In this episode, Kenneth Jones, Director of Facilities at Heartland Dental discusses tackling supply chain shortages, prioritizing the patient experience, and how he and his team are optimizing medtail.
Welcome back to Season 2 of Elevating Brick and Mortar! The podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance.
In this episode, we talk with Kenneth Jones, Director of Facilities at Heartland Dental. As a leading dental support organization, Heartland Dental provides administrative, clinical, and professional support to dentists, hygienists, and non-clinical teams so they can focus on delivering the highest quality dental care and experiences to the communities they serve.
In this episode, Kenneth discusses tackling supply chain shortages, prioritizing the patient experience, and how he and his team are optimizing medtail.
Guest Bio:
Currently, Kenneth serves as the Director of Facilities at Heartland Dental and oversees the facility management teams. The team supports their existing offices with all related activities including facility repairs and maintenance. Kenneth joined Heartland Dental in May of 2015 as Project Coordination Manager after 13 years as owner of Servpro in Vincennes, IN. He also proudly served 23 years in the active and reserve component of the U.S. Army. While in the Army, Kenneth attained multiple military occupation specialties, including infantry, field artillery, and transportation, and attained the rank of First Sergeant prior to retirement in 2014.
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Guest Quote
“We keep these offices running. We keep them safe. And it's really telling that story that our team’s goal is to keep this flywheel turning. Keep everybody going.” - Kenneth Jones
Time Stamps
(04:24) - Kenneth’s military experience
(09:48) - Heartland Dental’s north star
(16:48) - Preventative and proactive
(26:34) - The Medtail standard
(31:21) - Crazy stories in facilities
(35:10) - Final thoughts
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Sponsor:
ServiceChannel brings you peace of mind through peak facilities performance.
Rest easy knowing your locations are:
ServiceChannel partners with more than 500 leading brands globally to provide visibility across operations, the flexibility to grow and adapt to consumer expectations, and accelerated performance from their asset fleet and service providers. Get to know us at Servicechannel.com
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Links
Narrator: Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar, a podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance. On today's episode, we talk with Kenneth Jones, director of Facilities at Heartland Dental. As a leading dental support organization, Heartland Dental provides administrative, clinical and professional support to dentists, hygienists, and non-clinical teams so they can focus on delivering the highest quality.
And experiences to the communities they serve. Kenneth proudly served 23 years in the active and reserve component of the US Army and now oversees the facility teams that manage facility repairs and maintenance. In this episode, Kenneth discusses tackling supply chain shortages, prioritizing the patient experience, and how he and his team are optimizing med.
But first a word from our sponsors. Want to rest easy knowing your brick and mortar locations are offering the best possible guest experience. Partner with Service Channel for peak facilities performance. Check out service channel.com today to learn more. Now, here's your host. Industry and FM technology, thought leader and Chief Business Development Officer at Service Channel, Sid Shetty, along with our guest, Kenneth Jones.
Sid: Hello everyone. Welcome to season two, episode one. We are so excited about this new season. Thank you all for joining us. Our very first guest is Kenneth Jones, director of Facilities at Heartland Dental. Kenneth, welcome. How are
Kenneth: you? Hey, Syd. It's great to be here. Doing really well.
Sid: Thank you so much, and thank you for being here.
So, Kenneth, you served in the military, right? And, and by the way, thank you for your service, but tell us about your journey into facilities management.
Kenneth: So it, it was a long and, uh, curvy road is the best way to say it. So again, uh, did join the military as a young man. Uh, served mostly in the reserves, but did 23 years, uh, and then just, uh, did a lot of different things.
But, uh, in 2001, I bought a spro f. Uh, we ran that started a construction company, uh, now dry cleaners. So we were very entrepreneurial when we did that. Uh, in 2013, sold that company and went back to Union Construction. So again, I have a love for construction, so I went to that, did that for a couple years, and my daughter, really good basketball player.
She's 20 years old now. I also have a 17 year old daughter and a 14 year old son. Uh, so she was playing basketball and she's really good basketball player. Was on a, uh, traveling. And I was sitting talking to the coach and he said, he kind of asked me what I've done in my past. He says, well, I know there may be a good job for you.
And I said, well, I said, where's that at? And he said, well, Heartland Dental and I, I asked the question, what would I be doing for a dentist? So, uh, we, we talked through that, uh, interviewed with, uh, several people at Heartland Dental Super. I mean, the experience was just great and, uh, it was, uh, for a project coordination manager.
So really what we were doing on that team, we were running flooring and paints, expansions, remodels, those type of things. Uh, after my first year, uh, we didn't really have an emphasis on, uh, facilities, facilities. It really was, we were only handling major issues or we were just letting the office call the, the plumber, the electrician, or giving the plumber's or electrician's name.
So in 2016, we stood up a facilities team. Uh, so that's kind of how I got to facilities. It was, it was a long journey. Uh, one of the things I always find humorous, most people in facilities departments, facilities teams, they didn't go to school to be facilities managers. They didn't, you know, that's right.
They just kind of ended up.
Sid: That's right. It, it, it's, it's a story we hear very often, right? I mean, most folks, at least, you know, till now, uh, have kind of fallen into facilities or kind of found their way into facilities. Um, but you know, right now I think things are changing. I think schools now. Are having programs, um, that focus on facilities management, which is fantastic to see.
Um, so I think it's gonna be a very interesting few years as we see new blood come in, different experiences come in, so that's fantastic. Um, any lessons you think that, you know, you learned in the military that have applied in what you do in, in. Absolutely.
Kenneth: Like I said, uh, started in military way back in 1991 and really it was just some of the leadership traits and things like that.
One of the things the military is really great about is thrusting you into leadership responsibilities. And as a young leader, uh, I, vertigo had a motto, firm, fair and consistent, and that worked for a while. Interesting. Uh, yeah, it was just firm, fair and consistent, and it worked really well. But as I got older and I got more responsibilities in the military, uh, it.
A realization in my early thirties that everybody's a leader. Everybody on your team, from the newest person to the, to the most senior person is a leader. And micromanagement doesn't work. You know, uh, it is really training to standard and then letting them them go. And so that is something I learned very, you know, it took me a while to learn, but again, it was just, A leadership change and we have to be able, as leaders to change our leadership styles, uh, to to accommodate team members, to accommodate leaders.
and to accommodate change cuz it just, what we do is ever-changing. So we have to be able to
Sid: change. So your facilities team is pretty young, if you look at when it was originally formed, um, you know, what has that experience been and how important has your team been to the success of, of your, uh, you know, your program within your organization?
Kenneth: Yeah. I, I've had a lot of chances to talk to other people in my position, especially in the medical field, and we all are pretty young, so we're unlike retail, where retail, some of these companies have been open a hundred years and had facility teams that are, uh, 50 years old. So they've been doing this for 50 years.
Uh, we, you know, we've been doing this for about seven years in the facilities. I've talked to other companies. They, they're pretty new. So a lot of our focus in companies like myself and medical is all those other things, and this is something that's come along. So we've kind of grown with the company. Uh, the team is everything.
We as a team, very much. , you know, personality, being nice. Uh, we're hiring people and again, the whole team is part of the, the process. We want to find someone that's hungry. They're, they're looking for this challenge, they're humble again, they're not over the top, but they're also not in that, that bottom, you know, Hey, I don't know if I can do this.
And then people smart, which is the most important thing, you know, understanding people understanding. , their dominant buying motives, understanding their, their personalities so that we can help them and accommodate them to their, their needs. So that's a big part of it. Also, the team is young and, and again, this is the exciting thing about my team.
They're super hungry. They wanna learn. They learn the trades, they learn the plumbing, the electrical, all those things. They're diving into 'em, but at the end of of the day, it's customer service and, and really diving into making sure the customer is getting what they need. And again, it's a team effort.
And the great thing about facilities, uh, the one thing I love about facilities, we're fixers, right? So even if we get to the point where we're fixing something and something goes wrong, we don't have time to dwell on it. We have to go on to how am I gonna fix this issue now? Right. So that's really what the team is about.
And each one of those team members that are on my team, and again, very new team, they're leaders in their own dimension. So they find a way to lead and they find a way to, to bring innovation.
Sid: That, that's really smart. I, I think by the nature of facilities, when someone reaches out to you, they're looking for help.
You know, just, just because something's not working the way it should or something's gone wrong. Um, and being able to really have empathy and be humble and to have people, smart smarts, handle people. Um, and of course, you know, being hungry to like, you know, innovate and, and do more and to. Those are the right qualities to have.
Uh, it makes a lot of sense, for sure. Um, tell us about Heartland Dental. What is the culture like and what kind of experience does Heartland want, um, you know, your customers or your patients to have, uh, what, what, why should customers choose Heartland and, you know, what should an ideal dentist's office experience be?
Kenneth: Yeah. So one of the things that I, I. Life-changing. When I came to Heartland, there's several things, but everybody's nice and, and you know, we say that and we talk about that in this, you know, everything. But it truly is like, I go to work every day and I see people smiling. They're just nice, right? So that permeates through the whole company.
Our ceo, pat Bower says, you gotta be nice to work here. And that's everybody going into the dental office. You want to go into a clean, well set up, you. Efficient office. So you, you wanna walk in and feel welcome. So that goes down from the, you know, every element of the office to what it looks like outside, to going inside to how you meet the staff.
So those are things and we want it safe. I mean, we wanna make sure all our offices are safe for our staff and team, but ultimately you want to go into a place where you feel welcome. So anything we can do as a facilities, Uh, that's what we've, we focus on. How can we make sure that patient comes in from the time they pull in the parking lot to the time they leave, that they felt welcome.
Sid: What is your North Star? When you see the role of your team within Heartland Dental, like what impact do you have and or would like to have? You know, as it relates to the overall brand,
Kenneth: couple things that we're always there, we're always available, so we are a 24 7 department, so if they need us, we are there.
And it doesn't matter whether it's my department and I feel like everybody feels like this in Heartland. If you have a question about something outside my department, I'm going to find an answer for you. The other thing is to match their urgency. So there's so many things that happen in an office that may not be an emergency to someone, but to them it is.
So I, I use the West ceiling tile, you know, is that an emergency? But if you really ask the question, Hey, my patient looking up the ceiling all day, I have. There's a wet ceiling tile, and while I'm working in their mouth, they're thinking about that ceiling tile on 'em. So it's really understanding what they need and the urgency.
So we really focus on matching the urgency.
Sid: I love that. Match the urgency. And you know what, that's such an interesting point. Like one ceiling tile might not matter in a regular retail store or retail environment, but if you are lying down and looking up at that one tile, you're right. I, that would bother me.
I for. Wow, that, that's a very interesting perspective on, on how it could, you know, something small could be important in a different envi environment. Let's chat Metel, right? It, it's a relatively new term and new vertical, right? There's a lot of movement. Uh, where we are seeing some consolidation. Any thoughts on what's driving this wave?
Kenneth: Well, Medtel for me, and like I said, coming to Heartland, I, I mean I got introduced to Medtel, so it really is putting medical facilities in retail locations. So it's where the people are. So this is a major grocery, this is your target, this is your Walmart, and you have a dental office or a veterinary office, physical therapy.
I've even seen now pet. Uh, companies going in, you know, for boarding and things like that, right in front of a, uh, Publix. So one is putting these offices where patients are going to be, so it makes it easy for them. So I remember when I used to go to the dentist, I, it was in a medical center on a dead end road on the edge of town.
Uh, so again, this, we're putting this where the patients are making it easy for. , uh, yeah. So there's been a boom of this, and again, with the economy and everything, spaces opening up, mergers and acquisitions outside of medical. So, you know, there, there's spaces coming open that allows companies like ourself or other medical to get into there.
Uh, and again, it's just a, it's an envi inviting environment and it's easy for our patient. These
Sid: are, these are actual, uh, dentists who own the practice, uh, and are joining Heartland. Like what is, what, what benefit do they get by by joining, you know, uh, your company?
Kenneth: Yeah, so I've got to talk to several dentists and I even looked at it from my own perspective.
So I used own a business, right? And there are things I didn't like to do in my business. I didn't like do payroll. I didn't like to work with insurance companies. I mean, I'd love to get out and fix. Uh, so I see it similar for dentists than Dennis. I've talked to. Again, they get to be in the business of dentistry.
They get to focus, they get to become the best clinicians they can be, and then they can be an involved or uninvolved as they want in all those other things. Uh, I don't know of any dentist that wants to be involved in insurance that, you know, so we have a whole team that they, they handle all the dental and medical insurance, uh, even with facilities and projects that we're doing, we have.
Uh, dentists that are very involved in the process, they want to pick everything and then some say, Hey, you got it. Just take care of it. Uh, tell me when it's done. So again, we are kind of a carte in that sense that we will meet where they want to be. So like it isn't cookie cutter, it is, Hey, you wanna be very involved.
Be very involved. If you. , you don't have to be. And again, it allows the dentist to be the leader of the practice. So again, that's right. That's our culture. The dentist is the leader of that practice and. Uh, we meet their expectations.
Sid: Hey, I'm your host Cichetti and I hope you're enjoying this conversation so far to make sure you're up to date and have access to all our episodes.
Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast. Also, if you have thoughts, comments, or questions, be sure to follow Service Channel on LinkedIn so you can be part of our community of like-minded folks as well as have access to a lot of other great content. Feel free to also connect and follow me on LinkedIn.
I'm your host, Sid Shetty, and now back to the show.
It must be so different, right? Because it's not just a retail associate that's your customer for facilities. Like here, your customer is the dentist and the dentist associates. Who owned the boutique dentist office before the business before, and so they may have more pride and more a need for an, an involvement in that physical space.
How does that impact what you do? And it's definitely gonna be different compared to the standard retail restaurant environment,
Kenneth: right? Yeah. So you're not dealing with a manager that's, uh, in college or just got out of. Now some of these dentists have owned their offices for 20, 30, 40 years and they do have different expectations.
Uh, and it really is meeting those expectations of how they want to be served. Listening that that's the key is listening and whether it's to their operations managers or practice managers, really finding out who needs what. Uh, I always go back to dbm Do Dominant by Motting. If you can get key in on what the dominant thing that they.
Uh, you can, you can meet their expectations, but yes, it is, it's not easy. And again, you have to have people that are very, uh, receptive, very, uh, open to suggestions and things like that. Uh, and again, sometimes in retail you can be like, this, this, and this is what we're going to do. You can't do that in the medical field.
You have to meet different people's expectations. And again, they're. . That's
Sid: interesting. Um, you know, dentists office have very specific, kind of specialized equipment. You know, you're taking care of patients, you're doing procedures on patients. Um, so you know, you've got specialty equipment that now you have to be, be very, uh, conscientious about to make sure that those are working and working right.
Um, You know, a down asset would mean that it impacts your patient schedules, um, and your patients might be in the chair and you can't get to your equipment in the other room or around the office. That's pretty unique for like your. Your space, how does that impact what you do in facilities and and how do you navigate through that?
Yeah,
Kenneth: so one of the things that's preventive maintenance, so we try to be proactive, making sure, but there really are three pieces of equipment that really could shut a dental office down. So of course our hvac, again, we have patients in the chair, we have clinicians, you know, performing procedures. So again, you can't have it 80, 90 degrees in the.
because again, it's just not ideal or even cold. So again, that's a big deal to us, how our HVAC systems run and that are efficient. We also have dental compressors, which provide air to the tools, and then we have dental vacuums, which provide all the suction. So if these things go down, this really limits what the dental office can do.
So we work with, uh, our, our, our, basically our dental equipment team to make sure these are up and going fast. If they go. Uh, we also work with Henry Shine, who's our major equipment vendor. Sure. They, they, they're on Johnny on the spot when we need a replacement, but really is being 24 7. Hey, we're available, we're gonna get this taken care of.
And even with that, I'll kind of expand on it, you know, that there being procedures be done in here every day. So we cannot just send a tech with a hammer, start hammering. Cause you know, the dentist or the hygienist is working in someone's. . So we have to work around the dental office's schedule. We have to make sure that they, as a dental office, understand the work that's gonna be done, but also the contractor, the supplier, the vendor, making sure that hey, you can't disrupt patient care.
So again, patient care is paramount to us. It would probably be one of our other north stars that, hey, you can't affect patient. Um, and, and even in sometimes we have to shut down parts of the office to do work. We have to build containment, all those type of things so that work can go on the other part of the office.
Sid: If ever there's a situation where, you know, you, you do have to shut down your office. I presume because you have multiple locations, it might help with scheduling and asking a patient to go to another office because it's still owned by the same practice. Right. Well, what we
Kenneth: do in the sense is, And we've had this several with these recent pipe freezes, water damages, hurricanes, all these things going on.
Uh, so I can use an example. Just lately we had an office that, you know, was affected by major water damage and they had emergency patients so they could go over to the nearby office and see those patients. And they were still being seen by that dental offices, that dentist, that hygienist, but they were just working out of this other office and.
What an amazing experience, you know. There's that collaboration that, I mean, if, again, if you're on your own, you're not going to the next door dentist office and saying, Hey, can I see my patients? And it is, again, this is one of the things that excites me about Heartland and when I meet Dennis and I get this talk to them, is just all the collaboration.
There's, there's no competition. It is like, Hey, how are you doing this? How are you getting better? I look at it in my field. I talk to people every day, other facility managers, how are you doing this? How are you getting. So it's the same for our dentist. They're, they're talking to
Sid: other dentists. That's great.
How many locations does Heartland have? How many, how many locations are you responsible for?
Kenneth: So I think this year we just, uh, topped 1700 and we had around 500 offices. I remember in 2019, I think it was late 2019, we celebrated our thousandth office. . And so we've grown 700 even in that short time
Sid: period.
That's pretty phenomenal. So let's, let's pivot a little bit. Um, so Kenneth, you and I know each other well. We, we serve on the board of directors, uh, of Connects fm and you know, we get to talk a lot about the industry as a whole, the challenges we are facing and how we can collectively help move the industry forward.
Um, can you share your thoughts with our audience about just facilities in general? And how it's perceived. Um, and, and what can we do as a collective, um, to keep moving forward and, and, and really help with the image of, of what facilities does, as it relates to the whole organization?
Kenneth: Yeah, I think it's telling the story.
We keep these, uh, offices, whether we're in medical retail, we keep the offices up and running. We keep them safe, and it's really telling that story that, you know, our teams and our suppliers and vendors. , that's her goals to keep this, this, this, uh, flywheel turning. Keep everybody going. And, uh, you know, we also need to let you know the industry know that, hey, we're seeing shortages of contractors, we're having supply chain shortages.
So there's all these challenges that these facility teams in my team and other companies are dealing with. And, and again, they're, they're, they're large problem. and to realize the importance of these individual facility teams throughout the country, uh, the suppliers that are supporting those offices. I think it, it, it's,
Sid: it's a big deal.
Yeah. I mean, you, you've seen some pretty great growth in your own career at Heartland. How have you told the story about why facilities is important and how have you, um, articulated. The importance of your, your, your program and when, when you, when you talk to the leaders in your organization? Yeah. So
Kenneth: one, it's, uh, there's a couple things.
One, you have to be able to build a business case. So you have to tell the story of why you should be making change or why you should be adding this or why you should be doing that. So as a leader in a company, no matter where you're at, you have to be able to build that business case, the why, right? Uh, the other thing is it is sharing the success.
It really is sharing the successes. Cuz if you don't, nobody knows 'em. Uh, again, uh, I love the story that's been told by our ceo. We have one of our dental offices, brand new affiliation. Uh, she was on vacation, had a major water damage. Now, if she was still, you know, not with Heartland, she would've been going to the office taking care of all that, but she didn't have to.
She just made one call to the facilities. And we got that taken care of. So it absolutely is sharing the successes with your leadership. Of what your team is doing, how they're impacting the offices, because sometimes those things get, you know, just, I don't, they get where they don't get told, so nobody knows.
Right. So it really is, and that's part of my job as a director and a leader, is to tell the successes of the
Sid: team. And I guess connecting the dots, the bigger picture, right? Because you're right, facilities is in so many ways, like the unsung heroes in, in certain situations. But I think the nature of the industry and the people in it, we just come in, do our thing, and then, you know, move on and, uh, Don't necessarily take the time to, um, you know, kind of celebrate that success and share it with the other parts of the organization.
Kenneth: Yeah, and I even look back to the hurricane, hurricane again and just the things that not only our operations team, so we have an operations team out there in the field that are supporting doctors and teams and what they had to go through, but the facilities team, how they led and worked with other departments.
Like I said, that's the great thing about Heartland. I get to work with our dental equipment team, our IT. every day. And like I said, it is, uh, everybody's rowing the boat the same way. But to get to see how that team acted in tragedy, in emergency, again, an individual dental office doesn't get that. They're kind of on their own.
Whereas we get to support these dental offices at a high level. So, That's what we're here to
Sid: do. Yeah. Facilities, teams have to always answer the call. Right. Like, you, you can't not be present because if so, if something goes wrong, there are people that are, there's a whole store location, physical space that's relying on you, um, and your network of, of providers, um, to basically come save the day in so many cases.
Yeah. And, and you know, many times, like if you're doing your job, in a really good way. Um, you don't even know when something's broken, cuz everything just gets fixed behind the scenes. Right?
Kenneth: Yeah. Yeah. And it, it's as simple as answering the phone. Uh, again, I love to brag on my team on this. They answer the phone 95% of the time, so Right.
You know, they, they're there to answer the phone cuz they realize how important, just that first step, it's just answering the phone and finding out what's going on. So. Yeah. I mean, and I've had doctors all the time. , well, we've got calls and said, Hey, where's the status of this? And we're like, uh, you know, it's been fixed.
right? . So again, those are the kinds of the quirky things, but, uh, yeah, it's just an, it's an amazing experience to get to facilities as a instant gratification thing. You fix. You're a hero. You don't, you're a zero, but you're still moving on to the next thing you're, you're moving on to, okay, I didn't get it fixed.
Now what I gotta do to the next steps, and I think I've shared that before, is we're always fixing, so there's no time to dwell. It's moving to the next
Sid: thing. Yeah. But you know, you're right. And you know, it's so important to kind of, um, just talk about as a consumer or as a patient, what it would feel like if facilities was not there to support the business.
Right? Like, I can only imagine if I was actually, you know, going into. A dentist's office and the sign outside, you know, was kind of broken and I walk in and the floor's kind of dirty and, um, you know, the place just doesn't look welcoming. I mean, I'm, I'm gonna be in there with my mouth open, , you know, uh, getting a procedure done or a cleaning done.
It's not gonna be very comfortable, right? Yeah. And so it's, it's huge.
Kenneth: We have to maintain a standard and that's a great thing is that we do have those standards and we're gonna maintain those standards. And, uh, and to be honest, there's buying and power. What we do, we have 1700 dental losses, so. We can get flooring at a better price.
We can get paint, we can get these type of things for office to add value to the, to the dentist and the office. Uh, but yeah, we've all been there, but we walked into either a retail or a medical facility and we're just like, Ugh, I'm probably not coming back. Right. We don't want any patient to ever have that experience.
So again, we have brain standards. We, we, you know, do things like that to make sure the offices are taken.
Sid: Tell me about, um, the impact, you know, of the supply chain disruption on your business. Like, are you guys feeling it in your space? I'd like to also talk about, you know, the shortage of talent and, and trained technicians in the field.
Like how is this impacting your business? Yeah, so
Kenneth: the supply chain shortage, absolutely. We have a very strong procurement team at heart. Uh, so we have a development team and also a general procurement team. So again, yes, it has affected us trying to get parts for HVAC units, trying to get HVAC units in total.
So like even the proactiveness of the, our teams, uh, they've went out and bought units to have on hold so that if a dental office has a HVAC or down, we have something to put on it. Uh, it's also being used for our new construction, but even, you know, even back to the pandemic, the, the teams. Procurement teams were able to do, and uh, so they were able to just bring so much value to us by getting supplies, getting what at the right price, things like that.
But again, the supply chain shortage has been huge and we've weathered that storm. I still think there's parts of it going to go into the far into the future that we're gonna continue to struggle. But again, that is another great thing about us is we have a vast vendor, supplier and network and manufacturing network.
So we can go to several different avenues and find out, Hey, we can't get it here. Can we get it here? Uh, the, the other thing is the supply labor shortage. Uh, and one of the things we noticed after the pandemic, some people didn't come back into the, the, the. . Uh, so again, we are being very upfront with our offices, especially, you know, in certain trades that hey, there is a delay on getting those trades out cuz there's not the professionals in in them.
And again, this has to be a focus and that years and decades coming up is we are running out of service providers to help out offices. Uh, it puts us in a great position as a large company that we can secure those type of, uh, a, you know, assets, providers and those type of. But it is gonna continue to become a, a
Sid: struggle.
Yeah. And I think the more we can do to, I guess, be proactive and be strategic about how we look to the future, the better prepared we're gonna be to kind of handle whatever comes our way, right? Because today it's supply chain issues and, and the, they trained, uh, skilled labor shortage. , but you never know what kind of curve ball is gonna get thrown at us, you know, as we, as we move forward.
Um, but I think as an industry we have definitely come out stronger. Um, you know, out of the last three years, it's been a very interesting last three years, wouldn't you say?
Kenneth: Yes. And I, you know, we all have our struggles and our challenges, but I always think they bring innovation. They're being bring a better way to do something cuz you have to figure it out.
You have to take that next step and say, I'm not gonna have this asset, or I'm not gonna have these suppliers, or I'm not gonna have, you know, and facilities and, and we see this throughout, uh, you know, sometimes you don't get the, the, the personnel you need or, you know, the fte the full-time employee. So how are we gonna do it next?
How are we and how are we still gonna do it? Great. So it's always planning. It's always talking. It's, but I, I've always found problems bring innovation. Uh, so, you know, we, we innovated during the. Uh, we went to a totally, you know, remote workforce and were successful, so that was innovation. That's right.
You know, so we always innovate through problems and, and uh, we try to figure out a better way to do it. And we have like, uh, internet of things, you know, iot, on, you know, HVAC and electrical and things like that. It's a better way to do stuff. It's prevent. But again, it took time to do that.
Sid: On a lighter note, Kenneth, um, facilities teams always have the craziest stories, right?
Um, lot of things that, that come up that you wonder, wow, really, like I've not seen this happen before. A any crazy stories that you wanna share with our audience today? I have so
Kenneth: many . You've had so many. A couple of 'em is like we, we get the car hits, you know, hitting the buildings. Uh, this is throughout the industry, but I remember sitting at dinner in Oklahoma and getting a call from a regional manager in Georgia and she said, Hey, the car hit our building.
And I said, Hey, we'll get it taken care of how much damage is there? And she sent me a picture and it is actually sitting in the lobby. And again, it happened at night. It's sitting in the lobby. Uh, so I got a flight from Oklahoma to Georgia. We had that dental office up and seeing patients the next day.
Uh, so Wow. And then, uh, the other one is buzzards and vultures again. I, huh? I'm a country boy. I grew up in the country. I mean, I've seen buzzards and vultures my whole life. Did n did not know they're protected. I didn't know there were so many ways to deal with them. Uh, we recently had an office that was having some issues with that, and it really took six months working through.
The government to get stuff like that taken care of. Every day is an
Sid: adventure. Right. Vulture is in a dentist's office. Yeah. Maybe they needed a cleaning . Yeah. Right. That's, uh, something new. Um, you know, I love asking that question because you just hear so many great stories and, and different things that apply to different spaces, so thank you for sharing.
So Kenneth, you know, what advice would you give? To anyone who's listening, who either is thinking about or is starting out their career in the facility space, what should they be doing? What should they be thinking? How can they aspire to be a future facilities leader?
Kenneth: Find a mentor? So that's one of the biggest things gonna do.
And I actually had a mentor mentees meeting today, and we were talking through that, and one of the things I would encourage is find someone that's one step ahead or half a step ahead. You don't have to find. Top person, but you wanna find that person that's a step or half a step ahead cuz that's where you wanna get next and that's what you know, you can take that small next step or that next jump.
So you want to find that mentor and you need to find mentors within your own company, but also outside the company. So you need to find associations you can be a part of. And one of the things I'm very proud of is my relationship and connects and being on the board. But I've found so many great relationships, mentors when we started a.
Team. Again, I've repaired stuff my whole life, but I never started a facilities team I found and then was Prism. Um, but again, uh, changed Connects. I found all kinds of leaders there. Uh, One of my favorite stories is, uh, when I went to the first one in Nashville, north American Dental was there, and I'm like, that's the first people I'm gonna go talk to.
And they talked to me and we're like, what are you doing? And what are you doing? So again, we're not in competition as facilities teams. We support each other and we like learn so much from each other. But again, it was really, you know, finding those people that do what you do. So find a mentor inside your company that can get you to that next step, whether it's your direct supervisor, someone in another department, find that person.
And then find people outside of your company that you can work with and talk and, and even be a sounding board saying, Hey, I'm having these problems. I need help. Or, uh, one of the great questions you asked is, how do you get to the C-suite? How do you inform them of what you're doing? There's, there's people that have walked that path before, so go talk to them.
Say, Hey, how did you present this? How did you get this information?
Sid: I love it. Well, Kenneth, I just wanna say a big thank you for joining us. I truly enjoyed the conversation. I really appreciate it. If our audience wants to reach out to you and ask any questions, where can they find you?
Kenneth: Reach out to me on LinkedIn contacts and information's in there.
And again, I, I, I would anything to help this industry or people in this industry grow, I, I'd love to,
Sid: well, that was Kenneth Jones, director of Facilities at Heartland Dental. If you were to Google Medtel today, one of the things you'll read about is the rise of medtel and how it's shifting the way people have access to health and wellness. I think it'll be very interesting to watch what the future holds, but what will be important and determine.
Is the ability to focus on patient care and keeping the physical spaces warm, welcoming, and optimized for the best patient experience, much like what Kenneth shared with us today. Well, for all those in our audience, thank you for joining us. Until next time, I'm Cichetti and see you on the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar.
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