Tag: Sweden

How Structure and Transparency Help Johan Gärdsmark Lead HemoCue´s Firmware Team

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.

Interested in joining our team? Check out open roles across Danaher or join our talent community today.

November 9, 2023
How Cytiva’s Fast Trak Team is Making a Difference

In an industry driven by scientific breakthroughs and new drug discoveries, Anne-Cécile Potmans and her Fast Trak team are helping Cytiva customers who manufacture life-saving drugs make their processes better and faster. Below, Anne-Cécile reflects on what brought her to Danaher, explains some of the exciting projects Fast Trak is tackling, and shares what she does to encourage creativity on the team.

What do you do at Cytiva?

I’m the general manager for the Fast Trak organization within Cytiva, an operating company that’s part of Danaher’s Life Sciences platform. Cytiva supports customers who research and manufacture pharmaceuticals, and Fast Trak’s role in that work is threefold. We offer training and education to help our customers upgrade their bioprocessing skills and processes, we optimize their processes to address any challenges they’re facing with drug process development, and we handle what’s called “bridge manufacturing,” producing materials for use in clinical trials. The therapies our customers are creating will save lives, so our goal is to help get them to the market as quickly and safely as possible.

Tell us about your background and what brought you to this role.

I’m an engineer by training, and I started my career as a management consultant in France, working for companies in the biopharma and biotech space. After six years there, my husband and I decided to move to Sweden—my husband is half-Swedish—thinking we’d just try it out. But we’ve been here for 10 years now.

My work is definitely a reason we’ve stayed; so is Scandinavian culture, which I really respect for equally valuing men and women—both at home and at work. When we moved, I joined GE’s Life Sciences division, which is now Cytiva, and I’ve had many opportunities over the years to take on more responsibility and build new skills. Most recently, I was part of a four-year leadership accelerator at GE similar to Danaher’s General Management Development Program, which taught me a lot not just about leading a team, but about the companies we work with.

I took the Fast Trak GM role after my last rotation in that program, about a year ago now, and then continued in the role once we officially joined Danaher and became Cytiva.

I think we were all excited leading up to the acquisition, but it’s still been incredible to see everything this team has accomplished in just a few months—especially in the midst of a global pandemic. We’re simultaneously launching new products, supporting COVID-19 research, and completely rebranding the company. I don’t know of many companies that could produce such results under these circumstances, but we are fortunate to have some really amazing people at Cytiva.

Innovation is a big part of your work. What enables it?

Two things: collaboration and culture. Sharing ideas between teams is critical to what we do, because even getting to the same outcome will take much longer if we’re working in silos. Fast Trak is a global organization—we have locations in China, the US, EMEA, India, and Korea—so we hold regular technical meetings with associates from each site to make sure we’re learning from each other by sharing what’s working and the challenges we’re facing. We also collaborate across functions, so commercial, product management and R&D are all working together to improve our customers’ products and processes.

Fibro chromatography, a new technology Cytiva is developing, is a recent example. It combines high capacity with high flow rates, which substantially reduces purification times in research and product development, and provides a single-use solution for manufacturers. Our EMEA organization took the lead, driving the analytical work and coordinating efforts, while our team in Korea made new monoclonal antibodies for each center to test. And while R&D developed the new technology, Fast Trak is developing a service to help our customers evaluate and implement this powerful tool.

These advancements are possible thanks to the synergy between teams, as well as the constant support of Research and Development and Product Management.

They’re also due to the culture of innovation we’re creating. To me, that’s about making sure team members feel comfortable taking risks. Of course, there are situations where we want to minimize risk entirely—but if you want to do something new, accepting the possibility of failure is part of the job. It’s when we take risks that we make the most important discoveries.

What do you do to encourage a culture where people feel safe to take risks?

Part of it is the nature of our work. When customers come to us, it’s because they have a problem they haven’t been able to solve on their own—so we know we aren’t going to make much progress if we don’t use our expertise and get creative. And everyone on the team likes a challenge; that’s why we’re here in the first place.

I think it’s also about communication and making sure we celebrate risk-taking. Fast Trak has quarterly awards for team spirit and for execution, but also for innovation. We recognize lessons learned as valuable in and of themselves because they all contribute to the eventual solution.

The company culture supports that mindset, too. For example, there’s a Cytiva program called Innovation Accelerator where employees can pitch creative ideas around a specific theme—the first one was sustainability. And it’s not a theoretical exercise; you have to explain what you’d need in terms of funding and people as part of your pitch, and the ideas that are selected get support. There are six projects in progress so far, and I’m excited to see not only what they accomplish, but how their example encourages even more innovation. It’s a great way to ensure that good ideas get heard and that everyone knows they can make a difference.

What else are you excited about in the months and years ahead?

I’m excited about learning more tools and processes in the Danaher Business System; I think the continuous improvement approach will be helpful in building efficiency both internally and for our customers. DBS can be daunting, but Danaher’s team has taken a smart approach, introducing us to it gradually so we can build our muscles and focus on the areas that are the highest priority.

Our work on innovative process development never ends, so I’m also looking forward to seeing what advanced technologies such as AI might mean for our work. Of course, most exciting of all is seeing the impact we’re having every day. Fast Trak’s work is a piece of the much larger puzzle. When we improve customers’ processes, they can make and distribute therapeutics that much sooner, and run their clinical trials that much more effectively. And that really does save lives.

Interested in joining Anne-Cécile and the rest of the Cytiva team? Check out open roles across Danaher or join our talent community today.

October 5, 2023
Jennifer Teodorsson on Leadership Priorities, Role Models, and Helping Her Team Grow

When Jennifer Teodorsson joined Cepheid in 2017, she was a program manager on a team of four, with each person handling one or two products at a time. Less than three years later, the team and assay portfolio had both more than tripled in size, and Jennifer took over as director of the team—just as COVID-19 hit and demand for the company’s tests exploded. Below, Jennifer reflects on leadership lessons she’s learned, explains how she decides where to focus in the face of rapid growth, and shares why she’s so excited about her team members’ futures—even if it means she has to find a new job.

First, what do you do at Cepheid?

I’m the director of program management for assay development, which means I lead program managers (PMs) who coordinate the launch of new tests. At Cepheid, a PM is sort of like a startup founder. From the moment the company decides to develop a product until the moment it’s released, PMs are working with a cross-functional team to understand what the market needs and what we can do technically, then navigating all the trade-offs along the way. You have to be well-rounded in a lot of different areas in order to manage that push-pull and keep things running smoothly.

At a lot of companies, a PM might just be handed a product that they run through the usual processes and systems, but here, there’s a lot more empowerment. It’s, “Here’s your team. Here are the needs and the information. Now make it your own.” That can be intimidating at first, because you’re making decisions that at your previous job, your manager probably made for you. But this is unlike any place I’ve been in terms of creating a safe environment to share your ideas. Our leaders aren’t micromanaging from the top down; they’re asking what we need and how they can help. That makes it so much easier for all of us to contribute to the overall strategy and vision.

What are your priorities as a leader?

I lead 12 program managers, each running one or two product development teams, so there’s no way I can dive deep into their day-to-day. I have some processes in place to check on hot topics and know who needs help when, but I focus much more on them as people—their mental health and their development goals. That means being open and transparent, and building our relationships to the point where we have the psychological safety to trust one another. We need straight talk, whether it’s me giving them feedback or them reaching out when they need support. I always tell people in one-on-ones that it’s okay to struggle. In fact, I expect it. Struggling combined with reflection is how we grow.

Another priority for me is that our program managers lean on each other and build a team environment. In a lot of organizations, PMs get siloed within the projects we lead. But we have so much to teach each other. One reason I strive for diversity within my team is that, for example, someone extroverted and results-driven can learn a lot from someone more introverted and inquisitive—and vice versa. Often, I’ll put two people with very different strengths on a project together. At first they might think it’s terrible, but by the end they’ll end up being great friends.

Tell us more about working with your team members on their development goals. How do you think about growing their careers?

It’s always a conversation. I think it’s so important to talk with someone and understand what their interests really are, because that’s different for everyone. You might want a people-management path, and there are multiple roles within that. Or you might want to go a specialist route and be a principal PM but not have direct reports. Regardless of the goal, it’s imperative that we come up with an action plan to get people the training and experience they need.

Career development is a big part of the Danaher culture, and that’s key—the company walks the walk of encouraging people to move within, or even between, operating companies. If I have a great associate on my team, I might wish they could stay forever. But if they’re interested in exploring another area, I’m still going to reach out to that manager to see if we can set up a rotation or otherwise help the employee pursue their goals. Having a succession plan in place is a good thing; we want one for every role at Danaher. That includes mine—if one of my team members wants this job, that’s great! I’ve had lots of development opportunities of my own over the years, and I don’t need to sit here forever. I want to help that person take over as soon as possible, and I’ll find something else to do.

What are some things you’ve learned at Cepheid?

One thing I’ve learned is how to be my authentic self. I’ve worked in pharma and med tech for most of my career. Coming from that space and being a woman in leadership—especially in a global environment—I had developed a certain approach. But it wasn’t really me, and I wasn’t happy. This is one of the reasons I feel so lucky to have Shibu Gangadharan, our VP of Strategic Development and Program Management, as a manager. I first got to know him during my interview process, and we realized we could really learn from each other. He’s driven and ambitious, but he’s also the most compassionate human being ever. He has such a big heart. Whether it’s engaging with Black Lives Matter or helping people get development opportunities or just making sure we’re all safe during COVID-19, he is so invested in his people. He was also humble enough to recognize that mentorship from other female leaders could help me in ways he couldn’t, so he connected me with Elsa Burgess, our Senior VP of Engineering; Rika Dutau, our VP and GM of Commercial Operations in EMEA; and my own direct manager Wendy Wong, VP of PMO. Having them as role models has really been transformative.

Another source of learning for me has been the Danaher Business System (DBS), which is like a shared culture across Cepheid and other Danaher operating companies—a set of tools and processes we all use to do our work. Now that I know DBS, I wonder how other companies live without it. It makes everything easier and more effective. I even use some of the frameworks, like Problem-Solving Process and Crucial Conversations, in my personal life! I am totally hooked.

Tell us about some of the challenges your team has faced recently.

Like any team—especially in the diagnostic space—a lot of our recent challenges have been related to the pandemic. There’s little capacity for clinical studies beyond COVID-19, which delays our other projects. And of course, there are all the challenges of life outside of work during this time; people’s kids are home from school, there are deaths in the family, people get sick. Other medical treatments have to wait because hospitals are full. Meanwhile, Cepheid is growing quickly—that’s been true for years now—and keeping up with onboarding new people and projects takes its toll.

Regardless of the challenge, though, I think what’s helped most is maintaining our culture. Someone who just came on board can’t know how to do everything from the get-go. But you can create an environment where that person feels comfortable reaching out to a colleague who is already very good at whatever it is they need to learn. We’re all in this together, and I have never been in a situation where I didn’t get the support I needed here. When everyone is open and humble enough to admit what we don’t know, it’s so much easier. I think that’s how we’ve been able to accomplish so much and keep things moving forward every week.

What’s next? Tell us what you’re thinking about right now.

I have a lot of ideas about how to move forward with everything we’ve learned from this time. How do you create a team environment when we’re not only global but increasingly remote and hybrid? I think we have a lot of new tools that can help us do our work better and more quickly. If we used avatars and VR, for example, how might that change the solutions we develop for patients? There are so many opportunities. And while time zone differences are tough, I love that I can talk with someone in South Africa about what’s happening there, or someone in the UK about a new NHS initiative.

Of course, it’s not just about technology. It’s the people behind the computers. When you move from a physical to a virtual environment, things like burnout can be more of an issue. So I’m thinking a lot about how to help my team build not just emotional intelligence, but emotional agility. Building soft skills is really the most interesting challenge. We do want our associates to be performers. But more than that, we want them to be good citizens of the company, and the world.

Interested in joining Jennifer and the rest of the Cepheid team? Check out open roles or join Danaher’s talent community today.

September 24, 2021