S2E5 | High-Stakes Decision-Making is an Art – Boston Scientific, Cryosa, Provation

Hello, you’re listening to DeviceTalks Women in MedTech podcast with me, Kayleen Brown. In this podcast, I try to reverse engineer the making of a MedTech leader. But this episode is going to be slightly different. I had the pleasure of sitting in on the 7th Women in MedTech Breakfast held May 4th at DeviceTalks Minnesota. In this conversation, we talked through the art of high-stakes decision-making. After my hand cramped from taking so many notes, I realized this conversation is bigger than a room and it needed to get out to the public. So I reached out to our co-organizers Heather Hudnut Page and Archana Desai and they agreed. So with that in mind, I have invited Heather and Archana to join me in the studio to talk through how the theme came together, why is it important, and to give us a little bit of preview of that Women in MedTech panel discussion. I know you’re going to enjoy it. Again, I walked away just feeling more confident, feeling like I had tools in my tool belt. When it does come to high stakes decision making, I have no doubt in my mind that you’ll walk away yourself with a couple of gems. So before I bring in Heather and Archana to start that conversation, I wanted to remind you that just a little over a week we’re holding divide talks Boston. That is May 27th and 28th. If you haven’t already, please go to boston.device talks.com to register. Reach out to me on LinkedIn or send me an email and I’d be happy to send you a 25% off code. I want you to be there. I know that you want to be there. So let’s just all meet in Boston in a week. How’s that sound? I want to spend all of this time talking about the beautiful program, but I can’t because we have a big conversation coming. So I’m just going to give you like the very, very brief highlights and again, I ask you to go to boston.device talks.com to see that full agenda and all of our speakers. It was created with love, as it always is. So we will be featuring speakers from all around MedTech. But I think some of the highlight company names would be Johnson Johnson, MedTech, Abbott, Baxter, Olympus, Medtronic, Svato, Zoll Medical, Insulet, Nvidia Software. So I mean that’s just like off the top of my head, right? And we’re also gonna be covering a bunch of different markets. We’re gonna be covering stroke, Cardiovascular, Connected Health, AI, Diabetes, orthopedics. We’re gonna be talking about clinical trials. We’re gonna talk about material selection. So there’s a lot going on. I’m gonna touch a little bit on the keynotes and what to expect here, but I’m not going to deep dive because I really do want to bring Heather and Archana in to kick off this episode. But I have to mention I get the opening keynote with Devi Govender. Devi is Worldwide President, MedTech Heart Recovery. Some of our other keynotes include Ashley McEvoy, Director and President and Chief Executive Officer for Insulet. We are going to be hearing from the first Neuralink user. So those are just some of the great keynotes that we’re going to have. We’re going to have an ending panel talking about the MedTech ecosystem in Boston with a ton of huge Boston leaders. Go to boston.devicetalks.com to learn more about that. And then one last just mentioned, this episode is featuring the Women in MedTech Breakfast held at DeviceTalks Minnesota, where we have our seventh Women in MedTech Breakfast at DeviceTalks Boston. And I have the greatest pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Carla Goulart Perone. She is Chief Medical Officer for Philips. Carla and I are going to be talking about designing for reality building MedTech that works across systems, not just in ideal conditions. Okay. Join us at Boston. I’m exhausted, but I’m loving every single second of it. I’ll see you in just over a week. Heather. Archana, now’s time. Let me welcome our in studio guest, Heather Hudnut Page and Archana Desai. Welcome to the podcast. I’m so pleased to have the two of you here. We just got off of a very, very successful DeviceTalks Minnesota and, and our DeviceTalks Minnesota Women in MedTech Breakfast, which was our sixth Women in MedTech breakfast. And the success of these breakfasts, especially Minnesota, have everything to do with the two of you. So first and foremost, thank you, thank you, thank you. It has been an absolute pleasure to get to know you over the last couple of years. So with that in mind, I know I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know you, but I want to share a little bit of your background with our audience. So Archana, how did you find your way into medical devices? My background is finance and strategy, but I just happened to get into MedTech by chance. So in undergrad I had a mock interview with a recruiter from GE Healthcare and we had a great conversation and she inspired me to apply to their financial management rotation program. And then they actually place people within different companies within ge. And I got placed with healthcare, so got into it by chance. But I would say I stayed for 15 plus years really because of really two things. One is the mission of the MedTech industry. So you know we’re very focused around improving and extending patients lives and that is a very inspiring mission to get behind and a very easy one to stay with. And then the second I would say is the people. So I’ve had really the opportunity to work with very smart people who have very open door policies and who are very willing to come together to progress the common good. Which is really the mission of improving and extending patients lives. So that’s really how I got in but also how I stayed in healthcare. And my background started in finance with GE Healthcare but I went into Medtronic, transition from finance into strategy roles there, went to Philips after that and worked in strategy with Heather and then from there I left Philips to focus a little bit more on family. But Kayleen, you and I were talking about this earlier, but MedTech is a really hard industry to just leave behind. Right. Because we are so inspired by the mission. And so I’ve stayed connected I would say through part time consulting. I do some work with the university, teaching a course around MedTech and just staying connected through volunteer work with some nonprofits in healthcare as well. I can’t see our audience but I suspect many of them are nodding their heads right now going I feel that MedTech is so familial, the mission is everything. Heather, what about you? Give us your background and do you feel similarly to Archana and this connection to the mission? Yeah, well absolutely, connection to the mission. I came in a little bit a different path. I have been fascinated by medicine my entire life and debated med school versus business and ended up getting an economics degree and did my undergraduate thesis product line management in hospitals and trying to put together my interest in economics and business with my interest in medicine. My first job out of college was actually at General Mills where I was the marketing manager on brownies and muffins but then left, went back, went and got my MBA and started at Medtronic where I was really able to pull together my interest in business and marketing and medicine together. And I spent 24 years at Medtronic in various businesses in marketing and strategy roles and then left, went to Philips where I led strategy and then moved on to leading the peripheral vascular business and left there about a year and a half ago. And I’m focused now on board work in the MedTech space as well as the global health space. Love it love medicine, love business, love the coming together, all of that and the power we have to make a difference in patients lives. Hear, hear. So then was it Philips that you two met or was it Medtronic? Because I hear both of you. We actually met at Medtronic. I at the time was leading marketing and strategy for the interventional lung solutions business and Arch and I was in an area called patient access acceleration, PAA, leading strategy and she was leading a course for our team and I met her then and I gosh, wicked smart. She was helping us figure out incidence and prevalence and what are the right levers to pull as you think about driving adoption of your therapy. Was impressed from the beginning and then as she said, we overlapped at Philips and then spent a lot of time today on a number of committees and we’re actually on a board together as well. Excellent. Anything that you want to add to that, Archana? No, just when I was talking earlier about these, these smart leaders that have open door policies. Heather’s one of those people I’ve been talking about. So, so it’s been a pleasure I think working with her, working for her and her businesses and so it’s great to come together in this capacity as well and have an opportunity to work together again. Love that. Well, I feel very grateful that I’ve gotten a chance to know the two of you over the last two years and to that point. So this is the second DeviceTalks Minnesota Women in MedTech breakfast that the two of you helped co coordinate. It has been an honor as a conference planner for MedTech and a podcast host and a podcast manager. But to see how the two of you have approached developing the topics and finding, finding the right voices and making sure that there is diversity of perspective, which is incredibly important. Last year was the power of fearless leadership. This year it was the art of high stakes decision making. So really important topics. Why is it important to come together every year to have these, these conversations? What do you think, Heather? Yeah, so I just think it’s really important for women to come together as we grapple with similar issues as we lead through challenges. You mentioned the event we had last year focusing on uncertain times and there was a lot of uncertainty happening at that time and we wanted to hear from other senior leaders of how they were managing through that. So I think it’s really important to have a dialogue together, really open, kind of shaping as we all think about the future. We always say the goal of these events is to educate, to engage and to inspire. And the goal is for people to leave with, having heard from other senior leaders who may be having similar challenges, and then take from those people, those senior leaders, ideas of ways that you could take that into your business and even into your life. So really important conversations that I think help us all grow in our careers and our leadership in general. Absolutely. And Heather, you typically moderate the conversations, and Archana, you lead when it comes to the discussion group. So at the end of the panel, we break out into table discussions where we can have continue talking through the theme in a more intimate setting. How important do you think it is to have these discussion group breakouts after the panel? I think they’re extremely important. And I think we’ve heard the feedback both years from the people who have participated and attended these breakfasts as well. People love it because it’s a way for them to hear from the panel, have those moments where they say, that really resonates with me too, or to say, this is a great way for me to think about my next decision in a different way next, and then immediately have a chance to have a discussion with a group of other peers and colleagues and people they’re meeting for the first time to say, hey, how are you thinking about this? Right. And kind of build on those initial thoughts they have as they’re reflecting on the panel individually. So it’s always been, I think, a great way to end the panel discussions, to give people a voice themselves and to hear from each other at the end of the panel. I wish we had so much more time that we can really dedicate to the discussion group breakouts. I mean, speaking of feedback, I think that’s the number one feedback is we need more time. So hopefully we can, we can continue working toward carving out more time. You also mentioned Archana reflection. So if you were to reflect on last year’s DeviceTalks, Minnesota Women in MedTech breakfast versus this year, did you notice any differences? You know, I think last year when we talked about uncertain times, a lot of the panel, I think, reflected on kind of their own internal experiences on how they react to the uncertain times situations that they put in. Right. We talked about supply chain disruptions. We talked about a lot of different things. So I think it was an interesting way for the panel to say, here’s how you can manage in situations where you can’t really control some of the variables and the factors. And I think there were similarities with this year’s panel as well. Maybe I’ll mention some of them before I talk about the difference. So we had one, the diverse set of panelists. Right. Kayleen, you highlighted that. But I think that’s always very important for people to understand the different perspectives and in coming together around these type of topics. And we had people kind of share their own personal examples and authentically. Right. They shared some examples that I think this is the energy and the wonderful nature of being in a room together in person around some of these discussions is that energy just can, can’t be matched. And I think we had that similarly between the, the two discussions last year and this year as well. But those real world examples that people give around those experiences really, I think highlight and, and add to that energy. So those are the similarities. But I think the difference really is, you know, they talked about last year, how they react to those factors they can control. What I heard a lot about this year was how do you make these high stakes decisions where you’re the one in the driver’s seat. Right. And I think it was a lot of, you know, I’m going to go, Cat, for example, talked a lot about conviction, and you’ll hear that in the beginning of her conversation. But, you know, it’s how do you make those decisions and just drive forward knowing you have the center of information you need to make that decision? So I think it was maybe a subtle difference, but one of the differences I noticed between the two. Love that, Archana. Heather, what about you? Did you notice any differences from last year to this year? Yeah, so I think Archana hit a number of the similarities and differences. The other difference, interestingly enough, is that we got more men this time. A lot of allies showed up, which tells us that they want to be a part of the conversation as well. And I know when we moved to the discussion tables, the table I was at was probably almost equal in number of people in terms of men and women. And it was a fascinating conversation of the fact that we all deal with a lot of the same challenges in making decisions, in managing uncertainty. And how do you make decisions when it’s, you know, some of the things are very uncertain and how do we accept uncertainty now? Because it just continues to feel a little bit like, you know, what’s going to happen next from an environmental perspective. It was really fun to have both men and women in the conversation. So that was an additional difference, but a real positive difference as we think about this year versus last year. It gives me chills just thinking about it. That’s what I noted, I think the most as well. And it’s so important, one, to feel validated that our allies want to be part of the conversation. And two, it feels very validating to know that they have similar experiences and everything that you were just saying, Heather, I think is really important to highlight that we’re all experiencing so much of the same. And if we’re able to come together to have these conversations, we’re going to be able to move forward more effectively with better outcomes. So it’s good just to start talking with that in mind. Let’s start talking about the theme of our May 4th breakfast. It was the art of high stakes decision making. So that I think beyond anything else, coming together with the theme is the most crucial part of putting together the program. That’s where everything stems from. From there, then you go into fig figuring out who the right voices would be to reflect on that theme. So how did that theme come together for the two of you? Archana, why don’t you start us off? Yeah, I think what was important, I think for us at first was really to understand what is relevant to people, what do they want to talk about? So Heather and I, we have another organization that we work with and a team of women on that as well. So we really reached out to them first. I know Heather did a lot of lead work to reach out to her network and just ask the question around, what do you want to talk about? Right. What do you want us to come together around? So that kind of sparked some of the discussions around what are the main topics we want to consider. And then one of the things that Heather and I also talked about was hard skills or hard topics around, you know, the industry itself versus soft skills. And I think one of the values that we’ve brought forward in both of the breakfasts we’ve had last year and this year is we’ve kind of brought forward these topics around soft skills that I think are really helpful for people to hear, again, real world examples around, hear how leaders who have had years of experience making mistakes, learning through, you know, the ups and downs of how you deal with some of these situations and really come forward to say, you know, this seems like a best practice or this seemed to work for us in this situation. And so I think we wanted to bring forward a conversation like that as well this time around. So as you think about high stakes decision making, you’re not always going to get it right. But I think it’s important for us to talk about when it goes well and when it goes not so well. And our panelists just did a fantastic job, I would say, of again, being very Authentic and sharing some of those real world examples and giving the space right. For those discussions afterwards to say, hey, that resonated with me. Or hey, this is a great way for us to think about this differently. Fantastic. Heather, is there anything to add? And then in addition to that, how did the panelists come together? Yeah. So yeah, Archana really hit the nail on the head in terms of how we came up with the topic. And if we do futures of these, we’ll do the same thing, right? Going back to our networks of women and say, what’s the hot topic? I think when we think about high-stakes decision-making, the higher you get in an organization, the more it’s put on you to make those decisions. And I thought the women who spoke gave us great thoughts and ideas of, you know, where, where, where’s a decision super high stakes and where is it just high stakes. And then how do you think about those differently? And we’ll, you’ll hear more about that in a bit. The other is that there are high-stakes decisions both in our business decisions and on our personal decisions. And one of the panelists talked a lot about career decisions which can feel both business and personal. Right. Like am I ready to take the risk to take the next promotion or to move to a new area of the company or to go to a startup or. And I thought those were really robust conversations because sometimes we can get stuck in making those decisions. In terms of the composition, similar to last year, we really wanted a broad group of panelists who could really share their experience through different experiences. And so we had somebody from a big strategic, and that was Cat Jennings from Boston Scientific. We wanted someone who was at a startup and that was Laura Stoltenberg who is at a startup. She’s also worked at some of the big strategic companies. So it was fun to hear her perspective on going between big and small companies. And then we had Marcie Dewalt who is an HR leader, had been a strategic and now it has more of a small mid cap company but leads hr. And so how do you think about sometimes the costly decisions which was part of our setup around reorganizations, about quality issues? We think about M&A decisions. Those are, those are costly decisions. And we also, as you’ll hear when you, when you hear the whole podcast, a bit about the importance of women in those decisions, either as the leader or as part of a mixed gender leadership team. And the facts that support those kind of teams actually end up doing better financially. So really exciting and great to hear their three different perspectives given their roles in their organization. So it was good. It was really fun. I think that our audience is probably sitting at the edge of their seats and I don’t want to have them wait a second longer. So with that in mind, I just wanted to say thank you again, Heather and Archana. It has been a joy over the last two years. I hope we can do so much more together. I know we’re going to do so much more together because this is very important work and I appreciate the two of you. Now, with that in mind, Heather, will you do us the honor of introducing our panelists in the discussion from DeviceTalks, Minnesota 6th Women in MedTech Breakfast? Absolutely. Well, I’m excited to introduce you our three panelists. The first is Cat Jennings, who is the SVP and president of Vascular Therapies at Boston Scientific. Our second is Laura Stoltenberg. She is the CEO of Cryosa. And our third is Marcie Dewalt and she is the chief human resource officer for probation. And I think you’re really going to enjoy this conversation. There’s tons of good nuggets for you to capture as you listen in. So with that, thanks again, Kayleen. Appreciate the opportunity and looking forward to future work together. Hello, I’m Kayleen Brown. I’m the managing editor for DeviceTalks. And somehow this is our sixth Women in MedTech Breakfast. Wow. And I have chills. I don’t know how we got here, except for because of you. So thank you so much for showing up and for supporting women in MedTech leadership. Okay, so today’s topic is Mastering the Art of High Stakes Decision Making. And I want to start with talking about two women who aren’t quite in the MedTech family. The first is Christina Koch. See some nods. It’s a pretty timely reference. So for those who don’t know who Christina Koch is, she is a NASA astronaut and a mission specialist for Artemis II. And Artemis II has been a crewed mission to go around the moon first time since 1972. And it’s actually the furthest we’ve ever been from the planet Earth. Christina has logged 328 consecutive days on the International Space Station. So when we’re talking about high stakes decision making, that’s a pretty appropriate name to come up. The years that Christina spent preparing for a mission that she was not sure would even happen shows the dedication to that decision. She chose to go, and I want us to think about that decision more than the mission. Making a decision without knowing if the outcome is going to be successful or happen at all. We’re faced with those decisions all the time. Second name is Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. Does anybody know who that is? Okay, so Charlie is the launch director for Kennedy Space Center. She’s the person who gives the final go, no go decision before the rocket leaves the ground. She has access to more data than anybody else in the world at that moment. But when the clock counts down, it’s her decision. She says go or no go. And she has to live with that decision. There isn’t a second opinion and there’s no undo button. The weight of that decision is heavy. Christina Koch is long term, high stakes decision making. Charlie Blackwell-Thompson is acute decision making. It’s two different decision making environments, two different women, but one truth. You never know how it’s going to turn out. You never know. You can never have confidence in knowing that it will be successful or not successful. You just have to hope. But what is true about that is the decision has to be made no matter what. And even though I don’t think any of us are planning on going to the moon, but in MedTech, every decision we make carries weight. You decide if a design moves forward. You decide if the risk is acceptable. You decide when to speak up, when to stand down, when to hold the line. All of those decisions, they shape patient outcomes, company outcomes. They shape every part of this industry and they can affect life or death. Those are really heavy decisions. This is what we’re going to unpack today. This is what we’re going to talk through. How do we make decisions in a high stake environment? And that is exactly how this panel discussion came together. Before we can go on stage, there has to be someone or someones who are putting in the time, the effort, the thought and that person and people. That would be Heather Hudnut Page and Archana Desai. So with that in mind, Heather, thank you for getting us ready for liftoff. Are we a go? Great to have you all here. I know it’s early in the morning and I know it’s hard to get away from work, but this is a really hot topic. Last year’s topic was about leading during uncertainty. I think Carolyn Sleeth is here somewhere. She was on the panel last year. I really appreciated your insights, Carolyn. And today we’re talking about high stakes decision making which are important as male or female leaders and especially important in the MedTech space. So here are three big examples that hit us specifically in MedTech. The first is the cost of quality. $5 billion a year is the annual cost of quality decisions in the MedTech space. The second is productivity dips. When we do reorganizations, we have a 25 to 30% reduction in productivity and we make those decisions all the time. Sometimes I feel like we’re in a constant reorganization transformation that has big effects on our productivity. And then third, and oftentimes the hot topic is M&A. Right? M&A are big decisions. We’ve got somebody here on the panel who’s done a lot of M&A and you’re going to hear some of her insights. But they’re big decisions that oftentimes don’t go well. 70 to 90% of M&A decisions never reach their expected ROI. So a big decision and clarity in those decisions is really important. But there tends to be a number of misperceptions about women in making decisions. The first here is that we are too emotional. The reality is our emotions and our sensitivity means that we tend to do a lot more analysis to make decisions. We make sure we have data. We make sure we really know what we’re talking about before we make the leap. Second is we can be hesitant and indecisive. And some of that indecisiveness actually results in being much more thorough in our strategic decisions. Again, we make sure we have the data, we make sure we have cross functional conversations that we have, conversations that include men and women. We get it all on the table as we make those decisions. You’re also going to hear from one of our panelists that we still can potentially overanalyze, so you’ll hear more about that. Third, we can be risk adverse, which makes it hindering business growth when we’re just too risk adverse to make those decisions. The reality is we tend to be risk aware. And what we mean by that is that we look at both the short term and long term risks as we make those decisions, which means we actually end up with more balanced growth in our businesses. Fourthly, purely intuitive. It’s actually the opposite. Men to use their intuition more than women do. And again, it’s because we tend to be more thorough. We tend to make sure we have all the information on the table. And this one surprised me. Poor collaborators usually were in some ways almost too collaborative. But the reality is collaboration is critical to making these decisions. So what does that mean? The playing field is often uneven when we think about women in leadership, but the reality is women consistently perform. So you can see here, gender diverse teams that tend to diverse leadership teams are 25% more likely to have above average profitability Organizations with high female board representation produce 53% higher ROI. Firms with female directors and really director level above people on leadership teams make the calls on recalls 28 days earlier than men do. And women are 5.66 times more capital efficient. And I know cap, I don’t know if anybody here knows Capita3. It’s a big VC here in the Twin Cities and they say women tend to use capital more efficiently. They get going, they execute, they get it done. And you can see here in one of the facts here captured that we tend to be more capital efficient. So we have put together a panel here purposefully of a diverse group of women. We’ve got Laura Stoltenberg who it was at Medtronic, was at GE and we'll let you do your full introduction. But she is currently CEO of a startup. So I’ll give you in a second, I’ll let you introduce yourself more fully. Cat Jenning and I used to compete with each other but big strategic, she’s fantastic, amazing leader and we’ll let her introduce herself in a minute. And then Marcie Dewalt and I actually worked together years ago at Medtronic on the HR side. So purposely startup strategic hr. So with that Laura, I’ll let you introduce yourself. Well, thank you Heather and good morning everybody. Thank you for being here. As Heather mentioned, I have and I’ll talk about it a little bit later, an interesting career journey. I started my career at ge. Hey Heather. And we’ve got a number of alums there throughout the MedTech world. After 17 years I wondered what it would be like to go to a startup. So I did that for a couple years. Missed big company, came back to Medtronic, went to a UK company and now am at a startup. My functional journey started as an engineer, went into M and A and global general management and I’ll talk a little bit more about the twists and turns. That was my professional experience. Great. Well thanks so much for having me, Heather. My name is Cat Jennings. I’m the president of the Vascular Therapies business at Boston Scientific. I have been at Guidant Boston Scientific since I was an MBA intern and have grown my career there largely my home base was marketing, but I did a stint in M&A and in corporate strategy. And I’m really excited to talk a bit about seminal decisions that we make because I think that, you know, I’ve had a lot of career inflection points but also a lot of kind of business inflection points as well. So happy to talk about that. Good Morning everyone and thank you again for the invitation, Heather. I’m Marcie DeWalt. I lead human resources at a company called Provation Medical. We are a medical workflow software company. I’ve been there about four years and as Heather alluded to, prior to that I had the great fortune of also starting my career at Medtronic right out of MBA into internship and then into rotation and 20 years later. So over those years I had the great opportunity to work across multiple businesses, multiple regions, and to Heather’s point, I’ve had the chance to see quite a few big things happen. Awesome. Well, it’s so fabulous to have all of you here today. So let’s talk M and A. So Cat, as we know, we just saw, M&A is a big gamble. 70 to 90% never reach their expected return on investment. Tell us about how you’ve made these decisions and how you’ve taken on so much M and A in your career. Yeah, no, thanks so much. And I’m so glad I didn’t know those stats when I first started doing M&A. Otherwise I don’t know that I ever would have done it. You know, I think maybe I’ll say a couple things about it. First, you know, while the press release happens overnight, these are not overnight processes. They are oftentimes many months, sometimes many years in the making. I don’t think there’s ever been a target that we’ve acquired that is a company we’ve known for less than a year. And so these processes, like I said, while the press release happens overnight, the actual process itself takes a long time. And when I think about what it takes to get that conviction, and conviction is really the important thing with M and A because it is such a big decision for the organization to make and for us individually to make that conviction takes time to build. And when you think about the work that it takes to get comfortable with these types of decisions, it’s all around the folks around the table on your team and having that confidence that you understand this market and that you are making the correct bet. And then once you get into diligence, how do you make sure that people around the table with you doing diligence have that comfort to speak up and dissent if they feel as though there’s something here that they don’t like or they are concerned about? And to me, I think that’s a lot of what’s been magic for us has been that conviction, but that clear eyed view all throughout diligence to be able to say what we thought we knew going in is what was real. And then also just recognizing that there’s going to be some things after the acquisition gets announced or during integration that you’re going to find that was different than you thought. And, you know, as I reflect on, you know, what has allowed us to do serial M&A, it’s that we’re always learning and we’re always willing to take the risk. And when we learn something, we take it back and ensure that everyone thinks about that the next time we do diligence. Thank you. And sometimes they make it, and sometimes they don’t. And you have to make the tough decision to let an acquisition go as well, which I know you’ve had the challenge and the opportunity to do. All right, Marcie, reorganizations. This is an area that clearly sits with you as well as the business leaders. But we saw 20 to 30% of reorganizations actually impact, negatively impact our efficiency and progress. Tell us about how you make those decisions, how you work with business leaders and cross-functional teams in making those significant decisions. So I think someone alluded to, it feels like we’re constantly in reorganization modes in some of our organizations. So I don’t know how many of you feel that way. I see some heads nodding and just kind of reflecting even on the comments so far. There’s usually the really big decision at the beginning where you’re deciding that we need to do something, that something’s not working, and we’ve got to make some changes or some choices. And then there are all the small decisions that come after that, and they are equally as important. And so as we were planning and thinking through this, unfortunately, over the years, I’ve had many reorganizations. But I’ll talk about something that’s a little more positive, and that’s a bit of organization transformation, which can also be scary. Right. When you start to make big changes and big shifts in a team, it’s really critical to have that North Star at the beginning and what we’re trying to do and also why. Why you’re trying to do something matters a lot. And it really helps as you’re making some of those smaller or subsequent decisions along the way. Um, so when I think about productivity as the HR person, part of what we think about is what’s the change curve, and there’s the length of that curve. Like, how long is it actually going to take for us to get from point A to point B of what we’re trying to do, and can we ensure that everybody gets there with us? We can’t you know, if it’s too long of a journey, people stop being motivated and inspired by whatever prompted the change to begin with. And as Heather said, the other thing we think about a lot is what’s that dip in productivity and morale? And if you get your ideal scenario, you get a decently length change timeline with a minimal dip in productivity and morale. That’s the goal. And so as you think about what are the factors and the ways that you can kind of navigate that, some of it comes down to knowing who your stakeholders are. So we were doing a change in one of the roles I had, and it was a really big change and setting up shared services. We were taking a lot of business to Bogota, a lot of the operational background work to Bogota, and a lot of individuals had a lot of questions. Folks were curious and concerned about safety, they were curious and concerned about the workforce and could we get the work done there. And right, we were making a really big bet to say we’re going to set up shop here, we’re going to get this building, we’re going to hire these people, and we’re going to move this work. And so part of what we ended up really focusing on was ensuring that up front, as we were making the big choices and the big decisions, that you bring people on the journey with you, that these are not singular, even unilateral decisions, even if you can. Right. Sometimes you know you can, but should you? And so that’s the first thing we got to talking about was how do we make sure people go on the journey with us and that it doesn’t feel like I was told, but that I was a part of. And that gets you really far, really fast with most stakeholders. The second thing which kind of comes up as we’ve talked a lot this morning as well, is having some data. There is importance in following intuition. There’s value in that. And in the end, it helps a lot to debunk myths. So this question we were working through of can this workforce even do this work? The reality is we had a ton of information. People just didn’t know it, they didn’t have it. And so how do you bring forward data and information to help others come along on the journey with you? And then I think the last thing with transformation sometimes is, especially as you think about the length of the changes, everybody may not be ready to move when you’re ready. And so one of the other things to keep in mind is sometimes you do have to make decisions and hard calls before everybody is on board. But it doesn’t mean that you leave them behind. It means that as you continue to move forward, you continue to engage with folks and ensure that even if they’re not where you need them to be on the change journey at the point in time that you’re working with, that you work with them to hopefully accelerate at some point so that you do make sure the team moves together and that you all arrive to the finish line to successfully execute your change. Awesome. Thank you so much. All right, Cat and Laura, we’re talking now. Portfolio management. Managing our portfolios and making dispassionate decisions about programs can be incredibly difficult because it impacts people, teams morale, people excited about the products they’re working on, and suddenly you’re making a decision to go a different direction. Share with us, each of you, an example of where you’ve had to make that decision and how you’ve made that decision. So, Laura, why don’t you kick us off? All right, I’ll start with a portfolio investment decision. And so as I mentioned, I went GE to a startup and then to Medtronic. Well, Medtronic was a huge, well known company. I actually stepped in in an entrepreneurial role. So I was employee number one in Medtronic’s new type 2 diabetes business. So Omar said, you know, that was the time of, we want to serve more patients. The largest medical device company in the world is our obligation to improve as many people’s lives as we can. And in diabetes, we were number one financially market share, but we were treating the smallest population, being type 1 in only one way, meaning therapy. So we have 99% of a diabetes population that we could potentially help impact. Laura, how about you come on board and you figure out how to do this? And I was employee number one. So it started with, okay, that’s our North Star. That’s our goal. Now where do we go? How do we actually do that? So understanding stakeholders, so getting some data. What are pain points? What do physicians want? What do patients want? What does Medtronic want? They’re a critical stakeholder as well. And then putting together a plan. And I find in the context of risk, one of the things that helps is to also understand what you’re good at. What is your source of strength that you can build on when the rest of the things are being new. And we actually spent a lot of time and said, why does Medtronic deserve to win at this point? How do we start? So it’s not necessarily you’re climbing up to a really tall diving board the first time you’re ever gonna dive and jump off blindly. We wanted to do it in a really measured and thoughtful way. So we put that plan together. The other nugget, I think, in the risk is not just here’s the decision and what we’re conna go do, but why and not all the time are the assumptions of why you’re making a decision are one, written down, two understood, and three, most importantly, gone back to. Because either if things fail, you might have not had the right plan to begin with, things might have changed around you that cause you to have to react or you just don’t execute. No, we’re all executors, so we’ll take that off the table. So what happened? Kind of long story short is those first two things changed. So we were really bullish about, hey, we’re Medtronic, we could do this. And I give Medtronic a lot of credit for even taking the step and trying it, but we weren’t necessarily willing to do the $100 million in 10 years. So our expectations were probably a little off to begin with. Second thing is the world around us changed. There was a competitor, Abbot, had a huge direct to consumer engine, who had a product that was much easier to use. Good enough is good enough. Who, realistically we said, okay, let’s go back to our assumptions. What was true and what was not true, and those two things were fundamentally wrong. And the appetite of our major stakeholder, I. E. our funder, Medtronic, said, yeah, I don’t think so. So we had, we pivoted, found places for good people. A lot of our strategy and a lot of the engineering work ended up coming through, which is great. And what I’m really proud of is the people who are in the organization have gone on to do incredible things, grounded by their experience and finding that passion of wanting to do something new and innovative in an entrepreneurial environment. But it was tough. It was tough to be able to say, not anymore. That’s a great example. All right, Cat, share with us your example, which is also quite compelling. Yeah, so mine will tie back to the M&A piece you know, we talked about. Not all M&A is successful. Well, I’ll talk about one that wasn’t successful for us. This was a portfolio company of ours. We’d been in with them since a Series A. It was a company called Devoro Medical. They were making a device for extracting clot from blood vessels. And we had been enamored with this mechanism of action and this technology for years. Looking back on it, we probably had some blinders on around how easy to use it was going to be and how effective it was going to be in the market. So once. Once it came to acquiring the technology and actually bringing it to commercialization, we. When we went to have the first in manufacturing experiences, what we saw was that it was much more cumbersome to use. And it was kind of an opposite. An opposite set of physical things a physician had to do than they had to do with any other device on the market. And, you know, as much as we loved the mechanism of action and as much as we would have loved to bring that technology to the marketplace, we realized that the amount of additional R&D dollars that we would have to put into it just. It no longer made sense. And being able to pause there and say, look, we have now sunk X million dollars into this, and we can say that is all sunk cost. We can’t get that money back. But what we can do is make smart decisions about the go forward. And that, I think, is something that I am really proud of, because while, yes, I wish we could have taken back some of the things that we. Some of the decisions we made on the technology beforehand, I’m really proud that when the team saw that the go forward no longer made sense, we made the decision, we did it quickly. We were able to then pivot a lot of those dollars to other technologies that we wanted to do, pivot a lot of people to new technologies, and really chart a path forward that was much more successful for the division. And those decisions are hard, especially when, you know, frankly, they’re undoing something you yourself did. And I think that that’s something that I’d encourage you guys when you’re making tough business decisions is to be willing to say, hey, what I knew then made sense, but what I know now is greater, and I can make a better choice today than I could back then. And then be willing to change your mind. Absolutely. Jump in. So, just a couple of thoughts, having listened to both of the other answers. One of the things one of my mentors used to say, people always see when you do something really well, they don’t see all of the tough decisions or the times that it didn’t work. Like, people don’t typically pay attention to that. And so one of the things she encouraged me to think about in my career, and so I’ll share it with all of you, is take advantage of those moments. It may not be the outcome you were hoping for or looking for, but there’s a ton to be learned there. And she’s like, get your journal out, Marcie. Write it down. And write it down soon after something happens so you don’t forget. Because even three, four months later, you’re going to have a story in your head to make whatever makes sense for you. And other people will have their story in their head to make it make sense for them. But she’s like, write it down as soon as you can to remember whatever lessons you learned from that because those are the lessons that you’ll take forward from even the things that didn’t work. And those are some of, for her, the better lessons. Because when it works well, that’s great. When it doesn’t work, that’s when you get a chance to really test yourself and the thinking and the knowledge that you have. And to say, what would I do differently? More of, less of in the future to be even betteYeah, I love that. Thank you for good HR advice to all of us. It’s fantastic. Okay, Cat, so part of what you just told us also links to what decisions you’ve made on clinical trials. And the reason I say that is that you’ve got a very supportive leader at the top of your company who is supportive of taking risks. So I know you have, and I’ve experienced some of the clinical trials that you’ve done in the space that you and I competed in and you took some big chances. Now you’ve been successful, which is always good, but they’re not always successful. So talk to us about a clinical trial decision you made and how you made that decision and how you moved forward. Yeah, so we really, what Heather’s alluding to is we really pioneered going head to head in our space. We were one of the first companies that really did large randomized clinical trials, taking our technology head to head against other companies, technologies and looking to demonstrate either superiority or equivalence, but maybe with a better safety profile. And look, those decisions are not easy because as you all know, once you set a clinical trial in motion, that’s a, you know, it’s a one way door. It’s, you know, you don’t, it’s very hard to walk back those decisions. And so you have to be really, really thoughtful and really, really convicted kind of like M&A around that decision. And so one of the things that we do a lot of when we make those kind of choices is really deeply understand the science and have a reason to believe that our technology will win or will show this parity with a better safety profile. And look, we’ve won more than we’ve lost. But there are some trials that haven’t gone our way. But I think the overall benefit of taking those types of risks is enormous because as everyone in the room knows, reimbursement is becoming a much more important part of how our devices get selected out in the marketplace. And making bold bets on clinical trials is the way in which you get differentiated reimbursement, not just in the United States, but everywhere around the world. And so as we think about how do we open up markets, I think that’s, you know, as much as we talk about product innovation, clinical innovation is also critically important. And I’d say unlike an R&D project, where if you decide you want to stop, you can with a clinical trial, you are obligated to follow those patients. And so you have to put even more thought into those clinical trial choices than oftentimes you do. Even in the R&D. Yeah, I love it. All right, final topic. Career decisions. Oftentimes the most difficult. Am I in? Am I out? I’m going to move. Am I not? Am I comfortable? Am I not comfortable? So, Laura, share how you’ve made career decisions between large strategics and startups. Some people go to startups and never go back to a strategic and vice versa. And then, Marcie, you can give us your insights on hiring and getting the right talent and when you let people go. So, Laura, fill us in. How have you made these decisions one at a time? Honestly, I mean, we laugh, but honestly, it’s true. I was kind of never that person that said I have to have this title by this age or this, this revenue or this number of people. I knew that I was driven. I knew I loved MedTech and I knew I always wanted to challenge myself and contribute. And that sounds fluffy, but honestly, it was really true. So I made a decision by a decision and after 17 years at GE, said, okay, kind of itching for something new. I want to do something. I had a job offer from to run a very large P&L at a large MedTech company. And I had a job offer to take a chief commercial officer role at a startup. And I took the startup and I was wrestling with it and talked to one of my mentors and he gave some advice which may be helpful. He said, one, no one will ever be able to take away your experience, your accomplishments. You will always have them. He said, good people will always hire good people. And the third is you are the one that owns your own definition of career success. It’s like, cool. I like this all right, I’m gonna go for the fun one. And that’s kind of what I’ve done. And I don’t mean it as trivial as it is because it’s always been hard work, but the one decision at a time. Then I got into the startup and go, ooh, after 17 years at GE, I kind of. I miss the language, I miss knowing my people, I miss the comfort of the infrastructure. But I really like this entrepreneurial thing. So that drove me to Medtronic to kind of find the yes and in everything. Then after, and I told you the story of that didn’t work, then I. Then the little voice in my head says, well, Laura, you gotta show that you can run a billion dollar P&L. And I was like, okay, you know, I’m gonna do that, but I’m gonna do it in that is in a culture that’s totally different and completely decentralized and doesn’t have the matrix. I did that for a few years and then I was like, okay, but I really miss the innovation. I want to get back to not just leading leaders, but being the one who’s sitting in front of the physician, who’s in the case, who can walk back into the lab and tinker. Because even though I wasn’t a very good engineer, I love working with engineers. So then that brought me to Cryosa. So it truly was one decision at a time when thought at a time with my husband, my family, and reflecting on some of those pieces of advice from my mentor. And as part of it, kind of doing what I said about risk, always trying to anchor myself in a strength. So when I went into a new job or a new experience. Because the culture was different, the company was different, the technology was different. Being able to give myself some grace to say, what? Why did they hire me? There’s something that I must be bringing into this job to kind of give me the grounding and the confidence to be able to absorb the rest of the risk. I love it. And I also love the role of the mentor in all of that. All right, Marcie, tell us, how do you handle it? Kind of one day at a time. So I’m going to build on that. I think, you know, all of you, especially those of you in leadership roles and any one of us, we’re all people, appreciate that every person decision has an implication to somebody, to their family, to their friends, to their livelihood. So I don’t think anybody takes people decisions lightly by any means. They’re big decisions and big choices to make. And so when we think about some of these big people decisions that come with some of these business decisions, I think it goes back to again that having a North Star and knowing what you’re trying to accomplish on the hiring front, what does that mean? We were talking about AI as we were chatting a bit this morning of how do you not. One of my partners today likes to say, are we skating where the puck is going, Marcie? And I’m like, that’s the goal, Mike. And it’s really, how do you think a science just a step or two ahead. And that’s what I challenge myself. And when I look at my colleagues and human resources and other functions, as well as our business leaders, is the today is the today. And we’ve got to play in this space. Absolutely. We can’t. We got to live to do tomorrow. But the more important thing as we start to think about some of these talent choices is how are we getting a step or two ahead? Because if you don’t choose or understand where you’re trying to go, you’re going to always be on the back foot and behind. And so I think as we make people decisions and hiring decisions, that’s all about where does the organization need to go, what big bets are we going to be taking and how do we ensure we prepare the organization to be ready for that, not tomorrow, but today, that we are a step or two ahead so that nobody’s feeling as best we can, like we’re not behind the eight ball before we ever got started. And I’ll say that for our own careers. So I encourage all of us as we’re thinking about our own journeys, opportunities will come and we’ll get the chance to do like Laura did and make different choices. But there was a North Star in her story of here are the things that are important to me. And so if you’ve got those things in your mind, always helpful. And then there is the other side, which is always hard, which is sometimes things aren’t the right fit, sometimes it isn’t the right choice. And one of the things I keep in mind and right we all work in healthcare and technology companies that are there to help people. A part of helping people is personally, I will never sacrifice the organization for one person. And right. We have to make choices that are for the betterment of the team and the organization. And that decision may be that one or two or many of our colleagues are no longer the right choice to ensure that the organization and the people who work there get to sustain themselves and the good work that we do. And so as you make those choices, again, they’re never easy because those are usually your friends. They are people you’ve worked with for years. We talked this morning. This is a small community. We keep running into each other all the time. So it’s hard to make those choices. But again, if you’ve got a really good sense of where you’re trying to take the organization and the team, again, I had to make some tough choices these last few years with people who I do call my friends. But the thing I had to also say to them was, you see where we’re going? Do you see the misalignment of what you have with what we need? And in some ways it makes it a little bit dispassionate to your point, Heather, because it’s like this is not a values judgment of you, the human. We appreciate, value and respect you, the human. And for the betterment of this team and this company, these are the choices we have to make. And then I think the last thing in all of this is, and again, we all work in spaces and places where we’re intended to help. How do we treat people with respect? One of my rules is I actually will meet with anybody who wants to talk. So sometimes, especially when some of these big reorganizations happen, I get super popular on LinkedIn, which is a little crazy. But it’s because again, in this very small community, we can always find ways to connect and help one another. So even if a tough choice has to be made, we can still treat people well. We can still help them to find the next thing and or help them to see where the puck is going and what can help them to align in getting there. Fabulous. Thank you so much. Well, one of the benefits I had as we prepped for this and got a chance to ask this group lots of different questions, what came out is they each have kind of a unique way of how they make decisions and you’ve heard some of it through, how they’ve answered the questions. But let’s have each of you give a quick summary before we move to our table discussions of how you make high stakes decision. We’ll just start with you, Marcie, and we’ll go down the line. So take us away. Sure. So I’ve got two, two big things for me. First is understanding the interest of the folks. I’m working with the stakeholders and ensuring that as we make choices and decisions that again, I understand those interests and how aligned or maybe misaligned they may be with where we’re going. And what work needs to go with that to ensure that we move forward together. And then the other big one is data. Data does help again, to demystify or debunk or become more dispassionate in ensuring that we’re all working with a common set of information and that data is hopefully democratized in a way that anyone can bring it to the table and that we can all bring something to the table to make a better decision. Yeah, I’d say for me, you know, unfortunately, the. When you’re higher in the organization, a lot of the easy decisions get made before they come to you. So you get the pleasure of only the really hard decisions. Like, I got asked to look at a seating chart for a physician dinner that’s happening on Thursday night. And I was like, I love this. Can I do more of. This is amazing. Unfortunately, that isn’t my day. My day is mostly making tough calls other people either don’t feel comfortable making or don’t want to make. And so I have to think a lot about where I spend my time and how do I prioritize, because I could probably spend hours on any one of these. And so one thing I think a lot about, and you’ve heard me say this already, is what are the decisions that are one way doors and what are the decisions that are two way doors? Like, where can I change my mind or pivot or adjust later? Whereas versus, like, where are the decisions that we are casting the die and we are going to live with this, whatever it is. And I got to make sure that when it’s the latter, I’m spending an inordinate amount of my time really understanding the issues so that once we cast the die, we can live with the outcomes. Love that. Mine is From Earl Bakken’s 2004 commencement speech when he said he lives his life and his career by ready, fire, aim. And we actually pulled that in and as a mantra to our organization. And I love that. Again, I’m educated as an engineer and I’m a woman, and I have bias to data and thinking things through and all the consequences. So it’s a really simple mantra for me to be like, okay, ready. It’s not just fire, right? Ready is what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Fire. Bias towards action. But then he didn’t just drop the aim, he left it there. That’s the circle back, right? So ready, fire, aim. I love it. I love it. Oh, you guys, thank you. Thank you to all three of you for sharing all your words of wisdom. Can we give this group a round of applause. We did it. Another episode of DeviceTalks Women in MedTech podcast with me, Kayleen Brown is in the books. I think it’s really clear, and at least I hope it’s really clear why I wanted to bring you that conversation from our Women in MedTech breakfast held at DeviceTalks Minnesota on May 4th. This conversation about high stakes decision making is critical now more than ever and I hope that you acquired more tools for your tool belt because I sure did. So thank you so much to our co organizers, also my in studio guests, Heather Hudnut Page and Archana Desai. And of course, thank you so much to our panelists, Marcie Dewalt, Cat Jennings and Laura Stoltenberg for sharing your insights with us and helping us acquire all of those tools. I very, very rarely get an opportunity to thank our discussion leaders. So if you don’t know, at the end of our Women in MedTech breakfast program, we break up into discussion groups where we continue unpacking the theme in a more intimate setting. So this year our table leaders included Heather Knights, Amaza Reitmeyer, Michelle Lishner, Holly Scott, Carolyn Sleeth, of course, Heather and Archna, and our panelists. Well, thank you for continuing that discussion. I was walking around the room and I could just see everybody leaning at the edge of their seat and I just. It’s magic. It really is. So thank you so, so much. And of course, huge, huge, mega, mega, uber, uber. Thanks to Aptyx. So Aptyx sponsored our DeviceTalks Minnesota Women in MedTech breakfast and they were the founding sponsor of our very first Women in MedTech breakfast and have sponsored every breakfast since and are seventh. Breakfast is coming up of course at DeviceTalks Boston here May 28th. And again, Aptyx is one of our sponsors for that. So Aptyx, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are the reason I get to do what I love to do. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I mentioned DeviceTalks Boston, so I want to mention it just one more time. It is a week from tomorrow. In just one week, I’ll be on an airplane flying out to Boston, all the way across the country to see my friends and hopefully all of you. And a friendly reminder, if you want 25% off your registration code, please message me on LinkedIn or send me an email and I’ll get that code to you. We want you there. Follow me on LinkedIn. I’m Kayleen Brown. Follow our amazing editorial director, Tom Salemi. Follow DeviceTalks. Follow everybody I mentioned in this podcast and I will see you another episode of the Women in MedTech podcast. Thank you so much.