Brava Medical Presents an Exclusive Interview with Lee Oppegaard,  VP of Marketing and  Business Development for  Cone Instruments.

Lee Oppegaard, RDMS(R) is currently serving as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Cone Instruments, a company that has been providing supplies, accessories, equipment and service to the medical imaging community for over 30 years. 

Lee got started in diagnostic ultrasound in the early 1970s and after completing formal training from the first Postgraduate Course in Medical Sonics at Bowman Gray School of Medicine (Wake Forest University) in 1975, started the Diagnostic Ultrasound Department at Forsyth Memorial Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  His commercial career launched in the late 70s with Unirad as a Sales Representative in the Southeast.  This led to operations, product development and product management positions within Johnson & Johnson Ultrasound based in Colorado.  His combination of clinical, sales, product development and marketing experience allowed him to consistently contribute to the progress of diagnostic ultrasound technically, clinically and commercially while advancing through positions of increasing responsibility in sales management, marketing management and business development with Corometrics Medical Systems and Aloka. 

Lee is a past Contributing Editor to Medical Ultrasound and is a registrant with the American Registry of Diagnostic Medical Sonographers (ARDMS).  He is a long-standing, active member of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) and has served the organization on various committees through the years. 

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Lee Oppegaard met with Rosemary Penn, managing partner of Brava Medical, at this year's American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine  (AIUM)  held in San Diego for this interview. 

Brava Medical:  You’ve been an effective leader in the field of imaging for several years and I’m sure our readers will have a keen interest in your insights.  Let’s start with current affairs.  What is the most challenging aspect of your position as an executive with Cone Instruments?

 
Oppegaard:  Cone Instruments is a bit of a different position for me in that I’ve been involved in ultrasound in a lot of different ways.  Everywhere from running the clinical department to being in sales; being in product development and being with major OEM companies and Cone Instruments is different in that Cone Instruments serves all of the medical images modalities by supplies and accessories so it’s interesting in having to understand what the needs are of all of imaging professionals, not just diagnostic ultrasound but nuclear medicine.  People in MR suites, for example, have needs for non-magnetic IV poles for example.  Who thought of that?  So, there are a lot of different things.  The challenge is being able to understand a wide variety of needs that the customer has.  And the other challenge from the business development side I have is how do we expand upon our business and meeting the needs of those customers; finding other things that they need to have that we can provide to them.  I hate to use the word solutions because it’s so overworked but really, you know, trying to help them get along; get what they need to have in order to do their jobs and do it maybe more effectively; more efficiently.  For instance, disinfection is a big thing, being able to do things in a safe and clean manner.  It’s a whole variety of things.  I still love diagnostic ultrasound.  It is just that.  It’s diagnostic ultrasound and yes, there are a lot of flavors and the technology has expanded that the things that we can do these days are terrific.  But this is another viewpoint that I am able to have on the imaging business and the imaging business as a whole.

Brava Medical:  You sound like you’re really enjoying it as well. 

Oppegaard:  Well, I do and because it’s exciting, because it’s a new challenge and I love learning new things, but maybe most importantly it’s because I really enjoy the people I work with.

Brava Medical:  Do you see a definite slowing in the image growth, especially in ultrasound?

Oppegaard:  I see two things that really started back in the beginning of 2007 with the introduction of the Deficit Reduction Act and the subsequent reduction and reimbursement for outpatient procedures.  And yes, I think that’s definitely had a dampening effect on capital equipment sales, on ultrasound sales, maybe even specifically outside the hospital.  Inside the hospital I don’t think that there’s been that much of an effect.  I think it’s the outpatient procedures that are done in the private offices that have felt the brunt of it.  Certainly mobile services are feeling.  So I think that there definitely has been an effect.  There definitely has been a slow down in those areas, but given that, then the overall procedures that are being done, I don’t think have diminished.  There’s still the same demand for procedures.  So, again, this comes back to helping customer be efficient, having the supplies and accessories that they need to be able to do their job because they have to push more people through the same facility, through the same department with the same staff and that makes it harder.  They get less reimbursement; they have to do literally more exams to make the same money.  Now, that works out well for Cone Instruments because a lot of what we sell is tied to the number of procedures that are done.  So, the more procedures that are done are good for our business.  So, that’s the silver lining for us.  But for the diagnostic imaging business as a whole, I think it’s a drag. 

Brava Medical:  What have you seen as the greatest technological advancement in medical imaging?

Oppegaard:  That’s a huge question.  Well, I think I may have an answer you may not expect.  Computers are what have allowed us to do what we’re doing in all the different modalities.  Without the increase of computation capability we wouldn’t be doing a lot of the things we’re doing today.  We wouldn’t be doing color flow Doppler, for example.  We certainly wouldn’t be doing some of the 3-D reconstructions that you see you see, not only in ultrasound, but in CT and other things.  All of that and we have all the fancy technology for the ultrasound side and the CT side and from the MR side, but it all is reliant upon computers and computer power.

Brava Medical:  What did you learn about motivating people from your very first job? 

Oppegaard:  I think what has stood me in good stead all these years is having a trust in people that they are going to do the right thing.  That people are basically good and that they want to do a good job.  Now, we know that that’s not always the real world, but I come at it from that approach.  So, you’re going to have to prove to me that you’re not trustworthy.  Not that you are trustworthy, I assume that you are. 

Brava Medical:  That’s great.  Do you have a particular boss that inspired you? 

Oppegaard:  I was a sonographer, working in a community hospital.  I actually started the ultrasound department in that hospital.  We had a certain manufacturer’s equipment in our department and we were used as a demo site.  You know, they would bring their customers in, and in those days it was considered much more difficult to take the equipment to the customer or potential customer than it was to bring the customer to the equipment.  So we were a demo site for this particular company. I got a phone call from the regional sales manager from this company wanting to know if I’d come work with them in sales.  I loved my job.  I worked with great people, I ran the department.  Life was good.  Why would I want to change things?”  He said, “Lee, won’t you always wonder what it was like if you don’t try it?”  It was absolutely the right thing to say to me because that worked on me.  Those words have stuck with me. That’s where I embarked upon my commercial career for this company, in sales.  That led to a lot of different things, and it changed the path that I was on.  So, was that inspirational or motivational, I don’t know.

Brava Medical: Where there any frustrations or challenges that shaped management style? 

Oppegaard:  I’m not sure I was ever terribly frustrated.  I’ve been very lucky, in the different aspects of my career, and I’ve been in a lot of different things. I’ve been in the operational side of business, product management/product development side.  As well as the sales, sales management side of it.  So, I’ve been very fortunate in the positions that have presented themselves to me.  Of the best challenges that any manager of any sort, whatever your managing faces, you’re managing people and people are individuals, they’re all different.  They’re not all cut from the same cookie cutter.  I took a position as a regional sales manager where the region was the worst in the company.  I had a very diverse group of sales people.  Several of them by metrics that you would use were failing in their jobs.   I determined a couple of them simply needed advice and guidance along the way.  And indeed they flourished and did quite well.  There was one individual that I clearly saw was in the wrong job.  This person was not a capital equipment sales person.  I told him, “I don’t think you’re happy doing what you’re doing and you’re not being successful at it. You need to do something else.”

I was at another trade show six or nine months after that where I saw him.  He thanked me.  He said he had to leave his old job to realize he was miserable and had gone into another aspect of the business in which he was flourishing.  So, there are differences in how you have to do things.  So, the challenge is in dealing with people as to what they need and figuring out what that is.

Brava Medical: What do you advise employees to do?

Oppegaard:  I advise them to do the best job they can of managing me.  Because I’m their boss and yes, you have to have a hierarchy of positions and sometimes, you know, that’s necessary for an organization to function properly.  You can’t just have anarchy.  Having said that; I believe I work with people and not that they work for me and so that’s why I say they need to learn how to manage me well.  Because I have my quirks and I have my personality and I have my strong feelings about things and, believe it or not, I’m not right all the time.  So they have to be able to help me understand when I’m not right and help us move whatever project that we have together forward.  Having said that, I also give people a lot of freedom to do their job and I believe that there is generally more than one right way to get things done.  That’s why I don’t want to dictate to you or to whoever how to get your job done.  We have a job to do; we have a goal to meet.  I may have some ideas of how to get there.  You may have some different ones and they may be better than mine, they may not be.  But let’s talk about it, but I want to empower you to go out and do your job because you are a professional and what I don’t need is to have somebody that I have to tell what to do every minute of everyday.  I don’t have the time or the inclination to do that.  And then that would be the wrong person because they’re a person that’s not being creative in their job. 

Brava Medical:  So when one is attempting to be creative and you know the creativity is challenging what do you do to put them on the right track? Say look, let’s talk about this a little bit more? 

Oppegaard:  That’s exactly the thing.  Let’s talk about it.  Let me share with you what some of my thoughts are.  And maybe there’s an angle to it that you haven’t thought of.  And hear about it then.  How about if you think about it from this perspective or from that perspective?  So my job as a manager is to give them, perhaps, different points of view.  We will together come to a consensus of which way to go.  Now, all that sounds all well and good and indeed it does work a lot of the time, but some of the time it doesn’t and you just have to say look, right or wrong, we’re marching this way and that’s just the way that it is.  But I’m not that way.  Matter of fact, I’m generally not that way, but when you have to be, you have to be.  If you work with people and they feel as though they’re empowered and they work with you then they’re going to accept that and say ok that’s the path we’re going to march down and we’ll march. 

 Brava Medical: How much time do you spend on people issues? 

 Oppegaard:  One is I spend all the time on them, and the other is I spend time on them by exception.  By all the time I think that you don’t manage somebody on every third Monday.  You know, you don’t do it on a schedule.  Other than that I believe in annual reviews and formal sit downs and let’s have some goals going forward for this year oh and how’d we do towards the goals we set up for last year, but you should, and if we’ve done it well, and it’s hard to do because of time we’ve revisited those goals and things that we thought about back at the first of the year and in the middle of the year and three quarters of the way through the year so when you sit down and you talk about those again for the past year and looking forward to a new year uh, there shouldn’t be any surprises. So, I believe that you manage on an ongoing basis, and then you really have to manage by exception.  If you see something that’s just wrong, you have to deal with it right then, right now. 

Brava Medical:  How do you motivate the average employee?

Oppegaard:  Well, I think by a lot of the things I’ve already said.  You give them the opportunity to do their job.  Not tell them how to do their job.  That’s doesn’t mean you can’t coach them, you can’t educate them, you can’t give them the benefit of your age and experience.  But you empower them to do their job and I think that that just does wonders when people have the freedom and the ability to go out and do it and be successful.  And I’ve found that when that happens, there aren’t any average people.

Brava Medical: How do you encourage risk taking, and mistakes, when you also require results?

Oppegaard:  Oh, I’ve… an old cliché just came to mind.  “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  So you’ve got to take some shots and you’re not always going to be right.  You’ve got to take some fliers but you’ve got to know that they’re fliers and you’ve got to have an educated guess as to, are they’re going to be successful.  And you monitor them and measure them as best you can.  If it looks like oops, this one isn’t flying as high as we thought, well, then you cut your losses and you move on to something else.  But I think that you have to, you can’t have people afraid to make a mistake.  You can’t have them in fear of their job if they make a mistake.  Certainly there can be some mistakes one can make that can be terminal, you know, but they’re usually not.  That’s not what we’re talking about here.  So, I think that you just do that again on an ongoing basis that’s not something you do every third Tuesday.  It’s something you should do everyday as it comes up or as the business changes because it changes all the time.  We put together a budget at the first of the year.  We put together goals at the first of the year.  It’s all out the window after a while because things change and you have to understand that and you have to adapt to the change and not be rigid.  So rigid at what you’re doing that you’re actually hurting your business.

Brava Medical:  When it comes to recognizing employees, what counts more; Financial reward or personal touch? 

Oppegaard:  Depends if you’re going to show this to my boss or not.  If you show it to my boss tell him it’s financial.  But that’s not really the truth.  The truth is that people want to know that they’re appreciated.  And that goes so much farther than the money does.  I mean, assuming that the people we’re talking about are making a decent living.  It’s not that they’re living hand to mouth or whatever.  They’re making a decent living so that, food and shelter and all that stuff is covered.  So beyond that it’s really being appreciated for what you do.  And I think you look for ways to praise people and you do that in public and you do that in front of their peers.  And when you have to take them to the wood shed, or so to speak, you do that in private; absolutely in private, not in front of their peers at all.  That just, you don’t want to humiliate anybody.  I’ve just seen that happen too many times.  I’ve had it happen to me.  And it’s just a terrible feeling.  It’s not motivational at all. 

Brava Medical:  How important is it to feel attuned with the people you manage?

Oppegaard:  Oh, I think very important.  If you’re not attune you’re out of touch.  How can you be helpful to the people you’re working with if you’re out of touch, if you’re not attuned to what they’re doing?  Communication is key.  Keeping in touch with what’s going on.  And the best way to do that is a hallway conversation.  You know, not sitting down, on the third Tuesday of the month.  It’s more like a hallway conversation.  It’s, oh, let me tell you what’s going on with this and what’s going on with that and since the last time we talked about it, here’s what’s changed.  Ok, great.  I’m informed, you know I’m informed and it took a minute.  

Brava Medical:  What advice would you give to an aspiring entry level professional? 

Oppegaard:  The best advice I can give, I guess, is to be enthusiastic about what you’re doing.  Like what it is that you’re doing.  If you find you don’t like it, ask yourself why are you doing it?  Be enthusiastic.  I’ve hired people that have had more enthusiasm and less experience and perhaps less skills than someone else because of enthusiasm.  Because you can find an individual, a cranky old guy like me, who’s got all kinds of experience and all kinds of wisdom and all kinds of knowledge and can do all kinds of different stuff, but if they’re not excited about what it is they’re going to be doing, then they’re not going to be excited about what it is they’re doing.  So, you can teach people a lot of things that they may need to know but they don’t and skills that maybe they don’t have, but you can’t teach them enthusiasm.

Brava Medical:  You seem to like working for Cone Instruments, tell my why.

Oppegaard:  Oh, I absolutely do.  It’s a different challenge.  It allows me to learn yet another aspect of this medical imaging business.  I’ve been in a lot of different aspects and here’s another one.  So, that part of it I like.  It’s an interesting challenge, but the real, the quick and the true answer to your question are the people that I work with.  They’re all just wonderful people.  My boss in particular is I have to say, is the best business person I’ve ever met.  And I’ve met a lot.  And by business person, yes he’s a business person, but he’s been so successful in his business because of his people skills.  He’s just fabulous.  And that’s principally why I’m there.  You know, he convinced me to come to work for him and I have not regretted it. 

Brava Medical:  Is there anything you would like to add?  It’s a great opportunity to express a thought or words of wise to any aspiring professional out there or anyone who’s looking for a job in our industry.

Oppegaard:  What worked for me was learning a lot of things.  You know, I am a little bit unusual in that I came from a clinical background; got into sales; got into, actually, some operational stuff; some product development stuff; marketing, you know, product management; sales/sales management; marketing management, back and forth.  So I got to see a lot of sides of a business, if you will.  And a lot of sides of an industry, speaking of diagnostic ultrasound.  So, learning all that you can is really helpful and is a strength.  When I was in the field and I was a field regional manager, I understood what was going on in the home office.  I understood what their problems were and demands that they had.  That if you’d just been a field sales person you never saw that.  You never knew what those people back in the home office did.  You kind of thought they didn’t do much.  And when you’re in the home office you look at the field sales people, they’re out there running around, they’ve got an expense account, they’re playing golf, and they’re just really not responsible.  But people in the house don’t understand that field sales position is probably one of the hardest jobs there is to have in this world.  So, I was able to have that perspective on both sides of it and I think that has stood me in good stead.  My advice is to learn all you can about what it is that you’re doing, all aspects of it that you can.  Be enthusiastic; continue to educate yourself in areas that are going to help you in business.  I mean, I was coming up and I was one of the first to adopt computers, for example, but everybody has computers these days.  But it’s the same; a similar sort of thing. Technology keeps evolving, it can be a great tool for you and you can be one of the gurus of it if you take the time to learn and understand how it works.  And that can be to your advantage.  So… be enthusiastic and never quit learning. 

Brava Medical:  Last question.   Do you see any type of imaging breakthrough that’s coming up on the horizon?  Or, do you think we’re pretty much status quo between ultrasound, MR and CT?    I suppose I’m really asking if you feel the rises of a phoenix that will take us to a new level?

Oppegaard:  I would be loathed to say that there’s not going to be another breakthrough.  I think that’s really short sighted.  I’m sure there’s going to be.  I’m not sure what it is.  I think that some of the exciting things you can see right now are functional imaging, functional mapping.   I did a little stint with a company called Bio Magnetic Technologies , they did an interesting thing and they were actually using super conducting quantum interference devices to measure very minute magnetic fields that occur around a nerve.  If you have an electrical wire, a nerve, that has a current running through it; it will develop a magnetic field around it.  That’s just simple physics.  We had no way of looking at the brain to see where the functional areas were, and this was a way of being able to do that.  So, I thought that that was really very cool.  And now there’s functional MR, there’s PET, there’s a lot of things that are coming along.  So, I think we’re going to learn a whole lot from those technologies and I think that there is going be other technologies that’ll come along that we don’t even know about today.  One of the things that I was impressed with, which was an evolutionary, but could be revolutionary technology.  Toshiba introduced the Achilian 1, which was a CT scanner that, for the first time, could look at a 16 centimeter section in one pass, which means basically in one heart beat you could do an entire heart study.  You can look at the brain and inject contrast and watch the profusion of the brain in real time.  This is pretty hot stuff, I’ve been around technology all my life and when I saw that I was impressed. 

Brava Medical:  Thank you, Lee.  Your invaluable insights are hugely appreciated.

Oppegaard:  This was fun.  Thank you as well!

End

Next Month’s “Leaders in the News” will feature an interview with highly respected, Alice M. Chiang, Ph.D., President of Teratech and founder of Terason. Utilizing  Dr. Chiang’s key patents, Terason was able to introduce the first “true” miniaturized ultrasound system.