Name: Medtronic Says Post-Pandemic Business is Coming Back Strong
Uploaded: 2021-06-09
Duration: 9 min 20 s
Description: New CEO Geoff Martha’s Leadership Message: “Move With Speed”.

New CEO Geoff Martha’s Leadership Message: “Move With Speed”.

Medtronic Says Post-Pandemic Business is Coming Back Strong 

Leadership

Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. You know, you became Ceo of Medtronic just a year ago and it was right at the beginning of the pandemic. And one of the first things you did was to find a way that you could ramp up the production quickly of Medtronic ventilators. And it's a remarkable story, tell our viewers about it. It really starts with first of all, a commitment from our manufacturing employees to to work 24 7 through Covid cases and and putting really their own safety at times on the line for patients around the world. Um, the second part of this story is really of a commitment from our management team to put patients before profits, uh, and make the bold decision to put all of our ventilator designs online. Open source as they call it. And the reason we did this is because just working harder wasn't enough. The demand was orders of magnitude greater than our capability to supply. So we put these plans online and ask for help. We asked for engineering support of key constraints. We asked for manufacturing support to augment our own manufacturing And what we got was over 250,000 downloads of these plans. And these are thousands of documents and whether the individuals just trying to help out individual engineers downloading these things on their own time and reading them or large multinational corporations like Intel or, or like SpaceX and Intel ended up being a great partner for us and help us improve our processing power. That opened up new capabilities. And SpaceX uh, was really an unexpected partner who helped us with a particular component that we were very much supply constraint. It turns out this, this component called a proportional solenoid valve is something that they used in spacecraft, uh, and, and in ventilators and not much else. Uh, you know, this type of valve especially and uh, they became partners. Elon musk personally got involved in and provided support and leadership and commitment and uh, there there are partners to this day. Well, I think you're amazing. Part of that whole story is how many people did partner with you to make these ventilators. And one of those volunteers, as you mentioned was SpaceX, which is the company owned by Elon musk. What did he bring to this project? Was there something special? I was surprised how much the level of detail that he knew about this part and not only about this, this this particular component, but the history of it, how it's made the challenges and the whole history of why SpaceX gotten into it. So the level of granularity that he had on this uh, was was quite astounding. And the other thing, he was very just down to earth, you know, so you know, you read and you you hear you read his tweets, you read about him and there's a lot lot to read out there and you hear him speak. But he was very down to earth. Uh and and very into the details and very, you know, sign, you know, I'd say very technical. Um Yeah, the other thing that uh I'd say my kids, I have, you know, two kids in college and they thought I was a lot cooler after after talking to Ellen. How did this whole experience shape your perspective when it comes to things like competition and collaboration? Well, first of all, look, we're in health care uh and even even if there is no pandemic and its business is normal, we're often talking to our competitors about safety issues because patient safety comes first. And even if you're our tribals, the, when it comes to patient safety, we share as much information as possible and try to help each other solve problems and, and that's important. Um look, it's important for employees to know that the patients come first because uh, if you lose your North star on that, you're going to be in trouble in healthcare. Well now that we're at the tail end of the pandemic, how's your business doing right now? It's coming back strong. We're seeing a strong rebound uh, in, in the United States. It's not even a snap back, I'll call it and we're starting to rebound in europe and china is pretty much back to normal, but there are parts of Southeast Asia, especially India. And there's parts of latin America that unfortunately the pandemics worse there now than anywhere in the world, You know, India, you hear a lot about. And so the pandemic is not, you know, we're not through this yet, Jeff, I know you talk regularly with the ceos who run hospitals, what are they telling you? How are they doing post covid they're very focused on getting back to serving their patients and they're preparing for uh working through this backlog of patients instead of been waiting in their homes and putting off certain health care needs. And so they're really focused on growth right now. I think over the next 12 months you're going to see procedures at above pre pandemic levels. So how how is their comeback impacting your comeback at medtronic? Well, they're very much linked. There's a high correlation there. Uh most of the products we sell our in our used in hospitals, in these procedures. And so as the hospitals are coming back, patients coming back into the hospitals, the hospitals ramping up their procedures. It's directly impacting our economics and we're really close to getting back fully to pre pandemic levels, both from a revenue perspective and a profit margin perspective. So it's it's good to be back seeing this kind of activity. So what's in the pipeline at Medtronic? Is there one new invention or one new technology that you're most excited about the pipeline right now is the best it's been in our company's history. And so it's hard to pick from. But if I had to pick one, I would pick our Micra. Leaderless pacemaker. This is something we launched this device. We launched the size of a roughly a paperclip. Uh it's uh implanted using a catheter versus a surgical procedure. And it is uh it's revolutionizing the cardiac rhythm space. Uh and what's particularly interesting about this story is that Medtronic invented the pacemaker back in the 19 fifties and then here we are now today, reinventing and revolutionizing this whole space. What we call cardiac rhythm um with a with a disruptive technology like micro that is so small yet gets uh unbelievably safe and gets great outcomes Jeff. Let's talk a little bit about leadership. You worked at General Electric Healthcare Business uh for nearly 20 years before you came to Medtronic and you held many senior leadership positions. But here at Medtronic, this is your first time as a Ceo and you're running a 30 billion giant enterprise and in the middle of a global pandemic, what would you say is the most important leadership lessons that you've learned so far in your first year as Ceo lead and move with speed. Uh So big company like us can be a little slow sometimes and over the pandemic. We led we led in health care issues like open sourcing the ventilator. And we also led in in these social issues, the social unrest that came about over the pandemic and to you know, kind of voice uh you know what's what we believe is right or versus wrong and to express that opinion and to take tangible actions even on some of these social issues. Uh it takes courage. That was wasn't something that I anticipated coming into the ceo but it's something that I learned is very important for employees and our stakeholders. Um the young employees in particular, but all employees, they want to work for a company these days that stand for something and Medtronic stands for something and I need to vocalize that beyond Medtronic, you're working with the White House. I understand an attack force of global business leaders to help developing countries deal with the covid pandemic. And you sent a huge shipment of ventilators to India. You've assigned people at Medtronic to train the healthcare workers there on on how to use them. How do you feel about the work that you're doing in India and why is it important to you in times of need um use our capabilities uh to solve these problems? And I think you saw over the course of the pandemic, whether it be the vaccine or the shortage of ventilators and now shortage of ventilators and oxygen in India. It's really the private sector working with governments who provide the oversight and coordination. But the private sector that's coming up with a lot of the innovation to solve these problems. And we're the leader leading company in MedTech and we need to not just be part of this, but the uh be a leader here and shape the response. And so I'm proud of what we're doing in India. Um, to be quite honest, I want to be able to do more. It's difficult, there are challenges. And so, um, I'm, I'm proud of what we're doing, but I'm not satisfied quite yet. There's way too many people are dying unnecessarily. And so we are really, really working around the clock to see what we can do to stop that.