Despite two advanced degrees in business management, Monika Gram Ritter didn’t initially see herself going into leadership. A decade and a half later, she is at the helm of HemoCue’s global marketing efforts and reinvigorating the scope of her team’s impact. Her secret? Combining a strong focus on teamwork and development while setting clear goals.
Tell us about your role. What does your day-to-day look like?
I’m the Senior Director of Global Marketing for HemoCue, a Danaher operating company (OpCo) within the diagnostics platform. We focus on serving caregivers in decentralized healthcare settings with point-of-care tests, which enable healthcare providers to make treatment decisions during patient visits. I manage the global marketing team and the three teams within it: Digital and Market Communications, Up – and downstream Product marketing as well as marketing intelligence and strategic innovation. I really enjoy the challenge of an executive leadership (L1) role and the authority that comes with it.
My everyday work is extensive, but I am mindful of work-life balance and not the least, signal to my team that their well-being is important to me. My duties vary broadly from developing the long-term strategy for HemoCue and helping to drive key commercial and strategic initiatives, to working on how we improve standard work for delivering on marketing deliverables. Today, for example, I had four one-on-one meetings with team members to review the status of different marketing programs and initiatives while also preparing work for our upcoming company strategy process. Since we are one of the smaller Operating Companies, I also do a lot of hands-on tasks—but I am not afraid of taking on the details with my team.
In my early days as a marketer, I did an enormous amount of traveling and the many voice of customer visits in different countries related to various projects became a great learning, not just for the projects but for me as a marketeer. Listening to customers is very much in the Danaher DNA. Now that I’m in a leadership role, I’m still focused on learning. What have we learned since last year? What’s changing with competition? What’s changing in the market? We work with several data sources, and we’re still out there talking to customers and other players in our industry. I want us to drive strategy based on real information. It’s especially meaningful to do this work in the MedTech field because we know we’re making a difference in people’s lives.
You were at Radiometer for 15 years before you came to lead Marketing at HemoCue. Why did you make the move?
Constant learning has always been a driving factor for me. Of course, I want to succeed in my current role, but I like the journey and expanding my capabilities just as much. And I felt that this role would be a great new learning experience. At Radiometer I worked closely with members of the executive leadership (L1) team for several years, which inspired and prepared me to become an L1 member myself. Although I am a great believer in teamwork and leveraging the skills of my full team, in the end, I’m the one that has to make and own the final decisions for the marketing function. Knowing that, at the end of the day, all of this is my responsibility, has been a great challenge—and one I really enjoy.
Even though I have years of relevant experience, I haven’t always seen myself as a leader. I grew up doing team sports and took the role as captain several times, but it wasn’t until I was getting my executive MBA that I realized that leadership might be the right path for me. Feedback from my peers highlighted that leadership seemed like a natural strength for me. I realized I didn’t have to be the stereotype in my head of what a leader had to be. I really care about developing people, and positive feedback from my teams has just inspired me to continue the leadership journey even more.
How would you describe your leadership philosophy?
I believe in working as a team to achieve goals, and I also believe in personal responsibility. I always want to be able to fully trust my team members. That doesn’t mean I won’t follow up and make sure things are getting done, but people thrive so much more when they are trusted. No one likes being micromanaged. Often, if I find myself having to be too supervisory, it’s a sign that the person is struggling for another reason. It’s up to me to find the underlying cause and help fix it.
There’s no template or model for being the best leader because we’re all different. Of course, there are some principles to follow, but those need to be integrated with a leader’s personality. The most important thing, I would say, is understanding that leadership is about developing people and involving the team, not about getting more stripes on your uniform. I’ve seen wonderful colleagues struggle with leadership because they couldn’t let go of the notion that it was about their own career.
I believe in working as a team to achieve goals, and I also believe in personal responsibility.
Monika Gram Ritter
Leadership, like life, is about getting your priorities straight. An employee once said to me that it’s obvious that I’m ambitious and want us to deliver well, but that the team knows I also care about their well-being and our collective success. Actually, my daughter recently said something similar, too. “You always have a lot to do,” she said, “but it’s crystal clear that we are your main priority even when you work hard.” I’m very proud of that.
What are some of the key challenges you’re taking on right now?
When you’re on the L1 team, you have to find the right balance of representing and standing behind your own functional area and staying dedicated to solving cross-functional challenges for the company.
In general, taking a next step up in leadership requires taking up your space, and having the courage to challenge others. I’ve had to find ways to stand up for me and for my team—maybe in a more direct way that’s less natural to me, but without compromising who I am.
The HemoCue Marketing team has been through quite a lot of changes, but we’ve got a great team with people who have been here long and new colleagues that make a great addition to the team, and I believe we’re on the right track. As a leader, I’m working with my direct reports to take the marketing team to the next level and in a different direction. One major challenge has been pacing ourselves. We get requests coming from other departments, of course, and we need to remember that we can’t succeed if we’re trying to fulfill everyone’s wishes. I’m not afraid of making tough decisions when they need to be made, such as prioritizing or saying no if it means we are then delivering on the key priorities we committed to.
Overall, my key challenge is reinvigorating the team while simultaneously ensuring people feel involved and are part of the journey. We’ve been finding a balance, taking our work to a new level while not rocking the boat too much. I’m proud of how far we’ve come.
Leave a Reply