A brand new corporate purpose for a troubled pharmaceutical firm
The Situation
Mundipharma is the international division of US company Purdue Pharma, based in the UK, with presence across most of Europe, and annual revenues of €1 billion.
Having specialised primarily in pain relief – benefitting from the global sales of the opioid Oxycontin and related products – Mundipharma had, several years prior to this project, begun to diversify into other therapeutic areas, while developing a global network of partnerships with both emerging and established innovators. The company had, as a result, begun to achieve traction in the promising field of biosimilars.
Mundipharma had also, under the leadership of CEO Alberto Martinez, initiated a business transformation programme, with the goal of supporting its new strategy.
The Task
The CEO and CCO of Mundipharma engaged my services in late 2018, for the development and delivery of its first formal corporate purpose. The scope was subsequently extended twice through 2019, first to lead the communication of the new purpose to the firm’s regional management, and second to explore and crystallise its implications in terms of both internal strategy and external communications.
In-depth conversations with the leadership team confirmed that Mundipharma is a distinctly sales-led organisation, with a culture, values and performance metrics to match. To acknowledge this, the focus, approach and tone of what could otherwise have been perceived as a soft, optional project, needed to be rooted in both market realities and commercial success.
The travails of the parent company Purdue, and the widely covered public scandal that had already begun to embroil the Sackler family in the US opioids crisis, are well-known. It was hoped that any negative effects of the US crisis on the international division would be mitigated by its own local reputation, in the context of a far stricter European regulatory environment.
That said, this purpose project needed to walk a fine line between accommodating, and incorporating the positives of, the past, while pointing to a distinctly new and different future.
The Action / Approach
Many corporate purpose programmes begin and end at the top of the organisation, commonly producing outcomes expressed in superficial, inauthentic messaging.
In sharp contrast, our philosophy – which was discussed with and embraced by the project owners – featured a robust, ground-up, outside-in approach that would speak to the changing dynamics of global healthcare, the company’s own corresponding transformation, and how these elements combined to create a credible and defensible platform for the purpose.
Following a brief period of external fact-finding, the development work cycled across some six weeks, taking the form of weekly briefing sessions with key members of the leadership team, interspersed with offsite strategic thought to work through the implications, returning with a series of breakthrough observations, insights and proposed directions.
Where traditional consultancies and agencies would require substantial investment of time and budget – and also management focus – in costly, extensive fact-finding and workshops, this more agile process progressed quickly and energetically to create early wins, consensus and impacts.
The currency of success is the creation of shared strategic breakthroughs. As these emerge, clarity and commitment increase, and in this case, as with all of my comparable projects to date, the project owners and leadership team were entirely engaged and satisfied.
The secondary and tertiary rollouts of the work were successfully executed, as the programme extended to all locations and levels of the business across Europe.
The Result
I have noted the need to fully appreciate the aggressively commercial culture of Mundipharma.
The strategic platform that was evolved to show the logic of the new purpose, as well as the narratives that were developed to carry it across the business and, eventually, out to all stakeholders, rested on tangibly linking the impacts and implications of the firm’s transformed structure and processes, with current and emerging trends in healthcare.
From this rigorous foundation, a bespoke framework was distilled, mapping the components of the new purpose across three interlinked dimensions: Responsibility (in the world), Reputation (in healthcare) and the Revenues (as a business) which result. These form a virtuous behavioural cycle, which blends the ethical and aspirational with the corporate and the commercial.
The stringency and depth of the development process – which, as noted above, balanced “impeccable logic with irresistible narrative” – enabled a fresh, credible, ownable and livable purpose for Mundipharma, which resonated deeply with teams and individuals across the group. It was rapidly celebrated and carried forward, with, for example, both central and local offices commissioning professionally produced videos, to express and expand upon their understanding of, and commitment to, the Mundipharma purpose:
“TO MOVE MEDICINE FORWARD”
The following endorsement, one of many received from the CEO, is indicative of the project’s success:
“Thank you for helping us so much in this journey. We are so proud of our Purpose and very grateful for your contribution.” (Alberto Martinez, CEO, Mundipharma)
