Family Affair

Yes siree Spinebloggers, "the ability to promote from within is culturally invaluable."  Yet, it depends on ones interpretation of what type of culture one would like to promulgate.  When one thinks of something quick and agile, TSB suspects that the proverbial 800 pound gorilla is not what comes to mind unless one wants unquestionable power. Yet, after years of chewing up and spitting out employees and convincing sales reps and distributors to drink the purple kook-aid, the Bear is at a proverbial public relations cross roads.  Will he survive or will he walk the proverbial gang plank?  As one great sage once said, "all things must pass."  One can use only so many metaphors until it begins to fall on def ears. Yet, between the Cheetah being an endangered species,  how does a 14 year old company still considers calling itself a start-up?  What's it starting up?  Is that what Nuvasive pays its New York based public relations firm for?

Let's face it, NuVasive is no longer the Cheetah that it was seven years ago, it resembles the elephant that it detested in its old mentor and training ground Medtronic Sofamor Danek.  It has become top heavy and resembles a sever layer cake, fat with bureaucrats and administrators who like to tell one another and the lackey analysts  how great they are. How does a company build a unique culture when it recruits from DePuy? US Surgical? or Medtronic? Are you really building something unique? Is it a "new" culture or is it really just building the mirror image of what it has told the street and its investors    it wasn't going to be? It was only yesterday, a day in the lives of some of Nuvasive's bureaucrats, that they wanted to be something different, they took pride in being different than their former employer.  In many respect  Nuvasive has become everything it said it would not.

Mr. French can only coddle Jodie and Buffy so long before he no longer sings as the tenor.  TSB is sure that Mssrs. Link, Powers, and Durall are probably good citizens whom have now been tasked with attempting to make right what has gone wrong. Yet, if Mr. French is now going to be quoted as saying that he is "pleased to be engaged with his sales executives," does that mean that up until this point he wasn't?  Our readers have to love those corporate buzz words, "making progress on multiple initiatives, sales force penetration deeper into accounts (TSB bets that sends a tingle down the ladies spine), efforts that are not expected to hinder the company's profitability."  Who knows with a press release like that cigarette sales will be up across the board.  So as Sly Stone once sang,

"Newly wed a year ago, but there still checkin' each other out, Nobody wants to blow, Nobody wants to be left out, You can't leave cause your heart is there, but you can't stay because you've been somewhere else.................It's a family affair, It's a family affair.