At Danaher, we are committed to advancing precision medicine through innovative diagnostic solutions and enabling healthcare providers to diagnose disease with unprecedented speed and accuracy. We foster innovation through collaboration across our businesses and cutting-edge technologies.
Hear from some of our top associates on why they love working at Danaher’s diagnostics companies and about the impact of their work on patient outcomes around the world.
After three and a half years in the pharma industry, Kajal Pradhan took a leap into diagnostics and has found the change fits well with her personal and professional goals. We chatted about her experiences so far and her vision of what’s to come.
I am a Territory Sales Representative based in Guwahati. I cover the entire northeast region of India, so I am on the move a lot! My daily responsibilities involve visiting our customers, providing them with scientific knowledge about our products, and showcasing how point-of-care solutions can enhance their clinical practices.
My job is all about building strong relationships with customers, delivering services, and visiting our channel partners, which are things I really enjoy.
Prior to joining HemoCue, I worked in the pharmaceutical sector in Guwahati. I had been considering a change for career growth, but I wasn’t very familiar with HemoCue initially. I spoke to some contacts in the diagnostics industry and found that HemoCue has a very good reputation. And during the interview process, I got a very positive impression of HemoCue and the team. And it’s only gotten better since I started!
Upon joining, I found a supportive working environment, with leaders who appreciate and motivate their team members. I really enjoy traveling, and since that is something I do quite a bit for my job, it’s very motivating. There are a lot of opportunities to do good, meaningful work here, and I see myself growing at HemoCue.
HemoCue’s work culture is different from the pharmaceutical industry, and I’ve learned a lot through this transition. There is a strong sense of respect in HemoCue, both between colleagues, but also from our customers. Our customers trust that we are going to guide them to the right solution and are very excited to hear about the new things we have brought to them.
I think that the supportive environment, where every team member is encouraged and appreciated, has been instrumental in my growth. Very soon after starting here, I was given the opportunity to present a story of my success installing HbA1c machines at a Town Hall meeting. That was a very proud moment, and very motivating.
The leadership team, including my reporting manager Suman Dasgupta, has been encouraging and has shown that gender does not determine opportunities for growth at HemoCue.
The company focuses on selling value rather than just the price, and this aligns with my personal values. I want to sell more than just a product, but rather something that I believe in and that will help our customers. That is what HemoCue does.
Also, I value the work culture at HemoCue, which is built on respect and appreciation. I have interacted with people at all levels in the company and everyone is very respectful and open. Additionally, the equal opportunities provided to all team members, regardless of gender or background, make me feel valued and supported.
HemoCue might not have been widely known in northeast India before, but it’s gaining recognition now. The company’s small, close-knit teams create a supportive and motivating atmosphere where everyone’s contributions are valued.
What sets it apart is the trust it has built with customers, as well as its commitment to providing equal opportunities to all employees. There are many female managers here. It is motivating to see, knowing that they were once in a position similar to mine and now they are managing a whole team! Everyone is treated the same, regardless of gender or race, and that is very refreshing!
I am looking forward to strengthening myself on a qualitative approach. My focus is to gather more knowledge every day so I can be ready when an opportunity with increased responsibility comes.
I’ve been fortunate to experience a supportive work environment at HemoCue. The respect, encouragement and equal opportunities provided here have made my journey enjoyable and promising. I look forward to continuing my career at HemoCue. In the future, I wish to lead a powerful team in sales and marketing!
Johan Gärdsmark, Manager of Firmware and Project Manager at HemoCue, strives for open communication when his team members face new challenges and steep learning curves. As they build new software and support HemoCue’s point-of-care blood diagnostics products, Johan’s perspective on teamwork and what success actually looks like comes from a surprising place: coaching his son’s volleyball team.
What is your role at HemoCue?
I’m the manager of our firmware team and a project manager here in Sweden. My team´s and my job is mostly about defining and designing features for new products. Another part of my role is to collaborate with my colleague in India, Shanti Pi, who leads the work with our cloud and application development.
The way I split my time varies. Depending on the situation, I may spend 20% of my time as a manager, 50% as a project manager and 30% on other activities, for example supporting people who need help.
How would you describe your leadership style?
As a software engineer, you have to be very structured and detail-focused. Because of my engineering background, I thrive in an action-oriented environment with clear decisions and responsibilities. I like when answers are black and white, but in reality, they are often in the grey zone. Nonetheless, they also need to be handled to drive action and decisions.
Transparency is important to me. I’m quite open with my team—as much as I can be—about plans and what’s happening. If someone is delayed, it’s never a problem to say, “This took much longer than we thought it would,” as long as they are vocal about it. It all comes down to keeping commitments, being completely transparent if there are problems, and communicating clearly and accurately.
Also, I’m very flexible about working hours. We have the privilege of working with software, and most of the time, it doesn’t really matter if you’re in the office or at home. If someone feels like they perform better at home, they are free to decide for themselves. On the other hand, it’s important to me that we have a good team atmosphere and I encourage the whole team to meet at least once a week.
As a coach to my son’s volleyball team, I see similarities between coaching that team and coaching team members here. It’s about team spirit, making everyone feel engaged and wanting to reach common goals together.
For example, we were at a volleyball tournament and we lost the bronze medal match. But I’m 100% sure everyone on the team was excited and had a great experience regardless. Even if the ultimate goal is to win, we can enjoy the challenge and celebrate our learnings which will make us stronger in the long run.
You touched on transparency. Can you speak more about how that comes into play on your team?
It can be seen in our daily work and how we collaborate. When we review each other’s code, there can be opposing opinions and conflicts, but I expect everyone to keep it at a professional level. It’s important to be open about defects. For example, if we identify a defect in software, I want my team to be open, not passing on problems to the next person. Obviously, it’s never good when we miss something, but we should celebrate the fact that we caught it before it reached the customer.
From a company perspective, my team members are viewed as experts in anything that has to do with software. That’s not always the case, but because we are small in numbers, we need to have a broad set of competencies rather than being specialized in one area. We must take on assignments that may require a big learning curve for us. For example, new technology platforms that may require a certain set of development tools, programming languages, architectures or design patterns.
Together, we’re getting started on that journey. We find a plan and learn from the experts. If someone is uncomfortable with an assignment because they feel like they lack the correct competence or experience and they’re open about that, then it becomes a discussion. That discussion might end up with me telling them I want to challenge them, and then I make sure to act as support throughout their journey.
What could someone new to HemoCue expect?
The first thing I noticed when I came to HemoCue was that everyone said “Hello” in the corridor, even though I didn’t know them. It’s a welcoming feeling. You have this closeness and access to the different departments. We take time to help each other because we have a common goal. It’s quite easy to get the bigger picture of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
We’re creating medical devices, so documentation and understanding the complete system are important. If you only want to code without really thinking about how it helps healthcare professionals, then HemoCue might not be the right company for you. Our focus is on the outcome and on stable, robust, reliable devices with a high focus on quality, so we’ll never do fast, progressive, weekly updates to our software.
What continues to draw you to HemoCue?
As I mentioned, we’re a small team, and at HemoCue that means we’re agile and flexible. That’s the advantage of being a small company. But that also means the priority can switch quite fast. You need to be willing to adapt and take ownership at work. If you’re willing to do that, it’s very engaging because then you have an opportunity to learn and grow.
I can honestly say that I never planned on staying at HemoCue for 12 years, but many factors have kept me here. I have been challenged, I have great colleagues and the atmosphere here overall has made me stay.
How could a new associate expect to grow professionally?
As soon as I joined, I became the expert at low-level development because I came with that background and there was no one else with those skills. I felt that I was responsible from the beginning. If someone joins who has expertise within a specific area that they want to develop in, they may soon become the expert with growing responsibilities.
Another great thing about working at HemoCue is that we can actually influence the customer’s experience of our new products. If you’re in an organization with thousands of people working on the product, you have a very, very small chance of doing that. For example, we’re developing a new product with a graphical user interface. Somebody on my team might say, “We should not use that icon; we should use this symbol instead.” And that feedback might be put to use straight away in the design process. You can really impact the design of the final product. That’s really, really cool.
What are you excited about?
I’m looking forward to further growing my team as software always seems to be on the critical path for every project. Also, to continue collaborating with Shanti and her team in India and see how we can grow together.
I’m also excited about our endless number of opportunities. We are a global company with several hundred thousand analyzers on the field in 130 countries, testing 400,000 patients per day. From a global health perspective, it’s mind-blowing to think about what we could do with that data.
But mostly, I’m looking forward to my team supporting the rest of the organization with new products.
If Shanti Pi’s colleagues at Danaher’s India Development Center (IDC) hadn’t encouraged her, she might never have applied for her role at HemoCue. More than two years later, she’s leading a team of engineers—and helping the IDC itself grow as well. Below, Shanti explains her day-to-day work, what’s hard about her job, and why she finds it all so rewarding.
There are two parts to my role. The first is as an engineering manager for standalone software solutions, including our HealthTrender Anemia product. When a health care provider inserts a blood sample into a HemoCue analyzer, it displays the results for them—and those results can also be transferred via Bluetooth to an application on a mobile device, where they can add demographic information. That data is then added to a central repository, so governments and NGOs can monitor and evaluate their screening programs at the population level.
My team is responsible for software deliverables from end to end. As a medical device company, we’re of course subject to rules and regulations, and we reach out to headquarters for guidance on that. But otherwise, we’re set up to be completely independent in planning, building, and deploying releases. It’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s exciting for us and it gives us lots of opportunities to learn.
I’m also the HemoCue site lead for the India Development Center here in Bangalore, which is an umbrella organization that’s home to teams from multiple Danaher operating companies. I help promote support and collaboration between OpCos. Sometimes, in terms of career growth—if one of our team members is interested in a certain role, for example, and there’s a Beckman Coulter associate at IDC currently in that job, I might connect the two of them. We also work together on technology and solutions, helping each other grow and expand. And we seek and provide help from other OpCos for participation in and facilitation of Kaizens, which are weeklong problem-solving workshops.
Health care has always been close to my heart—seeing how my day-to-day work affects people’s lives is really important to me. I started my career with Allscripts, which provides electronic health record systems, then moved to Siemens as a product analyst before joining Beckman in 2016 to work on cloud projects. Back then, the IDC was just getting started. I’ve been able to see the whole journey, from a single OpCo to now.
When this position with HemoCue initially opened up, I didn’t think I’d even apply. They were looking for someone to establish the company’s first R&D team outside of Sweden, for both software and hardware—software development of mobile, web, and cloud applications had been outsourced up until that point. I didn’t have any experience with hardware, and I’d never been a people manager. But the IDC leadership had faith in me, and they explained their top priority was finding someone who was transparent and trustworthy. They encouraged me to just apply and see what happened.
I remember telling my husband after the last round of interviews that I didn’t think I’d get the job—I felt that just getting to the point where I was interviewing with the president of the company was an achievement in itself. But they ended up offering me the role, and I jumped at it. Two years later, I’ve been able to handpick 12 team members, and we’re on track to add two more this year.
I’m extremely grateful the universe gave me Magnus Tunklev, who is such a supportive manager. From the start, I’ve always felt like he trusts me, and I can tell him about anything that is difficult or a pain point. He suggests possible solutions and helps me see the big picture. And—this was an eye-opener for me—he never forgets to ask how I’m actually feeling. It’s not just about me as a leader, but as a person.
He’s also made sure I’m plugged into the right meetings and connected with the right mentors, and everyone at both IDC and HemoCue has been so supportive. I’ve tried to carry that forward for my own team, as well. Each of us—including myself—starts out with a “buddy” from the company who’s in a similar role to our own; they help us not only learn the logistics of working at HemoCue but really immerse ourselves in the culture. It’s given us a foundation that makes day-to-day decisions much easier.
One challenge for me is balancing the HemoCue and IDC perspectives. We need to belong in both organizations, and that can sometimes be tricky. What works for our team in terms of working style or flexibility, for instance, might not work for another OpCo’s IDC team.
Another interesting challenge is identifying how we can best support the Hardware and Firmware teams in Sweden. Because we work remotely we’re somewhat limited in how we can contribute from IDC, but we’ve found creative ways to collaborate on new product development, sustainability and firmware projects. And we’re learning and getting better with each experience.
But the most interesting of all challenges is expanding HealthTrender—adding new features, rolling out to existing and new markets, improving connectivity, and extending HealthTrender to other solutions. We work closely with Marketing and Sales, and it’s hard to overstate the sense of accomplishment we all feel as key players in achieving something meaningful to human health and wellbeing.
Continuing to take our solution global. We started out building specifically for India, and that’s wonderful. When I talk with candidates, they’re thrilled about the idea of building for people in this country and contributing to the Indian government’s health missions, because so many of us have previously only worked on products for the U.S. or Europe. But it’s also exciting to expand. Last year, we took our solution global, moving into Mexico and Egypt, and in the coming year we’ll be adding a few other countries. Of course, each country comes with its own challenges in terms of languages, governance, and regulations on data privacy.
We’re also expanding our platforms later this year—we already have the web portal, which is written in Java, and the Android product, and we’ll soon have the opportunity to launch on iOS. We’re also exploring potential cross-OpCo collaborations, which is one of the benefits of the IDC. Is there something another company is doing that we can tap into at HemoCue, or a solution we can provide to them?
Finally, we’re thinking about expanding beyond HealthTrender to other software solutions. I really look forward to seeing the things we build today in the market tomorrow, helping those patients and providers, and I feel very fortunate that I’m able to be part of it.
Donald Mofokeng, Regional Sales Manager in South Africa, came to the HemoCue Sales team with a background in lab science and a drive to help people. He loves the daily challenges of leading a sales team and is motivated by knowing that working hard means more people will have access to HemoCue’s life-supporting technology in resource-poor settings. Read more about how Donald transformed from lab tech to award-winning salesperson in just two years.
I lead a team of five area sales managers who cover four provinces in South Africa. Basically, I oversee the team’s day-to-day sales activities and ensure that my team stays motivated. I help them remove roadblocks and sort out challenges that arise, and I make sure we use company time and resources to move us toward achieving our objectives. For instance, I frequently accompany area sales managers to crucial meetings with the customers to provide support. Or I might take action to assist the team to address any sales objective shortfall. Of course, all of this requires working collaboratively across functions. Of all my responsibilities, I most enjoy traveling to see different customers across the country.
In South Africa, we have a fair amount of public healthcare facilities catering to rural and underprivileged communities. Most people out in these areas don’t have the luxury of having a lab next to where they live. They sometimes need to choose between paying for transport to the clinic and buying food with the little money they have. I sleep well at night knowing that getting our point-of-care analyzers to these facilities is helping patients.
I’m a person who likes to try new things. I started out as a medical technologist in 2001, and then qualified as a hematology technologist and worked in a hematology laboratory. To diversify my knowledge, I moved to a clinical pathology laboratory, then a molecular laboratory.
I got to the point where I was pretty much doing everything a lab manager would do, and I felt I had hit a ceiling. My role included liaising with our suppliers, and that’s where my interests started to expand. I’ve always really liked taking care of patients, and I realized that I could continue to help people outside the laboratory by directly providing innovative solutions to healthcare facilities.
I was using HemoCue’s products in the lab, and the HemoCue representatives I worked with were very professional. They really cared about us as their customer, and they really cared about the patients, which made me think I’d like to eventually work for HemoCue someday. That was 10 years ago. Before joining HemoCue, the longest I had stayed with a certain company was six years. What has kept me here is the excitement of the new challenges that come every day.
I came to HemoCue with a strong medical device background from the lab, but I had zero experience in sales. Within two years, I was Area Sales Manager of the Year. I’m really proud of that. When I was hired, I made it my first priority to use every opportunity to learn as much as I could from my colleagues and from the company-offered courses so I’d be comfortable and confident when I went out to sell.
I also raised my hand and said, “I can do it” any time my manager wanted to delegate anything. And if I saw an opportunity to assist with something, I would go ahead and do it without being asked. Then I applied for the regional sales manager post because it would give me a team to work with. That was in 2019, and I haven’t looked back since. I feel fortunate to be part of Danaher because it means I’ll continue to have opportunities to learn and grow.
I like to collaborate and, luckily, in my job, I collaborate a lot. We move as a team, and as the team leader, I work hard to create a safe space where everyone is willing to speak their mind, share their ideas and challenges, and work toward solutions together. I always want to hear the thoughts of the people on my team before I start talking about what I think. Having open communication helps gain trust and buy-in, and it also encourages innovative ideas. I’m also always trying to learn more about the capabilities and potential of the people on my team because I want to find alignment between what they are good at and what the company needs and help nourish that.
I want to expand my impact. Though I’ve been with HemoCue for 10 years, I’m not comfortable doing only one thing for a very long time. I like being in a position where I’m able to pick up on potential opportunities for improving the company, and I want to be able to act on these ideas. For example, recently in South Africa, we’ve noticed an interesting trend where more professional nurses are acquiring clinics, and more medical laboratory technologists are starting to own labs. And we think this trend will continue. Because of this changing landscape, we are now talking to customers—nurses and technologists—that we’ve never spoken to before, and we are doing it in a very systematic way. This approach is in the infancy stage, but I know it’s going to grow and because we are on top of it, the company will grow too. That’s exciting.
I work as Marketing Manager for HemoCue India. It is quite a comprehensive role as there are multiple facets to it and it’s not limited to the strategic marketing plans, which form the core of the role. It also expands to handling communications, annual plans layout, fulfilling tender requirements, customer support, updating literature and so on, at a regional level. Connecting internally with the sales team and externally with the customers frequently helps me get the real-time market pulse. The sales team is the center of HemoCue, and they help with real-time and new information updates, which in turn helps us stay ahead of the curve.
Our systems appear very simple, but we have a complex customer segment. We have a hematology portfolio and a diabetic portfolio. It’s very broad and one must reinvent new opportunities every time. It’s not always a duplication. The anemia and diabetes markets are huge, and awareness is still at its nascent stage with a lot to be done across the world. Working with government bodies, understanding the common vision, and presenting HemoCue’s solutions have now become routine.
So, it’s interesting. It’s sometimes tough; it’s a big task, but I thoroughly enjoy it as I get to learn a lot each day.
What brought you to HemoCue?
Having completed my basic education in engineering, I joined the Medical Devices industry, firstly in servicing and then gradually moved into sales. As a freshly graduated engineer, I had ambitions to be part of inventing, modifying and redesigning instruments, machines, etc. as well as be a part of the change process. Although India is now developing into a reasonable R&D hub, back then the industry was mostly into promotion and maintenance.
I got opportunities to work with Fortune 500 companies, which helped me build my basic understanding of the market. I enjoyed those roles where I had the opportunity to travel to new places – meeting new and different personalities, providing them with solutions and helping them achieve excellence in their endeavors. However, I was mostly executing the strategies and providing real-time solutions.
I enrolled myself in an international MBA course in Boston, Massachusetts and when I came back home, I started working in the marketing domain.
When I started working in healthcare, I realized there’s immense potential to touch people’s lives directly and indirectly. I, as an individual, feel so much for other human beings irrespective of their status. With HemoCue, I thought I was actually making a difference in the lives of people and society at large. Compared to my past marketing stint with aesthetic healthcare, I feel that my current role adds direct value and more people benefit. Here I am at HemoCue, working for a real need in healthcare, solving someone’s problem. That really makes me feel proud to be associated with HemoCue.
In addition to helping people, what else keeps you at HemoCue?
What matters a lot is the culture, the people. HemoCue has an amazing culture, and the best part is you can be yourself. To work is one thing, right? You can get overwhelmed with work, which is perfectly fine. You’ll still learn to manage with the experience you gain. At HemoCue, we have a great set of teams driven by trust and respect toward each other, so that’s what keeps me here. I enjoy it and there’s absolute openness and freedom to be yourself here. I can vouch for this and with amazing leaders it makes it worth it.
There are a lot of people who have been here for a long time, so there is a good bond and trust among people, which is essential. Trust is the core that cannot be compromised. Respect for each other, for who you are, irrespective of the cadre or role is crucial. There are times when you agree and disagree on something, which is fine as long as you can justify why. There have been situations when an activity or an engagement has been proposed and I felt comfortable and candid enough to say, “I don’t see how this is going to help.”
My manager gives me the psychological safety to say “no,” which is very critical. If I’m just being pressured to execute, and I can’t do my work wholeheartedly, it is no fun whatsoever. Here, I have the freedom to speak my mind. If it’s rational and justifiable, it will be considered. There have been times when I was convinced my “no” should be reconsidered, and this was only possible through respectable constructive dialogues. And I would like to praise my manager, he’s extremely humble, reachable and has almost zero ego. There is no apprehension, there’s no fear. You feel very liberated. Being heard is important.
Here at HemoCue India, we are, to a great extent, contributing to the government’s vision of eradicating anemia. We’re touching lives by testing and addressing this area, which plays a big part. I feel good about what HemoCue is, directly and indirectly, able to add to people’s lives, and that makes me feel satisfied with being an HemoCue associate.
Does this tie into how you’re able to be comfortable as a woman on a leadership team that’s particularly male-dominant?
Definitely. I’ve never gotten those indications, or been made to feel I’m the only woman, or I’m the minority. I’ve never had that kind of incident. Since my background is in engineering, I’ve always been in the ratio of something like 60 boys and 4 girls in a classroom, so that’s been a standard for me. However, irrespective of gender, I think one has to see through the lens of capability rather than anything else.
There are still organizations that are very autocratic. HemoCue is certainly not. But we’re in an era when the days of total control are gone. Even parenting has changed. We’re not in an era when somebody else would decide things for us. There’s no hierarchical binding here at HemoCue. There are so many organizations out there that follow hierarchy and follow egos. But here it isn’t so. And it means there’s no micromanagement.
What excites you about the future?
The future looks bright and promising, there is lots to do and new opportunities to explore. There is a subtle responsibility for people who work in healthcare. If we can give them the right tools and support, they can change the direction of the industry, and the next generations of mankind will benefit.
At a personal level, I believe I can stand out as a leader globally as well. I look forward to higher responsibilities within or outside the region and, most importantly, I believe HemoCue-Danaher has the right approach and opportunities for their employees.
Sara Karlsson is a Project Manager in Value Analysis and Value Engineering, building a continuous improvement program from the ground up, helping HemoCue become more aligned and efficient in reaching its goals. Here, she discusses the importance of interdepartmental collaboration and how HemoCue is supporting her as a female leader in a traditionally male-dominated field.
In my last company, I had a role as a project manager within a group of people working with continuous improvement. HemoCue wanted those same discussions about continuous improvement and gave me the opportunity to create my own process in the organization. I liked the challenge of building something from the ground up.
Also, since I have small kids, HemoCue’s passion for employees’ families and private time appealed to me. I can work from home if I want to. I rarely do, because I like to be in the office, but if the kids get sick, then I can work from home and it’s not an issue. They respect your private life. I think that’s a winning concept.
I’ve worked in my position for 2 years now, but it’s changed a lot since I started. I was hired as a continuous improvement engineer and project manager. As time went by, we realized maybe we need more: a focused organization to work with continuous improvement. It’s not a one-person job. Today, I have a core team of seven people who put around 50% of their time into this area.
We take on continuous improvement projects, such as improving the overall equipment efficiency in manufacturing. We calculate different parameters like the amount of stop time and waste to get a score that tells us how efficient our processes are. We also look at where we have excessively high costs and try to reduce the fees, replace what we think is too expensive or improve something where we scrap a lot.
When I started, the different departments were isolated, not communicating enough with each other. One of the reasons for creating my role was that the leadership team wanted more cross-functional work. We’ve needed to create structures and regulatory meetings. So, my biggest impact has been saying, “We need alignment.”
Since my team consists of people who only work for me some of the time, it demands a lot of relationship-building, follow-ups, and time management. We have to create a balance between their work within and outside continuous improvement. That’s been the toughest challenge, to not put one role above the other or take away from their work in either role, but I think we’re starting to get there.
For the people who were already involved in continuous improvement last autumn, I don’t have to explain the value of what we’re doing. They buy it. But if I put together a new project team, we’ll need to take it from the beginning. I think it’s a mindset. In my department, it’s crucial that we are aligned with other functions because otherwise we’d have a lot of problems.
As an improvement leader, the downside is that I see all the issues. Even though I like a lot of our processes, I still see where we can do better. To someone else, it may seem as if I’m complaining, but that’s not my purpose. It’s just that I see room for improvement and it’s my job to say something.
Of course, there will always be people who think I’m a young woman coming in only to point out problems in processes that have worked for years. And to an extent that’s true. There were really good processes within R&D, and really good processes within Operations, but they weren’t talking to each other. Now that we’ve completed some projects, the majority of people in the company have seen the results. The reaction has been much more positive now than before. I think we’re earning trust in the process.
I knew it was going to be tough coming into a company to make changes and improvements, so I told HemoCue I needed to be supported.
The company set up coaching sessions for me with the Human Resources Senior Director, who is a woman. Every month, we talk about the challenges of being a woman and a leader. I think women worry, “When are they going to discover I’m not this good?” A man would never think like that. He would just be like, “I’m this good.” If I think, “OK, I don’t know how to tackle this conflict,” or if something makes me feel uncomfortable, I can talk to my coach. She doesn’t tell me what to do; she makes me think in other ways.
HemoCue also sent me to leadership development training last spring—we spent three days out in the woods. They want to help develop more women leaders. My coach has been very excited about it, and we’ve talked a lot about how I can use the different tools I learned. Not only how I can use the tools today, but how I can improve upon them.
First, I really want to develop within leadership and work with people. Of course, because I’m an engineer, I like the numbers, but I like to work with people.
Also, I have a vision that we develop continuous improvement, and that we have more than dotted lines. We’ll have a department working with it, maybe three or four product leads belonging to the group. We need to build an organization of more people actually doing improvements.
It was geography that first put point-of-care testing provider HemoCue on Maria Fagerberg’s radar, but it’s serving her fellow associates—and customers—that’s kept her there for 18 years and counting. Below, Maria describes what it’s been like to build her career as the company has grown, explains how she encourages members of her Regulatory Affairs (RA) and Quality Assurance (QA) team to say “no” when they need to and shares what she’s excited to see as her work and HemoCue continue to evolve.
I head up our Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance department, which is a team of 25 great people. On the regulatory side, we keep up to date on licensing and regulations in the countries where HemoCue devices are used, and on the quality side, we support product development all the way from design through to production, launch and customer feedback. I have four direct reports, each of whom manages their own team within RA and QA, and my main task is to make sure they have what they need. I want people to be able to approach their work in their own way—they can decide how they do what they do—but we meet one-on-one every week so I can support them if needed.
When I moved into this role that I have today a few years ago, I also joined HemoCue’s leadership team, and I’ve really enjoyed that collaboration. I get to interact with stakeholders all across the company, so we can make decisions together and keep our resources and energy moving in the same direction.
I’m a chemical engineer by training, but I always wanted to work in quality management—even during my time at university, that’s what interested me most. I joined HemoCue in 2004, and it was actually the location that got my attention at first; I grew up here in Ängelholm, and when the company I was working for in Copenhagen decided to move, I thought it was a good time to see what my options might be back home. I also knew people who worked at HemoCue, and they had nothing but positive things to say. So I picked up the phone and called, and they invited me to come interview.
I started in what was then a very small Quality department, and did try out almost every position there—I worked with corrective and preventive actions, complaints, Operations, R&D. After a few years, they asked if I would be interested in building a new regulatory function to run licensing globally. I didn’t have a lot of regulatory experience, but I said yes and grew that team to what we now have in place. I really enjoyed being part of its evolution—there was lots of learning by doing, which I like! I was in that role for 12 years, until I got this position.
They’ve all been experts at different areas within quality and regulatory. Some helped me think more about the big picture and take a high-level view. Others were experts in the requirements and helped me learn all the details. But beyond that, they’ve all had an impact on me as a people manager. When I was new to HemoCue, for example, I had one leader who really helped me believe in myself. She pushed me to look at what I could actually do, instead of focusing on what I didn’t know how to do yet. I started to think, “Well, why not?”
I had another leader who was really focused on talent management; she’d only been with the company a few weeks when she sat me down and asked when I wanted a role like hers. I did want it, but I didn’t think I could say that! She encouraged me to go for it, and she helped me get prepared for when that opportunity came. That’s something I try to do for my associates now—encourage them to articulate where they see themselves, now and in the future, and then coach them toward that and work together on a plan to make it happen. I see the leaders I manage working towards the same thing for their teams.
I think one of the advantages of being a smaller company is that we’re very collaborative. No matter what role you’re in, you’re close to everything. You have a sense of what’s going on and who’s working on what, and you know everyone, more or less. That makes it very easy to reach out.
We also try to get to know each other as people, not just colleagues—that’s especially important now that we’re hybrid, with some people working remotely. We have to dare to talk about the soft things, because we’re all humans and we all have feelings. Sharing them makes for better discussions and helps us learn. In one of our teams, for example, we do “temperature checks” twice a week where we check in on workload, support needed, and we send out regular surveys where people can share how they’re feeling. Then we discuss the results of those surveys as a team, and if we see a negative trend, we talk about how to solve it. BUT also, focus on what is working really well so that we ensure to sustain that.
This is something we’re working on as a leadership team, as well—we want to be very clear about what our overall priorities are, so we quickly can align and redirect if we need to set a lower-priority project aside and focus our attention elsewhere. Then we take that mindset back to our teams, so they can feel comfortable, too. Saying no is difficult for all of us; we think, “I can do a little more. I can manage.” You have to practice—and know each other well—before you can start to say, “I need help,” or “Actually, I don’t have the bandwidth for that right now.”
The difficult stuff is what’s really fun! One ongoing challenge is keeping up with regulations in 130 countries with a regulatory team of around 10 people and even though it is an extremely big and challenging task, the cooperation we have and the learnings we do are extremely motivating. Priorities are key—we have to know where the biggest and most important changes are happening. Building our network has also been helpful; colleagues in other Danaher operating companies can help us stay on top of what’s going on.
Another challenge that comes to mind is adapting to the EU’s new IVDR, or In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation. It’s a much more stringent requirements vs before, and has been a make-or-break factor for companies in our space. On the Regulatory team, we started preparing in 2015—getting involved in the industry groups that helped develop IVDR, and discussing it thoroughly with our colleagues inside HemoCue, so that everyone understood what it would mean for the company and how we together could succeed. From there, we worked to balance what was really needed with what was nice to have, and I think we’ve seen that strategy pay off; while some companies that didn’t manage the transition well needs to drop off, we’re still going strong.
The IVDR project is a good example of how RA and QA can play a key role in the business, and continuing that journey is what’s most interesting to me. I think there’s so much more to explore in terms of the ways we can add value—for HemoCue as a company, and ultimately for our customers. It’s one thing to be compliant, but how do we take that to the next level and for example build a truly world-class management system supporting all employees at HemoCue and our customers in the very best possible way?
We’ve already seen the benefit of having cross-functional collaboration start earlier in the development process; you never know when insight from RA will be critical. Now, the next step is what we’re thinking of as “quality made easy.” We do not want to add complexity, we want to talk with the rest of the company about how to make it seamless for them to ensure compliance. We’re working with them to understand what they do and how, and then asking, “How does that work for you? Would this change help?” The tools and processes of the Danaher Business System are really useful for those conversations, because it’s a shared language we can use to investigate why we do things the way we do, and see if there are opportunities to improve.
It’s a step-by-step process, and we know that our team can’t create quality on our own. It’s something we’ll do together, as a company. But we are seeing the connection now between doing RA and QA well and helping the business grow, and that’s exciting.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.