In this episode of Learning Matters, we sit down with Dr. Sandee Dunbar-Smalley, Chief Learning Officer at AdventHealth.

Together, they explore:

• Why a people-first mindset is critical for retention and engagement

• How AdventHealth measures leadership effectiveness and growth

• The wide spectrum of leadership programs, from emerging leaders to executives

• The thoughtful adoption of AI in learning, including internal ChatGPT pilots

• The challenges of equity in access and migrating to Workday Learning

• Dr. Dunbar-Smalley’s inspiring journey from occupational therapist to CLO

Whether you’re leading L&D strategy, managing leadership development, or simply curious about the future of workplace learning, this episode is packed with insights.

🔗 Connect with Dr. Dunbar-Smalley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-sandra-dunbar-smalley-6a902657/

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We're helped by a technology group that's really wanting to do it system-wide for other things. So we're going to collaborate with our technology team. One system may be really doing just straight PowerPoint. Another part of our system could be tampering with the AI and really being progressive. A huge challenge surfaced last year in regards to our LMS system.

So we have an internal one that's really built off of something out in the communities, but we adapted it so that it would be more homegrown. So the discovery of needing a new LMS is something so significant in a system this large. So we said we do want to make that shift. So this year we are doing all the things that it takes to move to workday learning.

Welcome back to Learning Matters. I'm Doug Wooldridge, your host, and I'm very excited to be speaking with our guest today. She's an L &D leader, a thought leader, consultant, author, and international speaker. She's created and implemented for the Center for Academic and Professional Excellence at Nova Southeastern University. She's authored and co-authored three leadership books, one occupational therapeutic textbook, and numerous articles related to student clinical experiences, family-centered care,

and leadership management. She's presented nationally and internationally on topics related to effective leadership practices at events such as Unleash America, and she's CLO of Advent Health. Dr. Sandy Dunbar Smalley, welcome to the show.

Thank you Doug, great to be with you.

Thank you. And as always, we'll be discussing the latest and greatest in the world of L and D. And I'd like to start off with this. What strategy do you think matters most in learning and development today?

think it starts with a people focus. And so in our organization, we are within the umbrella of human resources. But even if that wasn't our stream and our executive directives and partnerships, I still feel so strongly that People First is an important strategy to adopt for any learning and development initiatives.

Yeah, 100%. And has this always been the case or is this something of a mindset that you've had to adapt over time?

would say I'd have to adapt over time. I tended to be very task oriented in previous roles and really very high sense of accountability and get the work done. But I realized over time, especially today, especially post COVID, there really needs to be an emphasis on how are we connecting with our teams? How are we really helping people to feel a sense of belonging?

in their roles and how can we support them in their development. That if we don't have that, it's difficult to retain, it's difficult for people to feel that they are really actually a part of the organization. So I feel that really should be a very high priority.

Yeah. Is there like a starting point to leaning more towards that people first approach?

I think it's listening. So as I changed roles three years ago to the corporate side, I really did a listening tour and really tried to understand. So that can be done just by focus groups, surveys, being able to use data that currently exists in the system. So we have an employee engagement survey. Combing over that data is helpful and looking about

how different it is in our different regions and divisions to see, where are the gap areas? So those are all the ways to really start with people.

Yeah. And I think having a people first approach really shows folks that you bought into them, not just, you know, the standards profit oriented approach and those types of things, but really digging into making sure that you're developing a culture that really supports the people that work for your organization.

Yeah, and you said an important word, culture. And because we're in nine different states, we have various cultures throughout those. But there's something so consistent when people really understand the mission and vision of the company, and regardless of where you go, that's consistent. So I'd say really having similar language that people can rally around is also very helpful.

Yeah. And what do you think is your biggest application for this strategy? How are you measuring the success of these applied efforts? You talked about data gathering. How are you really combing through that data and making sure that you're pinpointing the right data with the right information?

We have a couple different markers as part of our monthly just performance review. And that's looking at our employee engagement, which we really only do that assessment twice a year. But we're looking at smaller measurements in between those times. So we look at a composite of leadership effectiveness scores. So there are four items on our engagement tool.

that really speak to, I comfortable with my leader? Would I recommend my leader? Do I go to my leader for a good result? So that's one of the markers that we look at. And we're now in the 80s, percentile-wise, for people really feeling comfortable with their leaders. So that's been a gradual increase over time. And I think the more targeted we get to really supporting leaders, we're seeing the movement there.

Another marker is opportunity to learn and grow, which is so targeted to our learning development. And we see that number gradually increasing too, but we also see in certain markets where there isn't a targeted professional really working on leadership and learning, that it kind of slips. So we know if we have the right tools and the right people and the right seeds,

that we can inch up in those areas. So those are a couple of the markers that we really pay attention to.

I'd like to dig a little bit more into the leadership management and training side of things. I know it's definitely one of the things that you pride yourself on and that you take as a main focus in your work. What is your approach on training leadership and what do you look for in a good leader?

So my role has two different avenues. It's the organizational learning and it's a leadership institute. So that's a physical space as well as a lot of different things that happen from a studio. So we'll broadcast out to the different regions. And we have about five or six formal programs. So those formal programs range from emerging leaders, where we have non-clinical residents coming either between their junior and senior year.

of college or as they graduate from college, they'll get positions with us. We train them two to three years and then we're moving them into leadership seats in the company. So it's growing our own. I love that initiative. Then we have something in the middle called leading in Advent Health where we're looking at 11,000 supervisors.

anybody with a downline, they're coming in and they're learning something targeted for the year and then they join learning communities. This year it's on interpersonal communication. And then on the opposite end of the continuum, we have a couple formal programs for our executives. So besides that, I really want to grow more this open access opportunity. So we're looking at other tools where

You want to learn something on your own. We have something called Skill Surge. You go into a platform and it's a lot of different micro learning experiences. And I really want to continue to develop that because people are more into micro learning. They don't really want to stay with us for six months like some of the other programs are. But if they want to do something for five minutes on their way to work, they have opportunities for that too. So we have quite the continuum here and it's continuing to grow.

Yeah, it sounds like you're hitting on all cylinders there. And what top trends are you most excited about here in the world of learning and development?

Well, it's probably what everybody else is saying too, and that's the integration of AI. So we did purchase one tool and we're looking to expand to another tool next year. So as we're looking at that asynchronous learning and self-directed learning, there'll be opportunities for people to create their own learning journeys with the help of AI.

What was the adoption program like for this? it take a little while to dip your toes in and then really dive head first in?

We're planning a pilot for one program where we're really assessing can we have representatives from each of our states and regions? And then can we have a smattering of generations? We recently had a wonderful workshop on our generational differences. So we want to have some generational diversity. We want to have some regional diversity and get representatives from major groups within our company to pilot.

an AI driven tool to really be able to assess and give us feedback. Then for the following year, we're hoping to make that accessible for the entire company.

starting with a very targeted approach. And I like the idea that you're bringing in multi-generations, multi-different folks. And I think of that as just a brilliant way to try to adapt and adopt into this world of AI where everyone seems to be just kind of running full speed ahead, just trying to get to the cutting edge of this new technology without really taking a step back and thinking, okay, well,

We want to do this, but we want to make it work for us, right?

Yeah, it's important to create strategy around changes that's going to help the system to adopt well. Absolutely. And we're helped by a technology group here that's really wanting to do it system-wide for other things. So we're going to collaborate with our technology team because they just did a pilot for ChatGPT. Having ChatGPT

be internal to the system rather than people having to get their own so that they're already providing the protections that we need since we have a lot of protected data. So people don't realize that too, that when they use certain things outside of their system, there could be breaches. So we have a whole nother arm doing the chat GPT pilot and I'm part of that pilot.

where you have to fill out surveys so people know how often did you use it, what did you use it for, and be able to present that data so that they can make the case for building more AI tools also.

on the opposite side of top trends, what challenges do you think we need to kind of solve for as a learning community?

equity in access. That is something we're really hearing. We just worked with an external consultant and they did interviews throughout the system. And that was something that really came up was not everybody has equitable access to the materials and resources. So we want to really make sure that happens. Another thing was just what tools are being used. So for example,

one system may be really doing just straight PowerPoint. Another part of our system could be tampering with the AI and really being progressive. So we really helped with some of those challenges by creating learning standards so that everybody that is developing a course, really that course has to be reviewed so it meets minimum criteria for good quality. And we're finding that.

Once that's fully adopted, that will help with the type of quality that we have and that we can be consistent and more standardized. But for a system that's over 100,000 people, that's a work in progress.

I think it's always a work in progress, right? Off the top of your head, are there any challenges that you and your team had to overcome within like the last year or so or any big learning initiatives that you were pushing out? And how did you overcome that challenge?

A huge challenge surfaced last year in regards to our LMS system. So we have an internal one that's really built off of something out in the communities, but we adapted it so that it would be more homegrown. So it just is very limited. So the discovery of needing a new LMS is something so significant in a system this large.

said we do want to make that shift. So this year we are doing all the things that it takes to move to workday learning. And so that requires so much from the team to assess what are the needs. And then we unearthed that in our clinical area. Of course, they're regulatory things that they use a learning management system for. So then we're finding, we need to have a tool that complements workday learning.

So I'd have to say that's been the big challenge and the big push that we're working on currently this year for adoption by the end of this year.

Can you tell me a little bit about small world solutions and what led you to developing your consulting company and what do you focus on with this endeavor?

Yeah, that is actually my husband's consulting business is Small World Solutions. Our last name is Smalley. And so he is a former government special agent. And really in that role realized once he started recruiting other agents that there was such power in teaching, in the recruitment piece and really helping people to be their best and find their career journeys.

And so from that, once he retired after 25 years with them, he decided to really start his own business so he could be more on the positive side of helping people develop rather than, you know, working with people who were not doing the right thing. He most, he started to most enjoy the recruitment and teaching angle. So we really focus on when I do support him, I support him in the leadership content, but he also

really focuses on emotional intelligence and on conflict resolution, since that deals with what he dealt with in his former career. So it's to corporations, it's to schools. He does a lot of work with a local high school and elementary school, really teaching them, the staff and teachers, these types of skills, but also in large corporations and churches as well.

I'd like to get into some more of the personal side of things. So tell me about you Sandy, take me back to little Sandy days and what led you to get into the world of learning and development? I know that's not where you started from. How did you end up here as the chief learning officer for Advent Health?

It's quite a journey. actually started my career as an occupational therapist. I was a teenager when I found out about OT and my parents said, you know, they didn't know about it. They said, you need to go shadow somebody and figure out if that's what you really wanted to do. And I'm still in touch with the person that I shadowed those many years ago. Yeah, she's so enthusiastic. She's probably retired by now, but she just was so in the.

when I visited her in the hospital. OTs work all over the place trying to help people to be independent in their daily living skills and all of their occupations, not just their jobs. So I loved doing that. I did that for many years and then eventually started teaching it. Where I was teaching at Nova Southeastern University, they offered to pay for my doctoral degree. And so I jumped at that opportunity.

but they didn't have a doctoral degree in some of the areas I was most interested in. So I chose public administration. And so that changed my career trajectory. And as I became a chair of an OT department, I really leaned into leadership and management content for the students and taught that for quite a bit. And that was the beginning of the book writing. And so from there, I was recruited into Advent Health.

as an academic administrator on the university side. And from that university side, an opening came about for VP of Leadership Institute. And I thought, that's a great combination of the things that I did on the academic side. And on the academic side as an assistant dean, I started academies for teaching and learning and research and leadership so people could learn those skills while they were teaching their classes.

And so it just, this role, VP of Leadership Institute opened up and it just was this wonderful blend because it's a healthcare organization. I get to think like an OT, but I use my public administration skills. Shortly after getting into that role, the chief learning officer left. And so our executive sponsors said, and my leaders said, well, do we just get rid of that role? Cause it was only a couple of years old or what do we do with it? And they asked my opinion and I said, well, you should blend.

the leadership and learning because I think it really can be quite integrated and fun to do. The next thing I knew, I was in the position. So I wasn't asking for it. I just said, I feel that they should go together. And so it's worked out well. So now we call both entities the dynamic learning community. And it's a real blessing and thrill to run these aspects. And I have a team of

almost 40 people now between learning and leadership. So I don't do it alone. I've got a wonderful, wonderful team. It does. And they're a great village.

Well, it takes a village, right?

If you could go back in time and have just a brief discussion with yourself, you know, let's say just coming out of college, what advice would you need to hear at that time? You know, not really advice for the younger generation, but just you.

say just be open to, you know, not having a linear path. You know, I had more of a zigzag and got into areas I never thought I would get into. So just having an open spirit about that. And I'd also say be willing to learn from mistakes and not try to be perfect, not try to have all the answers. Just be willing to be real and authentic and allow people to pour into you.

And lastly, before I get you out of here today, where can people connect with you?

I am on LinkedIn Sandra Dunbar Smalley so people can find me there. That's probably the best route.

Perfect. We will have that in the show description. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your incredible insights, Andy. I really appreciate it.

Thanks, Doug. Appreciate the opportunity.

Definitely. And if you learn something new or had a laugh, share the show with someone, you know, and this has been another episode of learning matters as always like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And don't hesitate to reach out to us here at TTC innovations to see how we can assist you with all of your training needs. See you next time.