artificial disc startup. The CEO asked me to take over as general man-
ager of the spine business. My heart and stomach dropped. I was on a
roll at ENT. Annual sales growth exceeded 40% and we were gaining
market share hand over fist. Conversely, the spine business unit was
struggling and, in my opinion, didn't have a clear strategy. I didn't
want the job and said as much. The CEO argued that ENT was practi-
cally on autopilot. Unfortunately, I couldn't argue with that. Still, I
wasn't interested. Then came the kicker.
The CEO told me that the spine business unit had enormous poten-
tial, but faced the greatest obstacles and needed the most help. He
told me I was the most talented general manager in the company and
that he and the board were counting on me to do for spine what I'd
done for ENT (or words to that effect). So given that I was a patholog-
ical people-pleaser and risk-taker with an intense desire to be liked,
what do you think I did? How could I say no? I couldn't. It was one of
the key turning points and a decision that I would come to regret.
The key — and really only — product at the time was a SpineWand
that interventional
pain specialists used
to perform percuta-
neous disc decom-
pressions. The good
news was that physi-
cians reported that
patients with radicular
pain (sciatica, for
example) secondary
to a contained disc
herniation experi-
enced a significant
5 9
A U G U S T 2 0 1 5 | O U T P A T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T
I was working in a company
that would do whatever it
took to meet Wall Street
expectations. Given my back-
ground and personality, this
was exactly the wrong kind of
company for me to work in.
