Michael J. Crow, Vice President and General Manager of GlaxoSmithKline Russia, believes integrity is fundamental for the company and it is vitally important to trust your team.
1. What values do you share in life and within the company?
In companies if you have the rule book with thousand rules, it's impossible for everyone to know them all. Who knows the legislation of Russia from A to Z? Nobody. But we all know how to stay out of trouble. The same is right for the company. People need to know how to stay out of trouble, how to protect the company. If you have values based organization, instead of rules based organization, you get more thinking before acting. As we are a company which is all about human life, about health, it is important for our people to think about what is in the best interest of the patient today and tomorrow. People think about integrity. For us integrity is fundamental. You have to have people who think about patients' safety, people who think about doing the right things.
2. What does it require?
That requires everybody sharing that common value. The team comes together when you have an overlap: everyone shares the same values. Yes, we all have different values but often we'll have some values which totally overlap. In GSK among such values we talk about performance with integrity. If we have to do something, we make sure that we are doing it with absolute integrity, that we care about patient first and foremost.
3. Can you give an example?
We were registering a new drug for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. We could go through the full process. We could submit the files to Roszdravnadzor and we could wait for the process to run its normal course. It could take eighteen months, two years, four years. The longer it takes means that actually more women would die from breast cancer. That isn't good. Therefore, we tried to figure out how we can make sure that this file gets a priority review. How can we make sure that this medicine gets reviewed correctly but gets reviewed as quickly as possible, so that women whose current treatments would've failed and who would be dying would actually be able to extend their lives. But you got to do it in a way that is 100% ethical and correct. The interest of the company has to be always aligned with interest of the patient.
4. If some problem can be solved quicker but in a less appropriate way, would you do it?
It's all about to do the right thing for the patient today and tomorrow. In some situations if you accept an illegal solution even though it was presented in a legal way, and you know what's behind - that something being it is incorrect, you have to do the right thing. The right thing is about taking the legal course. Make your position very clearly known.
5. What's about trust within the team?
Ultimately, you have to trust the team. When we speak about my strong traits is resilience. One of the traits that I have to manage is details. I have a very curious mind. I like to understand certain things. In an organization of this size if I'll try going into all of the details, I just can't do it. You have to know when you should just let go and trust people.
6. How do you measure when you can trust somebody?
There is a variety of ways. If you have people whom you want to believe in but maybe they haven't got the experience or the competencies to complete a particular task, but actually what you want for them is to develop and to learn, and therefore you give them that task, but you make sure that you have spelled the task out, that you've been quite detailed around what you're expecting to happen; and you than put in place a process, so you can regularly review and give them feedback. It's important to never miss an opportunity to learn something, to develop somebody.
7. Can you recall some examples when team effort generated some interesting solutions?
Setting sales targets is always a very difficult task. Particularly in a market like Russia, which is incredibly volatile, but which also is growing very fast. What we actually did this year was we separated the budget that I have committed to delivering to my boss from the targets that our regional directors believed were possible. The reason why I did this: I wanted them to set their targets and I wanted them to beat their targets. I was pretty confident that they were going to beat their targets. Giving them that particular freedom helps to build confidence. Suddenly, they realized that actually if they say something they do even better. They created the plan, they created the target, and they delivered and exceeded. So when it comes to the next time round, they've got more confidence, they know that it's their target. So, you've actually empowered them to run their business.
8. Weren't you nervous about the result?
I was confident. This was the first time we were doing this. I was confident that between them there'd be enough who would go over, that I'll be able to deliver on my particular promise. But rather than pushing everybody up, basically, taking from them what they've done and saying you're wrong it's going to be this, I prefer to say: "ok, that's what you say, but I think you'll do better".
9. How do you control the process?
We put in place this very effective way of monitoring how they are progressing against their targets. We put in place an "early warning system" just as precaution and to monitor that. You can't just let go of things and say "ok, off you go", because than it is not a delegation. You got to have the means to be able to monitor. Delegation is not abdication. You are still accountable. It was very powerful, very useful to let the team to realize that they were responsible.
10. Were there any benefits from this experience?
Previously, we were one business, one budget, one target, one plan. By breaking it down we became six businesses. The beauty of being six businesses is actually you are standing on six legs. It is more difficult to get knocked over when you are on six legs. By breaking things down from each of those regional heads they likewise broke their targets down, and likewise empowered their organization.
Prepared byKatia Barzova, Good2Work Intern, on February 4, 2009
