Jeff Jankowski, PT, ATC

Jeff Jankowski, PT, ATC, is the chief executive officer of Redbud Physical Therapy in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He can be reached at jeff.jankowski@redbudpt.com.

Practice, location: Northeast Oklahoma

Size of practice: 15 locations, 73 employees

Years in practice: 22 total years in physical therapy, 11 in private practice setting

Most influential book: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell

How do you like to spend your free time? I spend a lot of time with my family. My daughter is a senior in high school and my son is a freshman. I spend a lot of time coaching their teams and attending their activities. We also like to ride bikes along the Arkansas River and go hiking with our Golden Retrievers.

What do you like most about your job? Helping other young leaders grow and being able to nurture and develop them as leaders.

What do you like least about your job? That’s a tough question because I love my job. I think the biggest challenge and opportunity in the job is competing against the larger hospital systems that are actively expanding their outpatient PT [physical therapy] presence and trying to control the referral patterns for the physicians that work for them.

Describe your management style: I like to lead with a coaching style approach with my team. It certainly depends on the situation, and at times management styles may intermix, but I most often utilize coaching as my go to strategy.

Best way you keep a competitive edge: Keeping all staff and leaders accountable for their responsibilities helps the business not get complacent in our day-to-day interactions. My friend David Browder says that each month in PT is like a hole in the game of golf. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your last hole (or month) was, we get a chance on the first day of the next month to start over and work on a good score.

How do you measure your success? My great-uncle left our family with a message on his deathbed and said, “Go make a difference in the world.” I believe that success is a journey and not a destination and strive in every relationship, employment situation, or board position to leave it better off than when I started.

What are your key performance indicators? Our top performance indicator is EBITDA [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amoritization]. In addition, we look at satisfaction surveys of our customers and have a goal for 30 percent of our referrals coming from family and friends. We think that is a good target to maintain a successfully run business.

Best decision: The best decision was to turn down opportunities that did not align with our business philosophy and the willingness to say no in order to become more successful in our areas of strength.

Worst decision: There have been a couple of “crisis hiring” decisions that I have made in the past where I picked a candidate that was not a great fit with the mission of the company and that employee ended up not staying very long.

How do you motivate your employees? I believe we cannot personally motivate others, but we can lead them in the right direction. It is definitely my role as a leader to provide the tools for my team to be successful, but at the end of the day we are all responsible for our own motivation.

Goal yet to be achieved either personal or professional? At the time of this interview I am a little over two weeks away from completing my transitional doctor of physical therapy so that is one of my main professional goals that I am close to achieving!