Demystify Pharma. Vol2: Building Rewarding Long Term Careers In Pharma

Demystify Pharma

Vol 2: Building Rewarding Long Term Careers in Pharma

By

Dr. Ajay K. Pandit

Sandeep Pandit

Demystify Pharma Vol 2: Building Rewarding Long Term Careers in Pharma

Dr. Ajay K. Pandit and Sandeep Pandit

Copyright © 2015 Dr. Ajay K. Pandit and Sandeep Pandit

Published at Smashwords

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Career Paths – What do they mean and do we really need them?

2. Career Landscape

2.1. Positions and Leadership Pipeline Model in Pharma Companies

2.2. Compare Positions and Leadership Pipeline Across Companies in Pharma Industry

2.3. Corporate Pyramid in Large Pharma Company

3. Long Term Career Planning

3.1. What is a Long Term Career?

3.2. Why is a Long Term Career Plan Needed?

3.3. Elements of a Long Term Career Plan

3.4. Leveraging the 5 Career Elements for Long Term Career Plan

3.5. Determining and Achieving Your Career Potential

3.6. Summary

4. Career Element 1: Motivation, Attitude and Self – Awareness

4.1. Motivation and Attitude:

4.2. Motivation Mix

4.3. Motivation Mix as part of Work – Life Integration:

4.4. Self – Awareness

4.5. Summary – Motivation, Attitudes and Self – Awareness

5. Career Element 2: Long Term Career Direction

6. Career Element 3: Skill Sets and Experiences (Abilities)

6.1. Background

6.2. Competencies DNA Model for Building Skill Sets and Experiences

6.3. Leveraging Competencies DNA Framework to Create Career Brand Equity

6.4. How does the Competency DNA Model Function?

6.5. Competency Mix Applied to Corporate Landscape

6.6. Leveraging Competency DNA Model to Get to Next Level

7. Building Functional Competencies

7.1. What is Functional Competence in Pharma Industry?

7.2. General Industry Knowledge

7.3. Function and Department – Specific Knowledge

7.4. Knowledge Application Ability

8. Building Leadership Competencies

8.1. What are Leadership Competencies?

8.2. Deliver Business KPIs

8.3. Process Leadership

8.4. Leading People

8.5. Business Growth

8.6. Winning Mind-set

9. Building Organizational Intelligence

9.1. What is Organizational Intelligence?

9.2. Building Awareness on Organizational Landscape?

9.3. Fitting Within Organizational Culture

9.4. Understanding How Key Decisions Get Taken

10. Building Relationship Management

10.1. Why Build Relationships?

10.2. Who to Build Relationships With?

10.3. What Type of Relationship is Needed?

10.4. How to Build a Relationship

11. Career Element 4 : Mentors and Cheerleaders

11.1. How to Leverage a Mentor?

11.2. Cheerleaders

12. Career Element 5: Opportunities

12.1. Before the Application Stage

12.2. During the Application Stage

12.3. After the Application Stage

13. Special Topics

13.1. Good Boss – Bad Boss

13.2. Performance Management and Getting Top Year End Ratings

13.3. Negotiating Salaries

13.4. Self-Actualization Dilemma in Pharma Companies – Game Theory Applied to Long Term Career Plans in Pharma

Preface

The idea for writing this book on building a rewarding career in pharma was an extension to the previous book that was written in the Demystify Pharma series – Demystify Pharma Vol 1: An introduction to a typical pharma company. In the previous book a lot of general information on the pharma industry and its departments is presented. However, what does one do with the information? Information not utilized for some benefit is just information for information sake. As exciting as it is even as such it remains purely emotional in nature. Any information fulfils its true purpose when it gets converted to an objective, quantifiable, tangible benefit. This book is a follow-up to the previous volume in Demystify Pharma series and intended to help readers utilize the information from the 1st volume and leverage it in context of what is probably one of the most beneficial parts of our lives – our careers.

This book was written between the both of us in contrast to the 1st volume of Demystify Pharma which was a solo act. The reason for this partnership was based on the topic of the book which is mired strongly in a cross-industry, cross-functional and a universal topic – building careers and career paths. What started as a thought extension from the previous book as to what career paths exists for pharma professionals and how do they build rewarding careers leveraging these career paths soon turned in to a conversation between of us whether there is an objective framework on which these career paths need to be based. This soon led us to a conversation of what is so special about building career paths in pharma industry as opposed to career paths in other industries? As part of these discussions went on back and forth between us we realized that although functional skills needed would vary from industry to industry, the rest of the common model would remain the same. In this thought exercise we agreed based on our combined global and leadership experience that in terms of building careers a universal career planning model is generally at work with functional differences based on the industry that it is applied to. This model is an original body of work from our combined experience and we happily offer it with all potential pharma professionals who would like to leverage it to build long term careers. There were always dots that existed on these topics – our original contribution has been in connecting these dots rather than creating new ones.

Although the book is a combined effort and is equally credited to both of us, the book is largely written as a continuation of the 1st volume of the Demystify Pharma series and in many places will use Ajay as the first person speaking from his view point. This is done to maintain the conversational and informal tone that worked well for the 1st volume as well. Every model presented in the book has seen many debates between the two of us sometimes supporting and other times critiquing the information presented here. Ultimately the information presented here is a combined effort from both of us. We hope to adapt this framework to other industries someday but for now we offer it to the pharma industry.

This book will be particularly useful if read as part of the entire Demystify Pharma series and we encourage readers to read the entire series that is about pharma industry, healthcare industry and how to build careers within the pharma industry. This book focuses on:

Understanding the career landscape that exists in pharma companies.

Understanding the abilities and competencies that drive career growth within a pharma company.

Some recommendations on how to develop these competencies.

How to apply these competencies at work and link up to the performance management processes within the pharma companies.

Having a long term perspective on career ownership and career management.

Value of having a good mentor as well as leveraging the mentor to the fullest.

Finally, a section on special topics

Good boss – Bad boss to help form great working relationships with bosses rather than be judgmental on professional relationships.

Getting top performance yearend ratings

Negotiating salaries

If the reader can understand these sections well, then they will enter in the Pharma industry with rock solid awareness of how the company is structured, which jobs are appealing and aligned with their own career plans and how to negotiate life in a pharma company where there are many departments co-existing simultaneously. Such an understanding of pharma companies’ strategy and operations will equip the readers to better compare career opportunities and prep for jobs amongst other things. Of course, it will help them prepare for job interviews which may be an immediate benefit of reading this book.

In line with the 1st volume of Demystify Pharma series, if you read this book and happen to be a Pharma industry veteran then it is likely that you can spot opportunities for improvement right away. Please help us help our Pharma community by contributing ideas for improvement and change. Nothing will make us happier than updating this book and issuing a following edition that is a more complete, factual and helpful than the book currently is.

Co-authors:

Dr. Ajay Pandit

Sandeep Pandit

1. Career Paths – What do they mean and do we really need them?

Career Path is defined as a series of jobs or roles that a person holds (or does) in succession from the starting until the retirement point in their life. This means that by default whether you are a happy-go-lucky sort or a painfully detailed/planned sort or a budding self-made entrepreneur or a future heir born to a business family – in all cases there is going to be a starting role somewhere, followed by quick succession of roles until you retire (at the age that you choose, in a role that you choose). In other words almost all of us will have a career path – except for those few who have chosen to not work in their lives for whatever reasons. In some cases people consciously choose their starting and ending points along with every intervening role. In other cases, people go-along with what their friends/peer group chooses or parents or counsellors advise them to do until somewhere down the line they find their inner calling and then they choose their career path. Some are satisfied with just a job and do whatever role comes along as long as it pays their bills.

So the question is not as much do we really need them because we all will have them in our lives. The question becomes what is the nature of the career path that we truly want for ourselves, why do we want it and how do we go about achieving it for ourselves? These are some of the questions that this book attempts to answer, especially in context of pharma industry. This book is not about a philosophical debate as to do we control our destinies or what does fate have to do with our lives or does success only mean getting the next promotion. There are other forums that are more far more entertaining, informative and helpful than this book (such as room full of friends and colleagues and glasses full of spirited beverages) that will help answer such major questions. This book is rather focused on building a career in pharma – it assumes that the reader is interested in building one and is looking for the how to do it rather than should this be done.

This book starts with describing the roles that typically exists in corporate pharma. It then moves on to describe a framework for long term career planning. Although this framework may be applied in other industries as well, I find it really useful in the way it applies to large pharma companies. As part of the long term career planning, there are several corollaries that are described which include getting a direction for the career growth, having a better understanding of motivations/self – awareness and also the competencies DNA model that explains how to build skill sets and competencies that support career growth. Finally there are chapters that explain how to apply these in context of career growth opportunities as well managing performance. Hopefully, this covers important elements of building and managing career paths in pharma.

2. Career Landscape

One of the most logical points in starting to build a career is to understand the career landscape. By career landscape what I mean is to understand what positions exists in a typical pharma company. This is important because if we want to attain a position as part of our career plan, it is important to know where it exists and then plan on how we get there.

2.1 Positions and Leadership Pipeline Model in Pharma Companies

One of the most effective organizational frameworks that I have observed being effectively used by large companies is called The Leadership Pipeline which has been developed by well-known organizational experts – Ram Charan, Stephen Dotter and James Noel. There is an entire book that is written by these authors that describes this model in great detail and this book is not intended to copy paste their brilliant work. However, we will use some references to their model to illustrate how pharma companies leverage the leadership pipeline model in various organizations. This illustration will enable us to better understand the career landscape and the positions that exist which can serve as milestones on a rewarding career path on a long term basis.

The framework presented in the above figure represents 7 levels that exist in a large pharma company. We will also review in the next few pages how these levels are different depending on size of the company, however for now we will use the large pharma company to better understand the model and the existing positions. The 7 levels that exist in a pharma company do not necessarily translate to just 7 designations from entry level positions to CEO position. A single level may have sub-levels as part of it. For eg: As a Manager of Self or an individual contributor there could be multiple sub-levels such as Analyst, Senior Analyst, Manager (designation may be manager sometimes although there is no revenue or people to manager) and sometimes even Senior Manager. The true value of the level is understood when there is a watershed moment when someone steps from a single level to the next level. Let’s review this through an example.

For eg: when someone gets promoted from an Analyst to a Senior Analyst position – it is a great moment of joy and accomplishment for the individual. However nothing really changes (besides their compensation and maybe some more challenging assignments) in terms of revenues that they lead and the people that they lead. These promotions when they happen are subject to intense scrutiny to maintain meritocracy and uphold expectation standards of the next position. However, the scrutiny is nothing compared to what an individual receives when they get promoted to real manager position where they officially lead a team of 8 – 10 individual contributors and may or may not have revenue responsibility. When this promotion takes place, there is a watershed moment in a professionals life immediately because now officially there is expanded responsibility. Again designations may get a bit confusing at this level because the manager could be called a Manager or a Team Lead or a Director or whatever. The key differentiating feature is that there were no direct reports in to this professional before the promotion and after the promotion there is a team of 8 – 10 direct reports in to this professional. And it is expected that this Manager/Team Lead/Director truly lead the team members by coaching them, managing them and delivering the teams work through the team members rather than by individual contribution on deliverables. Again at this level there could be a couple of sub-levels. Life between these sub-levels may not change much except for maybe having a team of 10 – 20 individual contributors and maybe a change in title. There will still be no revenue responsibility. Once again the real difference will be seen when someone gets promoted to the next level where their direct reports are Managers/Team Leads/Directors and they get some revenue responsibility.

From the example described above, it can be understood that Large Pharma companies tend to have massive hierarchies and there can be designations upon designations that get formulated and circulated and they may not all mean what they sound like. In fact depending on the type of the organizations there may be 2 parallel types of job categorizations that may happen. One might be the designation that describes the professional’s role in the company – for eg: Marketing Manager, Forecasting Analyst, Clinical Trials Manager etc. The other will be the level or the band to which the role will be mapped on the backend by the HR teams to help determine hierarchy fitment in the organization. If this sounds confusing then many a times it is confusing, only until you yourself start leading a business and start leveraging organizational management principles and then it will make all the sense in the world.

The description provided above is not to be judgmental on what organizational practices get followed or whether they are confusing or right/wrong or even fair. The description presented above has a single purpose and that is to understand the career landscape and the positions that exist. It is important to understand that the designations may be confusing and when designing your career plan and tracking progress, you understand and utilize the right levels rather than designations that might be misleading.

2.2 Compare Positions and Leadership Pipeline Across Companies in Pharma Industry

A logical question is that in an industry that has thousands of companies of varying sizes how does the leadership pipeline model apply and clarify positions that exist in various companies? In order to answer this question we can revisit the basic concepts of what revenue responsibility and team size responsibility every level has and project it on companies of various sizes to determine what career landscapes exists in various pharma companies.

The figure presented above illustrates (directionally) what is the scale of difference in leading an internal organization in terms of revenues as well as size of teams. If we recall from the first part of the Demystify Pharma series, the pharma industry is divided in to Micro, Small, Mid and Large pharma companies. For purpose of keeping consistency same benchmarks of revenue sizes have been applied to the comparison above. If we review the large pharma company presented above we will observe that all 7 levels of positions are present in a large pharma company – individual contributor to CEO level positions. In contrast a mid-size pharma company may have only 6 positions – individual contributors to division managers. So does this mean that mid-size pharma companies have no CEOs? The answer is no – the mid-size pharma companies do have CEOs however when benchmarked against the CEOs of large pharma, CEOs of mid-pharma will end up having far less revenue and team sizes to lead. In fact the extent of revenues and teams led by mid-pharma CEOs might be more comparable to those of divisional managers in large pharma companies. Similarly if we review the comparison for small pharma, the CEOs of small pharma may have no more revenues and teams to lead than a business manager from a large pharma. All of these comparisons are a function of the variable – size of company which is largely driven by the revenue of the pharma company.

The comparison provided above is useful in understanding the pharma industry, however the more important question is how does this help in understanding the career landscape and potentially planning for long term career in pharma? There are 3 reasons why the understanding that we have gained from above is important:

Reason 1: Understand that a designation between 2 pharma companies is not the same all the time. A division manager of a large pharma company could perform the role of a CEO of mid-pharma (and may be overqualified for CEO small pharma). Similarly, being a 2nd line manager in a large pharma company could change in meaning when stepping in to a small pharma company. When comparing roles, especially during job changes between companies fully understand job descriptions rather than be carried away with designations.

Reason 2: Because the roles are missing the quality and strength of leadership may change from large pharma to mid pharma to small pharma companies. For eg: A star division head from a large pharma company may be brought in to become a CEO of a mid or small pharma company, however they will find that because there is a difference in leadership level at all levels there will be gaps in the leadership pipeline. As a result people will need to step up and down at various levels to complete the gap and ensure seamless leadership of the organization. However, because there may be limited quality leadership at enterprise manager level these gaps may persist and lead to frustrations for those making the change from large pharma to small-mid pharma companies. Such frustrations are not reserved for just division heads but also those who are in mid-management positions. At individual contributor levels the functional work may not change all that much.

Reason 3: Growth opportunity internally within large pharma companies may be more than small – mid pharma companies, however opportunities to wear multiple hats and build other skill sets/experiences might be more in small – mid pharma companies.

These 3 reasons presented above should prepare the pharma professionals in anticipating how positions between various pharma companies compare in the pharma industry as well as what to expect when planning for a long term career in a pharma company.

Having described the various positions that exist across different companies, our next step is to review the corporate pyramid that exists in the large pharma companies. It is important to do so because if we understand these positions that exist in large pharma companies then it becomes relatively easy to understand the small and mid-pharma companies and the career paths within them, but not necessarily vice versa.

2.3 Corporate Pyramid in Large Pharma Company

So far we have covered what positions exists in pharma companies, however we have no knowledge of how easy or difficult it is to achieve these positions? To get a better perspective, we will overlay the leadership pipeline model on the corporate pyramid of a large pharma company and try to tease out the insights.

The figure presented above applies the leadership pipeline model to the classic corporate pyramid in large pharma companies and shows as an example what a large pharma company with 150,000 employees looks like. As can be observed from the figure, majority of the positions are at the base of the pyramid and comprise of individual contributors or the front line employees. There is a 10:1 ratio that is typically applied in terms of span of control which drives the mid-management layer to roughly 10% of the entire company. This is the layer that comprises of 1st line and 2nd line managers. Finally the last 4 levels may comprise of no more than 0.1% of the total company workforce. This layer defines the senior leadership layer. Of course, the percentages that are applied are in terms of headcount and not the compensation that the professionals in each of these levels receive. If that was the case then clearly the numbers would change a bit, because the senior leadership in a large pharma company is very well compensated for the exceptionally challenging work that they do and the results that they deliver.

What is presented above is more or less common knowledge, so if we need to tease out the insight from this illustration we will need to put the employees and positions in perspective. Pharma industry is really unique in the sense that functional knowledge is a basic expectation to enter any role in the company. And the functional knowledge that is expected of pharma professionals is very sophisticated unlike some other