By: Joshua Finley

Padmi Dissanayake’s career trajectory proves that saying “yes” to new challenges builds success. Born in Sri Lanka, her family migrated to Singapore, Indonesia, and finally Australia – all before the age of 10. This instilled an early ability to adapt to change. After migrating to Australia, Padmi graduated with a Bachelor of Economics and landed her first role in finance at Wella AG, a German hair care company. While this wasn’t her initial career vision, it laid the groundwork for future success.

Embracing People and Culture

Though Padmi started in finance, she soon pivoted to human resources – now called people and culture. She shares, “I reported to the finance and personnel manager, and as I engaged in more conversations with the personnel manager, I found myself drawn to the people’s aspects of business.” This desire to elevate people ultimately shaped her career.

Padmi then deliberately moved into a personnel officer role at Ohmeda, (Medical Division of BOC Gases). She muses, “I actually wanted to be a schoolteacher when I was young. My father wanted me to become an accountant. So, you listen to your parents back in the days and I completed the bachelor of economics.” Though unplanned at first, she fell in love with enabling people and being part of their professional and personal growth.

Leading Transformations 

Padmi recalls when Ohmeda was acquired by a Finnish company called Instrumentarium, she was heavily involved in this merger and acquisition. Soon after, Instrumentarium was bought by GE Healthcare, she then spent six transformative years there honing her business partnering, operations, talent management and change management abilities.

Padmi reflects, “working for GE was phenomenal. Within six months she was green belt certified and led Session C discussions with C-Suite Executives, and Regional Presidents, which included the alignment of people and organizational strategic direction, with a clear identification of exceptional talent and targeted career development opportunities. This led to her promotion where she held the position of HR Leader Australia and New Zealand for Clinical Systems, Life Sciences and Medical Diagnostics businesses. She then was headhunted by Pfizer, initially as a HR manager, and was later successful in leading 17 countries across Asia Pacific through commercial, cultural, service delivery and technology transformations, whilst working through several acquisitions, and divestitures across the Pfizer organization.

Guiding Transformations with a Commercial Mindset

Though shaped by economics and finance, Padmi realized she needed to gain a deeper and broader understanding of the pharmaceutical industry, the external stakeholders, and strengthen cross functional collaboration and communication skills. At Pfizer, she spent time in the oncology division to grasp the science and patient experience. This built her commercial acumen beyond traditional HR.

Padmi explains, “You need to be externally focused. That’s something GE taught us. We had five growth traits in GE, and one was being an inclusive leader, and another was being externally focused.” She continues, “The greatest compliment I received from my business partners was, ‘You don’t sound like HR at all.’ I take that as a compliment because you’ve got to be commercially savvy, and understand financials, risk and governance.”

This business mindset has been critical to her success guiding companies through change. She examines internal capabilities and external factors to shape a strategic workforce plan. Then, she determines if the company needs to build, buy or borrow talent based on the strategic direction of the organization – ensuring the right skills, and capabilities are in place to deliver desired results.

Leading With Empathy During Change

However, Padmi recognizes transformation isn’t just about strategy and skills. After completing a digital transformation program at Harvard Business Publishing, sponsored by her organization ResMed, her biggest lesson was “empathetic prioritization at the user level.” This was a game changing lesson in transformation which helped her to lead two technology implementations across 38 countries as the Vice President Global People Operations.

She explains, “That team member experiences so much change from all aspects of the business. How do you make whatever change seamless and easy for them?” More recently, in working for the Non-for-Profit sector, as the Director, People and Culture, for Lifestart Disability Services, Padmi believes you must engage people and evolve culture, whilst rewarding and recognizing team members achievements, and focus on team building and bonding initiatives, whilst strengthening performance outcomes alongside implementing changes. This holistic approach is now central to her new consultancy, Lotus Transformations.

Learning and Growing for Continued Success

Looking back on her varied global career, Padmi pinpoints five key tips for success:

• Say “YES” to new opportunities, even if they stretch your comfort zone. Tackle the toughest assignments to maximize growth.
• Surround yourself with talented people who can uplift the organization. A leader is only as strong as their team.
• Make sure people have the capability to deliver change. Buy in new skills or develop existing talent to set transformations up for success.
• Consider the pace of change in context to the whole organization, and empathic prioritization at the individual level, to establish capacity.
• Engage your teams, have fun, laugh often, be flexible and agile and focus on the wellbeing of your people.

Additionally, she credits her insatiable appetite for learning. Padmi reflects, “You need to keep evolving yourself and staying relevant. You cannot expect to be innovative without checking yourself in as a leader. Keep learning!”

After decades leading change across the globe, Padmi is excited to help others maximize their potential through Lotus Transformations. She summarizes her purpose as “elevating business and evolving people.” She further stated that Lotus is also the meaning of her name in Sanskrit. The flower is known for its ability to bloom in the toughest muddy conditions and rises above the water. She believes the Lotus symbolizes her character and is the essence of transformations. The values of Lotus Transformations are creativity, compassion, commitment, client centric, and collaboration. With her pioneering career and wealth of experience, Padmi is sure to keep achieving new heights making an impactful difference to her clients.

To learn more about Padmi Dissanayake and her journey, you can check out her LinkedIn profile.

Published by: Holy Minoza