How well do you know the whole elephant? by Steve Padgett
At the end of a workshop we’d been running last week a senior manager from the R&D side of a large pharmaceutical business complemented Mike and I by saying “it was great having facilitators whose understanding of the [disease area] really shone through”. Given that 2 weeks before the workshop, there would have been space left on a postage stamp if I’d captured all my knowledge on that particular therapy area, it got me thinking in order to build great strategies how much specialist knowledge do you really need?
Working almost exclusively in the life sciences space, mostly on behalf of commercially driven biopharma companies, I’m very aware of how large and complex the healthcare beast is. The process of bringing innovative new drugs to market and making them commercially successful is often a very long and challenging one that involves many hundreds of people with a wide variety of very different specialist skills. Consequently it isn’t any great surprise that it’s fairly common for functional silos to emerge; clinical vs commercial, local vs global, discovery scientist vs clinical programme director, payer needs vs patient and physician needs the list goes on. Far too often the divide between these different “bits of the elephant” gets in the way of creating a joined up whole that has the clarity and single mindedness to inspire and drive brands, teams and organisations towards success.
Whilst as a specialist strategic planning consultant I’d like to think there are unique skills and perspectives I can bring to the process of helping clients build inspiring, powerful strategies, I’m also very conscious to effectively bring those skills to bear I have to have enough specialist knowledge “to be dangerous”. It’s no good being an expert in a specific area if we don’t have an understanding of how that area interrelates with other areas that drive success. We can never hope to have the level of understanding of specialists in say clinical pharmacology, US regulatory policy or Chinese sales channels (nor do we need to). But as commercial strategists we do need to have a working general knowledge of all such areas that could impact on the success of our brand or business and how they fit together and what happens in one if you change factors in another area.
The most effective business and brand strategies join up the dots between all these areas. They highlight how each supports the overall goal and what each area needs to do to help build towards it. However too often in the work we do we come across silo mentality and “pass it over the fence and let them sort it out” attitudes to strategy creation.
Now I’m sure my 2 weeks swotting up on a new therapy area (thanks Wikipedia by the way!) didn’t make a seismic difference to the brand we were working on, I am convinced that getting to a level where I had “enough knowledge to be dangerous” did get me to a point where I could more effectively facilitate and challenge the team we were working with because my specialist knowledge is in how the pieces come together. To ask an insightful question, to compare and contrast with other brands I’d worked on in other therapy areas or at the most basic level to demonstrate enough knowledge that it gave me enough credibility that what I had to say was worth listening to.
Next time you’re working on your strategy ask yourself the question how much do I understand and am I reflecting the “whole elephant”. It’s often easier to think about only your bit of the “elephant” but rarely is it ever better.
