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It’s a good number, better than average. What makes Medtronic’s number higher, in terms of getting women into executive roles?
LP:
At Medtronic we closely follow our Mission. If you’ve heard our CEO, Omar Ishrak, I’m sure he mentioned the Mission at Medtronic, the aspirational model we follow. Tenet 5 of the Mission says that we recognize the personal worth of all employees by providing advancement opportunities to share in the company’s success. This helps us make decisions to be sure women and all employees have the same advancement opportunities.
How is the Medtronic culture different from other medical device companies? Can you give me an example?
LP:
One example is a program we call Careers 2.0. It’s part of our Women in Science and Engineering initiative. Omar wants to be sure that women in science and engineering have great career opportunities. Careers 2.0 addresses one of the barriers we identified for women in medtech. It offers internships to female engineers who have temporarily left the workforce and are now ready to return. As you’re aware, there’s a time in a woman’s career when they may choose to take time off—for family, for childbearing, for other reasons. The women in our Careers 2.0 program will have a chance to refresh their technical skills, to participate in professional development, and take advantage of mentoring opportunities while they’re looking for a permanent position within the company. We’ve just started, so I don’t have any results to share yet. The pilot is up and running and we are confident that this will give women an entry point back into the medical device workplace that they may not currently have.
Another example is our women’s network—it’s our largest employee resource group at Medtronic with more than 8000 members across 25 country hubs. The network brings women together to give them the tools, techniques, and networking opportunities they need to achieve their personal level of success.
Tell me about mentoring programs at Medtronic. Are they formally or informally managed, structured, etc.?
LP:
I have a strong and open commitment to mentoring because that is one of the most important examples I can share with women in leadership positions. We need to be a voice and a mentor for each other. I feel that it’s my responsibility to reach down and actively pull up women into the leadership roles. When I started my career almost 30 years ago at Abbott, I was fortunate to have sponsors who looked out for me—who paid attention to my career and encouraged me to get to the next level. Someone helped me, and I feel it’s my responsibility to help others. I also feel that women in leadership positions need to influence the organization’s decisions—to have the courage to speak up and promote the idea of women in leadership. We feel that the environment Medtronic is creating for each woman to achieve their personal level of success explains in part why we have high numbers of women in leadership positions. That’s not to say we are where we need to be—we know there’s room for improvement and we continue to work on that.
Tell me about diversity at Medtronic.
LP:
We think leadership must set the tone at the top. Omar has sent a clear message to his executive committee that we must improve diversity in our organization and be able to understand and describe why it’s important to have a diverse team. Studies have shown that having a diverse team will provide better business solutions due to the different set of experiences, background, and opinions of the people sitting at the table. We also recognize we must work with middle management to increase the number of women preparing for leadership positions.
Medtronic has just kicked off a resource group called
Men Advocating Change
. It was started by a small group of men who recognized the value of a diverse team that includes women. It is a very active resource group, especially in our sales organization. We think that these types of groups create opportunities for building important skills and empowerment in the organization.
