026, HR Healthcare_Cleveland Clinic Keynote Case Study_From Strategy to Structure

Announcer: Okay. At this point, I would like to welcome to the stage our last presentation before we get a networking break. Please join me, Colleen Carroll, Senior Director of Leadership and Learning from Cleveland Clinic, and Elizabeth Pugel, Senior Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic. I apologize if I said your name wrong. And they are gonna talk with us about from strategy to structure, formal development programs that work. Welcome.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: Thank you.

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: Thank you. And you got it right. All right. Yes. Good morning as we were preparing for this I didn't realize that we were the presentation that stands between you and a break. So our goal is to make this enjoyable. Hopefully you find something meaningful that you can take back, and maybe a new connection.

So connection has been a theme that I've heard not only in our boardrooms, but also in these sessions here, and how important it is in healthcare. And that is a lot of what our presentation is about today. Healthcare is arguably one of the most complex environments and industries out there, and connection we view as a non-negotiable for our teams and our caregivers.

So today, Elizabeth and I are going to talk a little bit to you about our formal development programs and how we've spent the last 10 years really scaling those programs to meet the demands of the healthcare environment. Before we go into that we will share a little bit about ourselves.

So as Mindy said, my name is Colleen Carroll. I'm a senior director of Leadership and Learning at the Mandel Global Leadership and Learning Institute at Cleveland Clinic. I've spent the last 10 years with Cleveland Clinic, really working on innovating our talent development programs to be the best of the best. Prior to that, I spent 15 years in the serving as in the government and then serving military members and being in the military myself, so working across high-pressure environments. So in my mind, I really view connection as a non-negotiable when it comes to helping teams thrive in complex environments. Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: Yeah. Thank you, Carroll. So thank you, Carroll. Thank you, Colleen Carroll.

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: We've worked together for 10 years.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: We worked together for a long time. That's surprising. So we just roll.

So I'm Elizabeth Pugel. I've been with the Cleveland Clinic for about 10 years, and prior to that, I have a pretty extensive consulting background. I've worked for a lot of Fortune 500 companies in a very fast-paced environment. So coming to the Cleveland Clinic was no different with the innovation and the pace that we move.

I was very happy with the topic for today, as connection for me and relationship building, I would say, has been the secret to my success. Whether it's been in my career with people that I work with professional organizations, but really being able to connect and taking those relationships a level deeper is definitely something that I find that has been so important.

So we wanted to start off and do a little activity with all of you. We are trained facilitators, so it would not be a proper session without some type of inter- So here's what we're gonna ask you to do in just a moment. I want you to grab your phone, scroll through it, find a picture that is meaningful or has connection for you, and then you're gonna have an opportunity to turn to the person closest to you. Go ahead and introduce yourselves if you haven't already. Share that picture and why it is meaningful, and we'll give each of you 60 seconds, and we'll regroup back here in two minutes. Have fun connecting.

You've got about one minute left, So we'll give you about 30 seconds, and we'll come back together in about 10 seconds

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: We have one ready.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: All right. We'll have you come on back. It is always one of the most challenging things for us as facilitators, is to get people back after an interaction that we prompted all of you to do. So thank you so much for sharing and participating in that. Being up here, I was able to see a quick snapshot of some of the pictures I'm very curious about and hearing some of the stories myself. So Colleen, if you had your cam- or if you had your phone out in front of you, would there be a picture you would highlight for your partner?

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: I- I'll even describe it for you. So the sc- Cleveland skyline behind me. It's Friday evening. And it's me, my sister, her husband, my husband, and their 18-year 18-month-old, Caden. We just ran a 10K together and we took a beautiful picture after it, and it's my best friends and family.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: So family, friends, ex- meaningful experiences is what you would highlight, right?

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: Yes.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: And also, I just wanna call out the opening activity, your hobby.

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: It's my hobby.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: So Colleen is a big runner, so we got two parts in there for today. So awesome, thank you. If I had to pick I have about 3,000 photos on my camera, probably 98% of them are our pandemic puppies that we got. And I look at them, we take so many pictures, love them to death, but they really just, capture those moments that are so meaningful for me and really the thing that provides the most energy when I get to see them and interact and keeps me going throughout the day.

I'm not shameless, so if you wanna see any adorable puppy pictures after, feel free. So here's what I'd like to do. There was some energy in here when we went to that activity, any time we did activities throughout this conference. So I'd love to hear from maybe just a few of you, a couple pop-ups, you can yell, we'll repeat it back. But how did that activity and that engagement, that connection feel? What was that like for you? Familiar?

Audience Member: Really like family.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: Family. Yes.

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: Love that.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: The connection with the person you are meeting with? Yeah. Thank you. One more.

Audience Member: Energized.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: Energized. How yeah, absolutely. And that's what we were hoping you would feel in here. And so one thing that we noticed, to that point is the energy shifted the minute we said, "Grab your phone, talk about something that is important to you." That was only two minutes, right? Two minutes of a 20-minute presentation, and probably two minutes of our entire eight-hour day together today.

So really thinking about what happens when we have that social connection, right? And really being able to think about how sharing something personal changes and shifts the room, right? It also provides us to connect and to have better attention with each other. Our attention will sharpen for the rest of this session because we now have a different connection with somebody that we just met or with the overall activity.

And so here's the big thing about this activity. That this isn't just, an activity. This is the work. This is the work that we do in every program, every interaction, every opportunity that we have to bring a group together. And we really find that connection is the catalyst for learning, and it is truly a foundation for the work that we put together in our programs.

And so we wanna think about, having that increase in attention, and that increased attention in the classroom or in those experiences, it adds to retaining the information. It's also about the glue, and the glue that binds everything together. We look at this as like a social contract, right?

We're able to connect, we're able to connect with somebody, and we're able to connect with the content, the work, the mission, the vision, the values, all of that comes together. And then we also find that people are able to have, better bandwidth for the information that they have. They're able to shift their priorities, have more focus, and really be more mindful of what they're doing day to day. And we have to keep this in mind as we're often dealing with very busy clinical and non-clinical workers

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: So we talked about the importance of connection. Layered on top of that is that our attention is so scarce In healthcare, we know that our caregivers, our employees, they are overwhelmed, they are skillful time poor, and under incredible amount of stress.

This only makes their attention, in addition to the many other things in the world that pull at our attention, even more scarce. So there are many learning theories out there and models. One that we wanted to share that really connects to memory, retention and how our brains encode learning is really NEAR.

Now, we did not create this model. We owe credit for this model to Dr. Wendy Suzuki from New York University. She's a neuroscientist. And really what it is it points to four things. So number one is novelty. So when we are able to introduce novelty into our presentations, our programs, or break with routine, it's like our brain is instantly able to hit the Save button.

When we are... Our brains are really good at routine. I'm sure all of you have your own morning routine that gets you started in the day. When there is an interruption to that routine, our brains start paying attention. But when we're in routine mode, we actually pay less attention. So any time you can introduce novelty, breaking with what is expected of a group or an event, you are going to instantly drive retention of memory and knowledge.

Second is emotional resonance. That connects a lot to the connection piece. We had you open your phone, scroll through, and find a memory or moment that was meaningful for you. That was our draw at your emotional resonance to get you to remember what we share with you today. Association is really around any time we can take new learning and glom it onto something people already know, we find that is just one more way to build a scaffolding for things that are to stick with us.

And then last is repetition, and this one I know is everybody says "Oh, repetition, that makes so much sense." But you'd be surprised how often in our classrooms or from our leaders, they'll say they already know that," or, "We've already told them that." And I've said it myself. But the reality is that when we're sharing knowledge, whether that's a new policy, how to lead practices in communication, repetition is so important for how we share new information, whether it's repetition in practice, repetition in hearing it, repetition in me repeating it back or you repeating it back to me.

Those are the things that make this more meaningful So that is the model we use. But to talk a little bit about the programs that we have at Cleveland Clinic We really looked at every level of leadership. So to give you some context for Cleveland Clinic, since 2010, our organization has nearly doubled in size and tripled in revenue.

So we've gone from around 40,000 caregivers to over 80,000 in a very short amount of time. We had went from a main campus was our primary location to main campus plus 23 regional hospitals, 300 outpatient locations, and we are across the globe in London, Canada, Abu Dhabi and Nevada, Florida. I'm sure I'm forgetting something at some point.

We're outgrowing ourselves. So what we realize with that growth, and as many of you in this room can probably relate to, is that with growth and expansion comes more complexity. So 10 years ago, when we started to look at our leadership development programs, we had a lot of off-the-shelf content and purchased content from other vendors because there are, there's so many great, competent, incredible models out there that you can pay for.

But what we realized is that was no longer working for the complexity of our organization. The issues our leaders were facing was more about working across a global organization rather than some content that we purchased. And our leaders wanted stuff that spoke to their experience. So we built programs that were designed for every level of leadership, and we really look at it in three ways.

We look at it by level, so everything from new leaders all the way through advanced leader development. We look at it by potential, so we want to make sure we're lifting up that potential talent that is ready for their next level leadership, and when they are, we're able to get them there. Then we also look at by discipline.

So we look at, for example, we have a nurse leadership academy that we've launched in the last few years to make sure that we are helping our leaders in specialty areas like nursing where they're under even more stress to develop those leadership skills So that's a little bit about our programs, but what's most important is not just the content in those programs, but the experience.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: Yeah, and the method is very intentional. So whether you're in a frontline program or a very senior physician-level program, you're going to get these three core disciplines. So the first thing is we always are mindful to protect attention. We are a sticklers for starting and ending on time. We very much base all of our learning on adult learning theory.

So every 60 to 90 minutes or so, there's a break. Colleen and I, this is probably the most lecture we have done in a few months to actually be talking for, 20-some minutes. Very interactive, very hands-on, very experiential. We wanna keep people engaged. And then we really wanna think about engineering that connection.

So we don't have lecture style. We're at round tables. We're at pods. We encourage that connection at their tables. And then for our longer programs, one of our goals is that each member of the cohort meets every single other participant at some point and has that connection. This also helps build our leaders' networks and it's a really great contact opportunity for them.

And then we run it like an operation. We are not standing here today because Colleen and I actually were able to show up on our own. We have an incredible team that plans everything. Our program managers they literally run this like a production, so the templates, the emails, the materials making sure our schedules are aligned. It really does take a village to have successful programs, and that is what we stand by to really create the overall experience that each and every one of our participants gain throughout the programs

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: And so I think really just to drive home what we focus on is the content, I we have an incredible team of instructional designers- and that, that put together our content, evaluate the needs of each audience. But what is most focused on top of that is that whole experience and the white glove of it all. We're making sure that we're building the trust and the buy-in with our leaders so that they want to come back. So some of the results that we've experienced...

Oops.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: Yeah.

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: There we go. Some of the results that we've experienced. Now, if you are involved in delivering leadership development programs, you know that it's hard to sell it to our, your executive team and share the bottom line. So there's really four things that we focus on. Number one is really the retention and readiness.

So we know that participants in our programs are seven times more likely to take the shot at the next opportunity than their peers based on data we've collected. We want our leaders to have self-efficacy as a result of the program, so feeling like they're being effective, and we want them to demonstrate readiness to lead because we want to develop our internal leaders rather than hiring externally.

We also want to increase our talent velocity and the promotability. So we know that our participants are two times more likely to be promoted than their peers, so we're building that pipeline from within. The third thing is really around engagement, and I know that's been a lot of what we-- And in addition to AI, that's been a lot of what we've talked about at this conference.

So we know that people that are-- the leaders that are participating in our programs, their average engagement index is three point four seven, compared with peers of that same level, that's three point o, which is significantly increased. And last, we want to keep those leaders at the organization. We don't want them to leave.

So we know that participants in our programs, they are more likely to stay with the organization than leave. So those are really the metrics that we focus on.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: So to cl-conclude out our presentation today, we really wanna leave you with three things. We first wanna make sure that we, we're very intentional with the work that we do and complexity is constantly growing, especially with all of the topics around AI.

And s- we really wanna make sure that development is intentional, integrated, and experiential. So today, we wanted to recognize, growing complexity is here, and it's really reshu-shaping the leadership development arena. We wanna reimagine formal learning as an integrated experiential process, and it's very outcome-driven. And then strengthen pipelines that really help those programs stay together for today and for the future

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: And really, that's all we came to share with you today was the importance of connection. And I think when we were putting this presentation together, we thought is that really all that matters?"

And I will tell you, when we are justifying these programs and sharing our metrics, and our leaders come back and say do they really need that table conversation? Can't we just push through and add one more activity or lecture?" We say, "No." The content is important, but your leaders' time, respect, and attention, and connection in the classroom is so much more important.

So with that, we'd love to have any questions. We know that you're off for a break, but just appreciate your time and attention here today.

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: We don't stop measuring the programs the last day of class. So we do a s- well, depending, 30, 60, 90-day, six month, 12 month. We also have a lot of alumni opportunities to keep those connections going.

It's also something that we facilitate in the program of, hey, the most important thing you're gonna have are the people that you meet here. Go ahead and sustain that. Put a coffee chat on the calendar now. Set up a connection. And we hear from our partic- Cleveland Clinic is large, but it's not that large.

And so people will reach out to us all the time like, "Hey, I still talk to from my program five years ago." So really putting the ownership on the participant of you're gonna get out of this experience what you put in it, including keeping up those connections Yeah, great question

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: Thank you so much  for your time. -

Elizabeth Pugel, Sr. Learning Partner, Leadership Development, Cleveland Clinic: Thank you enjoy the rest of your conference.

Colleen Carroll, Senior Director, Leadership + Learning, Cleveland Clinic: Enjoy the rest