Author: john

There is plenty of great knowledge out there about the phases of team formation , key dysfunctions of teams (Patrick Lencioni’s famous book: the 5 dysfuntions of a team), what high performing teams do differently and yet highly engaged and effective teams are still a rarity in organisations. Some of this is down to the leadership, some of this is down to the behaviours and processes and some of this is simply due to factors outside of the team’s control. There is plenty that can be done to support you in any of these cases but we thought it would be useful to share a case study regarding the impact of changes beyond a team’s control and share how this team chose to respond by engaging our support to help them get back on track. Following a re-organisation at a large Pharma company, the team leader of a sizable department realised he needed to create a new sense of purpose and generate alignment...

Would you believe that you could learn about transformational change leadership from a Netflix series? No? Well, frankly I am not sure I would have done either, but then I watched The Last Kingdom. This series, which in my view is a majestic tapestry woven from the threads of historical fact and creative fiction by Bernard Cornwell, follows the life of Uhtred Ragnarson during the 9th Century. This was a period when the land was divided by different rulers ; was being ravaged by the Danes, and when only one man (King Alfred of Wessex) had a vision of a united kingdom, called England.  A time of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity (VUCA) and transformational change for sure! What can we learn from Alfred about change leadership? As a leader, Alfred had a strong and compelling vision that he articulated repeatedly. He worked hard to make sure he had accurate sources of data to inform his decision making and achieve quick wins. He...

Our job roles usually evolve over time. But on occasion, a company will reflect on changes in the external world and realise that a key role needs to be fundamentally altered, quickly. For the job holders this may not be so easy.  Some years ago, a global Pharma company, having been over-comfortable with years of blockbuster drug sales, suddenly woke up to realise that the external healthcare world was changing fast. Concerns at Board level about keeping pace with the evolving commercial environment led to them reaching out to an international consulting firm to review their approach to strategic drug marketing and design a fresh approach that would fit with this emerging situation.  The full conclusions from the consultancy project were developed into an evolved commercialisation process, involving a much more far-reaching  dialogue with regional marketing departments. One of the key conclusions was that US and European head office commercial Execs could no longer dictate an approach to be followed by the rest of the world. Emergent regions were growing in size and sophistication – their views and local expertise had to be taken into account...

Leadership teams frequently aspire to change the ‘mindset’ of their units. They link the degree of productivity, customer responsiveness, urgency to achieve - with (quite rightly) an enthusiastic self-starting, engaged attitude in the staff.  Desiring it to be so is, however, much easier than actually achieving it!  Such was demonstrated at a large Pharma IT Group’s awayday. For most of it there had been a huge buzz. Early on staff mounted ‘stalls’ in a fair, showcasing various internal client projects and possible future technologies to their colleagues. Another innovative activity was a huge group photo taken by drone from far above (when drones were a lot rarer than now). There was a highly enjoyable meal and drinks and then everybody gathered in a hall for some presentations from the podium.  A couple of leadership team members made presentations about the future of the Group, and in particular told everyone that the ‘mindset’ needed to change – especially in the direction of a sense of urgency and responsiveness.   This may have been thought insightful by the leaders, but it was a mistake and did not have any galvanising effect on the audience. So, although...

A mid-sized contract manufacturing organisation, based in the UK, was doing okay. It had some lucrative, high-tech contracts with big Pharmas, two well-provided sites and a skilled group of staff, many of whom had years of experience in the sector.  The real business problem was their pipeline of projects in development, which was not as full as it needed to be. We were asked to help, essentially with enhancing ‘project management’. The collaboration across the company that this would provide would address two known problems: firstly the overlong timeline for turning sales leads into finished quotations, and secondly, existing customers’ lack of confidence over promised deadlines.  They had an existing project or strictly client project structure designed to facilitate collaboration between the manufacturing, quality, finance, commercial (and so on) functions, and it clearly wasn’t working in an efficient way. Some training, principally for the project managers, was requested as a solution.  Talking to these guys was interesting. In fact they’d had no shortage of training - they’d been on reputable (and expensive) residential courses. They identified the challenges quite differently. They didn’t feel confident...

UK Pharma firms that are selling into the primary care market will typically field sales teams in each region. Marketing and sales management use a variety of ways to incentivise sales execs in these teams. A UK affiliate of a European company was reviewing its sales operations, and had sought advice from a consulting firm, in particular to look at sales performance and behaviours.   The company were building new information systems to report on individuals’ sales results within the regions, to target and motivate low performers. In addition, the consultants were advising on the redefinition of each regions sales manager’s role. Key aspects of this in future were to be the  reinforcement of the individual targeting , but also to take more accountability for the teams results. The company maintain a competitive league table of the regions based on recent sales figures.  We were asked to help initially with just a small task in this scheme. One sales manager’s team was struggling near the bottom of the league table and had asked for some help.  Our plan was to talk to the manager initially then to run a whole team session over several days. The manager explained to...