In this Episode of the Being Human is Good For Business Podcast we talk to leaders who were at the helm of a merger of two Nova Scotia nursing regulators. This was more than a coming together of organizations, it was the start of a new beginning for the nursing profession across this Canadian maritime province.
Sue Smith is the CEO and Registrar at the Nova Scotia College of Nursing (NSCN). Doug Bungay is the Senior Director of Legislative Services and Deputy Registrar. They, along with Trilogy Effect founding partners Heather Marasse and Mary Beth Sawicki, discuss the importance of cultural alignment in an organizational merger.
“We thought the legal aspect of going from two into one was going to be the tricky part, but it became very clear early on that, even though we had two organizations doing nearly identical work, our organizational cultures were different and unique,” explains Doug Bungay.
Sue Smith credits the use of the Enneagram framework as the driving force towards the co-creation of the new regulator and a whole new culture. She says, “I would say it was the number one contributor to our success. The Enneagram allowed our team members to learn about themselves and grow professionally and personally. It gave them a tool to develop self-awareness and the self-control needed during a time of tremendous change.”
NSCN brought Trilogy Effect in early in the process to support the organizational cultural aspects of the merger. Managing Partner Heather Marasse says, “From the beginning of working with NSCN, I was struck by the depth of the commitment of the people. It was something deeper than you might experience working in the corporate world. In nursing, there's a higher calling and the difference is almost palpable. These healthcare professionals are giving their lives to this work. They are passionate and yet at the same time, they bring a certain sense of grace to everything they do.”
Her partner, Mary Beth Sawicki, agrees. “NSCN employees were really engaged in the process. It was almost like working with human sponges, who were so appreciative and soaked up everything that we had to teach. This stems from support of leadership. Everyone was encouraged to take part and was supported all along the way.”
In this podcast episode, Sue and Doug share their own leadership journeys and explain the important role that cultural alignment played in the successful merger of two healthcare regulators. They talk about how the Enneagram transformed their teams, their workplace, and their lives.
Links to helpful resources and information about some of the tools and concepts mentioned in the show:
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NSCN learned about the Bridges Transition Model which helps organizations and individuals understand and more effectively manage and work through the personal and human side of change.
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Being Human Is Good For Business Podcast with the Nova Scotia College of Nursing.
Sue Smith [00.00.00] It has been my experience, in any leadership journey, that it's about learning about yourself and your self-growth. “You know, whether you're a gardener and tending to your plants, or a conductor of how people are on their journey of these things. The Enneagram gave them that tool for self-awareness and to give control back to the individuals and especially experience tremendous change of where they could control and they control themselves and not others.”
Voice Over: [00:00:31] Welcome to the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. In each episode, the leadership development experts at Trilogy Effect explore how the process of self-discovery unleashes potential in us all.
Now here's your host Sherrilynne Starkie.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:00:48] Hello, I'm Sherryilynn Starkie. Welcome to the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. Today I'm joined by leadership development experts, Heather Marasse and Mary Beth Sawicki, both partners at Trilogy Effect. Also, today we are welcoming, as our guests, some leaders who have successfully led the merger of Nova Scotia Nursing Regulators.
So this was more than a merging of two organizations, it was the start of a whole new beginning for nursing right across the province. Sue Smith is the CEO and Registrar of the Nova Scotia College of Nursing and here with her is Doug Bungay, Senior Director of Legislative Services and Deputy Registrar. Welcome to the show.
Sue Smith: [00:01:27] Thank you.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:01:28] Sue, can we start with you? Maybe we could just kick off the conversation by you telling me a little bit about your career background.
Sue Smith: [00:01:35] Certainly, and again, I just want to say thank you for this opportunity, and it's an absolute joy to be here and to have this conversation. It just struck me actually, as I was preparing for this podcast, that this is, this year, my 40th anniversary of graduating as a nurse, with my Bachelor of Nursing.
I was a child student, I'm just kidding, I was seventeen when I started, but, it's actually my 40th anniversary, and so I'm a very proud nurse. I've also been blessed with the opportunities to have progressive senior roles and 32 years, of which were with Canadian Blood Services. While I was there as a senior leader, looking after Canada's Bone Marrow and STEM Cell Program, I had the opportunity to, in 2009-2010, to take a Masters of Arts and Organizational Leadership and have the wonderful opportunity to meet Heather and Mary Beth and be introduced to the Enneagram.
Along my journey, there was massive restructuring at Canadian Blood Services, and it led to an opportunity, in 2015, to become CEO of the Nova Scotia College of Nursing, the college of
registered nurses, at the time, in Nova Scotia. That led to, a very long story short, the opportunity in creating, along with the College of Licensed Practical Nurses of Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia’s one nursing regulator. I actually looked through at the dates and it was August of 2016 that I reached out to Heather, just the blind reach out ahead of time out there, I hadn’t talked to Heather or Mary Beth since 2010, and we just picked up the conversation at the time and I knew enough to know and recognize we were bringing together two very distinct cultures. I also knew, the tools, and knew about Trilogy, I didn’t know a whole lot, but really wanted to check in on it and thought, wow, here’s an opportunity, before we’ve even formally started to have a conversation about how we might partner with Trilogy on our journey.
Sherrilynne Starkie: And Doug, what was your role in all this?
Doug Bungay: [00:03:51] I got involved in regulation ten years ago, actually ten years ago, this month. I took a position with the legacy organization the College of Licensed Practical Nurses (CLPN) that’s really where I got involved, sort of my regulatory journey and began there where I was the Director of Professional Practice with CLPN.
Then when, when the merger, when the coming together conversations began, I was fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to be the Director of Professional Practices for both organizations. So I like to say I am the number one employee of the Nova Scotia College of Nursing. My ID badge is number zero, zero, one; that was the very first. So I did that as were preparing the journey to a one nursing regulator. Then of course, obviously after their proclamation, they got me on and in the as Director and now I’m the Senior Director of Legislative Services in the Deputy Registrars.
Sue Smith: [00:04:58] If I could, I just want to add, Doug is very modest and he started his career as a Licensed Practical Nurse, an LPN, and then on his journey, he became a Registered Nurse. He took his Masters in nursing, he’s practiced in Texas, he’s had a variety of practice backgrounds and he has truly lived the walk of what it’s like to practice in different roles and that has just been immeasurable. Just the credibility alone and authenticity that Doug brings to the table is really admirable.
Doug Bungay: Thank you Sue.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:05:46] Well, I think as we often find ourselves on this podcast; we are in the presence of two real true leaders. I’m so glad that you could join us, but what's a little bit different here than some of our past guests. They tend to be more from the corporate world and you guys are a regulator and your mission is to keep the public safe. So do you think with that kind of mission your approach to leadership needs to be different?
Sue Smith: [00:06:18] Doug and I talked about this and, fundamentally, no, I don't think there's a tremendous difference in the not-for-profit and for-profit, in that, we have to run not-for-profit like a business. In fact, I would say even more so, because we have very limited funds and we don’t have the opportunity to generate revenue that a for-profit does, and that can help in everything from development for your staff and otherwise so, if anything, I think it puts even more pressure on us.
My husband worked in the banking world for 40 years, so I've had some exposure to, when they budgeted it was always called the profit plan, that’s what they called their budget the profit plan. Trust me, that isn’t it in a not-for-profit, it is not a profit plan, but fundamentally, as a leader and the approach that you bring to being a leader, from my experience and exposure to others, it is still fundamentally the same and that was what was so cool.
It was still a very limited number of folks that we had in our cohort in the organizational leadership program where I met Heather and Mary Beth. We came from all walks of life and all types of businesses, but at the core and that's what I think stuck with me the most and whether it was the Enneagram tool or other tools. We all needed them, and all develop them in our own way, and adapt them to our environment.
Sherrilynne Starkie: So when you were merging your two organizations, two different, two different cultures, two different entities. Apart from the obvious legal things that have to take place in these kinds of things, in terms of merging the two teams and the two cultures, what would you say were the most challenging things you encountered?
Doug Bungay: [00:08:17] In the beginning I think we thought maybe the legal development piece of going from two into one was going to be the tricky part. Yet it became very clear early on that while we had two organizations that were fundamentally doing nearly identical work for the same intent of public protection, just with different audiences.
The organizational cultures were very, very, very different and unique and there was also a fairly big size disparity. So there was one organization that was 35 or 36 employees and another one that was seven. So not only were we different culturally and in how we interacted with each other, there was always sort of that overshadowing sense of we have a big sister and little sister.
So, we knew we would have to pay attention to that, we knew that was going to be there. I don’t know if we really understood those things and how they would play out until we began the processes of coming together and the Enneagram has been absolutely, I mean it has been a lifesaver, with regard trying to navigate those very difficult waters. Like I said the legal bits were complicated and I don’t profess to know anything about them, but I know they were complicated, but trying to bring together two groups of disproportionate size, it’s challenging. It was challenging and Enneagram, in the end, was the reason why we were so successful. We navigated that “U” that that, “U” and sometimes “U” and all day long, and other days it was a little easier.
Sue Smith: [00:10:10] Yeah. When you're saying the “U” Doug, I think you're probably thinking of the managing transitions, which is a great tool that Trilogy and Heather and Mary Beth introduced with us. We still use it to this day to describe where we are our journey between that and the Enneagram.
I know we'll probably get to this in a little bit, but when you're catching yourself going below the line, so to speak, in your behaviors of the stress. If I may add too, I think that the cultural aspect and, honestly, that was the primary reason why I Initially reached out to Heather. It was because I had enough scars on my back from my life with Canadian Blood Services and looking after different business lines and really acknowledging this cultural piece and how this was such a unique opportunity, and know the tools that Trilogy would bring, it was just such a wonderful opportunity for us and the joint boards or both organizations, because this was a governance driven move as well.
Heather and Mary Beth have also worked with, our boards, as well, which has been really important and the fact that they were, you know, more than fine with how we were going on this journey. Doug hit it right off the top, it was about equity versus equal and how from the beginning that we were both equal partners in all this, but in being equal partners to bring the equity, there were a lot of things that needed to be done on that journey. Yet, you don’t want to do it in such a way that the little sisters, or whatever way you want to say it, the smaller organization, we never, never, never wanted to attach that to it, a sense that there was anything lacking. It was more, how do we build, how do we co-create?
We were really always trying to stay focused on this co-creation, because the other big thing for us was in all of this, we’re only the third in Canada to regulate all designations of nurses. Ontario has done it for many years and BC were on their journey around the same time. For us, we really wanted to have the opportunity, and we were unique in this, in that, we did brand new legislation, a new Act and for regulators that’s the Holy Grail, but it also takes up a huge amount of time, energy and finances, as well.
In creating this new Act we also wanted, and have worked very hard, with Trilogy on this is we are and we are not what we were before and the legacy colleges. We were creating something new and co-creating something new and I think that was the other big element of this and the slips are not as frequent, but we really catch people and we do it respectfully.
That's another part of being on the journey with Trilogy on this, is when the odd time somebody will say, “well, we used”, to meaning, “we used to do this at either legacy college”. We catch ourselves and it's all about thinking outside the box in co-creating something new.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:13:30] Question for you, Heather, Doug kind of expressed that he knew there were going to be issues, but he had no idea. Would you say that that’s kind of typical of when, when two companies are coming together based on your client experience?
Heather Marasse: [00:13:48] Yeah, I think it is typical that many companies groups or leaders will acknowledge that they know this is going to be a challenge. There’s often some lip service given to the cultural element, but I really appreciate that kind of heightened awareness that Sue brought to the challenge, because of her own life experience and maybe some natural aptitude in the area. Peter Drucker has a famous quote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” and it’s so true.
I mean a lot of times when you put companies or units together the emphasis goes immediately to strategy and legal. It’s because culture seems so hard to get our hands around, how do we deal with this. It’s amorphous, it’s human stuff that brings us into a zone of discomfort, but the good news is there are tools. There are ways to get at it and to practice with the tools, and that’s exactly what happened here.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:14:55] Well, Mary Beth, I would like to learn about this “U”, I don't think I've learned about this in our podcast so far. What is the “U”?
Mary Beth Sawicki: [00:15:03] The Bridges Transition Model, so it is a great way of framing what we as humans go through during change. There are different portions to it and my favorite is called the trough of disillusionment, which is at the bottom of the “U”. I think that as humans we’d like to think that change is linear, we just keep plugging along and, you know, we’ll get to this end state. What this transition curve really shows us and provides, I think, some comfort to us, even when we’re in a state of anxiety or fear or something, we can still say that, okay, it’s really not linear. We may swing back a little bit, where we are as perfectly normal, and to be expected, and we can see the shore ahead.
Doug Bungay: [00:15:50] I think what, why it was so important for me and for my teams and for us, as an organization is, you know, regulation, when you think about it we tend to be very process driven. You know, if you're going to get a license, you need to do a, b, c and d or if there's a disciplinary issue, it's ABC the practices. So we had three groups of employees within two organizations; we had nurses who were infamously or famously process driven, we have a lot of lawyers who are, again very process driven and then add to that the other people that don’t fall into that category, equally as important, but have been living in this very process driven world. I figured, I thought in my mind, we’d approach this co-creation from a very process driven perspective and while the work to get us to the NSCN was very linear, the feelings about it were not.
Sue Smith: [00:16:54] If I could add one thing and I know this is a podcast but, for folks who are listening I'm holding up a picture of what Heather and Mary Beth presented to us, the curve and what's on it.
I'm going to overlay that with my own adaptation of it. This is how we lived it in that, for folks who are listening. There's highlighters and I am one of these people that love different color highlighters and what it means. I literally have visited every single place, on this curve on this journey. So I thought when I was preparing for that, it's just brought a chuckle to me about what a good sign of what a useful tool that it was. In fairness I’m not just saying this because we’re on a podcast and it isn’t that the tools provided the most important element, it was that Trilogy brought the people to this conversation to help guide and coach us on our journey.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:17:56] Doug, you had mentioned that this was your first, your first experience of career coaching or leadership coaching. So can you tell us a little bit about how that experience was for you and how you approached it?
Doug Bungay: [00:18:09] Yeah, to use the “U” theme it was pretty much all up and down and all around as usual. As a nurse, I approached whole thing, sort of with a bit of skepticism, which turns out to be my dominant trait as it is. I remember my first meeting with Mary Beth and Heather and I’m a six, and proud six, a very proud six because they are both rare and complicated, which is how I like to live my life. For me the difference was I was engaged from the beginning and, I maintain, still am engaged. I think I know Heather and Mary Beth were a big part of that, and I may not have been as engaged if it were other people, but the Enneagram is a process. It was very, very interesting and very helpful and Heather and Mary Beth were about, they were all gravy for us.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:19:05] Heather for some of our first time listeners, could you give us a quick overview of what the Enneagram is?
Heather Marasse: [00:19:11] The Enneagram is a framework of nine archetypes, if you like a of personality, or nine patterns of thinking, feeling and acting that show up in humankind, no matter where you are, it transcends culture. What we like about the framework is that not only is it a typology, but it’s a development framework. You find, first of all, you find those archetypes, because it’s archetype work. All of them are in us, and we can relate to all these nine archetypes and there is one where we become fixated, especially in times of stress and it colors our world, it colors life. So, what we are able to see, once we have a deep appreciation for how that colors our world, we’re also able to see how to remove the veils. How to put the veils to the side so that we can have a clearer experience of life actually as it’s happening to us in the moment.
It includes some strategies for clearing those veils. How do I get a clearer view of what’s going on here, because I can tell as Doug and Sue had mentioned, I’m feeling like I’m dropping below a line here and getting fixated. I’m getting caught in my habits and patterns, so it helps me to catch it and then take a pause, which can feel like ninety minutes, but it’s usually less than a full minute. It might be only a few seconds and it allows me to regroup and come back to reality. The real reality, instead of my private Idaho, that’s going on in my head.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:21:07] Sue was this your first experience of the Enneagram?
Sue Smith: [00:21:12] It wasn't, and I'd had the opportunity in 2009-10 in the Organizational Leadership Graduate Program to be exposed to it and Heather and Mary Beth, that’s when I met them. It struck me, as somebody on my own leadership journey, I’ve been exposed to a variety of different tools and certainly I’m not knocking them, but the Enneagram, because it integrates and speaks to so many people and it was the one tool that I found, over the years, that I would go back to personally and professionally. So, I knew that it had great value from a personal point of view and professional but, it was the fact that here was this wonderful opportunity. I didn’t know right off the bat that this is exactly where we go, because the beauty of Trilogy, is they bring a number of different tools in their tool kit.
In addition to what Doug has mentioned on his journey, is because we went off-site for a couple of days at a time, every six to eight months, on a journey and involved staff from the beginning, I would say it honestly was the number one contributor to our successful creation and co-creation of a new culture. On top of that and because, most importantly, as we know, fundamentally, it has been my experience, in any leadership journey for individuals, it’s about learning about yourself and your self-growth and how you can, depending on where you’re at with leadership. Whether you’re a gardener tending plants or a conductor of how people are on their journey of these things, the Enneagram gave us that tool for self-awareness and to gain control back to the individuals, especially experience tremendous change of where they could control and they could control themselves, and not others.
It gave us a language to unite us and articulate what we were experiencing, things like below the line and what not, and I think that Mary Beth and Heather both saw that is was very impressive that people practiced and they practiced in between. It was not just because Doug and I and others leaders were telling them to do it, they were doing it at home. One person that I know, during the month of February, they didn’t watch Netflix at night. He and his wife got the book out and were going through these things and it has given us a tool that, to this day, has been very successful in contributing to our change.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:24:02] Based on your experience with other organizations is this the kind of uptake, this kind of commitment, this kind of whole scale buy-in from the team typical, when companies start to bring this kind of work, this kind of thinking, into their organization?
Mary Beth Sawicki: [00:24:18] I think that our experience with the nurses was and is pretty special. One thing is we were working with them at the organizational scale, right versus, very often it's one-on-one or with teams, we're involved, we've touched every person within that organization.
I think what Heather was appreciating about the level of engagement that we encountered there. It was like working with human sponges who were so appreciative and kind of soaked up everything that we had to offer. I think that that also comes from the top, the leadership team was very encouraging of, you know; take what Trilogy has to offer here. They are here to partner with us; they’re here to support us.
Sue and the other folks on the leadership team were very encouraging of anyone within the organization; having one-on-one coaching sessions with us at any point, if you're going through a challenge, reach out to Trilogy. So I think that Sue and the leadership team created a very safe environment for the folks to just come as you are, right. Wherever you are on that transition model and so in that kind of safety, I think there’s more of a willingness to take risks and to just be open, be honest. So, I will say, it’s not the only experience we’ve had in an environment like this, and I’d like to see more of it.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:25:43] I understand that you guys included a 360-degree review as part of your transition. So can you tell me a little bit about that experience?
Sue Smith: [00:25:56] Doug, if you don't mind, I'll start on this. I chuckled, because when we were together off site, we'd have two days for the full staff, especially the first couple of years that we started on this. Then we always tried to make the most of it when Heather and Mary Beth came, and some other members of the team. In addition, we would have Doug, who was early off the gate, especially since he was living the model of being the first director of both colleges. This was hard to live, had to live some bumps along the way that, again I want to give credit to Doug, but also the staff that also committed to themselves.
One quick point I want to make is although we have a lot of nurses and we have lawyers, we have a wide variety of folks in the team; we have admin professionals and others as well. Although our focus is our designation of nurses, we regulate the profession for the public, so we had a wide variety of staff as well. We also reserved for our senior leadership team and
we were offsite in a spot and we were using tools like the big post-its on the wall and whatever, and it was a real growth experience and we had a safe space for the conversations and because there had already been a track record established about the authenticity and genuineness of it.
Everybody committed but, with the 360, you're going to hear some stuff that maybe he was like, oh okay. There were different reactions and especially the beauty of the Enneagram is you learn, especially, not to take offense to how somebody's reacting to you, because that's just part of who they are and how they react.
So that was a really important tool for everybody, not just the senior leadership team. So I sort of chuckled because again; sometimes we brought a sense of humor to it, sometimes we had the gravity, sometimes there were tears and sometimes there was laughter, but the most important thing was the commitment to it and the learning and to practice the learning.
Heather Marasse: [00:28:09] Honestly, NSCN has been a very special client for us, very special. It's hard to put it into words what our experience has been. First of of all it's the first not-for-profit organization that we ever worked with as Trilogy Effect and honestly, I didn't have a lot of experience in the not-for-profit field and wasn't particularly called to it, to be honest.
I've always been in the for-profit environment. I like the push for the results and the performance, but what we were able to find and discover with this organization is I didn’t know the level of commitment people bring to work in the public arena it’s not for profit. There’s something deeper at play, there’s a higher calling. Yeah, there’s a higher calling and it’s palpable when you start working in the system and see people, you know, they’re giving their life to this work and they get upset with things and they want to figure out how to move through things more gracefully because they have a higher calling, it’s really important to them, so it’s been really beautiful work.
Sue Smith: [00:29:32] If I were to say sum up on my journey, there has been so much I've learned and benefited from and as a result, I hope others have benefit from, but that's been quite remarkable. This journey of speaking to where people are listening from and the tender and genuine, and real and authentic guidance and coaching that Heather and Mary Beth bring to this conversation has been profound.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:30:05] Thank you to the Nova Scotia College of Nursing, Sue Smith and Doug Bungay and Trilogy Effect partners, Heather Marasse and Mary Beth Sawicki, for joining me on today’s show and thanks to all you listeners. I hope that you make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing to our podcast and liking us and sharing us with your friends. Please leave a rating or review that really does help people fine out podcast.
Look in the show notes, while I will include some links to some of the tools and topics that we were talking about on today's call. And thank you once again for joining us until the next time. I’m your host, Sherry Lynn Starkey and this is the Being Human is Good For Business podcast.