In this seventh episode of ASUG Talks: Candid Career Conversations, season 2, we talk with Scott Gordon, Senior Principal IT Technical Analyst for Medtronic.
A full transcript follows:
Laurel Nelson-Rowe:
Today I am joined by Scott Gordon who is Senior Principal IT Technical Analyst with Medtronic. Welcome to ASUG Talks, Scott.
Gordon:
Thank you.
Nelson-Rowe:
We will get started right with some questions on your background. Where did you grow up and if that affected you in any way, in terms of your professional career, your career choices, your career decisions? Scott, take it away.
Gordon:
I grew up in Albert Lea, Minnesota, which is just north of the border with Iowa, about 100 miles south of Minneapolis. I'm the youngest by quite a bit, of four boys and all of us ended up at the University of Minnesota. And my background, in terms of education and so on, is a little unusual. I have a degree in English literature and eventually, found my way into IT work. Several years after college I went back to school and got a certificate in computer programming.
I would say the background that I have, I'm happy about. My father taught me, before he passed away, sadly a long time ago, to not have a lot of regrets, even though he was a very practical person and thought I should have studied business. I don't have any regrets about what I did because I think that it's helped me a ton in my IT career.
Nelson-Rowe:
You've touched on it here. What values and principles from your childhood have contributed to your career and to the professional that you've become today?
Gordon:
I would say, being honest and holding myself to high standards, which sometimes that's hard in life depending upon who you are and what your background is and sometimes I feel bad looking over my shoulder. Mom's still around, but dad's been gone a long time. Sometimes I feel bad looking over my shoulder because I remember a couple of things from my youth when I did things that were stupid and dishonest and he held me to account and I never did those things again. He scared me and not physically, he just scared me because he basically taught me, your actions are more important than anything else and I'm not perfect, nor is anyone else, but I try to hold those things up in a responsible and as humble way as I can.
Nelson-Rowe:
You eventually made yourself into IT. Does that mean that you did or didn't expect to land in a professional career in information technology?
Gordon:
If you had asked me when I was in college and had decided to pursue studying English and told me that I would be working with computers and IT, I would've laughed you out of the room. First of all, PCs were not around when I was in college. They were very, very limited use. I remember taking an independent study class that involved swapping out five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy discs in a drive. It was a language class and I thought technology was evil and computers were bad and I didn't understand them.
My kids are digital natives. I was not a digital native nor are those of us of a certain age. So I had to come upon it and then start to appreciate it and then start to get beyond, oh, this technology is cool, let's focus on that geeky thing and then turn it into a tool. When I used to play with things, software-wise, then I went down rabbit holes. Then I realized, guess what? These are tools to make my job, which is not about that cool software, but about how does that software make my job easier or make somebody else's job easier.
Nelson-Rowe:
What was your first job related to IT and SAP solutions? When? Where? What were you doing?
Gordon:
My first IT job was where I ended up starting on SAP. I worked for a company called SciMed Life Systems, which eventually was acquired by Boston Scientific, one of Medtronic's big competitors. And I worked on the AS/400. When I started there, I was a programmer and also did computer operations work, which I also value tremendously. Gave me some background in hardware, not that that hardware is even remotely relevant all these years later, but it was really solid background that helped me learn a ton about IT more broadly, not just the early focus.
And actually when I took that job, I had been offered another job with a company called, at the time, West Publishing, which is ultimately Thompson Reuters, well known for WestLaw. And I had been offered a great job there, but it was going to be doing dBase programming and it was a very narrow niche.
I had taken a job while I was back in school getting my certificate in computer programming. And there was a guy there who really liked to mentor people. I was working there part-time doing computer backups and some other things and learning about stuff that I had no understanding of previously. And I told him I got these two great offers and the WestLaw one actually paid a little bit more. He said, "I'd take the other one. You're the fourth person in an IT department that's six months old. You're going to get so much exposure to so many things that you're going to be much better off. West's a great company, you're going to be in a niche, they'll move you around eventually, but that'd be your niche. If that's what you want to do, go for it. If you want more broad experiences, I'd go for that one.” Really great advice.
Nelson-Rowe:
Great advice early on.
Gordon:
Yes. So I started out at SciMed and about three or four years in, we started to look at SAP. And this is back in the early ‘90s when SAP was really exploding. The R3 system was really exploding and our AS/400 base system wasn't great. And we started down that journey then Boston acquired us. They shut down the project because they said we're going to look at this more globally and started to do a broader implementation for Boston. I ended up leaving there because they really moved a lot of it out to Boston and I was not interested in relocating. I then moved onto a number of other places, including eight years of consulting work, but that was my first exposure to SAP.
Nelson-Rowe:
Now, do you consider yourself a career path planner, responsive to opportunities, or a combination?
Gordon:
A combination. I've certainly done some planning, probably less than some, but definitely opportunities have arisen over time that I have taken advantage of and been mostly very happy with those choices. There was one decision I made when I really needed to get off the road for just sanity and family purposes when I was consulting. And I went to work actually outside of SAP for exactly one year and it was not a good fit for them and wasn't a good fit for me. But lesson learned about thinking through and it's not just about do you have an offer and so on and so forth. And that one wasn't even about money by any means. It was about me being in town and not being away four or five days a week.
Nelson-Rowe:
So we're going to challenge you with one of the first lightning round questions that we'll give you. Two minutes or less, just share with the audience your career highlights.
Gordon:
Well, I already said a little bit of it, but I'll say a little bit more. So I worked in consulting for Price Waterhouse Coopers for five years, after I had had left my first SAP experience. Did lots of SAP implementation work, gained a ton of experience and knowledge and breadth and understanding about the companies, worked with some really awesome people.
And ultimately, I'm on my second stint at Medtronic and I think I've done some of my happiest work at Medtronic. My last job before returning back to Medtronic four years ago, I worked at a company called MTS, here in Minnesota and I was an IT manager there for four and a half years. And that gave me experience that I had not had before, and I had a great mentor there who was super helpful to me. And now as I'm in the later stages of my career years, I think it's helped give me a lot of perspective and opportunities to give back, which is one of the reasons I've become more and more involved in ASUG.
Nelson-Rowe:
As you think back, what's been your favorite job, role, responsibility, project and why?
Gordon:
I have to say probably right now at Medtronic. One, because I like what we do. We do things to improve and save people's lives. I have direct family members who have our products. I've often said that we make great products. I hope I never need most of them because it usually involves something serious. But like I said, I have two direct members of the family who've used our therapies and they’ve made great improvements in their lives. So that means a lot to me that the Medtronic mission is talked about a lot and it means something to me. It sounds corny to some people, but it drives me.
I probably couldn't work for a company that, I don't know, did environmental damage or something like that. And I realize that companies have a right to--I don't want to denigrate them--they have a right to do their business. I wouldn't feel the same about it as I do now. And I like a lot of the solutions that I've been working on since returning to Medtronic. We've done some really important work to simplify some of the complexities we've built into SAP over the years and now we've taken some of those complexities out, which has thrilled our customers, thrilled our internal customers, and saved a bunch of money and also generated some revenue and we won a couple of awards as a result of it, which was icing on the cake. But those things, when I hear back the metrics, I'm just so happy about that.
Nelson-Rowe:
If right now is your favorite, what is it you do every day that makes it a favorite of yours?
Gordon:
My day-to-day, so I'm working a lot with business people and other IT people on the various projects. I work on projects. So different demand comes in. I'm often asked to help pre-assess that demand that comes in. The business wants to do this, that, or the other thing, try and figure out does that really involve my team or does that involve a different team or are we in an advisory role? Things like that, and then they ultimately turn into a request that gets funded as our model. So they have to get funding for these things and then I may or may not get pulled into it as it gets queued up for work.
And once it gets queued up for work and I am involved, then if I'm involved deeply, then I'm helping, sometimes writing specs, sometimes supervising offshore help to do that and advising on things. And I've got my fingers in a bunch of different projects and things. And it's good and I have to have good relationships with folks in IT and in the business, and hopefully I do.
Nelson-Rowe:
Juggling many different projects at once?
Gordon:
Yeah. We try and keep it relatively sane, so there's not too many, because I'm a firm believer that if you slice up somebody's time in too many pieces, you end up with a whole lot of nothing because you can't focus enough. We have to have a reasonable level of focus and I think we achieve that. And I'm used to it enough through my career, that I can handle that. I know there are some people who are, it's just not in their DNA to handle a whole lot of things and that's not a criticism of them. Some people don't work that way and we have to recognize that.
Nelson-Rowe:
Right. So if now is your favorite, what, as you reflect has been the most challenging role, responsibility or project and why was it so challenging?
Gordon:
Probably my last role at MTS, where I was an IT manager there. I didn't start there as a manager and got moved into that role after a year. And it was challenging because that's not my background. Anybody who says that moving into a management role out of an analyst role or a technical role, it's, oh well you know this stuff so now you can manage it. It doesn't work that way. And fortunately I had a manager who was, I think he loves to help people grow and if he happens to listen to this, I won't name him. But if he happens to listen to this, hopefully he's hearing that. Because I really appreciate what he did for me over that time. I think I grew a ton during that time.
Do I think I was the world's best at it? By no means. I don't know that anybody would say I was terrible at it. I hope not. But it was challenging because it was learning to work with a business in ways that I had not worked at a higher level a lot and also helping manage. One of the people who worked for me said, "You're the first manager I've had"--and he's worked in SAP for a long time--"who knew SAP to any significant degree and you know it to a very deep degree." So I said, "Is that a good thing or is that a bad thing?" He said, "No, it's a good thing." But there was always the balance of not micromanaging. We hired people who were professionals and were knowledgeable so let them go. Yeah, it was a huge challenge. I enjoyed it but it was a big growth experience and again, I thank the person who managed me a lot because he really helped me learn that.
Nelson-Rowe:
Challenging and learning at the same time. What's been your best career decision to date and what went into that decision making?
Gordon:
To stay on the SAP path. When I left SciMed, Boston Scientific, I had two job offers. One, to go to work for a company called Tenant here in Minneapolis. I believe they are ASUG members. And I worked for Tenant, two different times actually. The other was to go back to the AS/400 world and I think it was a programming manager role or something like that at another company. And that's a good company, I actually know the family who owns the company. But when I decided to stick with SAP, that was I think a really smart decision on my part because SAP has been something I've really enjoyed and grown with and there's always new things to learn and I’ve been at a dozen different SAP environments over the years.
Nelson-Rowe:
Is there a career decision or career choice, project, process that you'd like to do over? And if so, what would that be?
Gordon:
Career decision, when I left the consulting world, I accepted a position, it was actually outside of SAP for one year and that didn't go well. It wasn't a good fit for me, it wasn't a good fit for them and I took the opportunity to leave the road, which was the best thing for me and that was tough. Are there other things that I wish I could do over again? Geez, I bet there's no project I've worked on that I wish I couldn't go back, some more than others, and say, ah, if we'd only done this because software's that way. You're always improving it.
Nelson-Rowe:
What education and training experiences have been essential to your success in IT roles?
Gordon:
Certainly my initial programming course. I actually had two options that I decided to pursue to look at when I went into IT work. One two-year course, I don't even remember what it was called because it's a long time ago. And the other was a seven-month course, which is the one I did. There was a cost issue and also an income issue. How are we going to make ends meet? My wife working and me going to school, how was I going to do that?
Seven months was a much shorter runway and that felt better. It gave me building blocks. I learned a whole bunch of different languages, a smattering of them, not a whole thing. I learned concepts of just how do you do IT work. I also learned some things about empathy. I remember I wrote a program once, a simple program and I had to write an error message into it and I remember the error message said something about, “Way to go dummy,” and then the instructor looked at me and raised his eyebrows. He says, "You're a pretty bright guy but you don't need to be that way." All right. Point taken. I always just thought I was having fun. It's like, yeah, imagine yourself on the other side of that, how you might feel.
Nelson-Rowe:
Technical skills and soft skills at the same time.
Gordon:
Right? And after that, then when I got into the SAP world, I took, we had a bunch of education because we were an early adopter of SAP at SciMed. At that point, I was still a programmer so I got related types of training and then ultimately functional training as I moved more into analyst configuration role. And those things were really important foundational things to learn and some of the courses were okay, others were really good.
And then I did some CRM work at Medtronic when I worked here the first time, SAP CRM, and I got some CRM training, which my long ECC background really helped me learn the CRM stuff much more quickly. But there was still a ton to learn there.
Certainly everything from technical training to business understanding, so many different courses. Medtronic has tons of internal courses that some of which were required to take, some of them are useful and just anything that gains more depth and understanding not just of the technology but how it's used and how it benefits people.
Again, I used to think that playing around with the software was really cool and then realizing, you know what, that's nice, but how are you going to use it practically and how is it going to help somebody else? Because you might think it's really neat, but for them, it's not or then the day-to-day battles we all have with our computers, our PCs, and it's a tool. How am I making it the most useful for me because it's ultimately a tool to get my job done. And if you extrapolate that further at Medtronic, our software is a tool to ensure that we are selling good products to customers and we get them out to them and get them the therapies that they need to serve their patients.
Nelson-Rowe:
Your translation and hub of information role. You mentioned before, mentor. So we'd love to hear about the best advice a mentor might have given you at a point in time.
Gordon:
I think the best advice, and this is really a conglomeration of things. I think listening and paying attention to the needs of the people I'm working with, my customers, for lack of a better term, listening and understanding what they want and helping them understand it better because sometimes they don't really know what they want. But really listening and understanding that.
I had a recent conversation with an internal customer about something that we had at a proposal phase for a solution and they said, “No, that's not good. That's going to create work for our customer service people and we already have too many things we need to know.” So really listening to that. I think also, again, being empathetic, really understanding how people do things on a personal level, but also obviously on a professional level. Back to the customer service folks.
I learned over time at Medtronic specifically that our customer service people have an incredible amount of information to know to process orders, sales orders in our system, phenomenal amounts. And if we add more complexity to that, that's not helping them. And that's ultimately not helping our end customers, and our patients.
And I think the last thing that's become more and more obvious and important to me that I've learned and certainly in my manager role and in my current role, is think broadly and strategically. Don't just think about the point solution, think about how it fits into the big picture near and long term, within reason. We can't just sit and ponder things forever. We've got jobs to do, we've got projects to execute. But think about how it fits into the big picture and don't hesitate to raise your hand and say, “Hold on, I think we've got an opportunity or a challenge and I don't want us to have a problem later because we didn't think about it.”
Nelson-Rowe:
Those are pieces of advice that mentors have given you and also great pieces of advice that you are sharing with others through this podcast. Is there any other words of wisdom, pearls of wisdom that you want to offer in terms of advice?
Gordon:
Well, I think those things that I've learned, broadly, are the things that I would give to just about anybody doing the kind of work that I do, is really listen to what people want and help them understand, have them help you understand the business need. If you don't understand the business need, then you're not going to necessarily deliver a good solution and sometimes they ask for things that don't make sense.
But be creative, learn what they need and then think about it. If you know SAP, well for example, say, hey, I think we can do that. I'm always driven by, despite the significant customization we've done to Medtronic's SAP system, I'm still driven by the ultimate mantra that I think every SAP customer should do is try and find solutions in the system at work. But admittedly, not every solution in SAP is great. Not every process that SAP has works really well. Some of them are really clunky and they're not streamlined and they're not easy.
Okay, well is there a way to automate those solutions and piece them together to make them more efficient? And we've done that at Medtronic too. We do different kinds of things that leverage the technology in ways that don't involve completely jumping out of it or bastardizing it completely, but also making sure you're satisfying the business needs in the most efficient way possible.
Nelson-Rowe:
You've somewhat hinted at this, I think, but why are you so passionate about what you do?
Gordon:
I like helping people. I've learned that I really helping them succeed in their jobs. I think back to a project I did back on the AS400 at PsyMed, we integrated our system with FedEx for shipping, for billing customers 'cause we charged a shipping and handling fee and they used to have to do manual calculations offline and then during invoicing, add that in. Oh, we shipped them a three-pound box, we get charged this much from FedEx, we add a fee onto that, we have to do a calculation now we add that onto the bill. Somebody had to go do that. When I think back on this is, and this is well over 25 years ago, so I was the programmer who helped do that with a project manager and an analyst and we worked hand in hand on the whole thing.
And I remember I actually went to the warehouse the first day we implemented the solution, which automated all of that. And I went and helped them because we said, hold all your shipping ticket right now. And then I actually helped them pack stuff up and stick it on scales. It was fun and learned a little bit more about that. But they were like, they, we don't have to do that nonsense offline anymore. Nope, you don't have to do that. And they were so happy and that made me feel really good.
And then I fast forward that to dozens of other projects I've worked on with enhancements or other things. Again, some of the stuff I've done most recently in Medtronic and we've saved money, we've automated things, we've made people happy. I like that. That makes me feel good. I don't need personal pats on the back about it. It's nice to get some gratitude for it and things like that, but just knowing that it's made their life easier. And then when you think about it in purely business terms, what does that ultimately mean? It means we saved money or we generated revenue or did other things to streamline and that ultimately helps the bottom line, which is what fundamentally we have to do as well.
Nelson-Rowe:
It sounded like that face-to-face immediate moment of feedback was particularly rewarding and that was early on. Is there a moment or an experience that you are most proud of in your career?
Gordon:
Wow. I don't think I can pick a single one. I'm sorry.
Nelson-Rowe:
That's okay. That's okay.
Gordon:
There's lots of them.
Nelson-Rowe:
You've recounted a few already. If you could change one thing about information technology and SAP products and solutions, what would that be?
Gordon:
Probably a stronger customer focus. How do SAP customers use the solutions and ensure that they actually fit? Now again, I've worked with SAP for a very long time. I remember even having a conversation way back when, at my second SAP job, with somebody in Germany who was supporting an issue I'd posted with them and we found some weird poor functionality in the system and I said, this is a bug. And he said, no, it's not a bug. This works as it was designed. I said, well your design's terrible. And I don't think he understood it. And I felt like he was sitting in an ivory tower in Germany at Waldorf, Germany in their headquarters and didn't really get what we were doing and understood it and why this was a problem and made things difficult.
So now that's a long time ago. They've come a long, long way since then. So that's one anecdote from ancient times, but I think that's a constant need to make sure you're meeting the technology needs and it's always a rapidly changing environment.
Nelson-Rowe:
What are the most helpful resources that you've leveraged and taken advantage of from ASUG?
Gordon:
The chapter meetings have been really useful. Great interactions with other people, met lots of great people, developed some relationships, hearing stories, hearing ideas. And I just find those things. We often sit in our chairs, whether they're in an office or at home now or wherever we happen to be. And we don't stick our head outside. And I say that in not a scolding or critical way because we're busy. We're all busy in our jobs. But as long as our companies enable us to go to those kinds of events and to get other exposure, I think it's really important.
Great to have internal training. Again, Medtronic's has great internal training and lots of things, but it's also good to get external exposure. You're going to hear ideas, you're going to get rejuvenated and refreshed. Those are important. It's the business version of taking a vacation. You step outside and having that seating, for me, it gets my mind going. I've sat at ASUG meetings a lot and sit in sessions and I'm sitting scribbling notes and about things that just keep popping into my head because I'm hearing something that triggers something that relates back to what I'm doing.
Nelson-Rowe:
Time well spent. If you were advising someone who is contemplating going into IT and specifically going into it in an SAP environment, what would you encourage them to do and to become?
Gordon:
Learn about the technology and the pieces they need to know from a technology perspective and learn about the business that you're working for and the business you're that you're working in. Or at least if you're not currently employed and you're just getting training or you're studying, then get some business acumen because again, you're not just playing with software toys. It's there for a purpose and how is it going to help your business benefit?
Nelson-Rowe:
So a cross-section of the technical knowledge and also understanding what the business is about, business functions.
Gordon:
Right. And additionally, I said I don't regret my background studying English. I think I'm a pretty decent writer. There's probably a few colleagues who wish I didn't whip out my red pen when I review documents. I try to be polite because I have my mantra lately because one of my roles now is I have to approve certain things that go through our systems. And I often have to do peer reviews on specs.
I say to people, whoever they happen to be, think about this document in the future. Somebody two years from now is looking at this document and you're no longer here. And I try to put this in a positive, because you won the lottery, not because you got hit by a bus and you're no longer here and nobody else who had any contact with it is around and for you to ask and they need to read that document because there's a problem or because the initial solution that was implemented now needs to be enhanced because there's some additional business need. And that was phase one of it. And now they need to do phase two. But phase one is part of phase two.
Will they understand it well enough that they'll be able to use that? And I say that when it comes to support documents, I say it for anything, if it doesn't tell a story, why did we do this? Hopefully other options that were considered. Things like that I think are super helpful because sometimes they go back and look at something, well, what'd you do it that way for? Well, because there was a cost concern. We could have done the fancy solution, but there wasn't budget for it or time. So that's why we did it that way. Oh, okay. All right. I can accept that, budgets are not unlimited and that's really important.
So that's the other piece, making sure you are doing good communications. And it doesn't mean you have to write warranties. It just means you have to really think through how you do that. And that's hard for some people.
Nelson-Rowe:
Yeah, be clear.
Gordon:
Especially technical folks.
Nelson-Rowe:
Think of the audience. Your final question. In the ASUG Talks Candid Career Conversation of today, what if you could have one superpower to be better at what you do in your job today or in your past, what would that superpower be and why?
Gordon:
Magically getting disparate groups of people to understand each other quickly. That's my superpower. It's not being able to lift really heavy things. It's not being able to fly. It's getting those groups together because we've all been in conversations, whether they're in person or on Zoom or whatever else, when we're talking to a bunch of people and they just don't get each other.
Nelson-Rowe:
So magically making that conversation and communication happen. Great.
Gordon:
Yeah.
Nelson-Rowe:
Thank you. I appreciate the conversation that we've had today.