December 10th, 2010 -I attended the Mission & Medallion Ceremony
Q: What is Mission & Medallion Ceremony?
A: In the early 1960s, Bakken and a group of company officers created the “Mission and
Medallion Ceremony,” a rite of passage every new employee must experience six months or so after joining the company. This rite of passage is a journey back in time, a virtual trip back to the garage where the dream began. For a recent ceremony, Bakken, who is long retired from the company, flew from his home in Hawaii to co-host the occasion with current Chairman and CEO Bill Hawkins. Not only did Bakken review Medtronic’s mission and discuss its meaning in detail, he took the new employees on a virtual tour of the important events in the company’s history. He showed slides of the company’s first AC-powered pacemaker and the tiny garage that was the company’s first lab. Finally, he and Collins gave each employee a bronze medallion depicting a person rising up and walking toward a full life, with the words
“Toward Full Life” inscribed on the edges. On the back of the medallion is the first statement
from the Medtronic Mission Statement. With each medallion, Bakken urged the new
employees to remember
Medallion Ceremony,” a rite of passage every new employee must experience six months or so after joining the company. This rite of passage is a journey back in time, a virtual trip back to the garage where the dream began. For a recent ceremony, Bakken, who is long retired from the company, flew from his home in Hawaii to co-host the occasion with current Chairman and CEO Bill Hawkins. Not only did Bakken review Medtronic’s mission and discuss its meaning in detail, he took the new employees on a virtual tour of the important events in the company’s history. He showed slides of the company’s first AC-powered pacemaker and the tiny garage that was the company’s first lab. Finally, he and Collins gave each employee a bronze medallion depicting a person rising up and walking toward a full life, with the words
“Toward Full Life” inscribed on the edges. On the back of the medallion is the first statement
from the Medtronic Mission Statement. With each medallion, Bakken urged the new
employees to remember
“Your work here at Medtronic is not just to make money for yourself or the company,
but to restore people to fuller lives.”
but to restore people to fuller lives.”
With that said; here are a few pictures that I took while Earl was giving his speech about how Medtronic began:
Earl welcoming employees
Earl got his idea from watching Frankenstein (interesting)/He first started in his garage
First external pacemaker
2nd external pacemaker - it was redesigned because these were used on children and the first external pacemakers gave the little ones access to turning the knobs (which is not good)
43,000 people in the world with pacemakers
VP, James Dallas
I didn't get a picture with Earl Bakken (suppose I should've), but I shook his hand and he gave me my Medallion! :)
Here's a couple pictures I took of the people I knew from our building:
L-R: James, Shelly, Jai, John, Christina, Alyssa - Kristy R is sitting next to Alyssa, but she was behind me and I didn't do a good job so she's not pictured.
L-R: Jean, Tressa, Kristy A.
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