081: Seeking to Understand First, with Sandy Black

In this episode, I sit with Sandy Black who’s Vice President of North America Commercial Operations at LivaNova, a global medical technology company. Sandy's responsible for several departments within the commercial side of the organization including commercial data and analytics, sales incentives, commercial excellence and training, customer service contracts and pricing, as well as case management and clinical nurse education. Sandy shares her journey how solving problems in R&D led her to leading commercial teams.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Seek to understand, ask questions, and don’t make assumptions
• You can't make assumptions about teams just sitting in your office. You must get out there and connect with people
• Using questions during heated conversations can help deescalate situations
• It's OK to allow teams to fail especially when the decisions aren't business critical.  It can be a great learning experience for all
• When leading large projects, it's critical to have advocates and buy-in at all levels to not only support your mission, but to help with pull-through at the ground level