Successful Top to Bottom Strategy Featuring Luis Morales, VP Global Ops & IT

Medtech Snapshot episode #122: Successful Strategy Top to Bottom

Shockwave Medical VP of Global Operations & IT Luis Morales walks us through how companies can ensure their organizations strategy is successfully shared throughout the entire organization from production employees through to Excom. ​

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Read the Interview:
​Welcome back to another MedTech Snapshot, the one question, one answer, highly digests medical device podcast. With me today is the global vice president of operations and IT, Luis Morales, Luis, glad to have you on. Travis, it's an honor to be here, looking forward to our discussion today.

All right, Luis, now we're talking about strategy and how you really drill that strategy down all the way through all the layers. So can you kind of walk us through what are some strategies you've used in the past where, you know, in a large company, how do you ensure the execution of that strategy is getting through all the layers of the organization? You know, call it from EXCOM all the way down to our floor operators. Yeah, this is this is a topic that I'm very passionate about.

And I think I spent a lot of my time as a leader making sure that I'm thinking about the right strategy and how to convey that to the organization. But it really starts with having a strong vision. Right.

And that vision has to be something that is easy to understand. You know, an example today for for global operations and IT and shockwave, our vision is that we we will and we amplify the lives of millions of patients by fostering a premier global workplace that sparks innovation. Right.

And so there's three elements to that vision. Right. Amplifying the lives of millions of patients.

We acknowledge that last year we impacted almost three hundred thousand patients with our technologies. And but we're very clear that by twenty twenty eight, our goal is to impact double the amount of patients. Right.

That we there's six hundred thousand lives across the world that will be impacted by by our technologies. And so that serves as a grounding sense of purpose for the organization. Right.

The power around fostering a premier global workplace. It's an acknowledgement that our greatest asset is our people. You know, if you have the right people in the organization, you will be successful.

And that sparks innovation that that's all about, you know, the the fact at a very high level that that we're committed to delivering to new technologies every year as an organization, as a business. But it also talks about that. You know, we understand that what what got us here won't get us there.

And so we have to invest in innovation and simplifying our processes, simplifying our procedures, simplifying our structure right to enable that that innovation. So it starts with that clear vision. And then you you tie strategic initiatives to to enable the organization to move in that direction of that vision.

And and I think what one of the things that that's most powerful is defining at the highest level of the business, what are those top few strategies that would enable success? And that becomes part of everyone's performance objectives. And we win or not as a team. You know, it's not individual goals.

These are team goals, functions, share these goals. And you you you recognize the organization's performance based on those collective goals. And so if you do that, then now you have a clear sense of purpose.

You have an aligned organization. The last piece, the third pillar of that stool is you have to establish a governance structure, right, that connects the different levels of organization that allows for pathways of escalations when when things are not going going right. And ultimately, you know, it enables leaders to understand when the functional teams need help.

And that's our job, right? It's our job to support these teams, to enable the teams to drive success, not the other way around. Right. These are not governance structures that, you know, one of the biggest pitfalls is you establish these structures and it's about reporting and status.

Right. That's not what it's about. It is about understanding, you know, what are the risks, what are the problems that the organizations are struggling with so we can lean in and support our teams to drive success.

And I think that's that's how you enable alignment across all levels of the organization and you enable high performing teams. You had talked a moment ago about that strategy piece and how do you communicate that strategy down through the structures. And one of the things that I've seen, and I'll candidly admit I've fallen victim to myself, is it's kind of this idea of if you're something for everything, you're something of nothing.

Right. You know, so really making sure that that strategy or as we talked about in the past conversation, those KPIs are really aligned so that way everybody knows what the marching orders are. Right.

Yep. 100 percent. And those KPIs, right, they will evolve.

Right. And, you know, one interesting conversation that we get into in the operations world is inventory. Right.

And we all want to reduce inventory that drives cash flow, et cetera. Right. But but that's not one size fits all right.

I've been in businesses that are very mature where that's an opportunity. And that's something we should be working on. And I've been in business where we're growing double digits.

And that's not the focus. The focus is serving, you know, the growth of the business, getting product to the right at the right time, the right place on time. And so inventories may not be the focus there.

Right. And so you have to adopt and make sure that you're not falling on one size fits all strategy here with KPIs.

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