Who is to blame for screwing up a once great company?

Man, who should be in the hot seat?

 

SMCL

 

Everyone from top to bottom

All the money spent on galas, gifts, and stupid shit.

Really? Nobody had the foresight to see the market changing?

 

Unforseen headwinds aka end to the "greed".

 

1. Over reliance on price increases to yield "double digit" growth.

2. Failure to anticipate the power of PBMs especially with emergence of biosimilar glargine.

3. All eggs in one basket, the diabetes space. Eventually there will be a generic Novolog and Novolog Mix, maybe even a generic Levemir.

4. Ridiculous field force expansions beginning in 2008. 30 something RBDs, 100s of DBMs and AEs, thousands of reps in pods as if it were the 90s and early 00s again.

5. As the poster above said, too many perks in the form of gifts, lavish meetings, fancy company cars, etc. Other profitable pharma companies long ago cut that wasteful crap out.

6. Ultimately short sighted leadership.

etc., etc.,...

 

Accurate list. Based on this you could say the most previous ET should be held accountable. They pretty much moved a couple out but when is AA ever going to be held accountable? He's lost all confidence because these last few years showed the emeror has no clothes.

DL its your move. Don't fuck it up!

 

Agree, but I remember an expansion in 2004 that was way too early; bordering on unnecessary. There was another in 2006 (remember all the ex Pfizer reps). That one may have cost someone a job! I fear the next "correction" may be worse than it needed to be.

 

Unfortunately, I remember when were had two per pod, and a relative handful of managers and RBDs when I started in late 2005. The PBMs did not have a fraction of the power that they do now. Commercial and Medicare Part D didn't have the restrictive formularies that exist now either.

Even though it might cost me a job, we could do well with one rep per territory, one manager per 12-15 reps, and one RBD per 10 managers.

That is what some other companies do just fine with right now and have a broader portfolio of products.

 

The inept managed care aka account executives are to blame. So what did Novo do? Add more!

 

The DCA expansion doomed this company.

 

Unfortunately, as an insider who worked on many of the expansions, the accountability goes to KSZ and LRS... both pushed every expansion on the US and would never back down. WE had to make it work... including DCA expansion. All they wanted was to see our rep size larger the competition. Arguments and push back happened, but they didn't want to see it. Now they are gone and, my opinion, the board expedited the moves due to the downfall of the US. So if you think ET is behind it, you're wrong.

 

Don't fill open positions. Shift current employees to cover open territories/roles. This could alleviate the need for any further "right sizing".

*For once, actually listen to the field! We are all willing to do a little more to avoid another layoff.

 

Everything went to shit when Jesper landed on US soil. He's the one that changed the morale for the worse.

 

Morale has nothing to do with "unforseen headwinds" Jesper, Andy, Doug and to some extent Jo G were asleep at the wheel and only woke up to raise prices.

 

Have none of you noticed that the mothership has cut the us loose? Distancing from the headwinds ?

 

The post from the insider is spot on. Now what after KSZ and LRS

 

• We aren't the only company in this space that relied almost solely on constant and steady price increases to fuel our growth.
• Look at 2011-2012 CP posts (and your memory banks) to remember how we dealt with ESI and CVS Caremark back then. Ditto our dealings with major health plans. All I can say is that we are reaping from the seeds that SNOY and team planted back then. And SNOY is gone now, aint he?
• As recently as 2015, we were bragging about "having the foresight" to focus on the growing pandemic known as diabetes. How many articles did I read about this online and in major market newspapers? Yet, just 2 years later, those that supposedly had foresight to focus primarily on one disease state DIDNT HAVE THE SAME FORESIGHT to see that PBMs would jump to Basaglar like starving pigs to slop? "Unforeseen headwinds" ought to be the name of the Fortune Magazine article about our ineptitude!
• Because we are burdened with other companies' cast-offs at too many roles, we tend to follow big pharma "strategies" by about 10 years or so. Our 2011-2016 reach & frequency "strategy" of adding too many AEs, DEs, DCE, Es, Is, etc was fashionable in the 1999-2005 boom, but very wasteful. We were waayyyy late to that game. And now we're seeing what Big Pharma found 14 years ago: too many reps and AEs tripping over themselves is wasteful, pisses off our customers, and in many cases throws accountability out the window. Yes, a good 40% of us wouldn't be here if its wasn't for this foolishness, but facts is facts, ma'am. ZS Associates and other independent consultants have proven time and again that based on their studies, reps "see" an average of 3.5 docs per day. And we all know that "seeing" docs usually means over a L.U.N.C.H. We could do away with 33% of our head count and probably not loss a modicum of market share. How about our SAEs, making same salary as a busy internist in a big town? They talk to several key customers a few times a year. The rest of the time they…._______???_____
• I disagree that the gifts and perks helped lead to the downfall. Several million in trinkets, nice trips, cars etc is chump change to a company that is raising its drugs prices double digit % every 18-24 months. Shoot, we paid Paula Deen more than that for less than two years "work"!!!
• Our short-sighted leadership put us here. Unfortunately, when we fire them they will get a massive golden parachute. They will then get hired by a much smaller company, where job #1 will be to fire some people so that they can bring in their cronies from here.

 

#12 is the correct answer. A forced over expansion, focus on short term profits and a narrow focus caught up to NNI. Everyone could ride skateboards instead of "fancy cars" and it wouldn't make up the difference lost to competitive products and PBM muscle. Leadership changes have shown awareness that it's a new era.

 

We can't blame Denmark for everything. Our ET should have been the experts in the US market and they just sat by and did little to prepare for the changes that were clearly taking place. From my vantage point they were more focused on building their individual empires than figuring out how to drive value. Andy, and Camille aren't the only one to blame. Curt, Lars and others sat by and did nothing, yet walk around the building today like they have nothing to be embarrassed about. I don't know if Doug will be able to right things, but I do think he was one of the few actually working hard the last few years.