Winning in the Most Demanding Rooms

Jon Clifton:
[0:06] Today in Leading with Strengths, I am with one of the largest players in the healthcare industry, the chair and CEO of the Stryker Corporation. Kevin, it's great to be here with you today.

Kevin Lobo:
[0:18] Thank you for having me.

Jon Clifton:
[0:18] Kevin, as we're diving into strengths, can you talk a little bit about how you first learned about strengths and kind of what your strengths journey was?

Kevin Lobo:
[0:27] Well, when I joined Stryker 12 years ago, I realized that strengths was pervasive across the company. It had been in the culture for 20, 30 years, and I wanted to take the StrengthsFinder test right away. I was already familiar with Q12 because I'd used that engagement survey at a previous company, but I'd never done strengths training before in my life, and it was fantastic. I learned about my own strengths myself. I'd done a lot of other things in the past around self-analysis and different types of surveys, but strengths to me is the most powerful thing that I've done in my career.

Jon Clifton:
[0:58] So when you first took it, Individualization was your number one strength. You also have Learner in your top five, Achiever, Activator, and Positivity. When you first saw that collection of words, what was going through your mind?

Kevin Lobo:
[1:09] Well, I was surprised by Individualization. I just didn't understand what does that mean exactly. Because Achiever, Activator, I could see that Positivity. I could see that. Learner, after I read about it, I said, yes, absolutely. I'm always asking questions. I'm always curious. But that was the one that mystified me a little bit. So then I read through the descriptor of it. It became obvious that that absolutely is my top strength, learning to be able to relate to different types of people. As some people like more in person, I adapt my style to suit sort of how people behave versus having a militaristic approach to treating everybody in exactly the same way. Some people need to be in person. Some people are better on the phone. And I sort of adapt my style to the audience that I'm around. And I just do that sort of naturally without even thinking.

Jon Clifton:
[1:51] Now, after you had seen your top five, how did you think about your leadership differently? Did you have a coach that worked with you on this? Is it something that you just kind of picked up intuitively? Learners typically, when they get new information, they go as deep as they can on it. What was your experience with it?

Kevin Lobo:
[2:09] Well, for me, I thought about my team because not only did I do StrengthsFinder, we did a team blend. So that team blend was really fun because we got to see other people's strengths and see how the team sort of behaves together. And one of the things I quickly picked up upon was the Activator one, which is a strength but could also be a derailer in a CEO position, or even as that initially I was the head of orthopedics prior to being the CEO of Stryker, because Activators like to get a lot of things going. And if you get too many things going, frankly, it causes a bit of chaos in the organization. And it sort of reminded me when I was leading a previous organization, how people would try to tell me to slow down and not too many things and stay focused. And so I actually relied on my other teammates, to say listen you better slow me down sometimes. Or if I'm brainstorming or thinking out loud maybe it's better just to write it down instead of saying things until I have a thought that's really well formulated, because people will just grab onto things I say because of the position I'm in. And they'll just start launching initiatives and maybe that's not the best for the organization. So you have to watch out that your strength can actually turn against you if you're not careful.

Jon Clifton:
[3:16] As someone that leads with Individualization, I often wonder if because people with Individualization have this sort of inherent ability to understand the idiosyncrasies of every individual person. What did that mean to you when you actually saw the strengths of people that you knew so well? Did it sort of tell you, I kind of already knew that, now I have words to label these things? Or what was that process like?

Kevin Lobo:
[3:41] I would say yes, because Individualization is so high, I really understand people a little bit better than maybe others at first glance. But it enabled me to go deeper and enabled me to make sure that my behavior was consistently lining up because even because you know something doesn't mean you actually behave that way in a large team dynamic. When I'm dealing with people individually it's automatic, but it helped me with the team dynamic of making sure I would call out certain people who would who just not necessarily lean in as quickly or sort of the Activator tell them just sort of let  this other person talk. We'll get to you. Just sort of hold your horses a little bit. So it just helped me with team management more so than with the individual management, because that sort of happened automatically.

Jon Clifton:
[4:26] Now, strengths, as you mentioned, being such a part of the culture, it's in so many conversations throughout the company. I spoke to a few of your colleagues and said, even yesterday, strengths was a dominant part of the conversation that they were having with you. How is it that you accomplished that?

Kevin Lobo:
[4:44] Like I say, it started well before me a long time ago. I think it was Cy Johnson who initially first brought it, one of the large group presidents of Stryker within the MedSurg. But it spread throughout the whole company. It's a common language. And so when people, when you have a common language, it unifies people. It gets people talking. And it's very productive. And to me, it's the first time in my career where focusing on strengths is frankly a better use of your energy than trying to focus on people's weaknesses and fix people, so to speak. Which is kind of how leadership was taught when I first joined the workforce. It was like identify the weaknesses, someone's weaknesses will never be their strength. You can get better. You should be aware of your weaknesses, but you'll never be amazing at something that you're weak at. You could become sort of acceptable. You're never going to be great at it. But if you can lean into people's strengths, it's obviously a better use of your energy than spending time on weaknesses. So to me, once I learned about it, it became sort of obvious. I don't know why it wasn't taught 30 years ago so much.

Jon Clifton:
[5:44] Now, Individualization, your number one. What does that mean for a CEO to have Individualization number one? How do you use that on a day-to-day basis?

Kevin Lobo:
[5:52] Well what helps me a lot is if I walk into a manufacturing facility if I go to France or if I go to another country, I can relate to people pretty easily. And part of it's also my experiences where I've lived in four different countries, I've been in four different industries. And so it makes me approachable, and that I think as a CEO of a large company people being willing to come up to me and talk to me or send me emails or send me texts and not be worried about the level of my position in the organization. I think it's helpful to a culture of openness, of transparency. And so I lean into it. And I'm not afraid to walk around and talk to people and have them approach me. And sales meetings are great. I love that. I go to about 25 to 30 of those every January, February. It's a busy schedule. But being able to be with the sales force and have them know that we're there to support them and be able to be comfortable on the stage in front of 2,000 people, but equally comfortable standing at the bar and having a one-on-one conversation.

That strength has helped me be able to just relate to all kinds of every level of our employee and everywhere in the world. And I'm lucky to have that as strength. And I think they're all strengths. I always tell people, look, it's not a weakness finder. It's a strength finder. So whatever your top five are, leverage those strengths and use those strengths. It doesn't matter what they are. And in my case, it's Individualization. But I think it gives me a little bit of an advantage in respect of I like being open, transparent, having people voice their opinions. But by having that as a strength, it makes it easier for people to be able to speak up and not be worried about it or have different styles of dealing with different people or different organizations.

You're more flexible. So I don't have this dress code. Every division has their own dress code. So, when I'm going to visit endoscopy in San Jose, I call ahead and say, like, how should I dress? It's, you know, if you have Individualization, you're not thinking about, well, here's what the things should be. It's not a command and control mindset. I just don't have that mindset. And in a decentralized company, it fits very well, where each division has their own personality. The mission and values are consistent. The use of strength is consistent, but each division kind of has their own personality. If you're a bed and stretcher division versus a neurovascular division, you know, a, coiling business that saves people's lives that if the patient, if it doesn't work, the patient actually dies. So you have very different kinds of products and we allow that type of flexibility and personality for the different divisions.

Jon Clifton:
[8:23] If somebody had just taken strengths and they found that they also had Individualization as their number one, what advice would you have for them?

Kevin Lobo:
[8:32] I would say make sure you're around a lot of people. You know, if you have Individualization number one you like being with people. That you want a job that has a lot of interaction because you get energy from people and you give people energy if you have high Individualization. So that that would be, that's my interpretation. I don't know if you would agree with that for Gallup but I think I'm at my best when I'm out with people. Zoom makes it a little harder. You can still do it, but you need that sort of interaction with people to give you energy and to and really for you to give them energy, that's what I would say.

Jon Clifton:
[9:10] Learner is your number two.

Kevin Lobo:
[9:11] It is. I've worn out a lot of bosses with a lot of questions.

Jon Clifton:
[9:15] How many things are you learning at once?

Kevin Lobo:
[9:18] I'm just constantly curious. I'm a constantly curious learner. Even in business reviews where when I'm meeting with whatever division and going over their results, it's always about asking questions. And I think the more senior you get in an organization, the questions you ask are more important than the answers that you give. Because the leaders are the ones that should be making decisions, not I shouldn't be deciding for them or telling them what to do at this stage of an organization. So having Learner is great because I'll ask them questions, but they'll then take those questions and figure out what they want to do with it. I'm not there to tell them what to do or how to do it, just to sort of make sure their thinking is as complete as possible, that they're not missing something, that they're being fulsome in their thinking and not just rushing ahead to a conclusion.

But for me, it helps me be adaptable. I've gone to different countries, like I said, in different industries. And I can pick things up pretty quickly. And a lot of it's by asking questions. And I joke in the company that I use the I'm new phrase all the time. I've used it my whole career. So I'm new here. So please tell me about this or that. And when you say that, people will explain it to you. And they don't feel threatened because you're new. You're just trying to learn. And sometimes I say it, even though I want to test an idea, but I don't want the person to be defensive about it. So I just say, well, I'm new. And I remember my boss at one of my previous jobs said, why do you say you're new? You've been in this job for three years. You're not new anymore. I said, well, I've only been in the industry for about five years, and you've all been in the industry for 25 years. So I'm still sort of new. And so everyone laughed.

But being that Learner helps, I think, the entire group make sure that their thinking is complete and that sometimes somebody has an idea that they just weren't confident to throw on the table. And if they see me throwing ideas like that, then they say, okay, maybe I can, I shouldn't be afraid to ask a question or, because sometimes I'll ask a question and the answer is pretty obvious. And so they'll say the answer. I'm like, oh, okay, I should have known that. But I don't even worry about it. It just doesn't bother me. I don't worry about having the question look silly or something like that. We're all part of the same team trying to win. And so it's just part of who I am. And like I say, some of my early bosses luckily tolerated me asking them all these questions and it helps you build your judgment. For me, my business acumen, has developed, has accelerated earlier in my career because I used to ask a lot of questions. Because by asking questions, the answer to my question is, well, that's a bad idea because of XYZ. I said, okay, I just learned something. And if I hadn't asked the question, I wouldn't have learned that answer. Maybe it would have taken me two more years to realize why that wouldn't have worked, whereas I get the answer immediately. It just accelerates ...

Jon Clifton:
[12:05] So your learning is mainly sourced in asking great questions and continually asking.

Kevin Lobo:
[12:10] And reading. So I'm constantly reading. And when I'm out at dinner and I'm meeting a surgeon, I will ask them all kinds of questions. So I'm not there to – I'll tell them about our products if they – whatever questions they ask me. But I'm trying to solve their problems or understand their world. And so, yeah, it's rooted in asking questions and just being curious, having a curious mindset. So I never sort of looked at my job as just inside these four little walls of the job description. I would always get involved in other projects or different teams. I get invited to – I remember one of my bosses said, why are you going to a photo shoot? You're in finance. The marketing team invited me. And if I'm going to go to the photo shoot, I'm not just going to sit there. I'm going to ask questions. I'm going to be inquisitive. And so it's just been part of who I am.

Jon Clifton:
[12:54] And so do you feel ever like your learning is aimed at something or do you ever sort of unleash it and say, no, I'm going to yank myself outside even of the industry and go study something else to see if it inspires what we're doing here at work to inform the work that we're doing here at Stryker?

Kevin Lobo:
[13:11] Well, definitely, when I joined Stryker, I felt the company was high-performing, had really good values, had the strengths-based approach, but I felt it was very internally focused. It didn't have as much of an external view because most of the employees had grown from within, had had good success. So I absolutely tapped into my network of outside people.

One example is Larry Culp, who ran Danaher for a long time, is currently running GE. I reached out to Larry because I decided I wanted to get on to offense on acquisitions, to start using our very conservative balance sheet to buy companies. And we've purchased roughly 60 companies over the last 10 years. And prior to that, Stryker was not so acquisitive. But I reached out to Larry, spent time with him, had him come talk to our leadership team and explain when he was at Danaher how he did his acquisitions, how he did his integrations. So bringing an outside view inside the company is definitely something that I've pushed.

And even with my own team, having some sit on outside boards, having them join a hospital board, having them join outside groups of sort of within the industry and sometimes even locally, let's say in Bay Area. Join a group of leaders in the Bay Area or in Kalamazoo and learn from other industries. We should get best practice from anywhere. I'm always ready to do anything for the company to make it better, and I'll take ideas from anybody from anywhere that could work inside our company. And so that has definitely, you know, it's spread throughout the company now, this notion of let's make sure we're also looking outside, not necessarily just to copy people, but to see what are they doing that could be applicable to Stryker, to get inspiration from outside the organization.

Jon Clifton:
[14:53] Your Achiever is probably one of the things that creates a great deal of drive. How does that manifest itself as the CEO with Achiever?

Kevin Lobo:
[15:03] I mean, Achiever is one of the more common themes at Stryker. If you look at our mission statement, it says together with our customers, we are driven to make healthcare better. So we have a lot of people who are driven, but the way it manifests itself as a leader is let's be the best we can be. If we're going to do this business, let's not settle for being average or mediocre. Let's be the very best that we can possibly, the very best in the industry, the very best for our customers.

That's sort of the mindset. And what's interesting is when I looked at Achiever and Competition, they're sort of like sisters or brothers, you could say, of each other, but they're different. And a lot of times I would meet with salespeople and they would say, you're very competitive. How come Competition is not in your top five? And I thought about it and I said, I am competitive. I want to win. I want to be the best. But my short form for this, subtle difference between the two, is that let's say you're a golfer. And you normally shoot 80. And let's say you shoot 80 and I shoot 80. Shoot the same score. And we go out to play a match. And at the end of the match, I shot 85. You shot 86. So I win the match. The person with Competition is thrilled. Couldn't be happier. Everything is great. Because they won. The Achiever, I'm the Achiever person who has Competition somewhere in the middle, 15, somewhere in the middle of the StrengthsFinder. So am I happy that I won the match? Yes, I'm mildly happy. But I'm actually disappointed because I shot five shots worse than my normal score.

And so I'm more consumed with beating my best score than I am with beating the other person. So that's my, you know, you're doing this for a living. But that's my short form when people ask me. I sort of explain it that way. To say the Competition person doesn't care that they shot five scores, shots worse. They're just happy that they won. So Competition's a bit more of a zero-sum game type of approach where you want to win, whereas the Achiever just wants to be the best, which includes also outperforming Competition, but it's also raising your game to as high as you can.

Jon Clifton:
[17:08] How about every single day with Achiever? Achievers are obsessed with getting quick wins in terms of completing tasks. How does that work for you?

Kevin Lobo:
[17:19] Oh, I think that's changed over time. So when I was younger, absolutely. In my career, it would be you have a to-do list and a good day is when you knock all the items off the to-do list, regardless of the impact that you've had. And I just think as you grow in your career, you realize that, you know, just accomplishing a lot of small tasks doesn't necessarily mean you've had a great day. And so, I learned that really in the job I'm in right now, what I do each day, doing small tasks doesn't mean anything. It's really the key decisions that I'm making, the people that I'm spending time with to help inspire them and connect with them, setting the right cultural tone for the organization.

Doing things that are not necessarily simple, small tasks is what's required for the position. So I've had to adapt that mindset to say, I have to let other people lead. I have to let other people do those decisions or do those tasks. So it's sort of shifting from the player to the coach mode. It's different, right? So different things are required. So I've had to sort of just learn to be more patient because Achiever and Activator together, it's like you're naturally an impatient person. And so when the project teams would say it's going to take us this long to do something, I have this internal visceral reaction of there's no way it should take that long, but I have to sort of keep that inside my body and just sort of say, well, can you explain why and what are the gating items and could we do some things in parallel or what other types of things, what risk could be involved that we could take to speed it up and should we think about maybe taking those risks. So you have to change your whole way of approaching it, but it's self-regulation. But at the end of the day, I am driven to achieve the objectives.

So as I've moved up to the CEO, it's being very firm about where we're going, but being very flexible in how we get there and letting the team sort of decide and being more patient. I've had to learn to be more patient. And because if you rush in a large organization, you can create a lot of chaos. And I'd rather us, you know, change management's a big part of the job, but the change has to stick. And I've watched, and I've been part of organizations that race ahead too fast with changes. If they don't work, you have to go back. And then that just, it just really sets you back a long, long way. So it's better to be a little slower, a little bit more deliberative, persistent, but have the change stick so then you can just keep moving forward. I don't like the idea of two steps forward, one step back. I'd rather step one forward, step one forward, step one forward. And even if it takes a little bit longer, you know, sometimes going slow to go fast, I've had to learn that. But I had to modulate myself.

Jon Clifton:
[20:00] But on both of those, Achiever and Activator, was that a moment where you sort of had an epiphany? Was it somebody that coached you? Was it something that you had read? Because your description of Achiever is a very …

Kevin Lobo:
[20:14] That analogy is okay?

Jon Clifton:
[20:15] It's perfect.

Kevin Lobo:
[20:15] Okay, good.

Jon Clifton:
[20:16] Because, you know, as we often talk about the fact that we're identifying talents and then they mature into strengths. And one of the things about Achiever is the obsession to get these quick wins as much as possible and to really realize it in terms of a strength. It is to do exactly what you said. But how did you make that turn?

Kevin Lobo:
[20:34] I don't know. I just, you know, being in a lot of different environments, being around a lot of leaders, being a learner. I've watched, I've learned from people say, well, is there some one mentor you had that sort of, that you model, you role model your behavior? No, I don't have one mentor. I've had great bosses. I've had not so good bosses. And I've learned probably more from the not so good bosses than from the really good bosses. And I've tried to take the best practice from everybody that I've worked for and that I've worked with. And frankly, I learned a lot from my own team and just try to draw out what I think is going to be the most successful. So it's just sort of been an evolution over time.

I think Achiever, I was driven since I was young, right? I was the first person in my family to go to college. And the idea that I'd be the CEO of an American company as an immigrant from India in Canada is just hilarious. It's never in my parents' mindset, my own mindset. It's just unimaginable. But I had that internal motor, that internal drive that I knew I wanted to lead people. I knew I liked business. I knew certain things. And it's just sort of mushroomed.

The Activator one, there was an epiphany on that one. That one I didn't really realize. And it was when I was my first big job in medical devices back in about 2005, 2006, leading a very large organization with thousands of employees. And the company needed to make some changes. And I was racing ahead too fast. And the epiphany was the teams sort of came to me and said, like, we can't do all these initiatives. We just don't have the bandwidth. It's not going to work. And then I sort of realized, okay, I have to watch myself. Or I would say things in a meeting and all of a sudden there'd be a project team established to do something. I was just thinking out loud. I was just brainstorming. So it was my first big leadership job in a large organization where I realized I have got to slow this down. I've got to be careful. I've got to not think out loud as much. And it's because I saw the reaction I was having. It wasn't having a good effect on the organization. So I had to quickly course correct. And there was one of my team members who sort of told me that. And I obviously listened to what they said. I respected the person and decided, okay, I better watch myself. So that was an actual interaction that was occurring in a new job where I realized I have to modulate myself here.

Jon Clifton:
[22:54] But with the instinctive Activator, it's still to encourage people to move fast. So what is it? Is it just kind of some sort of internal governor that says pause? Is it metacognition? What is it that's saying that's my Activator? I have to hit pause here. But at the same time, meet that balance to say we still need to encourage people in a very positive way to keep moving.

Kevin Lobo:
[23:16] Yeah. So I tell my team to regulate me. So my team is aware that it's one of my strengths. So I tell them, I'm going too fast. You have to slow me down. Just remind me. And then the whole speaking out loud thing, that's a cue I have. So I always have a pencil and a paper when I'm in a review, and I remind myself, before you speak, write it down. And as you're writing it down, then decide, okay, is it time to now speak? Or should I just leave it on the paper? Because it's just an idea, and maybe we'll get to it another time. So it's a self ... I have little tricks that I use to modulate myself. It's developed over time.

Jon Clifton:
[23:57] Achievers one of the things about the go go go feeling that they have is that they often can be susceptible to burning out because they can never stop. In fact Arianna Huffington, she has Achiever in her top five, and she's even written a book about it because she went so intensely I think it was her Achiever that drove her that she burned out. How do you prevent against that and also how do you prevent against it even with your colleagues?

Kevin Lobo:
[24:25] Right. It's a great question. I would say that early in my career, I had a boss that came to me and said, like, you don't want to be like me when you're 40. I was 26 at the time. And he was a very senior person. I said, what are you talking about? Like, you're the, this is the kind of job I want to have when I'm your age and you're so admired and respected. And he says, yeah, I watch you and I see a lot of me in you. And he said, do you think I should be there on the executive team of the company? I said, of course, you're smarter than everybody here. Everybody knows that. So why do you think I'm not? And I sort of paused and said, never thought about that. Why aren't you a vice president? Why are you a director? You actually have more talent than a lot of vice presidents, so why aren't you? And then he said, look at me. He said, I'm a mess. He said, look at my office. Look at my car. Look at the way I'm dressed. Look at the, like, I'm a stressful wreck. I don't have balance in my life. And people see that. And they worry just because I have the intellectual ability to do jobs at a higher level. Can I handle what I'd be able to handle? Look at the executives. They're all calm. They don't get flustered. They're not yelling. They're not agitated. Their shirts are tucked in, they're poised, and I'm not. And this has happened because I haven't learned how to control myself and regulate myself and separate work.

I think about it all the time. He said, you better learn that. And that was powerful to come from somebody who I admired and respected. But as he was explaining what, because he had some tendencies that were bad in terms of how he managed, he was a bit autocratic yet. So there's some parts of what he did I didn't like. But when he explained that to me, it was kind of a shock. And I did a lot of self-reflection and I realized, okay, I'm not as balanced as I need to be. I need to learn how to turn things off. And so, you know, I've never, I don't schedule meetings on weekends. I don't, I'm careful about sending emails even to employees because they, you know, to ruin their Sunday. So I'll pile them all up in my inbox and blow them all out Monday morning. Because if they see something coming from me, even if they know me, it's going to ruin their soccer game or whatever they're there. Cause I like to work when I like to work. Sometimes Sunday morning is a nice time for me to work. But if I start sending notes to people, they're going to get distracted and it's going to ruin their weekend. If it's something urgent, that's a different story. But rarely is our thing is ... most things can wait till Monday.

Jon Clifton:
[26:52] But the balance for you because it's still ...

Kevin Lobo:
[26:54] Turning things on and off. Yeah. So that's ...

Jon Clifton:
[26:56] How do you do it?

Kevin Lobo:
[26:58] It's schedule management is the biggest thing. So you know making sure you don't schedule meetings too early, don't schedule meetings at night. When I travel making sure I book time to do workouts. When I was in Cincinnati a long time ago, my wife was home with kids and she didn't have a lot of adult discussion during the day. We would schedule lunches. Schedule lunches. So she'd get all dressed up, we'd go out to lunch. That one hour for her was magical and my phone was nowhere to be seen during that hour. She had a full, dedicated hour. The first thing I'd tell people is whatever notifications, buzzes, vibrations, turn them all off. Turn them all off. So when you're with somebody, you're with them 100%. And it can wait. Make sure your assistant or somebody knows where you are. If they need you, they can come and find you. And how often does that ever happen? It doesn't happen. Things are never that urgent. Because if you're always buzzing and distracted and you're looking at your phone when you're talking to somebody, that's bad manners. You're telling that person they're not that important.

And so those types of lots of little tips and tricks like that help me stay focused when I'm doing my work. And then when I'm not doing my work, just unplug completely and trust that your teams and other things will happen and get done. And so it's a work in process forever for me to manage my time and to make sure that I'm not going to get burnt out. But I take all my vacation. Europe cured me of that. So when I lived in Europe for five years, I remember I went on vacation for two weeks in a row because they have six weeks vacation or five weeks vacation, depending what country that you live in. And guess what? Their companies do fine. They don't fall apart, right, with all that vacation. But I remember I took a two-week vacation. This was a long time ago, so this was before texting. But there was email. And I remember after two weeks, I came back, I had like 30 emails. I was like, what? Now if I go to the restroom, I come back, I have 30 emails. But part of that is a sign of the times, but everybody else was on vacation. They all leave the whole month of August. So there's nobody else there. The only emails I got were from the Americans or somebody from China or something like that. And so I realized the company doesn't fall apart. And it was incredibly liberating. So I always take all my vacation. And I encourage all my staff to take all your vacation. Not taking your vacation is not a badge of honor. It's a sign that you can't manage your time effectively.

Jon Clifton:
[29:24] Your number five strength is Positivity. How does the CEO use Positivity? And what were you thinking the first time that you saw it, that your top five, when you first got the results? What did you make of that?

Kevin Lobo:
[29:36] I was not at all surprised that Positivity is in my top five. I always have this positive outlook on life. I've just naturally been that way. That even in the darkest times, there's always something positive that can come out of it. I wake up in the morning happy to start my day, and I look at things like the glass is always half full. That's just how I've always been, like that it's not something I learned, it's just I think I was just born with positivity. What's interesting is when I did that, the person from Gallup said to me, and sort of paused, I said, well, why are you saying, hmm? They said, well, we don't see Positivity as frequently in Stryker's top five. You see Achiever a lot more, that driven nature, but Positivity, not as much. We're kind of hard on ourselves at Stryker. But for me, it's great in leadership jobs, obviously, before I was CEO, and even now that I'm CEO, is motivating people. Being around positive people is motivating. And I don't have to work at it. It's just naturally how I am.

Even going through a pandemic, which was really hard, it's sort of giving people hope and letting them know that we can control what we can control. Here's what we're going to focus on. But here's what we're playing for and here's how we're going to win. And always keeping that positive. There's always a positive in any environment that you're in, as silver linings, as people call it. And so I just accentuate those things. And I think it helps the organization stay the course and realize that things are going to be all right. So it does give hope to an organization. And I've always, like I said, I've always been like that. Even though I was in chemicals for eight years and I had to lay off people in closed factories, I would be very honest with people.

The first question I had, first town hall, are there going to be layoffs? I said, have you seen our financial results? And they said, well, I said, don't you see all the cars in the parking lot are all leaving? Like, do you see things happening here? Let me show you. And I went to a flip chart and showed them how bad our results were. I said, so yes, 100% there are going to be layoffs. We have to get this negative, this loss to a break even. But we're going to treat people really fairly. You're going to be involved in the process. I haven't decided anything. And we're going to do this together as a team. And we are going to have a bright future for the people who are going to stay in this organization. And we're going to create a winning offense. But yes, there will be layoffs. We have to be honest with people. But it doesn't mean you still can't be positive about what the future will hold.

What I love about the StrengthsFinder is, and we haven't talked about this yet, is balconies and basements, which I think is amazing. Because the balconies is when your strengths are at their best. The basement is when your strengths can turn against you. Sort of talked about that with Activator, how you can sort of create chaos sometimes unintentionally. But the Positivity is you can't be Pollyanna, which is, I like the words Gallup uses. They're very blunt. And so you have to be realistic while being positive. And sometimes if you're positive all the time, people look at you like, well, it's just not realistic. So you have to balance that and make sure you're not, I don't over-rotate. But I think it's really been an advantage to have that as a strength to keep the organization in a good frame of mind. I do quarterly town hall meetings, and I show what's going well, what's not going well. But the tone is always very positive, and it helps that we have a high-performing company, right?

Jon Clifton:
[33:02] In the Gallup literature, one of the lines that we have is actually that people with Positivity hate people who are negative. Or at least it says hate negative interactions. When you do town halls, there can be a lot of negative things that are brought up from real employee concerns. How do you balance that when you're hearing oftentimes a lot of what's wrong with an organization, balancing it with your Positivity?

Kevin Lobo:
[33:31] Yeah, well, and certainly at every one of these town halls, I always take questions and answers. And that could be a sales meeting. That could be. So every time I speak to our organization, Q&A is part of it. And sometimes you're right, I do get challenged about things that are broken or things that are not as good as they should be, or we have supply chain challenges that last year was a classic example of that, where we couldn't get electronics for a lot of our products. And so to me, every time I get a question like that, that you could call it a negative question, underlying every frustration or underlying every negative question is an opportunity.

And so I listen to make sure that person is heard. In some cases if I don't know about something I'd say well thank you for raising that I'm not aware of that issue I'm going to look into it and I'll get back to you. Or I'll say yes I'm aware of that and it's going to be painful for another six months but here are the things that we're doing. And at the end of this we're going to have maybe a dual source supply. And so for the future we're not going to let this we're going to learn from this situation, and we're going to be in better shape in the future, but here's our path forward. And so you can turn that into a positive by telling them what's going to happen, when is it going to happen, manage their expectations so that they don't focus and dwell on that negative and have that take them down. It's showing them when will it turn positive, even if it's not tomorrow. So you can't make promises you can't keep, but they want to know when things are going to get better.

And even if it's, they're willing to wait six months and manage that with their customer, but not knowing is the worst thing and feeling like, well, this is going to be terrible forever. And then you lose hope. So to me, you know, having those negative questions doesn't annoy me. I don't get, you know, do I, people who are always negative, does that grate on me? Sure it does. It grates on me. But, but I always listen to those people, and underneath that negativity are good ideas, typically, are real things we need to face into as an organization. So I'm not dismissive of people who have that negative bend. But I do worry about, if they're leading large teams, how that can manifest itself. Because if you're always like that, it can wear out a team. But I think a lot of good ideas come from people who have that critical, you can call it negative, but like I say, a lot of times there's productive thoughts that come from that.

Jon Clifton:
[35:57] But for a CEO, one of the most important things to do is also listening at scale. How do you do that?

Kevin Lobo:
[36:03] Listening at scale. Well, I think it's through my teams. So we stay very connected. We have weekly calls every Monday and we get together in person. And so the team will bring forward ideas and thoughts, and I send them questions all the time. When I read things that are happening in the market, I'll send them questions about, you know, is this a company we thought about buying? Or what do you think of this trend of procedures moving to the surgery center? And so it's not sort of long meetings that are, you know, smoke-filled rooms, long, drawn-out meetings. It's frequent bursts of little activity, of interactions. That's kind of how I listen at scale or sales reps sending me notes or going out into the field and talking to people. It's an accumulation of a lot of little, little things. And fortunately, I have a very good memory. So that helps. So that I can – it helps me connect the dots between different things. And so I don't have to restart and have people re-explain things to me multiple, multiple times because, you know, luckily, I just have a pretty good memory that if someone tells me something, it sort of – it'll stick with me.

Jon Clifton:
[37:10] Another one of the demands that Gallup has uncovered is the importance of good communication. And we've seen leaders tested everywhere, especially during the pandemic, on communicating. What strengths do you use to be a great communicator?

Kevin Lobo:
[37:25] Well, again, I've developed this over time. I've always been fairly good at written communication as well as oral communications. And simplification and repetition are the two things I think about. How do you make things simple? And repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. So if you look at our mission statement, it's 11 words. It's three ideas, but it's 11 words. And it's on every presentation I do since we launched it, internally, externally, with customers, employees, every presentation starts with the mission and the values. Four values, easy to remember. Again, a lot of people's companies' mission statements and vision statements are long paragraphs and nobody remembers them. I can go anywhere in the world at Stryker. I can go to India, I can go anywhere, and ask them what the mission statement is, and 90% of the time they'll get it right, every single word, because it's only 11 words. It's not hard to remember.

So I'm a big believer in simplifying communication and then being very repetitive with that communication. That repetition is a source of comfort for people. It reminds them what we're about. And so for the pandemic, we had three priorities that I talked about over and over and over again. We want to protect the safety of our employees. We want to serve our customers and we need to have financial discipline because we don't know how long this is going to last. Our revenue is not coming in because these procedures have stopped. But those three things, I said, I can still remember them, right? Obviously. But I said them every meeting all the way through the pandemic. And I obviously sat, talked with the teams and said, and we decided what those three were going to be. And we just keep repeating them. And so that's the trick I use is keep the language simple so that if you're in France or Germany or wherever you can understand the words. Don't use fancy words that are obscure for a global audience. Keep them simple and make sure that they're very repetitive. So that's what I do for communications. And it works, especially the larger the company gets.

Jon Clifton:
[39:18] Thank you for spending time with me today. Thank you for being a strengths-based leader. And thank you for leading an organization that are helping build on every single employee's strengths.

Kevin Lobo:
[39:28] Thank you for having me.

Jon Clifton:
[39:29] Thanks.

Transcript autogenerated using AI.