Perry Payne - People First: How Leading with Compassion Became a Career Catalyst

On today’s episode of MedTech Snapshot, Perry’s answer takes us straight into the heart of a crisis—a natural disaster in Puerto Rico that forced a tough call between production and people. What followed was a leadership decision centered on clarity, compassion, and the kind of decision-making that sticks with you long after the crisis passes. 

Travis: 
Welcome back to the Med Tech Snapshot podcast, the one-question one-answer digest discussion surrounding all things medical device. 
Today we're covering an interesting topic with our guests where we asked them a surprise question, one in which they had no time to prepare for. That question is, share with us a breakthrough moment, a defining moment in your career, which when looking back on it, was the catalyst for where you are today. 
 I personally love this portion of the interview because it really leads us through a candid look under the proverbial hood of our guest in their career, along with the decisions that they made and how they got to where they are today. 
 All right, Perry, so I kind of lied to you here. We've got a third question. It's a little bit of a softball, but we'll have some fun with it. So can you share with us, you think back into your career, share with us a time that you can think about where it was just a pivotal moment. This is a breakthrough moment in your career. 
 And because of that singular moment, you were able to move your career exponentially forward or you, you had such a big learning moment from that career, it really caused you to pivot and that then produced XYZ afterwards. Any thoughts on that type of a moment? 
Perry: 
Yeah. So I'm going to go to a natural disaster. And we had a hurricane hit us in Puerto Rico at three manufacturing sites there.  
 I was responsible for one of the divisions from a supply chain perspective. We were working with the other groups. They have much larger business units than me, and they were talking about how fast they come back on the production. And the president came round to me to ask me what my strategy was to resume production. 
I said I'm not going to worry about production. I'm going to worry about the people first. I said what I said. Well, if the people are more worried about where they can get food for their child, diapers or drinking water, they're going to worry about that more than they'll worry about making product for us. 
Let's look after them so they can look after their family. Then they can come back and make product for us. And then I can tell you when we're going to get back in production. How about that? 
 And the president went, 'OK, we're, we're not doing what you guys just said. We're going to do what Perry said we're going to do Perry's plan.' 
 I said, well, it wasn't, it wasn't the plan. It's just an idea. But that's what we ended up doing. We focused on helping the people generate as batteries, you know, baby food, ramen. That's what we started shipping instead of components and parts and trying to get people to come back to the factory. 

If you don't have a roof on your house, you're more worried about that than you are making product for us. And, and that was a turning point in my career. I think, you know, I, I was elevated to a global status after that. 

And it wasn't because of that. I, I didn't do it to, to get that. I want to do the right thing for the people anyway. And I received a corporate chairman awards and all that kind of stuff came with it. But that was all, not the intent. It was just a byproduct of thinking about the people, and thinking about the real priority, right? 

We took in meetings all the time about having a great environment and doing great things for our people. And the money really comes down to it. We start thinking about profit first. So no, I think if you always think patience, and then people, and then the profits--in that order, then you usually make good decisions. 

Travis: 
And I, you know, I've heard it put similarly: if you put your people first, your people will then treat your customers, whoever your customer is, right, whether it's the patient or the OEM for that matter, right, They will do the right things. 

Perry:
100%. The reason I put patients in first is from my, my phase of leading quality and customer service is that the patient can't do anything to protect themselves. If you're in the pharmaceuticals, for example, they have to rely on you. There's nothing they can do to verify whether the thing safe and has efficacy. That's all down on you. 

So they are completely at your disposal with trust, never met you, but they have to trust you. Any implantable device, the same thing, right? They have to trust you implicitly so they can't defend themselves from any error you make. 

That's all. It's in their body before anything happens. So that's why I put a patient there, not a customer, but a patient before the people because they are defenseless people we can do things with. So that's why. I thought this out on a plane--with a bourbon. You know, the best player. But yeah. Patience. People.