What Caused Odyssey's Failure?

Discussion in 'Odyssey' started by OneWhoKnows, Oct 15, 2010 at 8:38 AM.

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  1. OneWhoKnows

    OneWhoKnows Guest

    For those of you who were part of this disfunctional team, what was the cause of this obvious business failure? Bad Marketing? Bad Exec Mgmnt? Poor strategy execution?
     

  2. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Yes (S Glock).
    Yes (B Bur).
    Yes (P Cottone).

    Now that we've answered that, this thread is over.
     
  3. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    I was there to the end and this is spot on! <scarier yet is that SG = B.Sc, M.S. and M.B.A yet is BY FAR the most ineffective empty suited corporate drone I've met in my 13 yr career..how was he hired?>
     
  4. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    and he stutters!
     
  5. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    1. good product (sanctura) - but BID dosing
    2. Pliva didn't understand American market
    3. 2 competitors came out back to back (QD dosing) Enablex and Vesicare
    4. Competitors hired more people in the field, more SOV
    5. Competitors able to get on Medicaid programs within the first 6 months of their launch
    6. Pliva pulls out of American market- no commercial sales force needed
    7. Pliva sells to Barr Laboratories
    8. Barr labs sells to Teva
    9. Sanctura lives on as the property of Allergan
     
  6. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Originally Posted by OneWhoKnows
    For those of you who were part of this disfunctional team, what was the cause of this obvious business failure? Bad Marketing? Bad Exec Mgmnt? Poor strategy execution?
    _____________________________________________

    1. good product (sanctura) - but BID dosing
    2. Pliva didn't understand American market
    3. 2 competitors came out back to back (QD dosing) Enablex and Vesicare
    4. Competitors hired more people in the field, more SOV
    5. Competitors able to get on Medicaid programs within the first 6 months of their launch
    6. Pliva pulls out of American market- no commercial sales force needed
    7. Pliva sells to Barr Laboratories
    8. Barr labs sells to Teva
    9. Sanctura lives on as the property of Allergan
    ______________________________________________

    I'D SAY THAT POSTER#2 WAS THE MOST SUCCINCT. AS FOR THE 9 POINTS ABOVE, IT SOUNDS LIKE AN EXCUSE MAKER WHO WA PARTIALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FAILURE. wHICH ONE ARE YOU, POSTER#5 ??
     
  7. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Poster#5 is most likely Name#1 on Post#2 (whew!)
     
  8. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Actually I was a rep there and finished in the top 10%, all the failures were out of our hands. My sales started to tank when Enablex and Vesicare hit the streets and sample closets. They destroyed us on managed care formularies, you can blame marketing all you want but it doesn't matter when you are BID and have no coverage. The marketing was good it hit the points why Sanctura was different (larger molecule, equal binding to M1-5 receptors, less blured vision,etc., no PY450 pathway) listen there was nothing else to do when GSK, Novartis hit the streets we had a rough enough time dealing with Detrol/Pfizer.

    Be fair.
     
  9. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Be fair? BE REAL.

    Marketing is also about market planning, market sizing and competetive intelligence. All of the aforementioned data on our competition was KNOWN and AVAILABLE data which our illustrious, marketer did not consider.

    Odyssey was a strategic marketing mistake beyond belief.

    Think beyond your sample bag.
     
  10. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Anyone know where I can find Debbie Riccadelli?
     
  11. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    The failure was caused by a certain persons actions - A.N. which led to a new CEO and the downward spiral
     
  12. GingerTea

    GingerTea Guest

    NO. You are wrong. A.N. was sexually harrassed by the first CEO whose ineffective management team caused so much of this business failure. She was not AT ALL AT FAULT for this crack management team's errors. I knew her and she was a very professional, hard working admin who I would personally hire ANY DAY.

    The poster who wrote "Pliva didn't know the U.S. Market" must have been one of Paul's failed leaders/minyans as well. Think about it: the three wise men (cottone, bur, glock) DID <claim to> know the U.S. market yet they failed to understand (or convey) product positioning. Further, Dumping the legacy Odyssey products and going 'all in' with Sanctura was a mistake as these legacy drugs were generating enough cash for the 125 person sales force. What greedy fools by tossing all their eggs into one basket. Tsk Tsk.

    For giggles, take a look where these so called 'leaders' are now. Then ask 'why?'

    There ya go.
     
  13. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Amen! We love you, A.N.! You have more than a few hundred of us behind you and DO NOT let any bonehead coments here ruffle you up.
     
  14. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    While Odyssey was a major marketing mistake caused by inneffective marketing management(thanks for nuthin, SGlock), the CULTURE of Odyssey was also a major part of the failure because the place was run by non-leaders (we all know that a job title does NOT make one a leader). In fact, one of the operational leaders only ever really managed kids in the classroom and a few reps when he was a Pharma DM for a short while (and NO, he did not launch Celebrex!). It's no wonder we had that robotic mentality steeped in fear and mis trust. Read this Bloomberg article and try to recall how much of this unprofessional behavior existed at Ody:

    Here are 10 signs of a fear-based workplace. If you're the person in charge of a shop, pay attention:

    1. Appearances are everything. When employees are preoccupied with staying in the office later in the evening than the boss does, fear is king. When people worry less about the quality of their work than about how they're perceived by managers higher up the chain, you've got fear.

    2. Everyone is talking about who's rising and who's falling. When a daily focus of office conversation is the discussion of whose stock is rising and whose is falling in the company's internal stock index, you've got a fear infestation. A preoccupation with status and political capital is a sure sign that stakeholders' best interests have taken a back seat to me-first, fear-based behaviors.


    3. Distrust reigns. Would this be your knife in my back? When your employees have to stop and ask themselves, "Is it safe to tell Marybeth my idea?" you have a fear problem in your organization. Workplaces where people steal one another's intellectual capital are places where trust is subordinate to fear (if trust exists at all). If your business is one where backstabbers thrive, ditto. In a healthier shop, people would be comfortable rising up in protest against a backstabbing colleague, and the paradigm "I win when you lose" would be quickly nipped in the bud.

    4. Numbers rule. Sensible performance goals help people understand what's important. An obsession with metrics, daily, weekly, and hourly, and a world view that says an employee is the sum of his numeric goals, are signs of a fear-based culture. Why? A healthy organization builds performance goals into its leadership framework, but the metrics don't equal the framework. When management views people as complex, creative, multifaceted value producers and considers metrics as just one element of a well-rounded leadership program, you can beat the fear back to a tolerable level.

    5. And rules number in the thousands. Maybe the most stereotypical yet valid sign of a fear-based workplace is an overdependence on policies in place of smart hiring and common sense. These organizations fear their own employees' instinctive reactions to everyday circumstances (the need to book a business trip, order a stapler, or schedule a vacation day), so they install lengthy, tedious policies to keep employees from thinking independently. A need to tout the trust and openness in the organization constantly can be another red flag. As my friend Marla says, "The more an employer drones on and on in the handbook and other employee materials about trust, the less trusting they are."

    6. Management considers lateral communication suspect. My brother worked for a major electronics manufacturer. One day, stopping in the office just before taking off to visit a remote location, he ran into some guys who had just returned from the same facility. "Let's compare notes," said my brother, and five or six team members went into a conference room to confer. Within seconds, a manager burst into the room and demanded, "Who authorized this meeting? None of you guys is at a level to authorize a meeting." Evidently sharing ideas that could benefit the company is only a good thing in this organization if you carry a certain title and salary grade. How idiotic is that? Organizations that don't allow employees to brainstorm with one another are places where fear has made inroads.

    7. Information is hoarded. Closely related to the question "Can employees in my company chat freely?" is the question "How do people find out how things work around here?" If the sole answer is, "Ask your manager," you've got some creepy-crawly fear bugs on your hands. Cultures that allow people to hoard what they know to consolidate their power are cultures where fear has smashed trust under its heel. Likewise, if employees learn about a company layoff through the grapevine or in the newspaper vs. a frank sitdown with their managers and their teams, something is rotten in Denmark, and fear is a silent partner in your management roster.

    8. Brown-nosers rule. When the people who get rewarded and promoted are the least-knowledgeable but most-fawning ones in the org chart, fear has come to town. Fear-based senior leaders surround themselves with yes-men and yes-women because it's more pleasant to hear the "right" answer than the truth.

    9. 'The Office' evokes sad chuckles, rather than laughs. My friend Amelia writes, "As hard as the writers for 'The Office' try to make Steve Carell's character look like the world's most bumbling, officious egotist, my actual boss is worse." When cartoonish fiction looks more appealing than everyday existence to your employees, fear may play a major part. Fear shuts down our ability to think creatively, collaborate, and bring passion to the job. When getting through the day requires a focus on keeping one's head down, taking no risks, and sucking up to anyone in management, your organization's soul has left the picture.

    10. Management leads by fear. When senior leaders make virtually all decisions in secret, dole out information in unhelpful drips, and base hiring on sheeplike compliance rather than energy and talent, and the PA system all but blares "Be glad to have a job, stop whining, and get back to work," your company's fear problem is off the charts. I saw an example of this myself the other day when I stopped at a national retailer to look at earrings. A sales associate mentioned to his co-worker, "Crazy thing, I broke something in my car's engine, and my mechanic says it'll be $1,400 to get it fixed." In a flash, the supervisor of the department swooped into the conversation with the message, "Lucky you've got a job, aren't you then! A lot of people are unemployed, and we've got a list of people who'd love to have your job. That's your thought for the afternoon: Lucky Me!" and off she went. When leadership is based on keeping people in the dark and keeping them off-balance, no one benefits except the tier of managers near the top who justify their existence by devising ways to solidify their stature.

    Chief executives know in their hearts that smart people, set loose to solve big problems, are responsible for every success and innovation industry has ever seen. Fear-trampled employees don't do a thing for your business. Still, management by fear is a hard habit to break, because fear-whipped underlings don't squawk. Meanwhile, your competitors may be hiring your best talent away and stealing market share while you make it easy for them to do so. Those meek, submissive, broken-down employees might blossom in your rival's trust-based culture. Do you really want to find out?

    Copyright © 2010 Bloomberg L.P.All rights reserved.
     
  15. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

  16. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    just read most of this posting area and will tell from experience that its pretty true

    what ashame that one or two fools can affect so many good and smart people
     
  17. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    It all started when McDonalds introduced the McRib in only selected areas.
     
  18. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    It's so funny that you mention the skeletal structure known as RIBS because we certainly didn't have anyone with a SPINE in HQ running the show!
     
  19. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Patrick Duffy is really the man from Dallas.
     
  20. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    No, J.R. Ewing was (then again, so was Jethro Clampett in Beverly Hills)