Many companies in the medical device and pharmaceutical industry are adrift. We have been riding the wave of emerging technology, data, and ongoing disruptions for the last decade. Customers, or in this case, patients are now entitled. They have digital proficiency, are increasing adoption of technology, and the vast majority of people are online, connected, and empowered. During the past few years, technology has provided an environment in which empowered customers believe they deserve something.
To address the challenges and opportunities occurring in the healthcare industry, leadership must be prepared and able to operationalize the requirements for change in order to avoid being disrupted. This is why many companies slowly and often unknowingly lose momentum as they fail to change fast enough—allowing the marketplace and competitors to pass them by.
The four common threads that leaders must weave into an understandable story and framework for your business in order to drive higher performance in your organization are:
1. Find Your North Star: This is your one reason for being, and will instruct how you make a difference in the world.
2. Build Your Commercial Strategy: This is the vision, mission, and strategic belief for entering the market.
3. Define Your Core Values: These include a shared mindset, expected behaviors, and actions across the business.
4. Create the Business Story: This is how your company and products are positioned in the market, your value proposition, and brand promise to your customers.
These threads are critical to building understanding in your organization—all of these threads must be fully aligned and understood by every employee in order to drive sustained business results and change in your organization. These threads become woven and part of the fabric of your organization that builds a common mission, culture, engagement, and a high-performing organization.
Why Are These Threads Critical to Success?
- To build a consistent message internally and externally and transparency when customers expect authenticity in all interactions.
- To provide a framework for decision making and launching new initiatives in the organization that connect to your company’s purpose, vision, and mission.
- To provide guiding principles for employees’ behavior and activity.
- To align the organization and ensure collective efforts drive the business forward.
As a leader you can’t expect consistent words, actions, and culture to develop organically in the organization if your purpose, commercial strategy, values, and brand story are not clearly defined, aligned, and trained in the organization. From person-to-person, team-to-team, and department-to-department, this ensures a consistent understanding of the threads and how they come together to form the fabric of your company. If not, companies will continue to struggle to engage employees, attract customers, and produce sustainable business results.
