Radical Innovators #7 leading with adaptability: rethink talent in the digital age with Medtronic's Matt Walter.

Welcome to the Radical Innovator Series, powered by Ronstad. In each episode we will bring to you bold and insightful conversations with top HR leaders for major global organizations to inspire the talent leaders of tomorrow. Join our journey as we explore how these trailblazers are shaping the future of work, driving innovation, improving the lives of their people, and creating radical shifts in HR and talent strategy. I'm Frank Conjou, EVP of Human Capital Strategy, and Executive Partnerships at Ronstad Enterprise. In each episode I sit down with industry leaders who are redefining the world of talent in business. Today we're diving into one of the biggest challenges facing business, talent retention and an increasingly competitive and rapidly evolving market. As AI, digital health, and automation, reshape industries, companies must rethink how they attract and retain the best talent, and in healthcare technology where innovation and expertise are mission-critical, this challenge is even more pronounced. To help us unpack this, I'm thrilled to be joined by Matt Walter, C.A.T.R.O. of Metronik. Matt is at the forefront of shaping Metronik's workforce strategy, ensuring the company continues to attract top talent while fostering a strong, purpose-driven culture. With the career spanning multiple HR leadership roles with Metronik, Matt brings a unique perspective on how organizations evolve, adapt, and lead in times of transformation. Today we'll explore talent strategies, the future of HR and healthcare technology, and what it really takes to build a resilient, engaged workforce in the era of rapid change. Alright, Matt, great to see you. Today here with the C.A.T.R.O. of Metronik, I'm excited to have you on, Matt. Frank, great to see you as well, and I really appreciate the opportunity to join you. Yeah, it feels like it's too far in between. I feel like we had a great time seeing each other at the TED conference, and then out at the NHR or Gala, and now we're on here, so hopefully we'll see each other sooner again. That's right. No, always enjoy. We've always seen a fact some good events, so I get appreciate this opportunity in looking forward to chatting with you a little bit. Yeah, so the reason I was so excited to have you on is I think about all the conversations we've had in terms of what is modern-day HR, what does it take to be a real leader, and then the exciting things that you shared, not only when we were at the TED conference around what you're doing at Metronik, both as an organization, but the things that you're doing to lead change internally. So, a number of topics I wanted to try and squeeze in today, and hopefully we'll get to most of those. That's great. Looking forward to it. Before we really jump in, though, I think part of what the audience loves to get to hear is a bit of the personal story, and if I think about, you've been in HR for a while, and you've had an impressive career as an HR leader, but it's easy sometimes for us to take a look at your LinkedIn background and see the milestones. What is it, if you highlight a couple of things, what did it take you to get into the seat now? Yeah, great question, and I'm not sure which time we have, but you know, with the benefit of hindsight, sometimes you look back and reflect and say, "Wow, it's probably more lucky than good," but ultimately, you want to find the intersection between both. Look, I think early on, if I even go back to kind of the days of getting through college and sending ourselves up for a career, I'm not sure HR was really on the radar, frankly. I was like many college students didn't really know what I wanted to do. I explored a ton into business and finance, even almost measured in minor in Spanish through undergrad, but I kind of really fell in love with this intersection between, I guess, human behavior and human factors and fell into psychology really as kind of the underlying training ground for myself, and I grew up playing sports and involved in athletics and what I really wanted to be early on was, frankly, a sports psychologist. At the time, you were watching Tiger Woods and all these athletes and they'd get done with a swing and they'd go over to the side and they'd be talking to someone and most people said they're thinking, "Hey, that's their swing coach or their caddy," and ultimately was their sports psychologist, but I was just fascinated with the kind of mental preparedness that you could achieve and perform in such an experienced way if you were just honing the mental side and understanding that about your performance. And so anyway, I went down that path quickly realized that there wasn't a lot of exposure there and there wasn't really career pass bill, but then found business-like, right, organizational psychology and had a chance to get some exposure and super fortunate early in their career just to have a number of mentors and advocates that helped steer me and so started looking at what is human behavior in the workplace and studying that and that took me on a path. And then early in the professional career, it was really to me about talent and I was just again, fascinated with the opportunity to steer and help individuals and help people with their careers and their growth and developments and that was really, I think, the entry point early on for me. It's funny because almost every person I speak to didn't intend to be in this role and they found their way there. And if I think about some of the parallels in our background, there's a college major who switched to accounting and neither one of those or what I do today, but certainly help underpin some of the things that I do and I think help with making you relevant amongst the number of the different functions, which I know we'll talk about a little bit later in terms of HR and how we're working to carve that out. Lovely hear what your thoughts are on how people need to be thinking about things differently to progress, whether it doesn't necessarily need to be into the seat that you're in, but as they want to evolve their own career, what are some of the real specific best practices or actions that you best people listening to this should take? Yeah, great question. I think everyone in relation to start with the end in mind and kind of have an aspiration or a goal that they're always kind of developing towards and always have that in mind. And it can be two or three steps ahead of where they are today. And I also think at the same time, if you strip it all down for me, a lot of times comes down to good judgment, decision making, and behaviors, and a big part of that, especially in the good judgment decision making category, is about having a diverse perspective on things. I had the fortune throughout my career to really think about how do you get differentiated experiences that then build that diverse perspective, right? And the diverse perspective is about seeing through things that different lenses, being to walk in different shoes, and gaining context, right? I mean, in the HR space, there's a hundred different ways you can do performance management as we all know. We tend to go in cycles, but it's about organizational context and business context and what matters and what's going to be the best solution in the moments for what you're trying to solve. And I think as you look through your career and think about the choices that you have in front of you, in order to get that diverse perspective, you've got to be one to take some risk along the way. I often hear people talk about, you know, the uncomfortableness or the ambiguity of those things. And to me, when someone's in that state where they're feeling uncomfortable, I think you've got to look their mirror and recognize that that's growth happening in the moment for you. And so it's those opportunities to go outside of your comfort zone, take risks, be willing to learn something new and have a unique and differentiated experience. I mean, it's a creative to what you've already done to push and test. But again, with the understanding and foundation of getting that diverse perspective on things and that makes you, again, have better judgment, have ability to make different decisions. But I go back, people often say, hey, given where you are today, what's it? What did you learn through school? How do you pull that through and especially grad school? And I'm like, look, the technical depth is probably long gone. But I think it deep for me was all about the scientific method and being able to be clinical in my assessment and ask the right questions and hypothesize and test and retest, synthesize all the information. And ultimately, you know, come to a conclusion on something. And I think everyone can benefit through that and how do you architect that throughout your career? I think that is something everyone should be thinking about as they have those choices in their career journey. Yeah. I think it's a risk taking is something I've heard from a number of CHROS. It's a challenge. Many individuals are risk-adversed because I think it's and I don't chalk it up to being complacent. I think it's this element of knowing that there's potentially more upside in taking those risks and having the willingness to take a shot at it. That's right. Absolutely. Given all of what you see particularly around town acquisition or retention in such a competitive space that you're in with healthcare technology sector, with the prominence of AI coming out, we just talked a lot about this at the TED conference, how AI is disrupting town acquisition, particularly in your industry, how are you adapting your talent strategy where you're accessing the widest range of skills, but also with the broadest set of perspectives possible to make sure you're getting the right talent in. Yeah. That's a big question. You really need to deploy multiple strategies because of how fast and how dynamic the talent market is. It starts for us around having a broader and more global perspective. So, I think one of the biggest opportunities is also one of the biggest challenges. As you see companies and metronics no different where, if you look back over our 75-year history, we've been predominantly a hardware company. We've manufactured medical devices. As we shifted over the past 10 years and our products are getting more and more what we call digitally enabled or becoming your digital plays. That really shifts your makeup and just choosing one kind of narrow focus here, pulling from hardware to software. And so, where we used to compete for talent just against maybe other hardware companies, everybody needs software, regardless of your industry or really what your business is in. And now on a sudden, you're competing against everybody. And so, you really need to broaden your view, right? Having a more global perspective and accessing talent polls and locations that maybe historically wouldn't have been a place you would have gone. I think that influences your overall workforce model as well. So instead of just thinking more traditional, you know, FTPs, how do you think about the gig economy and how do you think about contractors or even contract manufacturers? In some cases, as being part of your overall workforce model, and having talent strategies behind now, I think it also, you know, relates to how you're thinking about growing and developing your own talent in different ways and the pace at which you have to do that has definitely accelerated. So, the answer to your question is you need multiple strategies, you need to be thinking bigger and broader than you have historically. And just like your business, you've got to be innovating constantly and how you attract, how you retain, how you develop at all stages of that, of that life cycle. So you just have a broad implications and your ability to, again, adapt and change in the moment sometimes is just as fast. If I think about what you were just saying there, a lot of that is the traditional model of FTPs. And now there's this amalgamation of all these different levers you need to pull to bring in the right talents of the organization. And what must be quite hard is then how do you build the right culture to stay competitive as a nature of this because you've got people that are used to working in a certain way and now you're bringing in all sorts of different people and then there's different permissions that are allowed each individual and but don't want to get into your RTO policy specifically. But curious in terms of what's given you this unique perspective around driving the evolution of that and continue to create or maintain or create the new culture for which you aspire to have given all of the different changes around the way you need to adapt to talent strategy for the market. Yeah, well, a couple of different ways to answer that. I'll start by saying it's, you know, your cultural piece of being able to actually adapt and change with pace. It's everything from your policies to your practices to mindsets, right? So as an example, you think about kind of the gig work or economy, if you will, or this more transient workforce, you know, historically five years ago, you know, maybe more than that, your policies would have prevented or would have been a barrier for you to actually engage there because you would have had to get them through background checks and screen them and bring them on. And by the time you got to many of your organization, it was like, you were too late, right? So some of the things we're exploring there today where it's like you have kind of a full tout that's already been pre-screened and cleared and it's like, hey, you almost bid out for work and you get them, you get them in the project, you get them out, right? It's just as fast. So there's different, different approaches there. Stepping back and talking about, you know, overall culture, I'm in the camp of, we know how to change culture, right? We do it every day and it's not to say it's easy because you see organizations, you know, struggle with this and unsuccessful, sometimes more than they are successful, especially as you look at, you know, the M&A space. But what we know about it is it does take a conscious effort and I think where I see teams or organizations, not be successful, is when they're not able to really pull the thread all the way through. So typically we see a really good job with defining the vision, defining the end state of what you want your culture to be. We take the next step and we define the behaviors and the new expectations that we would want to see to actually drive that culture. What we don't do well is go all the way back to the beginning of alignment choices and what I mean by that essentially is how do you choose to operate the team or the company and make sure the way that you're operating on a day-to-day basis actually reinforces the behaviors you want to see and ultimately drives that that strategic culture that you want to create for your organization. I take a great example of this, you know, just to bring it to life that we all know about is Amazon's two pizza rule, right? You know, that rule was created or why that was brought to life for them was really around the culture of efficiency, speed to decision making and to be able to keep up and move with pace, right? It was to keep the group small in the decision making intimate and so it was back to we're going to choose to run the company, whether that's an work structure or a meeting where it keeps the group small and focused that ultimately led to creating the culture that they want and I think that's where a lot of times in Cranos cultures, we don't fall all the way back through to how we run the business and then we lose the ability to reinforce the behaviors. We talked a little bit about the idea of specific best practices around what you can do for retention and engagement and a lot of times these things are very short-term, with short-term incentives or short-term motivations, whether it's providing the good snacks or we heard about this when I had a recent dinner with a CHR of docuScience shared about providing coconut water, it was a draw for her population, but these are all short-term levers with short-term impact. I'm sure, is there anything you're doing that's different that's looking forward and maybe something that other organizations would benefit from trying out and this doesn't have to be something that you've seen results against but something that at least you're thinking about. Look, I think what you're asking is it's very difficult in today's times, right? I mean, you're so focused on the day to day and just getting through the week and the quarter is really hard to lift your head up and look a couple of years out and say what are our needs going to be and how do we get in front of that and future proof, the workforce. But there is a few examples we're doing, one I can share is we actually just launched this public campaign called Medtronic Spark, it's actually through the Medtronic Foundation. But as we look at a broader healthcare workforce needs, not just for Medtronic, but in the markets that we do business, right? I mean, a big part of our success is going to depend upon the staff levels of the care system, as an example. But what we've decided to do is look at the next generation, the generation behind that of the workforce and how can we invest today to start to build those capabilities? We know through some of our research that I believe it's 65% of the kids that are of school today, the jobs that they're going to have in their careers don't exist today, right? They're yet to be formed. We also look at the business that I just said and say, look, there is going to be a shortage of 11 million healthcare jobs in the next 15 to 20 years. And so how can we help today to actually begin to build the capabilities of the future? And so we set up in our process of building this Medtronic Spark program to go into underserved and low income, you know, kids and begin to remove barriers from, you know, scholarship to education will pass and begin to equip them with the right skills and keep abilities and competencies to have a very successful career. And at the same time, you know, start to close the gap of needs that we know the workforce is going to have down the road. So it's one example, it's very forward looking, but that's kind of worked. It's incredibly inspiring and incredibly strategic for full organizations to be thinking about. Yeah. I love it. I mean, the name of this podcast, Radical Innovators was very intentional in that, but it's not about what's the basic things that organizations that are doing, but what are the things that our organizations are doing to solve for the future. And I love what you're doing there because from my own personal background, the ability to serve people that necessarily don't have the background or some of the access, it feels like you're really making that more accessible for those individuals. So I'd love to hear more about this and hopefully in a couple of years as the results are there or something we can share out more broadly. And so one of kind of shift gears, it's a little bit going back to I think what got you to where you are, but also looking forward. If we think about what's coming up consistently is HR's role in driving business strategies, I'm having a lot of these conversations. And historically, I think HR leaders have maybe played a less relevant role and it used to be fighting to get a seat at the table. Those days are over. And so now it's really the conversation is more around. How do we HR leaders shape and elevate their role from a more operational to a more strategic role to demonstrate their impact on the business and the outcomes. Curious what advice you either have based on your own personal experience or as you're thinking about, how do you develop the HR leaders for the future within Metronik? Great question. And I think it's something that HR has been talking about for a number of years. And I'm glad you said, I think we're done fighting for the seat at the table. I think what's important now is that while HR has a seat at the table, they have a point of view. And an incredible point of view behind their voice. That will maintain their influence and the impact and value that they really have across organizations. But I was fortunate to join a culture, an HR culture early in my career where this was just embedded in who you were, right, embedded in art into our DNA of, you know, the mindset of you are a business leader first and you happen to remain expert in human capital, right? That's where it starts and there's a constant way in a curiosity that you have to sustain that mindset throughout your career to be successful and to be able to, again, realize what you kind of just, the question you just asked there. As I think about how that develops and what I look for when I'm, when I'm hiring, you know, HR, HR partners, you know, to be on my team, I think the way you start is to really, you've got to work backwards and you start with ultimately, what is the outcome that matters, right? It's, it's business first, outcome first, what's the priority? It starts with shareholder value, right? And knowing in your organization, your market, how is the value created for the shareholders and working backwards from there, right? And so if you understand how values created for the shareholder, it likely brings it back to your organizational strategy. You work your way through the P&L and understand how your strategy impacts your P&L, start top line to say, you know, how does the commercial sale actually happen? Why does it, why does it matter? Work your way down to the pros margin line and understand the inputs of pricing and cost of goods sold and down through the, down through the full P&L to the EPS line. And so that's where you've got to start as a, and have a curiosity and seeking to, seeking to understand that. And then you begin to translate that back into the human capital side of the equation, right? I think the great news is at the end of the day, people drive performance and people are responsible for innovation in every company. And so it's always going to come back to talent the end of the day. And that's where the intersection, and that's what you have to, as a, as a leader of human capital, have to understand where that magic happens, it start to translate to say, all right, what is your talent to value in your organization? And then start to circle that as, as the priority for how you lead in the strategies and services of solutions as an HR leader that you have to bring to the table to have impact in that value. Yeah, I love it. And so as you think about all of that, that's sort of like what table stakes now has become, but looking ahead across what leaders need to do in the next five years. How do you see that evolving, whether that's specific to your industry or if you'd say more broadly? You know, look, I think the markets and nothing's going to get easier, right? So I think, you know, you've got to have a set of principles around things like speed is going to matter, you know, sometimes probably speed over, over quality. You've got to have a mindset that changes a competitive advantage, not a disadvantage. And you know, I think the, the aspiration for stability and a, a level of comfort with the status quo are long gone. I think the search for, for talents and the ability to attract talent and, and hold on to talent for longer, ten years is, is likely gone as well. So I think there's this kind of changing nature of work and how do leaders think about almost readily organization in the workforce, you know, for, for the future. And you know, as I look across my organization, probably fair to say both within HR and broader leaders, they're probably not spending enough time on that. They're too focused on the short term, which is also very share right now as a, as a priority. But I think it's the, the, the, the very few are actually able to kind of pull up and look and say, how do I prepare for two years from now, five years from now for what my workforce is going to need to be to, to still be thriving as an organization or really do that, that long term planning. Yeah. I mean, I love what you said there, right? In terms of, I think about in my own family and my grandfather worked for the same company for 40 years, my father and law worked from Oregon Stanley for 50 years. Those days are gone. But well, maybe they seem to be, what are you thinking about like what is metronic strategy around them or approach to talent retention, both through, how do we keep the people that are most critical for us growing our business? And what are some of the specific levers you'd share that you'd say are working really well to engage those individuals? To clarify, I think, you know, the mix is going to be different in a different now than it was 10 years ago and certainly different now than it was 20 years ago in terms of those that are have kind of a long-term career in one organization versus those that are looking for an experience and a opportunity to move on and continue to develop in a, in a different experience, right? Or have multiple experiences at the same time. So I think there is just an understanding of the overall mix is different, it's going to continue to shift in an even flow too. I think you have to, you know, as an organization to take advantage of that, you do have to shift kind of your practices and your policies in a lot of cases to be able to adjust and take advantage of that and just recognize that in your workforce models, you need to create space for both and there's an advantage for organizations and that as well in terms of being able to access, you know, the best talent and different talent pulls at different states or different cycles in the business that you need. Internally, I'd say it is about creating a, you know, employee rich environment, one that they value, you know, thinking about the employee experience from from end to end. The one vision that I have that I often use with with my team is like we want to, we want to be the place that people can do their careers work and live their greatest, you know, best lives at the same time. And how do we make that true? What's important to the business, to drive performance and what's important to the employee, to thrive as a, as a human being and as an individual. So a lot of the programs we're shaping and really looking at one of the barriers to that and how do we remove that? So everything from, you know, looking at, you know, skills-based hiring to, you know, removing barriers around, you know, degrees, to helping people develop and, you know, removing tuition barriers as an example to whether it's for certification or for degrees. How do we think about overall well-being? We continue to innovate on our, our kind of overall health and wellness platforms and try new innovations that are coming out. So I think there's just a constant iteration of your, your, your practices, your benefits that really create a, again, a rich environment that people want to be part of and that, when they do join, they, they want to stay. Yeah, I'm curious if there's any other levers you'd mention. I mean, you mentioned a few in there that are great in terms of the focus on mental well-being and resilience. And I'm sure there's some component given the nature of the business that you're in around physical and wellness and then I'm sure there's a financial or wellness component. Any other levers you'd say, like, that stick out and things that you're proud of that the organization is doing and you think others maybe are doing enough up yet. You know, we have an inherent advantage in being in the mission driven, you know, purpose-driven environment. It's, you know, it's probably, you know, a, our number one kind of cultural thread that we weave throughout the organization. It is very powerful and I think, you know, regardless of what company I've been in and probably what, you know, organizational health survey, you, people want to feel purpose and their jobs. And so for us, it's something that, you know, being in that mission driven environment that you're able to anchor back to and really give people, I think, a more meaningful experience in understanding of, you know, the impact they have and how they contribute and how that ladders up to the overall, you know, mission of the organization. So I think all of us strive for greater purpose in life and work and family and so that is something that we, you know, leverage and tie back to an anchor on that I do think helps really, you know, sustain the, the loyalty and the commitment, you know, to the organization over time. So this is a little bit of a shift, but if you think about some of the things and of course we're recording this at a time where this could shift next week, but as you're meeting with your CEO and you're meeting with your, your colleagues on the leadership team, what are some of the key things that are keeping you up at night that likely are keeping up other CHROs? What are some of those big pressing issues? I think right now it is about just, you know, the overall environment that all organizations are operating right now around the world, the uncertainty, the lack of clarity. And ultimately it comes down to, you know, the business performance and how we're going to navigate that and what we have to do to put ourselves in a position of strength to navigate until we get, you know, more clarity and sustainability in that that feeds all the way through to, you know, our employees and our talents. The labor markets, you know, around the world have been extremely dynamic over the past few years. And, you know, part of our job in HR is to make sure that our roles are filled with the right town at the right time. And so all those dynamics are at play and that's the constant topic of conversation, likely in, you know, board rooms and executive rooms around the world right now. Yeah. I think that's the nature of today's world, right? A lot of these things that we used to think about three and five years out, some of these are so hard to plan for. And so I might ask you that question the next time we catch up and get a totally different answer. I 100% guarantee you will. I think the only thing we know for certain right now is if you try to predict the future, you're likely going to be wrong. So it's just, it's interesting times. All right. These are just some off the cuff, rapid fire questions and we'll just want to kind of test and see who the real match is so netflix and chill or night out the movies on netflix and chill. I think I did the day recharging my batteries, you know, work is so dynamic and fast pace. It's like it's time to chill and whether we get hits. Okay. Rock or rap. Oh, man. Rap. Okay. Now, I have to ask if you were to name a top or maybe a top two top two are you playlists? Yeah. I was in your playlist. Oh, then, but so my playlist is it's very broad and I would say it's it's not like it's more like genre of the Pacific and depending on my activity. And the reason why I answered rap is is is when I'm working out or or some energy after a long day, that's what works for me. And so it's it's more about the I guess the genre and then it is any any particular artist. But you know, I the go to's are probably the 90s 90s rap. All right. We'll definitely connect. I'm glad on that because I'm sure we share a ton there beach vacation, ski vacation. These are tough questions. Um, I'm going to say I'm going to say ski vacation, um, you know, just something about being out in the mountains, um, coming down a hill, it's just it's relaxing, it's peaceful. And yeah, it's just it, it takes me to a different place and it definitely allows me to to recharge. Love it. Well, hey, Matt, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I think it's been a ton of great value for for all the things you share, not only what it's been helpful to you both in your personal journey, but also as we think about what's relevant for HR leaders and HR as a profession, uh, more broadly going forward. But of course, I think a lot of these things, they're not HR specific. These really do apply to anyone coming up and earlier in their career, so I appreciate a lot of the things you're able to share with us today. Frank was a pleasure and really appreciate the opportunity. And that wraps up this episode of Radical Innovator Series, a huge thank you to Matt Walter for joining us and sharing powerful insights from transforming talent strategies in the digital age to building a culture that fuels purpose and adaptability. Matt's reflections remind us that the role of HR is no longer just about operations, it's about driving business outcomes, shape of resilient work forces, and leading with intention uncertain times. If you found today's conversation valuable, please be sure to follow the RadicalAidverse podcast and share this with your network and stay tuned for our next guest where we continue to explore how today's most forward thinking leaders are reimagining the future of work. Until next time, keep challenging the status quo and keep innovating radically.