At Onyx, the reason the company was special started with leadership and that was what Tony Coles was all about. One is a doctor while the other is greedy ex-investment banker, the kind that caused the recession in 2008. http://web1.johnshopkins.edu/onemagazine/spring-summer-2014/category/donor-profile/be-sure-you-make-an-impact/ This is Tony Coles: You’ve stated that your essential business philosophy is, “Whatever you do in life, be sure you make an impact. Secondly, leadership is about service.” How did you develop that outlook? I’ve had a number of great experiences in my life. I’ve gone to some great schools, I’ve worked for some great organizations, and when you have a set of experiences like those, I think you have a responsibility to leave this Earth in better shape than when you found it. It’s the idea that “To whom much is given, much is expected.” In your career, you’ve successfully merged medical and business expertise. In what ways would you say the study of business can be valuable to those who want to make an impact in a health care-related field? If you believe in making an impact, there are a number of professions that enable you to affect lives directly, and medicine certainly is one. You have the opportunity as a direct result of a diagnosis, a treatment choice, or an operation to change one life at a time. Now, if you think about scale and leverage, being in a position where you can influence something like the business of health care and effect change at the population level, that’s a really wonderful opportunity to create change. Because now it’s not just one life at a time, which is noble enough, but it’s scalable, sizable broad impact when you’re involved in the business of health care. Now, you have the opportunity to impact thousands of lives. When we realize that in business we are really serving others, only then can we create the environment for change and meaningful value creation. At Onyx Pharmaceuticals, there were a number of things we did in terms of having this kind of broad impact, through our products and in other ways. I’ll give you an example: We provided direct financial support to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, which is committed to finding a cure for the second-most common, and a very deadly, blood disease. So as a CEO with a philosophy of transforming lives, I saw that the grants we made to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation would have a real impact on the hundreds of thousands of people around the world who have the disease. That’s the kind of scale that a business opportunity can bring with the right focus and intention. You decided in 1992 to leave clinical medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital to work at Merck. To what extent was that decision influenced by a desire to make the kind of broader impact that you just described? The decision was all about that. I realized that while I loved medicine and patient care, I could have a much deeper impact and create more change by working in the pharmaceutical industry, where you’ve got great resources, breadth, and many opportunities. If you’ve got resources and the intent to make change, that’s a powerful combination. You’ve gotten to know Bernie Ferrari since he became Carey’s dean two years ago. What would you say he brings to his role as the leader of the business school at Johns Hopkins? Bernie is someone with all the management and strategic skills to organize the thinking at Johns Hopkins University about how to best connect business and health. Just think about the great organizations he’s been a part of, the great set of experiences he’s had, from the Ochsner Health System to McKinsey & Company. He’s a consummate strategist and businessperson. And being able to apply those skills at Johns Hopkins – a place known for leadership in health care and academic research – means Bernie will create the kind of change that can be deep and meaningful. You’re credited with bringing a positive change to the company culture at Onyx. How did you achieve that? I believe everyone should be treated with respect, no matter where they sit in an organization. Everyone has the ability to contribute and to lead. At Onyx, the key was to make our mission bigger than us. One thing I’ve learned as a leader is that people want to be inspired; they want to know they’re working for something that is greater than they are. I would tell people all the time, “We all work for the patients.” That was our mission. If we can all be inspired by creating change and working on behalf of other people, it can really help to change a company’s culture. Under you, Onyx had about 1,000 employees. How did you convey this sense of mission to such a large organization? I did a quarterly series of town hall meetings, and it was a wonderful opportunity for me to talk about the business, where we were headed, to explain who and what we worked for, and for the employees to ask me any questions they had. That personal contact between leadership and staff is essential in a mission-based organization. You can’t set the tone of an organization from the top without it. _________________________________________________________________ The media and BB ex-banker friends might say that Bob won in negotiating the stock price for Onyx but really...what has Bob done for you? What has he done for patients? What has he done besides lining his pockets full of money and then laying you off? Many of you built Amgen but does Bob care? Tony Coles could be seen at Onyx HQ and would talk to anyone even if they were a janitor and treat them with respect. Does BB do that? This is why Onyx WAS special... Best of luck to you in the upcoming layoffs!
Tony Coles is a human being that cares about others. Bob Bradway is rich white man who cares about pumping the stock price for his own financial gain.
Tony Coles -- you were fantastic! You lived and breathed the same principles you espoused. Onyx was slim but successful because you were able inspire and empower your employees to do more than they believed the initially could. That is leadership. Inspiring people to do more with less on their own and to be accountable without you breathing down on them. It is an art that you mastered and something Amgen leadership could learn from you. Bob Bradway may have more money but will never be 1/1000 of the man you are.
Typical Amgen garbage. Slick sales and marketing people who jack shit about science or have any concern for anybody but themselves....wait, that is southern California in General. Hope you get fired loser!
And just what makes you think that it was either an Amgen employee or that Amgen employees like Bob Bradway. After all, he has laid off several hundred people Sounds like troll do do to me. Amgen has passed down the road that Onyx is just beginning. It's a bumpy and unenjoyable ride to big pharma.....and there are lots of casualties.
Bob please view this to see what a real leader looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abRI0TElJss
Tony Coles was not perfect but still a very honorable man. BB is just another finance guy looking for a big payday. Onyx folks miss him since PC is pawn for Amgen.
Propale like bob are great at destroying synergy, collaboration, ideas, science and so forth, while people like Tony do the opposite. At the end, society loose by having people like bob in this planet since they add no real meaningful value to anything expect their superficial lifestyle.
Bob showed today he has the guts to make the correct calls, even when they are extremely tough, esp. on him.
