Bill Klaproth (host): This is Today in Nursing Leadership, a podcast from the American Organization for Nursing leadership. I'm Bill Klaproth. And with us today is Nanne Finis, the Chief Nurse Executive from Ultimate Kronos Group or UKG. We also have Nikki Gruebling, the Senior Vice President of Member Networks and Operations at Vizient as they discuss empowering nurse leaders within the digital revolution that seamlessly intertwines technology, leadership and Nursing. Nanne and nikki, welcome.

Nanne Finis: Thanks, Bill. Great to be here.

Nikki Gruebling: Thank you, Bill. Happy to be here.

Host: Yeah, Nanne and Nikki, thank you so much. Looking forward to talking with you. So Nanne and Nikki, you represent leadership on a AONL's LITT Committee, which stands for Leadership, Innovation, Technology, and Transformation. Can you each describe your role on the committee and describe how the work of this committee evolved and how it will add value to AONL's members? Nanne, let's start with you.

Nanne Finis: Thanks, Bill. And it's a wonderful time that we're here to talk about the last year of work as we have formed this committee, Leadership, Innovation, Technology, and Transformation. About a year and a half ago, Karlene Kerfoot, the late Karlene and I talked about how we can help AONL members to grow their competency and capability with the digital infrastructure that we were seeing across the country and how they really lead in a time like this.

So, we'll talk more about the detail of that. But, over this last year, we've sort of migrated from a small work group to now a formal committee of AONL reporting to the board. And I think the opportunity for us to engage all nurse leaders in digital transformation and digital strategy for the future, the time for us is now. So, we're really very enthusiastic and excited about our work. And we're going to get into that a little bit. And I am chairing this committee right now. And Nikki, I'm going to introduce you as our board liaison, which we're so happy to have you. Thanks, Nikki.

Nikki Gruebling: Great. Thank you so much, Nanne. I'm really happy to be here. Again, thank you for including me.

So, Nanne teed this up really well. There's a long history to the LITT Committee. I just joined as an AONL board member in January, so my role as a LITT Committee liaison just began. So, I'm still getting my feet underneath me around the committee. Nanne's the expert. I'm really here as her support person. But very, very happy, again, to be on the committee.

But one thing I will say and what I really value about AONL and this LITT Committee in particular, I work with CNOs from across the nation and consistently here, that this is a space where they lack a little confidence and they're inundated with information. We consistently say, and you'll hear this theme through what we're talking about today, that we need CNOs at the table for decision-making as it relates to all aspects of care. But in particular, we're focused in this conversation around technology.

At AONL, we believe, or I believe that it's not our job to get the CNO to the table. Yet, it is our job to make sure that when the CNO is at the table, she's armed or he's armed with the knowledge to ensure that their value is absolutely recognized and realized in real time. I really believe that's our job at AONL, and that's the work of this committee in this exceptionally rapid pace-changing environment.

Host: I love that. So, this is really interesting getting both of your perspectives on this. So Nanne, when we talk about empowering nurse leaders within the digital revolution, can you describe the guiding principles that has been heavily promoted by AONL this year?

Nanne Finis: Yes, thanks, Bill. And Nikki knows this well as we formed this committee over this past year. The first thing that we've done as a committee membership is really to think about what are the needs of our membership at AONL and how can we add value to the work that you're all doing in your daily lives and do it in a way that has some structure behind it.

So, we've developed as a committee these guiding principles, which there are six of them. These really emanated from our mission and purpose as a committee. But also, we did a survey of nurse leaders about a year, maybe 15 months ago, to look at what were the needs when it comes to technology and innovation, what were the needs of nurse leaders out there?

And so with that, we pulled the guiding principles, and we'll talk about each of them very briefly, but there are six. If you were to see these, they're certainly available on the website and we're doing a lot of work around these. But they form, if you will, the backbone of our work going forward. There's six principles, but there's one purpose in this, and this is really to provide, as Nikki said, the tools and the capability for nurse leaders to thrive and be successful in this new environment. So, that's what they're all about. And we can talk about each of them in a little bit more detail, Bill. But I think you'll find them very practical and sort of guiding the work of what you're all doing out there in the field.

Host: Yeah, I think that would be great. Nanne, go ahead and tell us about these six. We'd love to hear it.

Nanne Finis: So, I'll be relatively brief, but I will note that we'll provide the link on our website, AONL's website to these. But the first guiding principle is really to develop digitally competent nurse leaders. So in our analysis and in field discussions, we did note, and certainly in the literature, that nurses, nurse leaders, and that's all of us, nurse managers, nurse executives, frontline staff, you know, as AONL defines leaders, this is really a guiding principle that's kind of aiming at what are those competencies as far as technology that you need to understand and know so that you can lead your teams through this innovation.

And not every organization has a nurse informaticist or a CNIO. So, we really took this in a broad way to say, given what is happening in the industry with rapid pace, what is it that nurse leaders need to know? What do they need to understand so that they can use, apply technology in very successful ways? And it's not that you need to code or, you know, anything very specifically about the technology, but you need to understand the capability that it offers as a tool to support your workforce to be more efficient, effective. And so, that's really the first guiding principle.

The second one is no different from the leadership that we always talk about in Nursing and Nursing leadership. It's working in a collaborative way across teams and systems so that digital transformation and innovation is not happening in your organizations in silos. So, how do you as a nurse leader really collaborate with others, think about your Nursing workforce, make sure the digital work that you're doing and the technology that you're deploying is truly adding efficiency and lessening the work where possible of your Nursing workforce? How do you communicate with your peers at the executive level and then through all levels of management and really take a look at all of that. So, that's number two, collaborating with all of your team.

The third principle is leading. And in my role, and I'm sure Nikki will refer to this as well, is there are so many different unique organizations that we work with. And some of the best organizations that are moving digitally in a more mature and rapid impactful way are those organizations where perhaps the chief nurse executive, the CNIO, and senior leaders in Nursing are working together to make sure that the future technology purchases, implementation design is all aligned with strategically where the organization is going, but, as importantly, as Nursing is going and the strategy that Nursing is leading. So, how do you lead that to make sure that-- and this is sort of a combination of the third and fourth goal-- is how do you provide the oversight as decisions are being made? Are you really understanding the impact that the technology's going to have on your financials and on the work that is happening in your Nursing organization?

The fifth and sixth principles are really talking about innovation, and then the sixth is data. So, let me just combine those a little bit. The fifth principle is driving innovation. I think there's a lot of science behind innovation. This just doesn't happen naturally in all of our organizations. But you as a leader, it is up to you and myself and us to really think about stepping out of the current state and thinking about the future. How do you work outside your setting with academia perhaps, and other industry leaders to really think about what are the latest trends? Where is your organization needing to be from a Nursing and patient care perspective in the next several years? Are you driving creatively and innovatively to get there? And who are your partners in that, in your organization?

The sixth principle is probably the most important, and we're spending a lot of time on this, and that is the data. What is the data that you need, as a result of implementing technology? How do you analyze data as a Nursing leadership group and how do you present data to drive actions all the way to your frontline staff? And I think technology, as Nikki said, is a tool that will arm you, and your teams to be more effective and efficient. technology is here. There's no going back. This is the future, but we know technology also creates data. So, are you getting the best value out of your technology? And how are you really incorporating what you're learning through whether it's artificial intelligence or other technologies? Are you gleaning the value of that so that you can really make. Improvements and change in your own organization? Nursing needs that, and we need to be sure that we're continuing to improve as the industry is evolving. Nikki, I know you have some comments. And Bill, those are the six principles at a high level.

Nikki Gruebling: Yeah. Nanne, thank you so much. And you can hear this throughout each of the six principles. This does take more than one individual. This is a full organization working in a really synchronous way to understand and align the organization's goals, strategy, priorities, and align your technology strategy to support the realization of those strategies. And one person cannot do this alone. Yet, if you can have a really collaborative place where multiple needs are met, this success can be exponential.

What I would say is that there's two confounding issues to this type of work and potentially three. Number one, there are so many companies invested in the technology space, and all of those companies are trying to connect with organizations through multiple portals of entry. So, the CNO is getting requests. The CMO is getting requests, the CEO and COO. And you can imagine without an infrastructure and governance that Nanne spoke to a little bit earlier in alignment of strategy that can get chaotic really quickly. And that chaos is inherent disorder, which makes to tougher decision-making. So, the number of opportunities for technology is a barrier.

Another barrier is the speed at which the technology is changing. So in order to be fluent in this world, you have to be staying so connected to each of these innovations and changes. I think that's a space where the LITT Committee is able to step in and help give guidance and help our members understand what is really achieving the value that is being said that it can potentially hold. So, I think those are two things that we really need to be cognizant of as we step into this space.

Host: I like how you've put these six principles together as you've laid them out. One, making sure that we have digitally competent nurse leaders. Two, working collaboratively. Very important. Three, leading, again, very important. Four, also making sure all leadership is aligned and providing the tools to help nurse leaders thrive in this new environment. Five, innovation. And then, six, data. So very well laid out. Nanne, let me ask you this then. Given the rapid innovation in technology and practice, now that you've laid these guiding principles out, how will the committee keep this momentum going forward?

Nanne Finis: I think you've heard in both Nikki's comments and mine that the guiding principles are relevant and translatable for frontline managers, staff and executive leaders all at the same time. So, I think that's something that we constantly have in our mind as we're thinking about value we add to the AONL membership. We want to make sure that we're translating these to all of Nursing.

And I will put a plug in for, you know, frontline managers are so critical in the work that we're doing and going forward. We have spent a lot of time at AONL looking at frontline managers and Nursing. We also spend a lot of time with the nurse executives. But just thinking about frontline managers, when you look at healthcare, and this is actually industry agnostic, they're about 50-60% of any management team. And frontline managers manage directly 80% of the workforce. So for us to be effective as a committee and in our planning, we know that frontline manager, as well as the chief nurse executives and other staff are critical to reach out to in very unique ways.

We have a whole plan, and I'll be very brief here, but a whole plan of monthly publications, presentations. And we are going to be putting articles in various journals to reach frontline staff managers as well as executives. So, we're really looking at all of that to say, as we develop our content this year, we will be reaching out to all of those levers if you will. We also know that the academia industry where I sit, nurse leaders in my organization, need this same information and need to understand how we can, as industry leaders, impact healthcare organizational nurses and nurse leaders most impactfully. So, we'll be looking at all of that.

So, really quickly, we did a pre-conference this last AONL meeting. It was sold out. We kept it a hundred or so individuals. And we have gleaned a lot of feedback from that group about these six principles. We are meeting as a committee routinely to put those into action and thinking about how we can really deploy these principles in ways that add value. So, we will be doing a survey of membership and a smaller in-person survey just to get some very specific actions that we can take. We're doing that in the month of June. So, we'll be outreaching to many of you, but also developing our plan for the rest of this year and in 2026.

Nikki Gruebling: Yeah, I'll just add, Nanne, the work of the committee to develop this framework. I think will help us to be exceptionally successful moving forward. I'm not worried about keeping forward momentum. I'm worried about ensuring we're staying committed to these core principles because that will guide our work. There's a ton of work in this space. We could have three committees running to translate. All of that is happening in this part of the industry.

The real diligence that we're placing on this work right now is ensuring that anything we're producing is helping to make the jobs of those we're serving easier. They all have complex jobs, whether you're a nurse manager, leading 80 staff working to improve performance on the unit, or a CNO who has a huge bandwidth of responsibility. We can offer guidance in a space that there's a lot of turbulence. And I think that's just inherent momentum that will be there given what we're providing to the leaders who are involved in AONL.

Host: Guidance in a space of turbulence. I like how you said that.

Nanne Finis: I do too. That was quotable. Thank you, Nikki.

Nikki Gruebling: No problem. That's what I'm here for, people. I'll be here all day.

Host: I love it. I love it. Well, this has really been an interesting discussion. I want to thank you both, Nanne and Nikki. Before we wrap up, though, I would love to get final thoughts from you as we talk about empowering nurse leaders within the digital revolution. Nanne, let's start with you. Final thoughts. Anything else you want to add?

Nanne Finis: You know, I would add, Nikki and Bill that, as I said earlier, technology is here, innovation is here. The demands of how we as nurse leaders move forward and propel our work for the future, we have to be in the front of that. AONL is just one mechanism to support you in that. But we want to hear from membership. We know this is a broad, broad area of need, and we look forward to making impact with the membership and with, the committee at large. And it's really an exciting time for us.

Host: Yeah, I think that's a great way to look at. It is an exciting time. And, as you say, Nanne, technology and innovation is here. And what you're doing with these guiding principles is making sure that our nurse leaders have the tools to thrive in this new environment. So, I think this is great. Nikki, how about you? Final thoughts?

Nikki Gruebling: So, I would just add, we emphasized this earlier and I would reemphasize it. As a nurse leader, you need to have a seat at the table. You need to ensure that you're armed with the tools and information to be able to provide valuable input at that table. And if you don't step in and embrace this change and momentum, someone else will start making decisions for Nursing. And what we can do for you is help give you the tools so you remain the key decision-maker around Nursing care delivery and in this new and changing fast-paced environment.

Host: Very well said, Nikki. I love that. So, everyone has to have a seat at the table, and they need the tools and the info as well. And I think, very important, you said you need to embrace change as well embrace the momentum that is happening with the digital revolution. That makes a lot of sense.

Nikki Gruebling: I mean, buckle your seatbelt for that, by the way.

Host: Yeah. Good thought. Very good thought. Buckle the seatbelt, because it is moving quickly. But with the LITT Committee, you are certainly trying to stay ahead of all of this momentum and change that's happening to make sure that our nurse leaders are equipped with all the necessary tools and things so they can thrive in this new environment. Nanne and Nikki, thank you so much. This has really been great. Thank you again.

Nanne Finis: Thank you both. It was a pleasure.

Nikki Gruebling: Thank you.

Host: Yeah, you bet. Once again, we thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive into the heart of a digital transformation in Nursing leadership. And we thank Nanne Finis and Nikki Gruebling. And for more information, please visit aonl.org. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out the full podcast library for topics of interest to you. This is Today in Nursing Leadership. Thanks for listening.