Braving Change: Facing Fears in the Midst of Major Transitions

It’s been more than 25 years, but I still remember how scared I was.

I was two years into my first job at a major orthopedics company and freshly promoted when I learned it was being bought by another industry giant. I worried I’d lose my job. I worried that if I kept my job, my new boss would hate me—or I’d hate my new boss. I wondered if I needed to shop out my thin resume—how would it look to potential employers who saw how little experience I had? Was I even in the right industry?

These and so many other questions kept me up at night. I made it through that merger only to face yet another three months later. The fear returned stronger than before. Management was tight-lipped about what the ownership transition would mean for our team, our projects, and each of us as individuals. When they announced roughly 150 employees were now expected to move to a new major city with a much higher cost of living to keep their jobs, fewer than 10 accepted the offer.

It was a study in what not to do. I didn’t need to take notes for those lessons to stick.

Earlier this year when we sold the company I built from a single test frame 24 years ago, I understood how my team felt. I even shared some of their trepidation, even though I’d chosen our buyers because Applied Technical Services’ (ATS) corporate culture and vision for the future matched ours—specifically, the way they partner with clients to find solutions.

But this was a huge change for me, my family, and the men and women who make up Empirical Technologies. Change brings uncertainty and that can be scary.

All of this was on the heels of a global pandemic, no less.

To assuage those fears, I increased communication and my face time with employees. Even though I assured them no positions were being cut, they still cited job security as a top fear. As I was offering a job to our new chief operating officer, I told him ownership might change. He said he was accepting the job anyway because he was impressed with my honesty and was confident he could help with the shift. Still, fears persisted among team members. It took several months of no noticeable change in the day-to-day operations to reassure them this transition was actually going as smoothly as I told them it would.

I reached out to clients personally to let them know about the sale. I listened to their concerns, answered their questions, and hoped I was doing enough to ease the stress of the shift.

The first question they all asked: Are you still around? I’m still getting this question six months later.

Yes, I am still very much a part of the company I’ve spent my professional life building. I am still president. I am still a resource for clients and employees. I am still very much an active member of the medical device community, and deeply thankful for that fact.

It’s one I’ve conveyed in press releases, email newsletters, website updates, this column—I used every communication tool I had to share the news of this shift and alleviate the fears that follow it.

I also had to reassure myself. As with any major transition, I wondered if I’d made the right decision. For the first time in nearly three decades, I was going to have someone to report to. Before the sale closed, we learned a new CEO was taking the helm at ATS—yet another opportunity to confront the fear of change.

I also focused on the benefits and opportunities for my team and our clients now that Empirical Technologies is part of the ATS family of companies. As part of a much larger entity that includes 25 different firms, we can now connect customers with a much wider range of services in-house. Other labs within the ATS brand are leaders in chemical, metallurgic, and mechanical testing. Empirical brought ATS a new client base from additive manufacturing that now benefits from the range of tests ATS labs perform to ensure each lot meets design criteria. ATS labs also perform CT microscans, which can now serve our additive manufacturing clients in detecting defects in implants without destroying them, a particular boon for patient-specific devices with nonuniform geometries. ATS’s failure analysis pros and calibration test lab are more critical resources—aspects of medical device development my company had to outsource prior to joining ATS.

Many of these labs are well-established in other industries but are new to the medical device space. Part of the joy of my new role is creating connections within my professional community and knowing I’m helping advance a project, a company, or an idea. I’m not just looking at how to advance my business, I’m now positioned within a company that has the power and talent base to advance the entire industry.

Over the past few years, my husband Chris and I wrestled with the decision to sell the company we built together. Three questions drove our final decision: What is the best thing for our clients? What is the best thing for our employees? What is the best thing for us?

Finally this year, we could conclusively answer those questions in partnering with ATS.

I’m gratified that half a year after the change, my team tells me I fulfilled my promise I made them at the beginning of the shift. They recognize that their day-to-day operations haven’t changed, and they can now offer more solutions to clients. 

It’s been a completely different experience than what I suffered through fresh out of school. I faced my fear of change this time, in service to my goal of finding new leadership who could take my company to a level I never could. I didn’t want to just increase in size and resources. In partnering with people who see the potential of the talent on my team and the exponential positive impact we have to improve patient outcomes, I’m proud to be pushing through the discomfort and uncertainty of major change to finally lay my fears to rest. 

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Dawn Lissy is a biomedical engineer, entrepreneur, and innovator. Since 1998, Empirical Technologies Corp. has operated under Lissy’s direction. Empirical offers the full range of regulatory and quality systems consulting, testing, small batch and prototype manufacturing, and validations services to bring a medical device to market. Empirical is very active within standards development organization ASTM International and has one of the widest scopes of test methods of any accredited independent lab in the United States. Because Lissy was a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, she has first-hand, in-depth knowledge of the regulatory landscape. Lissy holds an inventor patent for the Stackable Cage System for corpectomy and vertebrectomy. Her M.S. in biomedical engineering is from The University of Akron, Ohio.