Thoughts on Leadership Teams in Pharmaceutical Companies I – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1022

Thoughts on Leadership Teams in Pharmaceutical Companies I – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1022

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1022 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing our contributions here.

Credit: August de Richelieu

Credit: Karl Solano

Credit: Khwanchai Phanthong

Credit: Mandiri Abadi

Preamble

Having worked in pharma industry for over 40 years and at the most senior positions, I have plenty of observations on the subject; many of these are concerns which I had been raising on various occasions in various forums. I am also in the habit of reading the latest thinking from accomplished people and analyzing/ relating pointers from here and there with our own situation. This may be read as what is happening and what better can be done.

Every organization strives to grow and become big, though their routes greatly vary. I shall not comment on methodology, I shall restrict myself to the leadership team, its functions, and its performance. 

I must add that every organization can have only one leadership team. The other layers may be having lesser leadership roles, but they must not be counted as leadership team.

Pakistan Pharma Industry Landscape

Of the 750+ pharmaceutical companies, probably no more than 10 are in public domain. The rest are all privately and family owned by the founder entrepreneurs or their next generation(s), who also run the companies as CEO. In a handful of companies, the owners have elevated themselves as Chairmen and brought in employee CEOs. It did not change the working style however, because all major decisions are taken by the Chairman.

The concept of Board of Directors – BOD – is there and a board comprising of family members/owners is a norm. Employee CEO and/or CFO may be invited to participate in BOD meetings but have little right to influence. They are invited to present things when asked, and to record proceedings. The industry therefore runs on the directives of the top management, who would conveniently exonerate themselves from the outcomes, if these are not as per expectation. 

The leadership team in pharma companies is typically headed by the CEO and comprises of the C-suite people heading major functions like Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Human Resource, Production, Quality Operations etc. Business Unit Heads are not part of leadership team because they report to marketing head, or rather Head of Marketing & Sales. 

The Role and Responsibilities of Leadership Team

Godart and Neatby in their book “Leadership Team Alignment: From Conflict to Collaboration”, state that leadership team is no regular team. In fact, it may not be a team at all, because at the core, there is a difference in scope for two reasons. One, the leadership team is required to focus on strategic rather than operational matters; two, the leadership team members have inherent job-related conflicts which apparently may prevent them from functioning as a team. Both points are well taken, and it is therefore important to review the role and responsibilities. 

The role of leadership team is to provide strategic leadership. Beside vision and strategy, leadership team also provides culture, values, resilience, and inspiration. 

Leadership team is responsible for achievement of corporate goals, even if they sometimes come into conflict with their departmental goals. 

The leadership team, therefore, must rise above personal and departmental levels and work towards corporate goals. For this, every member will need a mix of group and individual objectives.

Pointer #1 – Cohesion Among Leadership Team Members

All organizations have one of the three scenarios in the composition of leadership team: mostly home-grown, mostly inducted from outside, or a mix. Each of these combinations have their pros and cons.

Home-grown group is used to working with each other and are usually amicable. They also carry longstanding relations, old conflicts, fixated ideas about each other, about the corporate, and about the corporate owners. Most of the time, these were proved right, so they listen to new speeches with cynicism and without interest. The pace of work stays where it is. Everyone lives in a relative comfort zone. It does not mean the corporate shall not grow; it only means the growth may be stunted. The culture of old guards has gone in most pharma companies. Some left, others were discarded and sent home. Holding old guards together has the benefit of stability and peace (maybe), but innovation may be absent.

Mostly new people, coming from diverse backgrounds, are vying for making their mark and are generally competitive rather than being collaborative. In their zeal for recognition, they may also come up with outrageous proposals. The corporate may benefit from their energy and diverse experience and the desire to do big things for the corporate (read for themselves). The flip side is that they may sway the corporate in wrong direction if the top management is not vigilant or strong.

The mix of old and new is common particularly in older companies. The old guard in such organization are conservative and have held on to their old ways. Many of them are holding senior positions, heads of functions for example. Having a peer/counterpart heading a parallel function who is young and bubbling with new ideas is a contentious situation. The clash of thinking and working style leads to conflicts in various forms. The conflicts become power struggles in which finally one party wins and the other loses. I have seen the losing party losing the job also. This is a sheer waste of talent, energy, and time but it is happening.

The summary is that cohesion among leadership team is critical but remains elusive in most organizations. There are no quick fixes to bring cohesion, however, off-site meetings where everyone comes out of his silo, can help. Social gatherings between colleagues are also a good way to promote cohesion. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, the top management discourages cohesion and promotes divisiveness. They believe they can control better through divide and rule. This is a self-defeating attitude, and it affects the progress adversely. 

Individual Accountability

Accountability at individual and collective level is integral to corporate working. While it is easy to understand individual accountability such as finance, marketing, production, doing their assigned work. However, most, if not all, work in a corporate is cross-functional. This is where there is a lack of clarity. Every functional head takes his/her responsibility seriously but drag feet when it comes to cross functional working. The understanding is missing that no one will win alone. You win together and lose together. 

Some blame goes to top management also as they keep focusing on individual accountability. Even when a function complains of non-cooperation from other department(s), no action is taken. On the contrary, the complainant is taken to task for pointing out the inefficiency of the other department. This focus on individual performance is also disrupting cohesiveness.

In the larger and longer interest of the organization, focus should be shifted from individual to collective accountability, which we shall discuss in the next post

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, however, it happens unintentionally, I offer my sincere regrets.