I came a day before, allowing me to have a nice dinner with Emma Darcy, sharing the event, some of the speakers, and the Fleming organisation.
Day 1
The morning session started with a panel that I was part of to set the scene and give different perspectives on the whole event. It was interesting to have Michael Hickey and Jordi Guitart, who both have a view on the HCP or other stakeholders such as pharmacists. On my side, I stressed that along with the journey I live with Richter trying to move the lines of the industry starting from our teams, I shared how important to be able not to lose sight of what is coming as new competitors. The field is changing, and new players come fast to understand how to navigate our regulated markets. I also shared that as a company, our whole strategy is to avoid being a pharma dinosaur and to truly take the boat that fits our size and motivation when the time is right. It is a different strategy than others, but we believe it is the best way to optimise, learn and grow with our practice and speed.
The afternoon started with my spot, where I wanted to share the revealing pilot we had with our primary drug on our latest web campaign. I took the opportunity to refresh the audience on why we got there so slowly and what our strategy was for the long term. I pointed out that with good monitoring, you can know better where to act while focusing on low-hanging fruits. As a global team, we could quickly move from one traffic generation platform to another to adapt to what our metrics were telling us. As a result, we identified a tremendous amount of opportunities working with Outbrain while CPC on Facebook and google were still essential to keep. The quality of engagement of the traffic coming from Outbrain was not comparable with the other channels, which means a media plan needs adaptation to each brand, campaign objectives and market. I finished my presentation by sharing our social media planning activities that will start with a blogger summit later this year.
The rest of the afternoon was excellent, with many sales-oriented keynotes, which I think is good. But, again, the speaker’s level was high as all of them were senior executives who had, and you could feel it inside discussions, a lot of different and various case studies and projects experiences.
Ultimately, we rounded all into three groups to brainstorm how to set up a proper change management DNA in our pharma businesses.
With the group I was in, there were different ideas we collected for kick-starting change:
Knowledge Base
Building a unique knowledge base is critical to let people share, feel part of a culture and get on board with your new proposals for change.
Humanising the approach
We believed as a group that, too many times, we receive SOPs and directions meant for robots or people who don’t have a job and get the time to read 20 documents every hour. We felt that having human thought and turn-key actions don’t require a PhD in quality system management.
Synchronisation
Linked to the knowledge base a bit, we also felt that great ideas are coming down with no idea on how to roll them out realistically.
Top Management Endorsement
With no essential stakeholders, you will get nowhere with any ideas approaching change. Change is scary, and with no power, the difference is useless if not sustained till reached.
Champions
Having your projects change ambassadors will put more fuel to your actions and help you get credibility.
Motivational factors
Especially for mid-management, who needs to see the value and not feel threatened by changes impacting them directly.
Simple but scalable
Any change management activities need to be that simple that you can replicate at all levels, all cultures and all regions.
Corporate culture, spirit or style
By defining a company culture through little steps, little efforts, and connecting it with a group, a family of functions and the bigger picture, it connects better with suspicious individuals looking at a change initiated by one body or one person.
Day 2
Yeah, it is Friday in Amsterdam, and no, I have not gone all night clubbing. The day started with Emma, who switched her chairman hat to animate a workshop around social media. At the same time, it was not new for me, as I both know Emma from before, and the content of her keynote, I liked the animation and how she brought it to life. Small games stimulated us to think about campaigns and ideas for engagement and to open up to new ways to reach patients.
Then, we talked about gamification with many great examples from the crowd. Finally, I shared on my side the standard of our sales dashboard project taken on the idea of a formula one race.
The afternoon started with Jordi (the most challenging spot there, mate), where he gave us another perspective on using pharmacists in the value chain. It is all about communication in this presentation, where you can easily forget the power the network of pharmacists has on our patients. It was indeed a revelation to see the impact on sales after the second month with this compliance model Jordi Guitart shared.
