Episode 66

hello everyone brandon burns chief executive officer for peaks recovery centers inviting you all back to our wonderful finding peaks podcast here we are media episode here today joined by jason friesma this guy chief clinical officer lpclac all the clinical things clint nicholson chief operating officer lpclac all the other clinical things yeah right yeah okay welcome back guys it’s been forever since i’ve seen you so grateful to have you back on the show uh today we’re talking about um leading a healthcare organization what’s that what’s that like what are we doing comments thoughts ideas finding peaks at peaksrecovery.com that’s where this idea is coming from we want to talk a little bit about the behind the scenes of what it means to actually do something like this and operate a company like this and deliver the services that we promise i think the thing that i want to start with the viewers uh with is that oftentimes i come out of these out of the gates in these episodes and i and i poke and i prod and i point at the problems but we don’t i don’t always do i think a terrific job about wrapping that around and providing us like the solutions in the actual context and the sort of story building to it um so hopefully deliver that more be patient with me world uh on i think the probably the best segue that i can think of into this topic is the responsibility right first and foremost of advertising for services like our substance use disorder mental health primary whatever the case might be we put an ad up on the internet we send out clips into social media the social medias the tick tocks of the world all of that and out of that we get a response for people who are engaged and looking for the services and for me there’s a significant responsibility that comes with that because you’re stating i can help the condition you are suffering from in the first place but certainly in our growth at peaks starting from 12 employees with 36 beds to having 111 employees with 36 beds there’s a great deal you can do in leading a behavioral health company uh in our industry uh clinton’s only been with us for two-ish years going on so we’re not gonna go all the way back in time in that regard but certainly freeze i think you and i both know the differences in running a company culture with 12 employees for the same amount of beds uh versus 111 and and walk us through just a little bit of how you see that responsibility shifting from those good old days to kind of where we’re at today right because when we’re when we’re in those moments with that setting and with that amount of staff and that same sort of wholehearted dedication there’s there’s limitations to it at the same time um i don’t think we ever felt like we weren’t doing the right thing right yeah i think that’s fair and i think i mean talking about a transition i mean it is it is crazy to go from a company that does have 12 employees uh to an organization that has you know over a hundred and um so much of it was just our growing up and development as as an organization and i think um when we were kind of in a grassroots stage of like startup and and opening up and primarily doing uh php and iop work um the transition from that uh that that felt um very similar to when i was doing um my own practice with counseling uh whereas now i feel like we literally are a behavioral health care company i would not have said that seven years ago by any stretch of the imagination but now you know we have a medical team and we have a ton of protocol for how we treat various conditions and how we go about our our business and then as a result of that it’s really offered us the opportunity to help out uh a set of clients that off that we would never have been able to handle five years ago maybe not even three years ago um and we we’ve actually been talking about that as a leadership team just the expansion of our capacity as far as uh what type of person we’re able to help support so that’s that’s what i’ve noticed in our growth yeah well you can’t go back into those milestones with us uh in that regard clint so we’ll we’ll get up to speed here as far as uh getting you involved with this uh this discussion but i i think one of the you know the aspects of that growth in in leading a healthcare company right the the first thing that i recognized is all the jobs i was doing in the early stages of our growth and our development and probably all the hats that you were wearing in that regard therapist manager case manager family services provider transportation maybe at times i don’t know i was certainly doing tours and you know things of that nature but i state all that because um the responsibility to the individual we have a stabilization model right we’re telling you know families that when individuals come into you know peaks recovery centers that first two weeks is probably one of the most challenging time periods from a craving state protocol from a comfortability uh mental health primary individuals finding safety within the organization to you know sit still and be there in the first place and walk through their journey with us so getting back at that responsibility it feels like the greater responsibility we’ve obtained in this sort of transaction of employees is an actual ability when somebody is disrupted disregulated whatever that might look like for the organization first and foremost to be able to turn to that individual support them on top of that be sure to let the family system know what’s going on be supportive of them and you know talking about what’s going on whether person’s about to ama or whatever the case might be uh in that regard and also to be able to nurture the whole milieu who might be disrupted by the disruption or who might be just totally fine but at the same time you want to give priority to because they’re there suffering in their own you know unique ways at that time and so just curious to talk a little bit more about that and out loud with you guys about you know that collective experience and what it’s been like to arrive at a place that had literally no staff on color maybe you were just the primary one at that time you know to now having if something you know gets disrupted you know especially around the shifts the night shifts and the weekend shifts where your little you know lighter in staff where we have you know now here at peaks right a medical provider on call a clinician on call a residential staff member on call executive team members on call individuals who in a moment’s notice now can turn and actually show up on site and help nurture the individual the family situation and everybody else around us i’m going to speak pragmatically which uh so you got the feeling lane oh yeah i’ll take care of you yeah i think i got it but i think i you bring up an issue i i can remember um contemplating like how do we scale this business because so much of it was just about the personalities like it was my personality yours chris’s um you know and other people that have come along along the way here and how do we scale our persons and actually what it turns out is you need processes i need to take what the people are doing and then teach that and build the processes and um you’re welcome for that yeah absolutely i mean so how does that feel that was about that his pragmatism was about as short-lived as i imagined


more than that no my feelings are immense right now yeah i can imagine pragmatically speaking i think any organization um that’s go that goes from this like grassroots sort of model that you mentioned jason like initially you guys are the answer to everything right like individuals within the company those 12 people that that core solve all of the problems but if as a company gets bigger if a company is going to get bigger at some point the operations do have to take over i know i’m a little bit you know steered towards the operational side of things but eventually systems actually replace people to a certain degree so that you can expand and replicate and being able to but i think the key is actually being able to court to connect there is a clinical aspect to the way systems are developed and implemented that actually makes a good behavioral health company a good behavioral health company so the systems actually have to be designed to meet the needs of people not just the needs of the organization and really have to be clinically and medically sort of founded so that it supports um it kind of doesn’t really replace the talent that is that was initially or the individuals that were initially solving those problems but it allows for it to be sort of replicated to a certain degree yeah yeah but in the end i mean it that’s that’s what it takes you have to have operations put in place and systems put in place yeah how i you know i’m curious jason and you know something that you know i think it’s important for the viewers out there to experience like you know growth frustrations within organizations or even organizations out there who might be that 12 you know staff organization like how do i get from there to a place like you know peaks and make those leaps but you know so i just want to highlight what feels like


an experience um that at the time felt healthy and right and now doesn’t feel like the best approach and the way things we’ve been talking about narratives right and our company culture what is the common narrative that brings all individuals into peaks that shared collective energy whether it’s mental health primary substance use disorder and so forth that is a commonality of the room we’ve we’ve thrown words out like suffering you know we’re commonly suffering as a culture as a society individuals within the society maybe that’s the language we’re still working on it but when we were not right sized in the way that we are in serving the patient demographic but going back to that time it seems like you’re constantly projecting a narrative right and out of that narrative comes harmful things i potentially harmful things that otherwise wouldn’t take place like we might say something like in past peaks culture with those 12 employees that oh the client’s just not willing whereas in this culture that we’re in it of course they’re not we they just gave up you know the drug we know the tension that exists within those craving states and we identify that and so the narrative now is in like oh they’re not willing it’s like they’re going through a really challenging moment right now and they’re suffering in a big way then they’ve not suffered you know prior to coming into this program because of these detox protocols like like let’s have a genuine conversation about that let’s work through ways in which we can uphold boundaries that are positive in this regard that can be supportive of the individual but at the same time it’s not an unwillingness or a personal character trait um for why they are you know disregulated in the way that they are i mean does that feel accurate kind of comparing yeah i mean from a clinical terminology we would say treatment resistant and um fortunately we don’t say those words at all it peaks because uh that’s not a very curious statement um and it’s not very it’s very blaming on equine and it doesn’t require much uh uh clinical aptitude but but that’s sort of mentality or or using the word denial like somebody’s just in denial another word that we don’t really use anymore at peaks that’s those are the first couple things that come to my mind um as i look at our growth yeah yeah in statements like that what they do is they allow the organization to not be introspective right like you don’t actually have to look at yourself as an organization and look at your processes and um look at the way in which you’re approaching things because it’s just always the client right well they’re not responding well to our program because they’re just not ready you know or they’re too acute or they’re just not right for they’re just not a right a good fit for us and those are um essentially statements that that shut the organization down from growth right because they really they bypass introspection and i think that that’s the one thing that um peaks actually does really well is we’re not afraid to look at what we can do better even the processes that we’ve had that we have now versus six months ago versus a year ago i mean those have all shifted and we’ve allowed ourselves that space and that uh and that ability to be um introspective and and reflective and really look and see all right what is working on what’s not working and this isn’t about because the client didn’t respond well to it it’s about what can we do better and how can we actually meet the client more where they are yeah and that that that reminds me of course too of like outcome studies and the importance of it when you engage in outcomes you know one of the things and for all the viewers out there if you want to go back and uh in the catalog of finding peaks episodes i’ve interviewed joanna conti with vista research and conquer addiction multiple times on outcome studies and one of the things she highlighted within that those discussions was that hey everybody believes they’re doing a great job okay proof in the pudding let’s do this research one year later the data comes in and people are like oh there’s something wrong with the data there’s no longer to really know because we’re way we’re at 90 outcomes this is stating 33 that can’t be possible uh in that regard but the what the outcomes really require enforce if you’re not going to give up on them in that moment is to have that introspection and that insights okay what are we doing that’s not meeting these needs or the patient demand like when we say we’re a stabilization model


we should be stabilizing people in some considerable way of things and not having people leave treatment that are unstable or equally as you know dysregulated or disrupted as when they came to peaks in the first place so outcomes for me and participating in them though it’s challenging information when you first hear it is to take a look inwards and think okay how can we get these things right and you know in you know 2020 to 2021 we went through some very disruptive periods we’re looking at you know ama rates within the covet you know periods around 20 25 in there i mean that’s incredible there’s a lot of downward pressure right we can’t get off campus we can’t you know bring meetings in-house we’re doing exact wild executive you know directives from the you know governor policies orders right in that regard of seven days on 14 days seven days on seven days off 14 days on 14 days off we got rvs on so i mean all kinds of wild stuff that we’re trying to do to like account for all of that right but we don’t want to live at those ama rights it’s not supportive of our responsibility to the people that we treat and ultimately we’ve arrived at 7.8 percent is the current running number just a little bit above 92 percent of all patients stay through generally a 30 to 45 day curriculum and so out of those missed opportunities or all those challenges that we went through provides that introspection and allows us to put staff in place to actually really start nurturing what we’re talking about if you’re going to do stabilization it feels like we should have at least an a minus at the very least as far as who’s becoming stable within the process absolutely um so that might just be an at you guys statement you probably pretty much invested in that as much as i am um but you know going back we did uh at the beginning pre covered january of 2020 jason a little bit before clinton’s time but he’s a dare to he’s a dare to lead guy now in our world um we did the dare to lead training with uh mav o’neal who’s a wonderful professional um in the uh in our industry and community and out of that you read these leadership books most of them dare to lead podcasts mave o’neil in this particular sense when you become a a company culture of 50 plus employees there’s this significant shift in responsibility and we were doing that right around the 50 employee you know kind of benchmark and it’s easy to pass off as like i don’t know what people are talking about like you know 36.50 whatever the number is it’s just you know input but something about popping above that number really started taking a focus from a manager standpoint of like actually don’t have time to be all the answers for clients right i have to have time as well to have answers for our employee demographic and just curious you know from your lens jason what it was like to kind of pop over that 50 employee you know personnel and then what that was like is a shift because for me it certainly felt like something shifted and now we’re taking care of kind of two departments patients and staff now in a much different way yeah i think


you know completely from my perspective it feel it feels like when you when we popped over somewhere around that 50 threshold it did require attention on taking care of our staff and you know when we were smaller culture like we all just kind of we knew each other well enough or we would all go do something together or whatever and we could just kind of nurture each other uh in that same organic fashion that we were providing this kind of grassroots care to people but somewhere around that phase like i think to your point brandon like you can’t keep track of all of that like you have to begin to form those systems too of like how do we care for one another and how do um how do we begin to focus on the on the care providers rather than just providing all of the care and that’s certainly been a big part of my own personal growth too um i don’t get nearly as much time with clients as i used to and um and that was a big shift to be honest with you and to begin to to empower clinicians rather than just doing the work has been that’s been a significant shift so i think it just feels like there’s these layers that begin to develop and um and i’ve had to really think about what it is i do so that i can hopefully pass it along to other people too rather than kind of just doing it all


wow yeah i mean i i wasn’t there yeah right now


clinical culture is a challenging one at least in that hindsight perspective for me because lpc says i can treat mental health and addiction right lac says i can treat addiction and then out of that it’s like okay well then you’re equipped with the tools and the skill sets to actually deliver services within this setting and so it is like hey i’m gonna take these titles i’m gonna put it in this chair i’m gonna put the person on my website now like go and do the things and then people turn around and they’re like i don’t i don’t unders what do you want me to do with the stabilization thing this client’s like popping up over here you know and what’s going on and um and out of that that for me is like this significant increase in responsibility to staff lpcs and lacs sure i can do the documentation we can build for these services and i can come at this but at the same time like teach me how to do this absolutely teach me how to do this well who do i communicate with when things are going wrong when things are going well you know whatever the case might be and especially as we grow as an organization i think we’ve talked about it more from a leadership perspective it’s like how do we give them more you know tools and assets uh in that regard and especially as a growing organization i think old you know kind of peaks was stick the person in and you know kind of hope they do well but um that can be pretty destabilizing for an individual especially around the intensity sometimes that we experience and so putting in an actual sort of or building out sort of an education platform for staff in that regard becomes more imperative in a way that i never thought you know four years ago that we’d be engaged in anything like this because i was holding on to those titles and i think that’s an important message for family systems and our industry to appreciate here in the background is that just because somebody has a title behind their name doesn’t necessarily mean that they are best suited for that environment of care that they’re in and that requires its own nurturing yeah i think what i was thinking about as you were saying all that we we are on boarding um a couple of new clinicians amber and lindsey and um


you know what they’re used to is walking into an organization and being handed a big caseload and go do a group and figure it out and and i think what what i think makes peaks really cool is like we take a lot of time to orient clinicians to our caseloads or to our group our curriculum and also um kind of how we maneuver individuals through our care we take a lot of time to do that like more time than i’ve ever seen but we i think we value so much the culture that we have and the care we are providing um our clients and we we can’t have a disparity in care like it has to be it has to be integris like it has to be kind of one clinical team and we can’t have 14 or 15 individuals running around doing their own thing like because like you said you get these degrees or whatever and you have all these ideas and then a lot of the decisions we have to make as clinicians we’re not really taught and it isn’t necessarily in uh a cbt or dbt model like there’s a lot of judgment involved and a lot of critical thinking involved i would say well when you’re a small company like really your the program is based on the individual talent of the counselors like that’s what creates your program clinically but as you get bigger that just isn’t a thing i mean you have to be able to bring people in from well one you want to have a staff that represents the client demographic that you serve so you’re going to have to have people from different backgrounds different walks of life different experiences different educations and but at the same time you want to preserve that culture you want to preserve that’s the peak’s essence which requires training right it requires a system you have to have processes in place and as much as we invest on clinician investing clinicians on the front end i mean i still think that we don’t do enough but we also do twice as much as most organizations do but that just goes to show that most healthcare organizations particularly behavioral healthcare organizations do not spend a lot of time investing in their clinicians you know when you guys were talking about that sort of threshold that 50 person threshold earlier i think when you hit that threshold uh it’s the company and the employees that’s when the family vibes starts to change and all of the sudden it becomes a company vibe you’re not a part of a family at work you’re a part of a company at work


and in that moment there’s this really critical piece of uh cultural preservation that thank god peaks got right we were able to preserve that that family and feel and that that culture of support that has um i think actually only gotten stronger as we’ve gotten bigger but again it’s because we have this investment in the people that we bring on which is goes to your earlier point brandon that at some as you get bigger you have to invest equally in your employees as your clients like they they are become one and the same like that investment as a leader it has to be almost the it’s almost a one-for-one you know because in the end if you’re if your clinical staff or your medical staff your residential staff doesn’t feel supported and doesn’t feel invested in how in the world are they going to meet the needs of the clients that are there if we haven’t met their needs totally i’m going to you know we’ve talked about this a lot in the leadership meetings and i had you guys kind of put your heads back and listened to a five-minute introduction from this book tribe by the author stephen junger just quick background for individuals listening if you go back to our dr stephen elardi episodes the depression cure he talks a lot about tribalism that in in the sense that our biology as human beings is not necessarily equipped for contemporary society if you catalog uh our biology back into tribal cultures he’s looking at zero rates of you know depression whether it’s himalayan tribes american indian tribes uh even the amish is a good kind of contemporary tribal culture that exists that has nearly zero rates of depression anxiety so the thought from there is right like um we’re not biologically suited for this but in that regard catalog all that go back check it out i think these are all great reads as well too but i want to highlight just a quote out of it that says that i’ve shared with you guys multiple times now that uh human mind human beings do not mind hardship in fact they thrive on it what they do mind is not feeling necessary and american culture has perfected the art of making people feel not necessary and that resonates with me certainly at the level of you know patient care but also you know when it comes to employees our time currency on this planet is very limited uh we don’t get a lot of time we don’t know when we’re going to wake up not wake up car accident or otherwise or these awful things can happen in the world to us and out of that to me it brings to light like we’re asking people to give up a great deal of their time 40 hours a week 60 hours a week 80 hours when it’s necessary you know whatever the case might be in an hour time allotment and i further want to say that you know you can pay people you know as much as you want but at the same time that’s not going to ensure that cultural you know transaction and so mainly when i’m saying kind of this bridge to the cultural aspect of running a company that’s so pivotal going from family to an organization that’s big enough where people start to not know each other’s names is how do we ensure that each individual within the organization feels heard from hey this is my world on the outside and this is what’s important to me to also i’m trading off some of this world so i can come work with you guys and here’s what’s important in my professional environment but ultimately while everybody’s doing their job they’re not just a component of utility toward it right collecting a paycheck i’m just here to collect this paycheck peace just needs me to document this note so they can get paid as an organization and those things but to actually have people feel like they matter to the project to our mission to save lives towards the vision of quality of care that they’re actually participating in something greater themselves but not at the height it doesn’t stop at hyperbole that they actually feel that sort of tribalism within our own company culture how do you guys see that as being important within our organization well it’s it’s fundamental i think and it is everything and uh um you know another word we’ve been talking about a lot lately is transparency and i think obviously a hundred percent transparency isn’t appropriate but as transparent as we can be and as


you know i certainly try to be as much of just me jason friesman with my team as i can be and not um not anything other than that and i think that that feels like a piece of the old peaks that was good and came through is just being having that genuine um approach


i had another newer clinician um a few weeks ago he he circled around me yesterday and told me what this meant to him but i was just like listen man you belong here like you don’t feel it yet but you belong here and um and i think it that speaks to that necessary the necessity piece um because none of us can do this alone and making sure people see clearly um their necessity and it’s a tricky balance because like running a company too like we need to be able to replace people or move people in different positions or or sometimes people just have to move for their own life circumstances so it’s a delicate balance to to be like you are unique but i i certainly clinically too um what i tell clinicians is i want them to be them i want absolutely i want you to be you i don’t want you to be a little frisma or a little freud or whatever like i just want you to be you and that’s where um that’s where you’re going to be most valuable and i think


i would hope that helps too yeah i think we’ve created a tribe of authenticity you know i think it’s that’s our culture yeah um we can’t replace people when they leave like because they’re unique and individual but we bring on the next person and we look at them and we hear them and we celebrate them and we utilize the unique skills and attributes that they bring and then we integrate that into the culture um like we talk about company culture but company culture is just people it’s the people that we have you know and if we allow people to show up to work um in a way where they get to just be genuinely themselves like man like we’re we’re we’re miles ahead of the next organization and people at that point start to feel necessary because they get to show up to work as themselves and so there’s um a continuity and a congruence that i think you don’t really get in a whole lot of work environments um yeah but i think that yeah we’re definitely uh tribe peaks and it’s it and it is just a tribe full of unique and amazing and diverse voices yeah we’re pretty lucky yeah absolutely fortunate and um but before we conclude for sure i think you know one of the things that uh you know i’ve i’ve talked about it a lot on the show all of our websites say all the same things and the reality of a lot of our websites is we’re talking about hope as the reality if you come to peaks there’s hope if you go here there’s hope if you go here there’s hope one of the things that you know we’ve been talking about recently something far more challenging is is the reality of our business we are in health care not everybody makes it there are 107 000 opioid deaths last year uh in that regard never mind all of the other drugs and alcohol mental health suicidal suicidality all of that stuff that is encompassing of the individuals that we treat and out of that reality um we have the uh gifts of being able to provide treatment to individuals to give that hope and provide those recovery journeys and at the same time there’s this sort of underlying burden differently than like you know a snickers bar factory right at the end of the day where there’s not human lives involved with it and out of that reality um you know just a few short weeks ago you know a friend of peace recovery centers passed away um unforeseen and unexpectedly but i want to talk about that because that’s a very real thing that we do here speaking of the responsibility of an organization like peaks those promises we make on the front end phone calls family systems or otherwise um we know that reality exists you know within the background and at the same time not only nurturing family systems when they go through events like that but also the hit on our staff and it almost seems unexpected at times right where um you know different individuals can provide just extraordinary weights to the organization and how we feel about those experiences and i just wanted to talk a little bit about the tough things that are always talked about in leading a healthcare company you know like ours because it is a reality of this business it’s the reality of hospital systems it’s the reality of um you know really anybody who’s treating anybody who has some underlying illness on the other side of it this is just the way it unfortunately turns out sometimes but overall right um not just the support of the systems and the family and being transparent about that potential reality but also um how we you know kind of approach staff and i think this last few weeks has taught us like we’re just maybe missing a little bit of something around that staff aspect and uh i think we’ve wrapped our arms around it in a really healthy way i think we’ve talked about it out loud the same little speech i gave here i gave on our interdisciplinary you know team meeting on this last tuesday in that way but i guess what it’s caused again is just back to that introspection language of there’s something more we could be doing here to support staff and also something more we could be doing to not dismantle hope for the family system but provide more uh realities for the family system that we’re treating that this is life or death and so we got to like team up together and really lock arms together to nurture this because this is one of the realities of you know our situation and but you know going back to the staff side of things um you know what has your guys’s experience been like over the past few weeks of walking through something like that i i think we’ve done a great job of uh letting our staff know it’s okay to feel sad it’s okay to feel overwhelmed it’s okay to feel hopeless it’s okay to feel exasperated or tired or whatever like i i think that creating that culture um you know oftentimes a lot of our meetings are about gratitude and all the things that we’re grateful for and all of that but if we also don’t kind of build a container to say it’s also okay to grieve and to feel uh less than good then i think then then we’re just cheerleaders and we’re not living in reality i think and so i think we’ve done a phenomenal job of walking through some of the hardships because we celebrate our victories for sure and we grieve our losses though as well


items i think um you know we have these like chief level titles right and i think part of the responsibility of a title like that is really being able to hear um when somebody tells you that you didn’t do enough that you’re actually not doing a good enough job in that you have to do better i think our instinct is to try to fight that and to say oh no no but look at all the things that we’re doing well focus focus on this not on this but in the end like we have to focus on this you know we um i think we support our employees amazingly well and we provide them an opportunity to come in and be genuine and to to feel all of the feels without shame or without uh retribution or what what have you um at the same time because we have we ask our staff to show up genuinely that means that there’s an element of vulnerability that inevitably follows which makes us as a team more susceptible to loss and i mean we’re peaks isn’t perfect you know we never have been and we never will be but we will never stop trying and um i don’t care if it’s um if somebody that we’ve lost or even just a client that wasn’t successful in the program every single employee feels that like they own that and they feel that and they carry that with them because i think we’ve done a really good job of at least within company culture reiterating that this is life and death i mean our mission is to save lives and when we don’t when we don’t meet our mission you know people die um so i mean i don’t mean that to sound somber but i i think it there’s just um for me and i think for the three of us in this room like our commitment to just always doing better and to always trying to to to be able to support our employees in whatever way possible and knowing that if there’s one thing i would want our employees to know and our teams to know it’s that we will never stop trying to get better um whether for the people that work for us or for our patients as soon as we stop trying to be better is we should just shut yeah i always share with you guys you know as well too you know i know how to do mediocrity there’s a way to make exceptional to use this foul language in an industry of healthcare uh you know there’s there are ways to make a great deal of money uh in this world and through these types of platforms and my commitment to the organization is to die on the sort of quality of care so what i mean by that is if insurance premiums continue to lower but we are committed to this quality project i would rather die on the sword of losing the company to in state that we were part of something bigger we tried to do something significant we tried to do what you know dr perry and the boy was raised as the dog book talks about you arrive at this quality level now expand it now create greater access to it what does that look like and it’s seemingly in healthcare systems it’s actually a lot harder to expand quality than it is to expand access uh in that regard and there’s these trade-offs and i think you know for us wholeheartedly we’re just committed to quality uh each and every day and that’s that’s our pursuit and that’s how we go from 12 employees to 111 for the same amount of beds uh at the end of the day um and that’s how we’ll go from 100 to 11 to employees to 200 11 employees but we’ll do it we’ll do it intentionally and we’re not going to sacrifice anything along the way it’s it takes us as long as it takes us but we will get there yeah and before we kind of take this out and and talk just a little bit more of you know with gratitude for our employees our leaders and so forth you know i’m just curious for the three of us just to talk out loud about kind of our biggest takeaway of being a leader in an organization and i think this is a shout out to those you know ceos chief operating officers clinical officers and so forth maybe in smaller company cultures uh moving forward you know the thing that i think i’ve gotten right as a leader if i’ve gotten anything right is you know whether it’s an employee holding me accountable whether it’s a patient holding me accountable whether it’s a family system whether it’s this industry holding me accountable i’ve been far more successful in my career path when i take a moment to take one step back and nurture my responsibility take accountability for where i’m at take responsibility in the situation because with these titles we are absolutely responsible for each and everything and then come back in uh you know to the general work environment with solutions and that sort of thing renee brown talks about in dare to lead 95 percent of the time spent on the problem 5 on the solution and when we feel like we’re doing great things and we get hit with hard things it’s like we want to be reactionary and solution focused in those moments but that reflection period and that absorbing of responsibility taking a day or two and then taking it back to the teams has been pivotal i think in my personal success as a leader in the organization but for the overall organization of vulnerability and preservation of that so curious about maybe it’s the same maybe it’s different but something that’s been powerful from you know your leadership perspective that we give to the viewers as a takeaway


man i i feel like


first of all um you know we have a core value of being curious and i know i always have to seek first to understand anything before i’m trying to be understood um because i know i don’t read things perfectly and sometimes people just have to explain things to me or um or you know maybe when one of us isn’t in the room things go differently so like i have to ask and be curious um


and so i’ve definitely learned that um i’ve also certainly learned i can’t demand um anything from from my team that i’m not willing to do or offer myself i can’t demand a team to be emotionally available for one another and for clients and all that if i am detached or um not around so those things matter a lot and i think i think maybe it’s not quite what you’re saying but i i do know like always my first thought too is like okay what um where’s my responsibility in whatever situation and then um i think i learned from clinton too like okay what’s the operational solution and instead of going at people like let’s look at the process first that’s where i would start


wow um i think that in my experience


no leadership team works no organization works if there isn’t safety and if there isn’t trust and i think that i over the course of my career i think i’ve spent more time than i ever thought i would just trying to foster safety and trust because if you have those two things then you have an environment of creativity of risk of exploration but also of support and compassion and empathy um it’s i i think that it’s one of the things that i greatly underestimated going into probably my first career and have i am so grateful that i’ve learned and been able to and that when i stepped into peaks i think it’s one of the reasons why i was so drawn to it um i mean you’re a very charismatic interview and you have your five inch shorts on there’s a whole lot there’s a whole lot going for peaks at the time but there it felt safe and it felt i felt like this was a place where i can like really stretch and really push myself and create an environment that other people can do that too


appreciate it appreciate those insights you know for me you know i’ve you guys know me i’ll listen to any books read all the books use all the books avid reader but i will take those in and be like we’re changing the company tomorrow because look what i’ve read right calm down brandon yeah calm down but generally speaking one of the great books that was ever recommended to me was by you jason the advantage by patrick lincione and he asks in the book without cataloging the whole book here around cultural development like what is it worth to you as an organization to you as a leader and in reading that simple passage on top of all of the gifts he gives us in the book for being leaders in this world i thought to me it’s worth everything now


and so that’s what we do i feel like that’s my whole job each and every day at peaks as a leader in an organization especially a health care system uphold the mission uphold the vision and definitely ensure the core values were always operating within the organization and now the ceo title thing gets really simplified into something meaningful greater than myself and it’s the project that i’m advancing uh each and every day and with that as best as i can here i think i can move through this and we had a pretty emotional interdisciplinary team meeting this week for a variety of different reasons but i’m grateful for the leaders around me clint you were gone for two days cried like a little baby in your absence during the interdisciplinary team meeting right you know just taking two days off and you know in that regard that’s to me how close we are your office right next to mine you know hearing each other talk back and forth through the walls all those sort of things and the meetings and the nuances of it um you know there’s something special here and there’s something special within this room and what you’ve provided jason and how you’ve stepped up into this greater company culture in a way that it’s probably a lot safer for probably the three of us to do the things prior to stepping up into these moments uh in that regard and certainly would eliminate a lot of you know fear maybe anxiety at least for myself uh in that regard but you know dr ryan our chief medical officer rel director of nursing rachel tapp director of iop uh office manager jennifer esparza my wife human resource director in that regard as well too um all aaron on our admissions line i mean wholeheartedly what a future leader in this world not just uh within peaks but i mean her her future is bright in this regard our residential directors sarah brandon cara uh in that regard as well too who show up wholeheartedly in the direction of patient care each and every day paul eschen our financial guy nobody likes to talk financials in healthcare but it matters especially when your financial guy has the same heart as the company culture and wants to continue to add the next best staff to the operations that ensures its longevity um and without cataloging of course the entire you know 100 other employees that exist in our organization you know just a big shout out to them as well too that uh we always hear you we’re listening and we’re always trying to strive to do better on your part because to me if we get this cultural staff dynamic correct patient care just follows and it feels that simple at the end of the day when we’re disrupted the patients experience it when we’re related they’re elated you know there’s this transference thing that’s constantly going on and so the nurturing the staff side to me always has this positive ongoing reduction in against mental advice discharges and i think we’re seeing that in real time and would just encourage any other company culture out there to take it seriously especially at that 50 employee mark because you’re going from a family to a much bigger thing and missing that mark i think can be quite catastrophic in a really big way and we were fortunate enough to avoid it uh at the same time i think we could feel it simmering at times uh as well too so i want to give my gratitude for the staff there before i take it out you guys want to throw out some shout outs as well too yeah i mean i i i do want to shout out the clinical team and uh you know i really i i look at them as uh i don’t know we have we have our clinical meeting on wednesday afternoons and i just look at that meeting as sacred ground and just where uh where our culture as a as a company um i think it’s where the interface with the clients comes with the culture of the company


and i mean they just show up time and time again difficult times in their own lives difficult times with clients showing up and uh definitely giving it their all and um


i don’t know i just couldn’t be more proud of of a team and i’m humbled uh by the work they do every day so shout out to clinical you guys rock


wow um i think one of the great things about my position is i basically just work with all of the leaders you know on all the teams i get i have direct contact and um so in in having that contact i get to hear about everybody you know like i i’m literally on we have our chat message platform where all of the communication for the company goes through and i am on every single chat not because i’m a control freak sometimes maybe a little bit but really so i can just see people like i to see everybody i mean there’s there’s no one team that can exist without the other there’s no one position that can exist without the other every single person that we have is vital and amazing and um i got to take two days off and really just sort of watch it all happen and it was absolutely breathtaking in the best way possible so i’m just grateful for the tribe i’m grateful for the entire tribe and i’m grateful to be a part of it so thank you for bringing me on yeah absolutely


i’m just grateful that i have talent like this on my team because i cannot do it alone certainly and you guys keep all my tangents at bay so that company culture doesn’t have to experience them except for the viewers on these episodes uh you know and taking this out i think i think there are two individuals that i’m trying to touch base with out here one family systems to hear that there is at least here at peaks recovery centers there’s a lot of thought going into this each and every day and it’s not uh hyperbolic thought there are meetings processes systems constant conversations push back we got pin cushions we take thoughts ideas put in and pull those things out at some future date you know to actually implement them as an organization uh you know patients come us and tell us what they could see you know being better for them in the future i think our responsibility is to respond to those types of things and family systems desperate for that hope love and guidance from an organization isn’t always talked about on the front end and i just want you know family systems to hear kind of at least at a at a high level some of how of our thinking goes about in delivering these services and some of the complexities with it as well too 111 people plus 36 patients a lot of people to kind of know where everybody’s going at any given time and then i think professionals out there as well too um you know a lot of us especially here in the state of colorado have seen us grow from that 12 employee standpoint to where we’re at now and it was not a smooth you know linear journey by any means it had wild ripples within it and learning experiences that we went through but the moment i think we took seriously what it means to be a leader and to really engage in that and and implement a leadership meeting to talk about this how we’re going to nurture this how we’re going to implement these core values all of that sort of stuff mattered and to me you know some of these books ask you know do you think you’re above these things are these two foo foo for you in regards to black and white logistics that you know maybe work i don’t know in an engineering firm or something i don’t don’t hand me out their engineers if you guys are loving on each other and uh doing vulnerability and dare to lead stuff at the end of the day but um it matters and the more energy that you put into that the greater reward you’ll experience on this side and by reward i mean a greater customer experience and a greater appreciation for the services that you promised on the front end in that regard so take responsibility reach out to us use us as a platform and maybe as a guiding post if you’re back there you can all reach out to me you know that my friends here in the state of colorado but otherwise signing off another episode of finding peaks here finding peaks at peaksrecovery.com send us your ideas thoughts insights happy to extend on this conversation in the future follow us on the tick tocks the facebooks the instagrams the twitters all the things we’re on all the things and at the end of the day we just wholeheartedly love and appreciate the opportunity to do this each and every week and to just talk about the thing that we love doing and grateful for all of your attention on the other side of this camera and the audio podcast side of things so until next time love y’all