Leadership vs innovation
Thursday, December 1, 2011 at 6:20AM Recently I attended the NASS (North American Spine Society) meeting in Chicago. Like most industry attendees, I felt the meeting was lacking to say the least. As I have read summations regarding this meeting, the consistent theme seems to be; there "was nothing new and there is no innovation in the spine marketplace now." Why is this?
Well my answer is that part of it falls on the shoulders of the leadership of the companies in the industry and another part of the "blame" falls onto the shoulders of the sales teams in the industry. (I will talk about this group in the near future, but not today.)
The part that falls on the leadership teams is not what you might think. It is not because companies have not gone out and invested in new technologies, (at least in my eyes), because many of the company's investments are either improved technologies or new but not generally accepted yet. Not every acquisition or product improvement is going to result in the next hot new technology.
Where this leadership void exists is that there appears to be little vision at the top. Take this for example, turn the clock back a few years. You had leaders who made declarative statements on where the company was and where it was going to go. Think about it...John Brown, Stryker, 'We will grow 20% every year'. Dane Miller, Biomet, 'We will be the company where surgeons want special attention and customized solutions for their orthopedic needs'. Ray Elliott, Zimmer, 'We will change the way surgery is done and move orthopedics to minimally invasive techniques'.
Now whether you liked or agreed with any of these tenants or individuals, these LEADERS moved entire organizations to the goals we now know as The Good Old Days. They told the street where they were going, not the other way around.
Today we hear no such statements. It used to be that one statement every CEO made about his/her organization was the value of the people in the company. We hear little of that today. What we hear is; Stryker will layoff 1,000 people and Medtronic will trim another 1.23 Billion over the next few years, this after reaching their target of reducing costs 1 Billion dollars recently. We don't hear about investments in talent (people), we don't hear about the people in a company making the difference. We do actually, but not from any of the bigger orthopedic / spine companies.
I think that when we begin to hear about investments in talent, in people, in personnel AND personal development we will once again return to The Good Old Days and see plenty of innovation.
That's it for today, I need another cup of coffee.
Rainman
Reader Comments (2)
Well said. "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Proverbs 29:18
All great points. Difficult times are nothing new. Yes sometimes they often bring different challenges than previous cycles, but the successful companies will be the ones that maintain, develop, and support their talent. Times like these will certainly weed out weak companies and expose shortcomings in vision and execution. It's easy to grow when the times are "good" but the tougher times are where the real tests and opportunities exist.