Pharma Veterans

The Servant Leadership – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #971 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post 971 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 your contributions here. Credit: Matheus Bertelli Credit: Werner Pfennig This post is based on multiple searches; some of the links are given under references. The Concept of Servant Leadership The term ‘servant leadership’ was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in an essay titled ‘The Servant as Leader’ that was first published in 1970. Greenleaf said, “The servant-leader is servant first … it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the ser...

How to Promote Engagement in Your Organization? – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #852 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #852 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Alexander Suhorucov Credit: Ketut Subiyanto Credit: Wills.io This post is based on several research findings by Gallup and McKinsey. Fighting disengagement is a defensive strategy; offensive strategy will be to promote engagement. Multiple strategies must be employed to promote engagement level across the organization. We take a brief look at some of these strategies. Recognizing and Valuing the Presence The first step in creating and sustaining an environment of engagement is to recognize the people who work here.  This basic step is needed bec...

Is Pharma Industry Ruining Careers? – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #830 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #830 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: Nicola Barts Photo Credit: Mikhail Nilov Photo Credit: Monstera Photo Credit: Vantha Thang A colleague working in a large MNC, who was few years senior to me when I started, once told me this. “I was about 18 years of age when I joined as medical representative. I had a rather large territory, and I traveled a lot with several night stays. My expense statement was bigger than most and I earned almost 1800 rupees a month. Earning 1800 at 18 was fantastic”. In the early 1970s, this amount of money was large by any standard. The gentleman kept rising through ...

Tired Organizations – Reasons & Cures – Part 7 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #766 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #766 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: Marcus Aurelius Photo Credit: Anastasia Shuraeva Photo Credit: Pavel Danilyuk Continued from Previous…… We explore reasons why organizations fail to perform up to mark and become tired.  Technology Aversion Alan Greenspan, the long time and more famous head of Federal Reserve in the US, recounts in his book ‘The Age of Turbulence’ his early days of work. According to him, they used to have large size registers in which they made data entries manually. The same data was used for analysis. Now US has the most advanced technologies in t...

Public and Private Sector Careers – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #742 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #742 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: Andrea Piacquadio Photo Credit: Antoni Shkraba Everyone, including myself, propagates that one should plan, monitor, and control her/his career. In the same breath, we say that one should stick to an organization to get recognized and upgraded. Then there are others who say it all depends on luck, nothing else. For the latter, no logic can be given though at times it seems that luck has prevailed over competence and performance. Given this uncertain situation, how can one gain control over career evolution? We shall examine these questions in this and the...

The Butterfly Effect – Part 2 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #549 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #549. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. The title of this Blog series is taken from an article published in INSEAD Knowledge. The content is mine. [Link to article appears at the end of post] ‘Butterfly Effect’ is when an apparently stable, well-performing employee suddenly announces his/her departure from the organization. This phenomenon happens regularly in all organizations. It leads first to confusion as to what happened, and then to questions as to why it happened. The sudden departure of employees certainly impacts an organization’s plans and performance. In the previous episode, we looked at the HR status in va...

Mentoring, Motivating, Coaching & Grooming II – Blog Post #438 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #438. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Mentoring, as I wrote in the previous part, was largely abolished. There are some people here and there who still keep the tradition alive, but for all practical purposes, everyone is now on his own. If you wish to learn, it is your sweet will, and you may learn what you like to learn. The fallout of getting away from Mentoring is that the learning does not follow any standard anymore. A variety of views are held by people which hardly connect with others. I am not writing this as an obituary of tradition; I am highlighting the changes that have taken...

Staying Inspired III – Blog Post #436 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #436. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… In this last part, we talk about the subject which has drawn huge attention in the last several years. It is Employee Engagement, and it is relevant to our discussion as it is among the greatest sources of inspiration. Employee Engagement may be defined as the state where the employee is physically, mentally and emotionally engaged with the organization. Physical engagement brings hard work, mental engagement brings focused thinking, and emotional engagement brings joy and pride in achievements. Gallup did an extensive survey several years back which included interviewing about t...