Hello from the New CEO
To the Employees of Bioventus,
It is an honor and a privilege to serve you, our customers and our patients starting today. I am excited to be part of Bioventus! This role and opportunity is not something I would have predicted a short time ago but timing made this opportunity a reality. My wife Kristin and I look forward to returning to North Carolina and I very much look forward to helping Bioventus move forward on its future pathway of success and growth. I believe in this company, our mission of helping patients live healthy and active lives, our products and most importantly all of you. The most critical asset of any organization, at its core, are the employees and the culture. At Bioventus, it is clear that is the main strength and has been the greatest factor in driving success and market leadership.
Our strategy as a company will not change in the near term. The strategy will evolve over time as growth in the company and business conditions change. If we execute exceptionally well our strategy will evolve into new areas with even more opportunities for growth. Please note our advantage is our size as only a mid-cap company like Bioventus can be agile, quickly adopt to new market opportunities, and also have the size and scale to take advantage of those opportunities commercially.
My initial areas of focus will be on building relationships with the executive team and learning and understanding the current opportunities and challenges in the business. I will spend quite a bit of time understanding process and how and why we do certain things the way we do on a departmental level and ultimately what is being measured as metrics to our success. Focusing on what is working well today will be a key aspect of early discussions and have found that to be a great starting point to many great initiatives.
The following four areas you will hear me speak of often and is where I will spend a lot of my time.
- Ensuring a cohesive executive team that includes alignment on goals, objectives and priorities. This is essential to any well run business and look forward to working closely with the Bioventus executive team as we build toward the future. I believe in open debate and having a “disagree and commit” mentality that ensures execution across all departments.
- Organizational clarity – our mission, our culture, our commitment to quality and ultimately our strategy are all part of organization clarity and there can be many layers to this. This is specific to each individual employee and if you are not clear on your important role in what the company is doing then I am not doing my job!
- Over communicate organizational clarity – Through consistent e-mail messaging, executive alignment, all company meetings, skip level meetings and other forums (and always open to new ideas) organizational clarity will be made clear.
- Reinforce our organizational clarity through the initiatives and actions of our human systems. This includes hiring practices designed for best talent and cultural fit, rewarding for performance and dismissing for performance and values.
Every leader has their own style and approach to leading that has evolved based on their past experiences of success and failure and I am no different. I will tend to prioritize areas and topics that only a CEO can do to maximize my role in the business. Beyond that, here are some areas that I believe in.
- A culture that embraces mistakes, learns from mistakes and moves on and does not repeat the same mistake twice
- Double digit growth and doubling the business in revenue and EBITDA in the next five years is what we plan to do
- Destination company – double digit growth actually leads to continuing opportunities for career growth with key talent and this is crucial
- Compliant and ethical culture – highly valued and it starts and ends with this
Today we are in an unprecedented situation with the ongoing pandemic. I know these are trying times for all of us. First and foremost, the safety and health of all employees is paramount and is the first priority. Amazing work has been done to continue to serve our customers and patients under very difficult and unusual circumstances and thank you to the whole team for your flexibility and ingenuity during this time. I will be working closely with the executive leadership team as we continue to look at the business and understand the financial impact the current circumstances are having on our business in the near term. This is a fluid situation and we will have some short team challenges to work through as we all carefully watch the expenses in the business. Our priority will be to continue to serve our customers and preserve our organization, as we know better days are ahead. Patience is the key right now as we follow the orders of social distancing and working from home. Bioventus will emerge from this time period stronger and well equipped to continue on its pathway of growth.
Finally, I want to personally thank Tony Bihl for his amazing leadership at Bioventus! I got to know Tony through this process and our discussions played a critical role in my understanding the organization. Thank you Tony and we wish you and your family all the best!
Best Regards,
Ken Reali