Cardinal Health’s president of U.S. sales for medical solutions discusses the company’s commitment to customers, embracing diversity, and facing adversity as a team.
For Robert Rajalingam, there was no ramp up. When he was appointed president of U.S. sales for Cardinal Health’s medical products and distribution in October 2019, he and his team had to hit the ground running, dealing with the traditional challenges that come with serving a large customer base of both acute and non-acute facilities, as well as a significant recall. Then COVID hit.
“On one hand it’s certainly been a challenge, given we’re all working at a frenetic pace,” Rajalingam said. “I think the last year plus, it’s been the hardest that I and many on my team have worked in our careers. It’s really about knowing your reason, your mission – know your why, as some people use that phrase – for what we’re doing.”
In a recent interview, Repertoire Publisher Scott Adams spoke to Rajalingam about a wide range of topics, including Cardinal Health’s pandemic response, lessons learned, leadership insights and how the distributor plans to celebrate its 50-year anniversary.
Scott Adams: This past year has had its challenges for all of us. How have you been able to keep your team motivated despite the conflicts, obstacles, back orders – all the things that you had to deal with on a daily basis?
Robert Rajalingam: While we’ve had a lot of challenges and obstacles this year, I think one of the positive aspects was just the heightened sense of mission. What we were doing has been critical. When else in our careers would the front page of whatever news outlet you visit talk about PPE distribution? There’s no doubt that was unheard of as dinner table conversation. I think for the folks on my team – the sales reps but also everyone in operations – there was a real sense of trying to help the customer.
I think beyond that, just tactically, a lot of frequent communication came from me and the rest of our leadership team. Our reps operate pretty independently, and even more so in a virtual environment. Making sure the team heard from our leadership team, and me specifically, was important to let them know we’re on the front lines with them. I talk to customers multiple times a week if not every day. Our team knows that I’m experiencing what they are, and I think that’s been motivating for them.
Adams: For all of your customers, especially on the health system side, you can go on any of their websites and the first thing you see is mission, vision, values. When everybody’s drinking from a fire hose, how do you keep your team focused on what you just described, your mission, vision as an organization and overall values?
Rajalingam: It’s one thing to have it on a nice PowerPoint slide and mention it, and we certainly do that – but the way that I think our team really internalizes it is through the repetition and reinforcement of what we talk about every day in our staff meetings or all-team calls. For example, when we have a best practice to share, we recognize someone, or one of our reps shares a big customer win, I always try to tie it back to the five key values that we have as an organization. That’s where people start to really see, “OK, this is what Robert and the leadership team are focused on.” It’s a good reminder. Whether it’s best practices, wins, key messages, we’re always trying to incorporate our values consistently through our actions and messaging.
Adams: Do you have a system in place that helps you come up with great ideas within your organization?
Rajalingam: I wish I could say it was as organized as a system, but there are probably a few key principles we follow or ways we operate. One is having a diverse group of employees on our team. I think it starts there, so we avoid that consensus or groupthink. We’ve certainly made great strides toward that, in terms of a really diverse team.
The second one is listening to customers and also observing customers, because there are things they don’t always articulate that you might notice, such as problems they’re encountering. They don’t even think to tell you that it’s a problem, but if you notice it and address it, it’s a way to make their life easier and make their experience working with us better. We’re trying to really put customer experience and customer engagement at the forefront of everything we do – and not just our sales reps, but everyone, whether it’s IT, folks in finance, people who are more peripheral to our customers. We haven’t solved this, but it’s a journey we’re on to put the customer experience at the center of everything we do.
Then the last thing I would say is we did have an internal business case competition that was successful. We had a number of great ideas. We teed up a few different problem areas for our employees, not just our sales reps but our employees across the organization, to engage, partner with people they normally wouldn’t partner with in our organization, and then look at a problem from a different lens. We came out with a good problem – we had more ideas than we could give one first place to. Certainly there was a winner, but we’re moving forward with a few of the ideas that otherwise we wouldn’t have arrived at.
Adam: What one or two things are you proud of within your organization over the last year?
Rajalingam: There are a couple of things I’d mention. One is seeing the team really accomplish a goal that maybe at the outset was greater than something they thought they could achieve. Making progress toward the goal and doing what was needed on behalf of a customer, whether it was through the pandemic or some of the significant occurrences we had, the team showed up in a big way and I’m very proud of our organization.
For instance, we had a significant gown and pack recall, one of the largest in FDA history by SKUs. We had reps spending nights and weekends for weeks at a time, shoulder to shoulder with customers, right in their inventory rooms and warehouses, working through sorting product and assembling kits. I got notes about reps who were driving for hours on Christmas Day to get product to cases where they were needed. Just seeing that dedication from our sales team, that’s better than any articulation of the mission. Their actions embody that, and it’s really energizing to me and I’m proud of that.
The other item that I’m proud of is our commitment to diversity, which spurs innovation and great thinking on our teams. We’ve been really intentional about that in our organization and my specific team. At an organizational level at Cardinal Health, we’ve closed the gender pay gap. We’re at 99%, essentially closing that gap, which typically is 15 to 20% at other companies.
In my broader organization of over 1,000 people, we’re at about 50/50 male/female, which as you know, in most sales organizations isn’t very typical. Almost 40% of our hires in the last year have been ethnically diverse, and we’ve increased the number or the percent of female leaders and ethnically diverse leaders. For all of those things to happen, it takes our leadership really believing in the potential diversity can create in our organization for good ideas and great performance. It’s great to see that progress over the last year.
Adams: How do you continue to grow and develop as a leader?
Rajalingam: It starts with a mindset and an intentional commitment, so the notion of no matter what role you’re in or title you have, you’re always evolving to be a better leader than you were last week, last month, last year. I like to learn from other leaders. I have mentors and others I talk to, but I also engage with a lot of podcasts and books. There are some podcasts I listen to that are interviews with leaders in other spaces. One I listened to in the last month was Bob Iger, the former CEO and chairman of Disney. How does he develop creativity in his employees? There was another podcast interview with John Brennan, who was the former CIA director. How does he make tough decisions with incomplete information?
Adams: What are some of the most important attributes you see in successful leaders today?
Rajalingam: I think especially in this current environment, I notice a few things that make leaders successful. One, seeing disruption as an opportunity for improvement or transformation. I think everyone understands that we have more disruption now than at any time in our careers, whether it’s our specific industry, the healthcare supply chain, how we work, etc. We were just talking about virtual versus in-person and how we engage with employees across all different spectrums of diversity. There are so many disruptions happening. I think a leader today must be energized and opportunistic about that, versus scared of it and reluctant to embrace it.
The other characteristic I think about is authenticity as a leader and the ability to inspire. I’ve found more and more that with my team and even leaders I work with, I’m energized when I know more about them as a person, versus just a title and someone you see in a business review-type meeting. Again, I try to be candid with my team as much as different virtual forums allow, so they understand who I am as a person, and that we have lives and families outside of work. I think that makes you more relatable.
This all ties into the inspiration piece. Our CEO was talking to us last week about a letter he got from a board member. He mentioned managers light a fire underneath their people and leaders light a fire within their people.
Adams: On the flip side, what are some dangerous traits you’re seeing in leadership today?
Rajalingam: Overconfidence or arrogance, confidence without humility and being focused on yourself. One of the reasons I enjoy working at Cardinal Health is that I don’t see a lot of that in our leadership team. If you have a leader that is arrogant, then other folks start to model that behavior because they see that maybe it’s being rewarded. I’ve been in other organizations where that’s been the case in certain teams. It can lead to a sense that the rules don’t apply to you. You’re unaware of blind spots you may have, you make questionable decisions, and you have a lack of respect for your team. All of those things you learn by observation, and I’ve certainly seen that in the past.
Adams: As a leader in a large organization, what are some of the qualities and traits you look for when you’re considering to promote somebody into a leadership role or somebody that’s starting the career path?
Rajalingam: I have a list of a few things – they all start with C. One is just capacity – both intellectual and bandwidth. Are they smart? Can they work hard? That’s almost table stakes, but it’s important.
I also think about curiosity. Are they a continuous learner? Are they always trying to seek out new information?
Another quality is courage, which goes back to your earlier question in terms of are they willing to do the right thing under pressure and voice their opinions. Again, I think that’s really important.
I also consider their competitive fire. Do they have a drive to win, especially in sales? I think you just can’t teach that. That’s something I try to look for in any type of interview or recruiting process.
Then the last two qualities are communication and culture. Can you clearly convey your ideas and influence others? Certainly, most folks who are successful in sales are able to do that, but I think it’s a valued trait in any function. On culture, that’s an intangible one, but I think about whether I would want to sit next to them on a cross-country flight. That’s how I assess culture. If I don’t want to do that, then I probably don’t want to hire them and work with them.
Adams: What was one of the most important risks you took, and why?
Rajalingam: The risk that comes to mind is when I was working in business development at Medtronic and helping the CEO with some different opportunities. The preamble to it is that we had gone through a deal that didn’t work out so well, and through some diligence, we learned we couldn’t scale it up.
The risk I took was in the second opportunity on the deal, there was a lot of consensus. You’ve probably been involved in things like that, where an entire organization from the CEO on down are bullish or gung-ho on a deal. People get deal fever and are ready to do it.
The risk there was I was an associate of business development but was on point with due diligence. I knew that there were some risks to this deal, to this product, that would make it something that would be untenable for us to go forward. The risk was just speaking up on that, in a pretty broad setting with broad leadership present. For someone at that stage in my career, candidly, it was intimidating for me to do. However, I learned to really speak truth to power when maybe that wasn’t the proper thing to do.
It went against the consensus in the room, and it certainly turned out to be a good decision in terms of what happened with that product in different hands. Thankfully we didn’t make that acquisition, but that really taught me to trust my intuition that was informed by facts and just build some confidence. It’s something I always counsel folks on my teams or folks I mentor about. “You’re hired into that role for a reason, and we want to hear what you have to say.”
Adams: Can you tell us about your current goals?
Rajalingam: From a team perspective, certainly our customers have gone through a lot over the last year. It’s been the most challenging on record, with all kinds of activity around PPE and COVID testing and things like that. I think the first one is making sure we acknowledge as a company that the experience for our customers has been difficult. We have self-awareness for that and are really improving and simplifying the customer experience. That is my number-one priority for me and my team – and really our entire business segment – as we’re going forward. We’re launching a messaging campaign, along with a lot of improvements and investments behind that to do exactly that. We’re excited about that.
The other one is on a more qualitative level, and that’s to make sure for myself and my team that we have good balance, and the team is able to understand that what we’re in now is not a sprint, but a marathon. We’re essentially in a new normal. That phrase gets overused certainly, but I believe that’s the reality. I want to ensure that my team is creating that right work-life rhythm. Because when our reps are happy and fulfilled, that translates to what our customers experience.
Sidebar:
Cardinal Health at 50: Service at the Forefront
Cardinal Health as a company is marking its 50th anniversary in 2021, and kicked off a year of giving back in January.
Robert D. Walter was only 25 years old and fresh out of Harvard Business School when he decided to pave his own path. Walter founded the company in 1971 with the purchase of a small grocery wholesaler called Monarch Foods in Columbus, Ohio. He eventually changed the name to Cardinal Foods, in honor of Ohio’s state bird and the mascot of his high school.
After more than 10 years of growth in food distribution, Walter pivoted to pharmaceutical distribution and purchased Bailey Drug in Zanesville, Ohio. That was the first in a series of acquisitions of pharmaceutical distributors that eventually led to an initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 1983.
In 1990, Mike Kaufmann, now the Chief Executive Officer of Cardinal Health, joined Walter’s growing team, and then in 1994, the business changed its name to Cardinal Health.
“I have had the great fortune of knowing and working with Bob Walter for 30 years,” Kaufmann said. “He has helped make the company what it is today – a pharmaceutical distributor, a global manufacturer and distributor of medical and lab products and a provider of performance and data solutions for healthcare facilities. Bob also taught me a great deal as a leader – and continues to do so.”
Since its inception, Cardinal Health has continually evolved to meet healthcare’s changing needs. But one thing that has remained constant is a deep commitment to its customers, partners, employees and communities.
“It is a privilege to be with Cardinal Health today,” Kaufmann said. “We continue to adapt and innovate through a dynamic environment, building upon our scale and heritage in distribution with products and solutions to serve our customers and their patients – now and into the future.”
Walter said, “We built the company on a sustainable foundation – doing business the right way. Not a day goes by that I don’t see evidence of the good work that Cardinal Health does for its customers, partners, employees and communities.”
Robert Rajalingam, president of U.S. sales for medical solutions, said Cardinal Health is commemorating its 50-year anniversary with a year of service. “We’re encouraging employees to actively engage in programs that are important to them in many different areas, including educational initiatives, food drives, improving the environment, ending prescription drug misuse, whatever it might be. Our goal is to record a minimum of 50,000 hours of volunteer service by the end of the year.”
Throughout the year, employees will support causes that mean the most to them across four areas, one for each quarter of the year: equity, our environment, health and hunger.
“We’re purposefully beginning the year with equity-focused service,” Kaufmann said. “Diversity, inclusion and equity are core to who we are at Cardinal Health – we firmly believe that ‘as you are is just right for us.’”
Looking ahead to the next 50 years, Cardinal Health is focused on improving outcomes – for customers, partners, employees and communities. “As we collectively navigate the pandemic, we are dedicated to continuing to fulfill our critical role in the healthcare supply chain, as we work to become healthcare’s most trusted partner,” Kaufmann said.