TrendSetters: Up Close with Sander Flaum, CEO of Flaum Partners
by PAULA SILVERMAN

Flaum and his consultancy, Flaum Partners, focus on transformational thinking for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. He is co-author of The 100–Mile Walk: A Father and Son on a Quest to Find the Essence of Leadership (Amacom, 2006), which was awarded the Hazan-Polsky Prize for outstanding business book in 2006. He also founded and chairs the Fordham University Leadership Forum. He can be reached at sflaum@flaumpartners.com.

After decades of experience as a product manager and, eventually, Marketing Director at Lederle Laboratories, this industry veteran rose to become Chairman of pharmaceutical advertising agency Euro RSCG Life. In total, he has directed more than 70 product launches and restagings. PM360 recently spoke with Sander Flaum about what young product managers must do to rise through the corporate ranks, the subject of his next book, due out this fall.

PM360: You describe your firm as transformational consulting. When have you witnessed a company’s transformation?
Sander Flaum: In 1988, I was recruited to [the advertising agency] Becker, and unbeknownst to me, Merck was the biggest account we had, and we were about to lose it. The second week, we were down to 40 people. The way to invigorate the agency and to really change the feel was to recruit most of our senior people from the corporate side. Stars from the client side were paid well—much more than we could afford. But in order to attract the stars of the industry, we had to do that. People thought I was crazy. They would say, “But this is an advertising agency. Why are you recruiting all these strategic people? You should be hiring advertising people.” But we knew it was about the breakthrough thinking. And we knew that in order to rebuild the business, we needed innovators. Eventually we became Euro RSCG Life. I retired at the end of 2003, and we had 7 of the 10 largest pharmaceutical companies as our clients. We had a wonderful run with the best people in our industry.

You have co-written a book on leadership, and we hear you are working on another for young go-getters. Tell us about it.
It’s called Big Shoes: How Successful Leaders Grow into New Roles. And it’s a different kind of book. It’s really for rising stars, and it focuses on what you need to do when you advance to the new job. The problem is there are no books for rising stars. The leadership books are written by old guys for old guys.
So now you landed the job. What are the first things that you focus on? You write the 100-day plan: What will I accomplish in the first 100 days, so the people who put me in this job look at each other and say, “Wow, this is the best hire we’ve ever made,” or “This is the best promotion we’ve ever executed”? The second thing for rising young stars to remember, it’s never about them. It’s about the famous radio station WIIFM—What’s In It For Me? Your job is to make your boss look good. So it’s about discerning from her what the issues are that she’s facing, and what you’re going to do to help her fix those issues. And that requires a whole other tact of being a listener, which is very difficult for rising stars to be. They love to talk, and, mainly, you know when you’re in a new role, you talk about yourself and how you got the good job. But your boss is looking at you, and bosses know that a great conversation is you listen 80% of the time and talk 20%. So you have to learn to be a listener as well.

Innovation also seems to be an integral part of your business philosophy.
As you’re growing into new roles, you need to learn how to step out of the traditional path and start to innovate. Like if you’re in the pharmaceutical industry, and you’ve just been promoted to a brand director, if you do the traditional eight-page, four-color visual aid with charts, that is too small for the doctor to read. Many brand directors don’t work enough in the field with reps to see that doctors sometimes pull the visual aid out of the reps’ hands because they can’t read it. You also might do the traditional 12 waves of direct mail, which nobody reads anymore, and file cards and reprint holders. Then you’re going to be looked at as the traditional person, rather than someone who’s saying, “Tell me other ways I can drive my product.” So innovation, to the rising star, is very, very important.

Any other words of advice for the ambitious product manager?
Also very important: who you surround yourself with. When I started as a product manager at Lederle Laboratories, now Wyeth, the CEO, Bob Luciano, was my mentor. He taught me to surround myself with the smartest people I could find. You need to have a person who is extra skilled in the area you are deficient in. I’m not a good financial person. So I knew I wanted to have a great CFO. Now, if you’re insecure and have low self-esteem, you’re going to surround yourself with agency people who love to say, “Yes, yes, yes, and yes.” But if you have high self-esteem and really want to break through, you’ll surround yourself with people who push back on you and always try to embed new ideas into your plan. You’re going to have people say, “Let me suggest another way to handle it,” rather than just saying the same old, same old. But, you need to have healthy self-esteem. If it’s low, you get very upset. I made a lot of mistakes in my career—and what I have learned, sometimes painfully, is that you gotta fix ’em quickly. If you hire the wrong person—and you know that he just doesn’t fit the culture, or hire him thinking that a certain performance will accrue and it just hasn’t happened—you have to move. When [former GE CEO] Jack Welch was asked in his book, What’s the biggest mistake you ever made with your CEOs? He said, “Easy. Waiting too long to part ways with an underperformer.”
Ask yourself: Who are your friends? Who might be enemies? For example, after you’ve won a position and been successful in beating out other candidates, they may end up reporting to you. You need first to look at those people who are not terribly happy with you in the new role and are starting to buzz about how unhappy they are. And one of the first options is to find strategies to part ways with these persons. Or some of the wise young leaders have started to cultivate their enemies—and attempted to neutralize them. For example, President Obama and the Clintons. They were not the best of friends—and probably still aren’t. But Obama ending up offering Clinton the most important Cabinet position. That move has probably neutralized both Hillary and Bill. You may never get them to vote for you but at least you can get them to drop their negativity.
As a wise philosopher once said, “Keep your circle of friends close; but keep your enemies even closer.”