Author: amanda.manconi

Wolfgang Weinkum is used to new experiences. Even while working at Pall in Austria for his entire 17-year career, his work has been marked by a range of new challenges, new positions, new direct reports, and even new methods for training and development after Danaher acquired Pall in 2015. Below, Wolfgang reflects on Pall’s fast pace; the emphasis on mentorship, training, and continual growth that have shaped him as a professional and a person; managing with trust, and collaboration across Pall teams and with Danaher OpCos around the world.

What do you do at Danaher?

I’m the global director of sales and marketing operations for Pall, one of the operating companies, or OpCos, in Danaher’s life sciences division. Part of my job is to strengthen our sales automation processes—working with the team to make sure our customer relationship management (CRM) system is a one-stop shop for tracking all of our contacts, opportunities, and accounts. I’m also responsible for Pall’s lead management program; I head up a team of qualification specialists who curate the leads that come from our digital channels, to make sure our partners in Sales are able to focus on what matters.

The lead qualification specialist role is a relatively new one for us. We initially launched it as a pilot program in early 2019, a few years after Pall joined Danaher. It was just a couple of people in the U.S. at first, but it was very successful—conversion rates more than doubled. So we expanded it to more business units, and now we’re working to bring it to Europe and Asia, as well.

Tell us about your path at Pall.

I started at Pall more than 17 years ago, so I’ve had a lot of different roles. I started out in technical inside sales and then moved into marketing. After we joined Danaher, I focused on marketing campaigns as well as automation and lead management, and then started my current position about a year ago. One thing I really appreciate about this company is that when someone raises their hand for an opportunity, we recognize it. It might start out as just one project. But every time you take on something new, you gain experience—and the trust of your colleagues. 

Change is part of life, and that’s certainly true at Danaher. We move quickly, but the great thing about that is that you have constant opportunities to advance your career. In every role I’ve had here, I’ve never once felt like anyone was trying to keep me there or hold me back in any way. It’s always about supporting you and helping you get to the next level.

Tell us more about that support. How has Danaher helped you grow?

We have so many resources and tools available—not only on the technical side, but to help you be a better manager and even just a person. I think I’ve had more training in the five years since we joined Danaher than I did in 20 years before that. And mentorship is a big part of our culture, too. I’ve had several mentors over the years—and now that I’m a manager, I try to pay that forward. To me, mentoring someone is all about trust. Without that, why should someone listen to your advice? And part of building trust is setting an example. I’m a hands-on person, but I resist the urge and try to delegate, so my team knows I trust them. It’s also critical that they know it’s okay to make mistakes—in fact, it’s important! If you make a mistake and learn from it, I’ll be the last one to complain about that. We need people thinking outside of the box, because that’s how we discover new ideas or better ways to do things. 

What’s collaboration like in your role?

Within Pall, we’re collaborating not only within our team but across several departments. We work especially closely with our partners in Sales; keeping our teams aligned is a big part of my job. Working together as effectively as possible and getting things done right always requires good communication. Nothing is a one-person show.

The nice thing about being part of Danaher is we also have counterparts in other OpCos. If I have a question about lead management or lead qualification, I can go to someone who’s in a similar role at a different company and ask, “Hey, what does this process look like for you?” There’s a constant exchange of information, which is brilliant. We don’t have to start from scratch. 

What kinds of challenges are you facing?

One challenge is that we’re working in a global environment, across different cultures, and serving a variety of business units. Sometimes processes have to be streamlined, and you can’t make everyone happy. But those situations are also an opportunity to listen, and hopefully, explaining our thinking will make people more comfortable with the decision. 

And of course, COVID-19 has had a big impact—we shifted away from traditional marketing efforts like conferences and trade shows and made everything digital, which means our team has a lot more leads to handle. But the systems we’ve been building, including our work on marketing automation and the lead qualification specialist role, are actually a great fit for this moment. We also just launched a live chat function on our website, so prospects and customers can talk with us right away in real time. 

In general, I’ve been really impressed with how Danaher has responded to COVID-19. Flexibility and agility are so important right now—things that might have changed annually before are changing every couple of weeks these days—and a lot of companies have struggled. Even something like shifting sales from in-person meetings to video calls can be tough. But here, we’d been increasingly open to working from home even before the virus, so we knew the processes and already trusted people to put in the same effort they would in the office. And the overall communication and direction from leadership has been great. They really exceeded my expectations. 

What are you looking forward to?

Meeting the new members of our team in person! We’ve added a couple of people since COVID-19, and virtual onboarding went incredibly smoothly, but it will still be nice to be face-to-face when we can.

And for them and everyone else on the team, I’m excited to see them grow. Thinking back just a couple of years ago, it’s fun to realize how much people have accomplished. We have team members proactively driving new efforts, leading projects, even leading their own small teams. All of that helps Danaher, but it also helps them, which is very rewarding. Whatever your job is, the most important thing is that you can wake up every day and be happy to go to work.

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Interested in joining Wolfgang and the rest of the Pall team? Check out open roles across Danaher or join our talent community today.

Eric Davidson knows being an ally requires more than just an open mind. He’s learned from experience that creating an environment of vulnerability requires asking thoughtful questions and listening carefully to what others share—and don’t share. As a father, people manager, and member of Danaher’s LGBTQ + Friends Associate Resource Group, he’s committed to building a corporate culture where associates feel safe to self-identify and be themselves.

What do you do at Danaher?

I work in the Danaher Business System office on the Growth team, providing support for sales tools across Danaher. Right now, I’m also working with Leica Microsystems on several key sales initiatives. Before COVID-19, I traveled extensively for work. Of course, now we’ve transitioned our support to virtual events; in the past two months, I’ve led six training sessions on Funnel Management with associates around the world. It’s provided plenty of learning opportunities. 

I’m also involved in LGBTQ + Friends, Danaher’s Associate Resource Group for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer associates and allies. Our role is to support an inclusive environment where associates feel comfortable being themselves, so they can achieve their personal goals and help the company grow.

Why was it important to you to support LGBTQ + Friends?

I’ve considered myself an ally for a long time. My son John realized he was gay as a teenager, but didn’t come out to our family until several years later. He and I were taking a long walk when he asked me if I knew. I told him that I didn’t and that I was sorry I’d never asked about this aspect of his personal life. That conversation helped me see I hadn’t done enough to create an environment where he felt comfortable bringing it up. We can talk much more openly now, and it’s completely changed the nature of our relationship.

Work has helped me understand the importance of allyship, too. One formative experience for me was years ago, when I was interviewing an internal candidate for a promotion that required him to move. Gay marriage hadn’t been legalized, and the company I worked for at the time didn’t offer domestic partner benefits—so he had to ask me for help to make sure relocation assistance would be available to them as a couple. I did, of course, but I also realized that I could have made it easier on him if I’d just asked one simple, open-ended question: “Is there anything I can do to support you in your move?”

When the LGBTQ + Friends ARG was launched in 2019, I contacted Elliot O’Glasser to see how I could get involved. I do whatever I can to be an ally—including wearing my pronoun pin, sharing my message of acceptance, and promoting the benefits of having an inclusive work environment. 

Why is inclusion important to Danaher as a company?

People do better work when they know they’re safe and included. Providing an environment where people feel like they can be themselves with everyone’s full support is important from a business perspective and the right thing to do.

We want to ensure that our team reflects our customers and community, as different perspectives make us a stronger company. Offering people the chance to be treated the way we’d like to be treated benefits all of us—it goes around.

What are you excited to see as LGBTQ + Friends and Danaher’s inclusion efforts grow?

We’ve already made excellent progress as a company; we just need to keep going. Rainer Blair was one of the first executives involved in D+I efforts, and he’s talked about his commitment to pushing things forward as our new CEO. I’m looking forward to supporting LGBTQ members of the team directly and bringing more allies into the fold. That can be through events, whether in-person or virtual or just by being open and making people aware. Even having a simple conversation about how to support a teammate can make a difference.

I think the way we interact with people outside our team is important, whether it’s customers or candidates. In terms of hiring, we need to actually lead with our inclusion program because it speaks volumes about how we treat people, whether they’re part of a marginalized group or not. We want everyone to know that no matter who you are, there’s nothing that will limit your opportunity at Danaher. 

Interested in joining Eric and the rest of the Danaher team? Check out open roles or join our talent community today.

David Koch, Senior Director of Supply Chain Planning for Beckman Coulter and a leader of Danaher Business System (DBS), has held several roles in his more than seven years at Danaher. But one thing remains consistent—he’s seen the power of DBS unite teams, clarify processes, and drive results. The former DBS director explains this uniquely Danaher approach, the opportunities he’s enjoyed so far, and a preview of the future. 

For those who aren’t familiar, what is DBS?

DBS is a set of tools and processes, but it’s also a way of thinking that’s embedded in Danaher’s entire culture. It’s a mindset of continuous improvement—a belief that everything we do today, we can do even better tomorrow. The tools themselves include a variety of things, from the way we organize a process flow to a very specific template. In supply chain planning, for example, we might have a DBS approach to material replenishment, and within that, a Kanban calculator that helps you size a card.

DBS tools fall into four categories. The first is Fundamentals, which includes things like our problem-solving system that apply to every aspect of the business. Then there’s Lean, Growth, and Leadership, which tend to be more process-specific. They’re all incredibly helpful for organizing complex situations, structuring our thinking, getting people aligned, and driving action.

Tell us about your introduction to DBS.

I remember it vividly! I was brand-new to Danaher, about two weeks in. We had just acquired a factory, and the integration wasn’t going as planned. It was overwhelming at first, but as soon as I got my hands on our tool set, everything was so much more clear. It was very logical—Here’s everything you need to make a material system work, now check things off the list. It allowed us to build an action plan and just start executing. We got back to north of 90 percent on-time delivery relatively quickly, and the whole experience was a big unlock for me. It was like a light bulb went off; it made me want to go tackle the next problem.

Why do you think this approach has been so successful for Danaher?

I think there are two reasons. One, we don’t make things more complex than they need to be. There are some companies where when you dig into one of their tools, you get 500 slides of incredibly technical jargon. It’s just not common sense, and it would take you 10 years to learn. With DBS, it’s simple enough to be accessible for everyone.

The other reason is DBS helps us create a blameless culture. We frame problems in terms of process, not people. Of course sometimes, a problem really is about people. But if you assume best intentions and start with process in mind, everything is much more collaborative. It helps us figure out how to do things better, faster. 

If you’re someone who likes to drive change, it can be tempting to just move on to what’s next, but the fact is things very rarely work out perfectly on the first try. We have to learn and iterate before we can confidently say, “Yes, this is truly a better process now.” It’s not change for its own sake. It’s change for the sake of real improvement.

How have you benefited personally from DBS?

It’s really been a force multiplier for me, because it’s allowed me to get both a depth and breadth of experience. My technical background is in global supply chain, and I’ve learned a lot in that area by using DBS. But because these tools are so universal, I’ve also been able to bounce around and apply them to all sorts of big, meaty challenges across almost every function of the business and even externally with our suppliers and partners. 

The opportunity you get at Danaher to put your hands on and learn about so many different areas, and the opportunity you get to lead—there’s just nothing like it. Especially when you’re early in your career; I have friends that I graduated with 10 years ago who are just getting started on some of the things I was doing six months into my time here. Plus, I’ve been able to do it all—all these different projects and roles at all these different levels—with one company. I’ve never needed to go look for the next job. 

What are you looking forward to in the coming months and years?

In the short term,  Beckman Coulter is working on some serology tests for COVID-19, and of course we’re all really eager to play a role in helping people on that front. Longer term, we’re going to be tackling some exciting challenges in connecting our distribution, finished goods, and upstream supplied networks.

I’m also excited about some changes we made recently to our Operations Leadership Program, to make sure new team members get the same broad foundation I had. I love mentoring and coaching those folks, even if it’s as simple as suggesting a DBS tool that could help them solve a problem. The system itself is so powerful, but to make the most of it, we need to keep developing leaders who have that continuous improvement mindset. Together with OLP, I think it gives us an incredible opportunity to put people in roles where they can make a massive impact in a short amount of time.

Interested in joining David and the rest of the Beckman Coulter team? Check out open roles across Danaher or join our talent community today.

As Beckman Coulter works to bring a new COVID-19 serology test to market, President Julie Sawyer Montgomery shares what it’s like to lead the company during a time of incredible exposure, the collaboration required for increasingly faster product launches, and how a risk-taking culture inspires learning, innovation, and motivated teams.

First, tell us about your day-to-day at Beckman Coulter.

No day is typical, which is part of what I really appreciate about my role—it keeps things interesting. On any given day, I might be working with customers, or with R&D, Operations, Sales, or Marketing. Every part of the company shares a common language in  Danaher Business System, which is a big advantage; I know I’ll always be focusing on the most important metrics or using problem-solving tools to understand the cause of any gaps in performance. We even use DBS with our customers to help make their labs more efficient, and we’ve seen some remarkable results in terms of productivity, cost reduction, and the satisfaction of their team members. 

Usually, I do a lot of travel, meeting at our locations around the world. But of course, much of the team has been working from home since the COVID-19 outbreak hit—and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how effectively we’ve transitioned to being more remote. Because we’re a complex, global team, it was never typical to have everyone in the same room for a meeting, anyway. If anything, I think the shift has made us feel closer. We’re having conversations we probably wouldn’t have before; we’re laughing together when people’s kids and pets interrupt; we’re dressing more casually than we did in the office. Everyone’s a little more willing to be vulnerable. 

What is the company’s top priority right now?

Priority number one is getting a new COVID-19 serology test to market. Everyone’s got a part to play in that—the Development and Operations teams are front-and-center right now, and they’ve had a number of breakthroughs, but as we launch, thousands of people on other teams will be getting involved. It’s critical that we maximize the sensitivity and specificity of these tests to avoid false results. Or serology test will be an important tool in the fight against COVID-19 and offer needed improvements over some of the inferior technologies currently on the market. And because Beckman Coulter is such a large player in this space, we’re in a unique position in terms of scale, as well. We have a very large base of installed instruments in labs around the world, of all different sizes—and many of those instruments are connected to automation systems that make them even more productive. We’re planning to launch with more than 30 million tests per month, which is a production volume most organizations can’t match.

What’s the biggest challenge your team is facing?

We have a very ambitious launch cadence for new products—it’s a radical step up from the Beckman Coulter of even five years ago in terms of not only development, but sales, marketing, service, and applications. One of the keys for us has been a DBS tool called Policy Deployment, which helps us focus on the areas where true breakthrough thinking is required; it’s our framework for problem solving, setting stretch goals, and solving underlying issues that will allow us to attain those goals. With our new procalcitonin marker, for example, which is used to diagnose sepsis, we were able to use Policy Deployment to cut the time to market in half. And with our COVID-19 serology test, we’ve already been able to dramatically reduce the time required to develop an APF file—the instructions that tell an instrument how to run a test—from 55 days down to 5. 

Tell us about the company culture.

I think at its heart, Danaher is a learning culture. We talk about how to “try-storm” new ideas, how to fail fast. When people feel comfortable taking those kinds of measured risks, it’s very conducive to innovation. We try to set the example as a leadership team—every month, we discuss our top initiatives with the teams leading them to review their results and brainstorm how we can remove roadblocks. Anyone who’s been in the room for those discussions knows we don’t have all the answers! We’ll never accomplish our goals if we limit ourselves to what leadership knows.

Instead, we try to keep things flat, apolitical, and transparent, and we encourage people at all levels and in all areas to share their views. The APF file innovation is a good example—that didn’t come from the top; it happened because the team shared about every opportunity they saw, all along the timeline—and because they thought beyond the limits of our current processes. That level of efficiency never would have been possible if we’d simply refined what we’d always done.

How do you see your role as a leader—and as a mentor?

As a leader, it’s my job to challenge the organization to achieve stretch goals, and then to remove barriers. Setting goals is a collaborative process, because we want them to be accomplishable, but still ambitious enough to spark innovation and creativity. To strike that balance, we need to understand what teams are facing at the ground level. We’ve seen a double-digit increase in U.S. customer retention over the past few years, for example—and that started with a model in one small area that gave us a sense of what was possible.

As a mentor, I have the privilege of building more personal relationships—and it’s very much a two-way conversation. My mentees and I talk about their challenges and barriers to progress, and sometimes, I’ll reflect on similar experiences I’ve had in my career, to help us think through their options together.

What’s most exciting to you right now?

I love feeling the energy of collaboration—where people can trust each other and pass the ball seamlessly—and we’re seeing so much of that right now. Certainly, COVID-19 means we’ll have a different year than we’d thought, and we’re closely watching factors like diagnostic testing volumes. But many of our key initiatives and strategies are moving forward just as they were before. We haven’t slowed down our innovation or product development efforts at all. And above all, I’m immensely proud of our people—their dedication, their expertise. They are leading an incredibly fast, incredibly high-quality effort right now, and their passion has been amazing to see.

Curious about joining us? Check out open roles or join our talent community today.