North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring, and as a leader, it's your job to deliver. But where do you focus? Where do you direct your time, your team, your budget, and your emotional energy?

We're learning this together on the North Star Leaders Podcast. In this podcast, I talk to purpose-driven leaders about the choices that they make to create audacious economic value while also realizing their distinctive purpose. I'm Lindsay Pedersen, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of the North Star Leaders Podcast.

Let's get to it. Today, I am so happy to be joined by Amanda DePalma. Amanda is head of global marketing for ultrasound at Siemens Healthineers.

Amanda, welcome to the show.

Amanda DePalma

Thanks, Lindsay. I'm glad to be here. Appreciate the invitation.

Lindsay Pedersen

Thanks for coming. To start us off, what is the most energizing part of your job that those of us on the outside might not have guessed?

Amanda DePalma

It's really the people. The most energizing part of what I get to do is travel and see the people on our teams and the customers that we work with. And I just, I so enjoy that environment when I can see the great people who work for our organization and who are really focused on developing solutions for our customers and then listening to our customers and their needs and collaborating with them on how we can work together to solve those needs and drive better patient outcomes.

Lindsay Pedersen

What is it about people and actually togetherness with people that creates energy like that, that has such a rewarding spark to it? Why is that?

Amanda DePalma

That's a great question. I mean, I think it's when people are how you get things done. I mean, you can have all the plans in the world, but I think having a culture in an organization and having people that you bring into the organization that meet that culture, when you come together, I just, I feel that you can get anything done with a team of people who are committed to trying to figure it out.

Lindsay Pedersen

There's like this sense of possibility.

Amanda DePalma

Yeah, yeah. None of this is easy, right? I think when you sign up to be in a role that's innovation oriented, of course, it's going to be hard.

But when you find people that want to try to figure it out, no matter how hard it is, I don't know, for me, that gives me good energy.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. And cross-functional collaboration comes up repeatedly when people describe your leadership. What is it about you specifically, like your secret to getting cross-functional teams, marketing, sales, R&D, clinical teams, to getting them really aligned, especially during hot moments during bringing something new to market?

Like, what do you bring?

Amanda DePalma

I think there's a couple things. I think one, I grew up doing every part of marketing. And when I think about marketing, I think about a continuum of strategy to portfolios management, to internal investment, external investment, product development, commercialization, working with sales to sell.

And so I think the fact that over the years, I've had the opportunity to sit in each one of those roles and understand what's required and work with my peers, you know, and other functions to get the work done. I kind of know what needs to happen. And I appreciate what needs to happen.

I also think, especially having now been in the industry for almost 30 years, I think as you get to know people and you build trust, and you really maybe have the experience of success, you probably if you've talked to a lot of people in med tech, you've heard about Guidant. And I think I learned how to do things at Guidant years back, and it was all about the team, right? We work together on everything.

We met regularly, we developed our plans together, we all had accountability for our portions, we met with customers together. And I think when you see how the different perspectives come into developing a new solution and commercializing that, the ups and downs, I guess, you just connect the dots and understand that it takes everyone in every different way of thinking to get something done.

Lindsay Pedersen

You think that people are more quick to trust you because they know you have been in their shoes at different parts of your career, you have sat where they sit.

Amanda DePalma

I hope so. I also think my leadership style is to not micromanage, it's to get the best people on the team. And, you know, I believe, so I grew up with a father whose motto was plan your work and work your plan.

And I believe if you develop that plan together as a team, then everyone understands what they need to do and you trust them to do it and you check in regularly, you're going to get a much better answer than if you try to micromanage it and control it. Because we've all got ways of thinking and you limit yourself, I think, if you don't expand your horizons to what other people are thinking and how they might come to developing a solution. And look, sometimes the answer is obvious to me and not as obvious to others, but I'm happy to have that conversation and teach and try to create an environment that people feel comfortable that, look, I have, I have high standards.

But if somebody is wanting to learn and wanting to deliver, then I love helping people figure that out.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. I know at some point you mentioned in something you wrote feeling alone as one of the few women on the marketing team early in your career. How did that experience shape your commitment to mentorship and diversity now?

Like, do you see kind of threads of that younger you coming up in the way that you now lead and manage?

Amanda DePalma

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I've never felt that I didn't have the opportunity, but I didn't always feel like I related to the people that I was working with. We all have our own style.

And I think some of that's very much to an individual and some of it though is gender related and getting feedback from folks on when you sit in a meeting that you need to say something in the first 30 seconds and demonstrate that you're in control of the meeting. And I would try to do that and it just didn't work for me. And so I think what I learned and then having taken, you know, over the years, multiple courses on communication and leadership and thinking styles, I think I've learned that the most important thing we can do is be authentic.

And certainly over the years, I did have to learn to be confident speaking up more. That's why I was hired, but do it in a way that works for me. And so as I have encountered folks and mentored and coached and led teams, I think helping people understand that there are different thinking styles and different behaviors and how do you bring that together to compliment each other and be authentic, but push yourself is important because I feel like if you try to make someone behave in a way that is not natural for them, they're going to burn out. It takes too much energy.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, it's surely an energy drain, like to say nothing for leaving their superpower behind and so on. The advice that you described is advice that I too got a lot early in my career kind of, it's that like lean forward and talk, have something to say, make sure that other people are being quiet so that you can talk and have the floor. And by the way, that wasn't merely from men co-workers, that was also from women who this was hard one wisdom that they learned.

And so it wasn't natural for me either. So I just, I really understand that and I get it that that's the environment that that's what the environment is going to celebrate. And it also, it leaves you feeling really tired and maybe a little empty and maybe just as importantly, like just kind of back to your comment about just all types and all types of energy and thinkers coming to the table, then we don't have that person whose style is to be more considered.

It's like having a more one-dimensional answer without that.

Amanda DePalma

Everybody's operating the same way you miss out on, I just think you miss out on different ways of thinking to get to an answer. I mean, I'm a synthesizer. So if I could actually sit and listen and connect the dots and kind of listen to what everyone's saying, I think I have the ability to take complex situations and boil them into easy, kind of more linear thought processes.

But if I'm talking and just trying to make a point versus listening, then I can't bring that to the team or, you know, the problem that I'm working on.

Lindsay Pedersen

Have you always known this about yourself being a synthesizer? Or is that something that you've realized later, more recently? It took me a little while, right?

Amanda DePalma

I think as you just kind of mature, as you go through the phases of your career, for me, I was pretty naive. My parents are both hard workers, but they weren't in business. So a lot of what I learned was on the job.

And, you know, when I started, there weren't many things online for us to learn, right? I mean, if you learned, you had to go to a course and learn on a physical campus, an actual place, people. Yes.

And so I think it just was a combination of getting experience, building my confidence, kind of listening and learning and then understanding and being okay with how I think and seeing that as an attribute versus I'm not like everyone else, or I don't speak as much as everyone else or, you know, but it took some time. I think it takes time to kind of grow into yourself.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. And hopefully people along the way who are seeing that in you and drawing it out and you and reinforcing that it's helpful.

Amanda DePalma

Yeah, I have been lucky in that I have had what I would call sponsors pretty consistently over the years. So, you know, there's coaching, mentoring, sponsoring, and I don't think I knew that distinction early on either. Yeah.

Lindsay Pedersen

Say more about that for listeners of mine who don't know that distinction.

Amanda DePalma

Okay. So I think, you know, coaching, if someone's working for you or you're working with them, you can always give them advice or thoughts and coach them like you would a sports team or an athlete to continue improving their performance. I think mentoring is an ongoing relationship, but it's mutual, but it's often needs to be owned, I think, by the mentee in terms of what they want to get out of the relationship versus sponsoring is, you know, someone actively taking a part in advancing your career.

And I think I was fortunate to have several individuals over the years who did that for me. I don't think I understood it at the time, but now I view it as my role to play those roles for other individuals along the way and not confuse them and help other people understand what we're committing to in our relationship and in advancing, you know, helping them to get to where they want to be in their career.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Those terms, I only learned those maybe five, six, seven years ago, pretty recently to, I think, before I would have conflated them and they have different values. So in nearly everything you've written about that I've read, you emphasize customer focused and patient focused.

And in the medical device world, you're often selling to hospitals, I imagine, clinicians rather than patients directly. So how do you keep that ultimate patient in mind at the center of a B2B marketing commerce exchange? How do you do that?

Amanda DePalma

I'd like to think it's natural for us in this business. It's probably not, as I say that out loud. But number one, it also depends on the kind of business that you're in.

I mean, as I've been in businesses that are more implantable devices, I think you've got to do work with clinicians and really talk about the outcomes that you're looking to solve. And why would they do this procedure over what they're currently doing? What is it that you're solving?

And it's generally around, you know, clinical outcomes. And so for that, for example, in the past, we had a device that had better outcomes in female patients. And so we did a series of her story is our story and highlighted some of the female patients who are treated with our device and told their story, because it does matter, right?

It does matter. Even if your device is 5% better in a female patient than the other alternatives, every female that needs this procedure deserves that 5% better. And so I think it mattered a lot to our team.

It mattered a lot, you know, sharing that stuff internally with the R&D teams, with the sales teams, with the clinicians where I think we have a shared commitment to our customers and what we're trying to do. It just makes it real. And I think for our teams, oftentimes, that's really important to share the human aspect of what we're doing, because, you know, you come in the office, you're working away on hard problems, and you're looking at where I am today, different images and different image quality or acquisitions that you're trying to get.

And I think just reminding people that it's a patient on the other side of that it's worth the extra diligence or redoing something, because we all know it could be us, it could be our child, it could be our parents, that's going to receive a scan with our system or a procedure under our guidance. So I think just trying to bring the face of the patient through what we do.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, well, and I hear you saying that's effective for customers, it's effective for teammates who might not be as close to that customer experience as you might be. And I also heard you use the word story, which is subtle, because it's so simple. And we tell stories all day every day, in our own heads to other people.

And yet, it's so powerful to come to a specific scenario of the specific person, not like women age 35 to 45, but Lisa, or, you know, whoever that person is, there's something different that happens, like, in my body, when I hear a story about Lisa than when I hear the same facts that are embedded in that story listed as facts.

Amanda DePalma

Absolutely. You know, you and I met through Deb Kilpatrick, who I had the pleasure of working with 25 years ago, or more, but also sit on the board of medtech women with and we have an annual meeting every September where we bring together 250, largely female, but industry leaders to talk about problems that we're looking to solve. And, you know, we highlight a specific topic, and we really curate the individuals that come in and help us understand how they've approached different problems.

But we start that meeting every year now for 15 years with a patient keynote. And every year, it's a little bit different. But we set the tone for the day with a story and a person that has been affected, good or bad, right through our healthcare system and through the treatments that many of us are trying to develop.

And I think, often, there's never a dry eye in the room. But it just, again, like we're all running like crazy, right? We've got work and kids or, you know, during COVID.

And I think just bringing it back to why we do what we do, it just gives you that extra energy to keep pushing and makes it real. And then, you know, the older we get, I think the more we see our family members in the hospital and just reminds you that what we do really matters.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, all of us want meaning in our lives and in our work. And it's not that there's not value in the facts, the abstract stuff. It's just that it's so powerful to hear a specific person, a specific human being in a healthcare environment, a person and their family, their loved ones are so vulnerable.

So those stories can be so rich and make people feel so seen. I love that. What are you really excited about right now that you're just psyched to tackle in the world of healthcare?

It could be in your current role or in the broader industry. What's really lighting you up right now?

Amanda DePalma

Okay, this is going to sound really trendy. But I'm fascinated by what's happening with AI right now. It's been a buzzword for so long.

And I think for so long, no one really knew what it was or how we could talk about it. Or what were we actually doing for our customers with AI, especially here at Siemens Healthineers. And I think I feel really fortunate that my background having been in the device world for a long time and now being in imaging for the last eight years.

I think the intersection of procedures, devices and imaging have come to a point where we can enable so many procedures and better outcomes. And when you look at no matter where I am in the world, talking to customers, it could be India, it could be Europe, it could be Asia, the US. Time and time again, when we talk to our customers about what their big challenges are right now, it's staffing shortages, they just don't have enough people to do the work and to see the patients.

It's huge patient backlogs, not being able to get patients through fast enough and get them through a diagnostic procedure to get them to the right treatment quickly. And with those staffing shortages, you have an influx of young and new clinicians who are still learning. And so they're there, but they're not going to get the same types of outcomes or results as an experienced individual.

And so what we're seeing with AI is being able to provide some consistency, shortening workflows so they can do the exams faster, aligning workflow to specific device procedures so that not just the best of the best can get a good outcome, but every clinician for the most part could get a similar outcome for that patient. Repeatability in exam times. And I mean, like I said, it sounds it's a real buzzword right now.

But when you can put something in the customers and you start to see AI help them and they start to see it is not going to take their job away, it is not a threat, it's actually going to make their lives easier and allow them to see more patients. It's been pretty fun. And that intersection, I think for me, devices and imaging is really interesting.

I think what we could do with that to just continue to treat more patients faster and better is very exciting to me.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's cool that it's like it's faster and better. It's like you don't have to. Yeah, you don't want that tradeoff, right?

You don't have to trade off when you get better. And then it's a win for the patient who gets a better experience, gets in there faster, gets it's a win.

Amanda DePalma

You know, around the globe, it could take months to get a diagnostic exam and then weeks to get the outcomes of that exam. Well, if let's say you have an issue with your heart valve, that patient can deteriorate pretty quickly. So if they're waiting to be treated, they're getting sicker and less and less likely to get the outcome that returns them to health.

So we can see them faster, treat them faster. It's better for them. And when you look at our health care system, ours or anywhere else, ultimately, it's better for the health care system because you're keeping that patient healthy and ideally preventing them from coming back for more expensive cost of care.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's really exciting. It's really cool. It's a cool moment.

I love that. Well, this has been such a great conversation. As we wrap up, I've got a few rapid fire questions, kind of one word answers, one word or two words ish.

Are you ready?

Amanda DePalma

I'm ready. Okay. Like I said, I'm a synthesizer, so we'll see how I do.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's okay. I'm not going to like hold you to that one word thing. Okay.

A book or TV show or podcast that you've recommended lately?

Amanda DePalma

Fourth Wing.

Lindsay Pedersen

Say that again.

Amanda DePalma

Fourth Wing. I just read it with my book club. It is a sci-fi book or fantasy book.

I do not read that genre, but we, it's a group of female executives and we read all different genres and I didn't expect to like it. And it was, we all read it faster than any other book.

It's like fantasy. It's dragons and things that I was like, okay, I'll read it. But that's really good.

Lindsay Pedersen

Wow. Okay.

Well, maybe that will be my entree. Okay. I'm just writing this down.

Okay. The best way to spend a Friday night?

Amanda DePalma

With my kids, if they'll have me and my family. They're around less and less, but I love family dinner night and just, I love to eat out. So I love to go to dinner with my family.

Lindsay Pedersen

My kids, if they'll have me. I love that. We're just like, yep.

Yep. What is your favorite way to work out?

Amanda DePalma

Early and intense.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. I like that. How do you like your morning coffee or tea?

Amanda DePalma

Just a little cream.

Lindsay Pedersen

In your coffee?

Amanda DePalma

In my coffee.

Yep. Cream. Pour over with a little cream.

Lindsay Pedersen

Pour over. And by cream, do you mean half and half or heavy cream?

Amanda DePalma

I think it's non-dairy creamer.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, okay. I am glad I asked.

Amanda DePalma

Oatly.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, sure, sure, sure. I know Oatly. Love that.

Okay. Coffee with Oatly. This has been so great.

Where can we send folks who want to learn more about you online or about what you're building with Siemens Healthineers?

Amanda DePalma

Yeah. Probably to LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and show largely what we're doing out with customers and my teams.

So I think it's a good place. I usually include enough hashtags that you can work your way to some of the products that we've got that we're working on for our customers.

Lindsay Pedersen

That's awesome. Thanks again, Amanda. Yeah.

Thanks.

Amanda DePalma

It was great to meet you.

Lindsay Pedersen

Thanks for listening to this episode of North Star Leaders. Make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing on your favorite podcast app. If you know of a North Star Leader whose insights would be valuable for this community, please message me on ironcladbrandstrategy.com.

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