Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #945 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.
Continued from Previous ……
Before we move to the next job with KK, it would be instructive to review the first job and analyze what was right and what was not.
The Right Things
KK applied his educational knowledge on the job. He was a good learner, and he kept the learning streak alive. The difference between good and poor education is its assimilation; good education gets into the personality and enriches it; poor education keeps floating outside.
KK had good observation and he picked up many things from his colleagues. He had a reasonably good reading habit, and he kept reading relevant articles mainly online.
KK also did not fear experimentation. Rather, he did not want to keep doing the old thing, and tried to innovate as much as he could. KK had good energy level, and he liked to work hard. He would often sit late in the office, working on his projects. He was sensitive about his performance and kept it up.
Generally, KK was well-mannered and dealt with people decently.
The Not-So-Right Things
KK did not get structured mentoring, like he should have received, this being his first job. His bosses treated him better than others and his work justified preferential treatment. However, this ‘pampering’ convinced him of his superiority over his other colleagues. His work was constantly appreciated even when it was ordinary. He was mostly in limelight and got to know the senior management more than others. This was instrumental in his faster growth but did not accompany related development.
From the beginning and for many years, KK worked alone. He managed his own self only, and he got plenty of space to perform. Marketing teams are small, and each member has his/her own portfolio to manage, which means that even as part of the team, each member mostly performs alone. KK never got the taste of working in a well-knit team where members worked together, supported one another, and cheered one another. KK was more of a loner and did not know how to work with people, much less how to inspire a whole team.
KK rated his own self quite highly due to his smooth, rising career, and believed everyone should be following the same track. He found it difficult to accept people with low intelligence or low performance. He felt himself more powerful than most other people. KK was not inherently a poor listener, but this combination did make him selective listener.
KK based his forecasts on IQVIA data which is an authentic source. While it gives figures for market size, share of brands, and their growth trajectory, it did not give information about market dynamics. Data is a dead statistic which despite having good value, is only half the picture. To complete the picture, KK did not ask his team to do market survey and customer survey. He also refused to listen to sales managers who could provide information on market dynamics, such as what the competitors were doing to take business, what customers thought about that product, which specialty issued most prescriptions for it, and so on.
What Brought KK Down?
Three major factors may be identified which brought KK down.
One, the inability to understand the team and connect with it, their composition, their internal bonding, what moved them, and what stopped them. KK did not realize that a leader is as strong as his team, rather he thought that he would drive the team any way he wanted. True, that there are several leadership styles, including the commanding, autocratic one, but it is truer that present day thinking discourages leaders to live with one style only; it encourages to use multiple styles based on the need.
Two, he based his entire working on dead data. Data is good but knowledge is power. KK did not try to become knowledgeable about the market dynamics, if he had, he would be able to move the market in his favor. This is a common deficiency in marketing people who work with data long time. They develop strong faith in data and present it everywhere. The senior managers in such cases do the balancing when they work with the teams. In this case, there was no one to do that.
Three, he showed an absolute lack of outside-in approach which may also be termed ‘empathy’. He worked with inside-out way which meant that whatever he was thinking was right and that he had the right to impose it on others. Inside-out approach is a more common personal trait than its opposite in intelligent, successful people because they tend to be predominantly self-centered. They simply do not appreciate what others are thinking or saying, which may be highly valuable.
New Job – New Beginnings
With a growth-oriented career track of fourteen years in only one organization, KK was a highly eligible candidate. To the inevitable question of why he left such a lucrative job, KK offered a diplomatic answer which was a mix of facts and lies. He got the job of Business Unit Manager in another organization without much hassle.
Though the previous episode had left KK feeling bruised internally, he reported for work on the new job in high spirits, full of energy and enthusiasm. He wanted to get done with the orientation as soon as possible so that he could start real work, and that was exactly what he did.
KK immediately called in all hands in the meeting room belonging to his team. He asked many questions in rapid fire and barely listened to answers. He did not give opportunity to participants to give him rundown on their work portfolio. After question/answer session, KK laid out his one-point agenda; 100% achievement of assigned targets, be it sales, marketing, or else.
The team assigned to KK was doing well in sales. However, their portfolio consisted of mostly older products, few of which were cash cows also. The older products were entrenched in their market segments but grew quite slowly. KK thought it was a great opportunity that he had established products; he attributed their slow growth to lack of focus and targeted work.
We shall see what happened next in the next blogpost.
To be Concluded……
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