84: Tomo Hasegawa, President, Japan at Medline Industries

Tomo Hasegawa is a second-generation Japanese-American with
extensive leadership experience in the global medical and
pharmaceutical industry. After he graduated from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an Electrical
Engineering degree, Mr. Hasegawa joined Hewlett Packard (HP) as a
Project Manager and Engineer where he helped design ultrasound
devices that HP was creating at the time. When HP was struggling
to survive the competitive market in Japan, Mr. Hasegawa was
assigned from the US to work for HP Japan Medical (later became
Agilent) to help turn around the business. He was originally
hired to assist with marketing and sales of roughly 50+ people.
Eventually, Agilent was acquired by Phillips and Mr. Hasegawa
became the General Manager of the cardiac ultrasound business in
Japan. After three years, Mr. Hasegawa was headhunted by Sonosite
Japan, a company specializing in portable ultrasound devices. Mr.
Hasegawa then began working at Sandoz Japan, a multi-national
pharmaceutical company, and most recently, joined Medline
Industries Japan office as their president.


 


Mr. Hasegawa says HP’s people-centric approach in business was
what made the company so successful, and he has taken on this
leadership approach throughout his career. He explains: “[As
leaders] we were told to just do two things...first, set the
direction and second, get things out of the way for your people.”
During the early 2000s, a rival company had headhunted many of
the leadership staff from HP, which caused many challenges. Mr.
Hasegawa initially struggled with the challenge of leading an
organization with a strong competitor, on top of the fact that he
had no experience in doing business in Japan in Japanese. Yet he
eventually came to realize that the customers care much more
about the product and wanted to hear about the technical details,
which Mr. Hasegawa as an engineer had thorough knowledge of.
Within his team, Mr. Hasegawa’s knowledge and active listening
skills helped him build trust and credibility.


 


At Sonosite Japan, Mr. Hasegawa joined just as the company had
set up a subsidy from Olympus, which grew to 15 people within a
year. Mr. Hasegawa helped take the company from a distribution
model to a direct sales model and exceeded set targets. After a
successful four years at Sonosite, Mr. Hasegawa was offered a
position at Toshiba in the US to lead their ultrasound business.
There, Mr. Hasegawa was tasked with bringing an ultrasound device
to the commercial side. Mr. Hasegawa’s felt Toshiba had “made it”
in the US when he was approached by salespeople from General
Electric (GE) who joined Toshiba, and are still with the company.


 


Mr. Hasegawa then joined Sandoz Japan after completing an MBA at
the University of Washington – Michael G. Foster School Of
Business. This was Mr. Hasegawa’s first experience in the
pharmaceutical industry, leading an organization of approximately
300+ people. Mr. Hasegawa found it challenging to be in a
competitive market trying to sell a product that was similar to
many other rival companies. He explains that because the company
was trying to make a cultural transition yet at the same time not
agreeing on how to make the change, maintaining transparent
communication was a challenge. Mr. Hasegawa recalls his years at
Sandoz as a challenge but also a time of tremendous growth and
learning. He explains: “I remember my boss telling me I don't
care about your opinion and it's like, okay, great. So, what do
you care about? And he explained to me it's facts, insight, and
then action. That's what we pay you for…not the, this is what my
gut is telling me…Right, the insight is why we are human beings
running a business. Otherwise, you can have a computer run the
business for you.”


 


Finally, Mr. Hasegawa joined Medline, a medical product
manufacturing and distribution company, which he calls the
biggest company people have never heard of. The secret of Medline
is, according to Mr. Hasegawa, despite its grand scale, it is run
like a start-up – the organization is agile, bureaucracy-free,
and focused on the genba (field). Mr. Hasegawa led the Japan
branch of 400 people. At Medline too, Mr. Hasegawa practiced the
leadership approach he developed at HP by setting the direction
and leading by example. From customizing products to suit
Japanese customers to building a warehouse in Japan, Mr. Hasegawa
says such leadership activities allowed him to build trust from
his team as well as customers who felt listened to. Mr. Hasegawa
has built a yattemiyo (let’s just do it) spirit within the
company culture, which he believes has given the organization
more innovation.