After settling down comfortably into my seat on a flight from Chicago to San Francisco, I started browsing through my digital copy of the latest issue of The Economist. Much to my surprise, I saw an article titled, The Usefulness of Managers beginning with the sentence, "Is your manager really necessary?" Bingo!!! My mind went back to so many discussions we keep having about our Indian Pharma industry and the various arguments about line management and their contributions, role clarity, their usefulness and the often-asked question, “Are they really effective?” When the top leadership says, that effective managers are a rare breed with comments such as, “they are the weakest link in our chain”, my mind keeps racing through with the thought as to, “if they are not, who has to be responsible to make them effective?” Having been a line manager and climbing the ladder against odds, I can understand and empathise with both sides of this management world. However, when these doubts and questions keep raising its head often, my curiosity quotient kept raising a question, “Are we in Indian pharma very unique to have such challenges?” A chance meeting I had with a team of Google senior management personnel based in Google’s headquarters in California during this trip gave me an interesting insight on what Google did and what it continues to do. Much to my solace I found that their apprehensions were similar to what we in Indian Pharma face. The differentiating factor was that their "people operations" team (HR) has applied the Google Way (data analytics) to management analysis and developed a manifesto entitled Eight Habits of Highly Effective Google Managers.

If a business fails, it was an idea that didn’t work. If treatment fails – it must be a botch up. A broken gadget may be beyond repair, but not a patient in a doctor’s hands. From such ungraded expectations stems the potential for things to take an ugly turn. An unwanted profession dealing with an unwanted condition, namely Ill health: If possible, we would wish away death and diseases, hospitals and doctors. A hospital is not a holiday resort, but it too costs money. And the scenario of an adverse outcome like death simply becomes unacceptable.

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More than digitalizing your product promotions, the case calls for building and engaging your brand community through digital solutions that create memorable customer experiences. With the new normal emerging, the traditional Pharma commercial model needs to be relooked by exploring alternative channels of engagement, which offer opportunities to create value for customers. Company-specific digital adoption workshops to experience how a brand can be promoted using the omnichannel approach with field force involvement.

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