“I’ve Never Felt More Incompetent…and LOVED it!”
At the conclusion of a recent High Potential Leader learning journey experienced by a group of future pharmaceutical industry leaders, participants were asked to pause and reflect on their key learnings and how their experience will have impact and future impact on their performance. This particular learning journey was an integration of Business Acumen skills development and Business Leadership skill development wrapped around a complex global pharmaceutical industry business simulation.
This entire blog shares the learning experience of one participant and the three important competencies that were enhanced as part of her learning journey. A 36 year old Marketing professional with an MBA, 8 years of industry experience, and currently on a “stretch assignment” in supply chain management started her presentation with the following statement:
“I’ve never felt more incompetent…and loved it! The entire simulation experience helped me realize how much I don’t know and helped me identify a learning path for improving my competencies and performance.”
Below is a summary of this participant’s three key learnings:
Enhanced Understanding of the Healthcare Business Ecosystem
“As we all know, the healthcare industry in the US is under siege. I had no idea how complex and truly intertwined the system of business is. Between the payers, providers, and patients each having influence, cost impact, and immense redundancy it is no wonder nobody can figure this out. In the simulation, we developed a unique strategy for offering the most reasonable quality of care at the most reasonable costs, in a reasonable and scalable delivery system. Through this discovery learning we explored the different relationships within the industry and how government, private business, and not-for-profits can work together in a reasonable way where everyone can win.”
Drivers of Financial Success
“I have an MBA from a top business school, but I didn’t really understand the relationship between strategic thinking and financial performance. I now understand that you can’t run a business off of a spreadsheet. We are taught to cut costs and optimize capital but what we aren’t taught is that different strategies have different metrics of success and none of us are looking at driving long-term, sustainable success that drives value for patients, employees, and investors with the same integrated approach. The simulation enabled me to see which ‘levers’ to pull strategically and how to build real value by listening to the needs of our customers and delivering solutions they want as opposed to products we think they want.”
Focusing Resources on the Strongest Customer Needs
“Pushing development of new products for the sake of saying we are investing in new products could be a critical mistake that I never realized. We are born thinking that new product development and building the pipeline is the only way to be successful but it isn’t. It actually could destroy a company if we aren’t careful. In today’s complex world of healthcare, the next generation of solutions and products have to leapfrog the existing technologies as there is no room for incremental improvement. Too many people think of healthcare in the same way Apple launches iPhones. The iPhone 7 is incrementally better than the iPhone 6 yet customers will buy it anyway. In pharmaceuticals it is the opposite case. An incremental improvement will not be paid for by a majority of the payers (governments and health plan insurance companies) so the bets of new solutions that focus resources on the strongest customer needs have to almost disrupt a market every time a new product is launched. And at $2-% billion to launch a new product – including all R&D, Marketing, and Sales – that is a bet that must be right. I had no idea how critical resource planning was until we lost over $3 billion in the simulation and almost went bankrupt.”
In summary, learning about, and how to apply, Business Acumen Skills and Business Leadership skills is not easy and should drive participants to explore being uncomfortable. Out of the discomfort, and this case the “incompetence," comes the ability to understand the system of business in a new and clear way that improves business and personal performance. Our recommendation is to look for ways such as stretch assignments and simulation-centric learning experiences to move beyond the comfort zone and into the learning zone.