How - Dov Seidman [94]
I asked Jeff for a specific example of how he planned to restore the market’s trust in Pfizer. “Although the patients are the ultimate consumers of our drugs, a lot, if not most, of our products around the world are being paid for, to a large extent, by governments, insurance companies, or other commercial entities,” he offered. “In the past, in situations where we had a really great drug, we could almost impose upon those payers a demand that they reimburse the product and make it available to the patients. We do not live in that world anymore, and so we must change. We have to be thinking about the payers not as adversaries that we have to argue with and push to solve our problems and address our business issues, but as partners. We need to understand what is driving their concerns and their issues to emerge with a win-win solution. Over time—not overnight, but over time—if we can demonstrate that we are open to that, that we are listening, that we care about their concerns, and that we are taking steps to respond to them, then I think we will engender trust.”
What Jeff is attempting is pretty easy for leaders to say, but something altogether different to achieve. The pharmaceutical industry has many bridges to repair. Changing the way people perceive you and rebuilding trust doesn’t happen overnight. It requires self-reflection and hard work, struggles in the Valley of C necessary to build a team that can really thrive in a hyperconnected world. Jeff’s honesty in the face of this challenge is a powerful first step. “It is a long process,” Jeff admitted. “It takes wrestling and struggling to change these behaviors, but if you really start to go to this gym and build muscle in this area, you will have much more mass around you, and you will outperform your competitors. A cornerstone of trust is credibility. If people think that either you do not acknowledge reality or you acknowledge it but don’t admit to it, why would they trust you? You are saying things that are inconsistent with the reality that they see. So, obviously, an essential element of credibility—if not the entire essence of credibility—is being honest and open and realistic about things.”
Keeping promises, acting in a consistent manner, building upon and extending the work of your predecessors (frequent shifts in policy and procedure create uncertainty in others and undermine the trust response), acting from principle, thinking in values terms and putting those values into operation, and pursuing activities of significance are all larger ideas that inspire trust in others. Filling the interpersonal synapses between you and others with trust-producing conduct will increase the profitability of those relationships, in both human and financial terms.
TRUST, BUT VERIFY
James Paul Lewis Jr. was a trusted man. A devout Mormon and churchgoer, for nearly 20 years he ran Financial Advisory Consultants (FAC) from its offices in Orange County, California, where he administered two investment funds aimed at those looking for a high rate of return on their retirement funds. His promotional material promised up to a 40 percent annual return in FAC’s Growth Fund and an 18 percent annual return in its Income Fund. According to reports, Lewis “did not accept investments from anyone unless an existing investor referred them,” and most of those investors were church members and clergy.15