Our Senior Associate Steve Shevel shares a personal experience with unfortunate relevance.

I recently had an unfortunate experience where a close relative was admitted to a hospital in East Africa with a life-threatening event. There were many frustrating aspects of this situation that I encountered, however one that drew a close analogy to the BioPharma industry was the entrenchment of culture and just how difficult this is to navigate.

The culture in which I was embedded in this African city was one in which there was very little or no sense of urgency. While this may be typical and a mere annoyance in the daily routine of life around the world, it became almost unbearable in a hospital intensive care setting, where loved one’s lives are at risk. I just could not get over how slowly people moved and how simple administrative tasks proceeded at a glacial pace. Some of this had to do with technological limitations, but the more significant part was attributed to the institutional culture that not only accepted this pace but expected it.

This experience gave me pause as I drew the analogy to our work. In almost all of our engagements with a biopharma client, our recommendation to address a problem and/or initiative is inevitably tailored to fit within the culture of that company. There are a few times when the recommendation requires a necessary shift in culture. When in Africa, I spoke with a woman from the United States who at one point was in charge of training new nurses and she admitted that one of her biggest obstacles was changing their mindset to work and move at a quicker pace.

It surprises me then that this crucial aspect of organizational behavior is either overlooked or marginalized by management when implementing a new initiative, project or change. Sure, there is the obligatory change management discussion that occurs with either HR or a third-party vendor taking the lead to ease people into the change. While this is important, it is individual in its focus. In other words, “This is how the change will impact you individually and how you can learn to deal with it”. Some might argue that this is veering off into the psychological aspect of corporate citizenry, but there is a mechanical aspect to this that is visible if one reads between the lines.
When a new initiative, technology, or project is undertaken in the biopharma world, the typical practice is to look at the problem as entirely mechanical and rely on middle management to sell it to the larger organization. This strategy routinely fails, as there are competing biases amongst the participating departments and further, it neglects to address a crucial aspect to the success of the project – how to mold the implementation into the existing corporate culture. An alternative strategy, which is equally unsuccessful, is to try to overhaul the culture through a standardized, templated implementation of a specific initiative.

The adaptation, and even acknowledgement of, a cultural specificity to a project in clinical development is not a widely available skillset and not one that can be commoditized as an offering on a website or pamphlet. It takes years of experience to hone and recognize the nuances of the biopharma culture in order to adapt to meet the needs of the organization without being too disruptive (which may be a fashionable buzzword these days but is often counterproductive).

Understanding and adapting organizational culture is even more relevant today given the large number of mergers and acquisitions in the industry. In those situations, the new entity has to deal with two or more highly divergent cultures, resulting in change initiatives that are taking so much time and are so financially burdensome.

A company’s culture is not defined by a mission statement or inspirational poster; it is deeply embedded in the people that have worked there for many years. It is time for executives to begin considering the culture variable in the success of their company’s operation. If they do, they will recognize greater success in their operational projects and initiatives.

For further discussion or assistance on this topic, reach out to Waife & Associates, Inc. at www.waife.com, or email Steve directly at shevel@waife.com