriers from success and you don't do that, then you're signaling it's okay to not do your job. Now people start to cut corners because you're cutting a corner and they know it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

So that's how it starts. Like I said, model is everything. If you're not doing it, no one else will. When you start doing, when you start holding people accountable, that's part of the job. When you start having accountability conversations, not in a vicious, not in a mean way, but in an uplifting way to say, listen, I expect more from you. Ash, we hired you because you're more than capable. We only hold people accountable we believe are capable. If I don't think you're capable, I'm not gonna hold you accountable.

Right? If somebody asked me to clean somebody's teeth, I don't know how to do that, and I do a bad job, nobody's going to punish me for doing it. Because why? Or hold me accountable for doing it. Why? Because they don't expect me to be able to do that. But if I went to school as a hygienist and I trained in how to do that, and now I go clean somebody's teeth and I miss some spots and I do a bad job of it, or I cut them or whatever, you know, terrible hygienist jobs might be, and you don't hold me accountable to it, what you're really saying is, yeah, it's okay, I don't really expect you to do better. And if you don't expect me to do better, I'm not going to do better, right? So that's your job. Make sure you do it. Hold everybody to that strictest, highest standard. Set the standard.

People will rise to the occasion. Dale Carnegie once said, give people a fine reputation to live up to. Part of that is saying you're more than capable. So when we have those accountability conversations, we don't do it from a place of, uh, punitive. You do it from a place of uplifting. You're more than capable, and I'm here to support you in rising to your ability and level. And people will respond to that. They do respond to that.

So the way I'm receiving it is that As a leader, you need to look at the bigger picture. What are you trying to accomplish with your team members? So when you're having a conversation with them, keep that in mind and not just, you know, okay, I see something was done wrong and this person needs to be blamed or punished. Yeah, the higher purpose— if you're thinking

about blaming and punishing, that's self-serving for you in the sense that, right, that's about your ego feeling good. That's not about making them a better individual. We want people to be self-actualized, to look forward to coming to work every day. When you do something you love, you want to do it well. Create that environment where people love doing that. Doesn't mean enabling. It means setting the standard and holding people to the standard. And when I was in officer candidate school, our drill instructor was incredibly fair.

Right? He said, this is what I expect from you. You're capable of doing it. And then when we failed to do it, if we failed to do it, right, there was a consequence to that because we were capable. But that consequence always helped improve us. So the next time we had to do that evolution, whether it was a run a mile and a half in a certain amount of time or whatever it was, the obstacle course, whatever it was. It was always intended and served the purpose of making us stronger so we could achieve whatever it was we had to achieve.

You know, you draw a clear line between responsibility and accountability. Why is confusing those two so damaging to execution?

So, you know, the two, they're related and not the same. Accountability is, as I've said several times now, the ability to follow a process and then talk about the process you follow to make sure it was done accurately. That's different than doing it in a timely fashion. So responsibility is your ability to respond. So if, for example, you're walking down the street and you have no training in medical whatsoever, and you see somebody who starts collapsing and writhing on the ground, and you jump over and you go, I don't know what to do, but I'm going to help, and maybe you put a pillow under her head, you're right, you're being responsible, you're responding. Okay, if I don't know what to do, I can't be held accountable to helping this person beyond that sort of basic stuff, right? I can't even be held accountable to that. Hey, you know, I thought to put the pillow under their head or something so they don't knock their head on the cement. That's great.

On the other hand, you're a medical professional trained, let's say, ER, in that same situation, and you realize what's going on and you start going through whatever process is required and something goes wrong, well, then there's going to be a review board that says, okay, what steps did you do? Why were you doing it this way? What was your thought process? Right now you're being accountable. Okay, so you could be accountable and irresponsible. I know how to do the process, but I decide not to do it. That's being irresponsible. And I think the reason the two get conflated is there are processes that are time-sensitive. When you see this, you must immediately do that. Well, if you don't do it, you're being both irresponsible, failing to respond, and need to be held accountable because the process says you have to respond in a certain time frame. But they are really two different things.

And if you hold somebody— if, if you don't understand that, then we start getting going down the wrong path and talking about things that aren't actually what the real problem were.

So you could technically be responsible for things you could be held accountable.

Absolutely.

On the same token, you don't always have to be held accountable for other things that you might be responsible for.

Yeah, so, right, somebody may be responsible to see something gets done in a timely fashion, but somebody else has to do it. So I'm the supervisor, okay? But at the end of the day that supervisor then has to hold the other person accountable as well. Right.

So it would go in hand with those standards that we were talking about set forth by the leader.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and this is where having those standards— this is why the mechanics is the first piece, right? If you don't have those boundaries, if you don't have the standards, right? This is how we're going to do it. This is what we're going to do. This is when we're going to do it. If you don't have that clearly defined, then people make it up as they go along. And you and I may be in the same jobs, but because there's no clear boundary about how we do it, we do it a little bit differently. And because we do it a little bit differently, we get different results.

And I mean, I would go so far as, you think about, think about McDonald's, which at one time was the most successful franchise in the world. Now, in your estimate, do they have the best hamburgers ever?

No, I wouldn't say so.

No, I doubt anybody would. But I have been to McDonald's all over the world, literally. And, you know, the level of service doesn't change. You— when you walk in, you expect certain things to happen, right? You walk through a McDonald's anywhere in this country, you're going to get greeted, right? They're going to suggest something to you. They're going to upsell you to it. And then the product is going to come out and it's going— it's the same hamburger. All right? In, in, in Des Moines, Iowa, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, San Francisco, California, doesn't matter where you go, that burger is the same. And so you, you have an expectation because they have a process.

And the reason they were so successful is their franchise manual, you know, is just as complete as can be. And this is where most people break down. They may have their key processes. Documented. I was actually talking to the owner of a managed service provider the other day. They're an IT support company, so they support small businesses that don't have internal IT departments. And while the processes for the technicians who are on the phone, those are really well thought out, the process written and documented, the processes for the managers who supervise or who have to do sort of higher-level cognition stuff aren't quite as thought out. And so they have a breakdown at the upper level.

There should be no, no, no stone unturned when it comes to this. And when it's there, it actually supports faster, more dynamic growth.

Now, you know, talking about the triad and mechanics being the first component that we were talking about, what are some of the common mechanical gaps that you see in otherwise talented leadership teams?

Well, one of them is a process, a QA process. That's probably the biggest one. Not the biggest, but a huge one. When things go wrong, it's handled in an ad hoc fashion, which means you don't always get to it, the root of the problem. So I ran a large moving company in San Diego 10 years ago or so. And we had a process I put in place called a Q board or quality board. And the— anytime a client or customer would call us and request money back for some reason, whatever that reason might be, they didn't think this move went like it should have, I would sit down with my operation— I was president— with operations manager and my warehouse manager, who were two other leaders there, both of whom were experienced movers. And we would call the crew in without telling them what the complaint was.

And we would just walk them through step by step the entire process from the night before when they got their assignment to what they did with the truck first thing in the morning. Because all of this was laid out, every single thing they were supposed to do from the, from the moment they got there to check out the truck, to check out the inventory, to ensure they had the right things, that sure they had the right paperwork, to they got to what we called the shipper— was the name of the customer within the term in the industry— shipper's house. Until they got back at the end of the night and secured the truck and went home. There was no— nothing there that was not delineated in a procedure. And we'd walk them through what they did, and we're looking for one of two things: did the procedure fail, or did they fail to follow the procedure? Because understanding that helps you then improve things. If the procedure failed— they followed the procedure and something went wrong— great, now we know How do we improve things so it doesn't happen again? We figure that out. We had a crew once move 9 tall potted plants. They were palm trees that couldn't fit in a personal vehicle because they were too tall, but could fit in our box truck.

And we had a policy not to move plants, potted plants, because when they bounce in that truck, the soil against the pressure of the pot would frequently break the pot. And we were responsible for that. We had to pay for that. When I went through this process and we asked the lead mover why they elected to ignore our policy, he said, we were in a bind because the shipper couldn't move it themselves and they had to be out of the house that day. And we prided ourselves on customer service. So I talk about mindset, you know, that was one of our things. So I made the decision to move them. And he wasn't wrong and he didn't get in trouble for breaking policy because he was right.

We had this conflict there. And so in our opinion, he made the right decision. But what it caused us to do was now create a relationship with a plant moving service so that my salespeople would uncover that need ahead of time, and we can make those arrangements so we didn't have to be held responsible for moving these plants. These people had the right equipment to do it properly. On the other hand, I had another lead mover who was breaking rules left and right because he just thought they were stupid. He didn't stay working for us too long, right? So we can make the right decision based on following that process.

Now, you said you were in the military and, um, also in your article you mentioned or emphasized on intent before instruction.

Yeah.

How can leaders ensure intent is truly understood rather than just assumed?

Well, you have to solicit feedback, right? You can't just say, you know, my intention is, right? What is your understanding? What is our goal here? What is the purpose of doing that? How does this fit into the big picture? You need to solicit feedback.

All right. So we're going to stop right here and come back In our next episode for part 2 with Dave Rosenberg, where we talk more about the responsibility of leaders motivating your team and how to foster employees who take on responsibility.

Thanks for listening today. Be sure to subscribe to Beyond by Wings on your favorite podcast platform. For more information, you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or reach out to us on our website. You can also shoot us an email at info@eandassociates.com.