Michael J. Crow, Vice President and General Manager of GlaxoSmithKline Russia, believes that his strongest competency is resilience - the ability to never give up and to never lose out of sight the vision he is committed to.
1. What is you strongest leadership trait?
Probably it is resilience - the ability to keep going. It's important to differentiate stubbornness, persistence and resilience. Resilience is around you when you have the ambition, the vision. Things change along the journey. You get various obstacles. If you are resilient, you just don't' give up. Ok, obstacle is here - How we can overcome it, get around it? And you never lose sight of the vision that you communicated, that you committed yourself to deliver. The CEO of GSK always is talking about triple plan ‘A'. You have three plan ‘A's. And if first plan ‘A' fails then you are again on plan ‘A'. And again on plan ‘A'. This way you are getting to your target point.
2. What is the difference between resilience and stubbornness?
Resilience can look like stubbornness depending on how you manage it. Within your organization you produce various systems and processes to get people to enroll behind and commit to your vision. You then put processes and systems to detect when there is a breakdown, when something is not working. Often, you get the best break-troughs and some of your best disciples can be the people who were most negative at the start. Your most creative moments can be when you have a breakdown. When something suddenly doesn't work and you face the obstacle. Then you start thinking of your second or third plan ‘A'.
3. Can you give an example?
I remember when in GSK Russia we were transitioning from being an offshore business to be an onshore business, this involved moving the warehouse that was based in Helsinki to Moscow. It involved transitioning all employee contracts from a representative office to the Russian trading company. It was in 2006. At that time customs control seized being part of Gref's ministry and ended up becoming a separate government agency. There were a lot of issues at the border. At this particular time we had ten or twenty trucks full of pharmaceuticals at all kinds of border points trying to get into Russia. We had difficulties getting them customs cleared.
4. How did you approach this problem?
Every single senior manager knew that this was a problem that we couldn't get our products customs cleared. We just kept worrying about the problem and kept trying to find the way out. Eventually, we found the right door, which allowed us to customs clear our products and get back to the business. It was going on for six-eight weeks. We were pretty much paralyzed as a company. Some people were saying that maybe we should move our products back offshore, that we should reopen the warehouse in Helsinki and continue trading that way. I said no. We've said we are going to transition it onshore; we are closing that warehouse down. We are going to be a 100% Russian trading company. It took us six-eight weeks. It was quite painful, a little bit nervous, but we got there.
5. How did you persuade other people to keep trying to solve this problem instead of pulling back?
The goal was that we wanted to be closer to our customers. We wanted to be able to sell our products not with four weeks delay but with four hours delay. That way around we could respond quicker to our customers' needs. We never lost the sight of what we wanted to achieve. We recognized that there was a bigger problem, this wasn't specifically against GSK. We communicated with everybody. We let everybody know what we were trying to do. We also let know those ones who were giving us problems what the consequences of their actions could be. As it became more and more critical we let them know what GSK as a company is doing. We discover, develop, market medicines and vaccines that improve the quality of people's life. If they were denying people access to these medicines the impact actually was they were denying people a better, healthier life. In some cases for some medicines people by not receiving them were actually putting their life in danger. So, we let them know that there was a human aspect in all of this. This wasn't business, this wasn't customs; this was about people not getting their medicines. Therefore, they needed to realize that this wasn't just GSK's problem; this was also their problem as well. When we put it into that kind of context, then the authorities, the ones who were giving us the issues, realized that actually they needed to find solution as well.
6. What, in your opinion, is the reason why this approach has worked?
We put it into a human context. People often think this is business. Therefore, as business we should be about making profit. The profit is the oil that makes the engine work. But as a business what are we about? We are about helping people to do more, feel better, live longer. It's about improving the quality of human life. That's what we are as an organization. The sales and the profit - that's just the oil that makes this whole machine work. Once you communicate what you are about as a business, than it changes the relationship. It's not just about money; it's about something that is much more important, that actually touches all of us.
7. How did you manage to communicate this human aspect in a way that people trusted you?
Let's take a particular medicine that we manufacture. There is a drug which is a corner stone treatment in HIV. For somebody who is infected with HIV once their disease progresses to a certain stage then they need to go to an antiretroviral treatment. Once they have started, what's important is that they continue, if they have an interruption, if they stop taking their medicine than their disease can come back and be even more harmful to them. So, during this period if some of these patients would not receive their medicines, it would've shortened their life. So, we made sure that the authorities knew that actually because of that particular issue there was a chance that some peoples' lives were going to be shortened.
8. Do you think it is important to communicate your vision to other people?
You need to communicate it as widely as possible in the organization because you don't always know where the answers are going to come from. Often people think: you are the head of the company, therefore you are going to have all the answers, but actually, I'm probably the least intelligent person in this company. Usually, when I go into a meeting, people around the table are far more intelligent than I am. They bring their specialist skills and knowledge. So, you put the issue onto the table, and then everybody has their view and has their say. They start thinking how we can solve this. Everybody is focused on the goal where you want to get to. Everybody works together. As a leader, you coordinate, you make sure that everybody is working together for this common single purpose.
9. How you do it?
There is a variety of ways: from the intranet, from various team meetings and then cascading into sub teams and into departments and across the organization. It is important to make sure that everybody or all of the right people know what the issues are. It's all back to communication, what kind of processes you've got in your organization to make sure people know, feel involved and are engaged.
Prepared byKatia Barzova, Good2Work Intern, on January 28, 2009
