Welcome to 2020
Dear team #InGoodHealth,
I recently saw the GIF below on twitter and it reminded me of how it must feel to be back in the office after a long vacation. Trying to get back into work mode isn’t easy. :)
However, I hope your 1st week back in the office was as exciting as mine was. Throughout the week, I hosted planning workshops with all the business units. I left each workshop brimming with hope for our future and the communities we serve. 2020 will be a blockbuster year for us. There is joy in knowing that our success means better health access to the many and not the few.
On January 8 (just 2 days after we resumed), we initiated treatment for another breast cancer patient at the National Hospital in Abuja through our HER-Radio service with Roche. This patient is starting the new year with a better outlook because of YOU and your work. You should feel good about this and commit yourself to giving another chance at life to the many breast cancer patients in our communities.
We can only serve more patients and create tremendous impact if we are able to build a profitable business. At our management meeting on Monday, we committed to getting mPharma closer to profitability while continuing to build a rocketship. To achieve this, we need to continue to increase our gross margin (GM) while managing our cost.
I have never been more confident about our future. I am committed to doing everything possible to see us succeed. However, mPharma will only be successful because YOU want us to succeed. As Dr. Daniel Vasella shared with us when he spoke at our company retreat last year, — “You have to ask, what do you believe in yourself?” The only thing we can act on are our true beliefs. If you believe that a successful mPharma is better for our society, then you should act on that belief. We are on an improbable journey. There are people who benefit from a broken medicine supply chain and they do not want us to succeed. Our success means patients will win and they will lose. I am fine with that.
I am grateful to all of you for joining the mPharma journey. There is nothing I think more about than how each of you can become successful in your career. I want mPharma to be the best job you ever had. In return, I only ask that you commit yourself to excellence. Do great work because you want to be great and not because someone else is asking you to.
Let’s get the party going.
Onwards!!!
Greg !
P.S — As I always do, I am including my 2018 Welcome letter below.
“Welcome back to the start of a new year. I hope your break was relaxing and entertaining. 2018 is a pivotal year for mPharma because we will transition from start-up mode to scale-up mode. I used my break to think about how we can go through this transition without losing our identity. In pursuit of this knowledge, I read “Principles,” a book by Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater. Bridgewater is the worlds largest and most successful hedge fund. The book got me thinking about how we can apply some of the principles that has made Bridgewater so successful to our own business.
As we start 2018, a lot more would be asked of you. We have set aggressive objectives and targets. How do we ensure that we continue to run a well oiled machine? It always start with the people. While you don’t need to be best friends with your co-workers, you need to cultivate meaningful work and meaningful relationships. It is much easier to achieve excellent results if you work with people you genuinely care about. Remember that you are part of a team and no matter how hard you personally work, if you are unable to build meaningful relationships with your colleagues, you will always be unhappy. When in doubt, escalate your concerns and issues to your manager and re-escalate to their managers if they don’t address those concerns. Silence is never a solution.
This brings me to an important principle that we ought to embrace in 2018. mPharma needs to do better at becoming an idea meritocracy. Decisions should not be made based on who is the loudest or has the most seniority. Decisions should be based on which ideas are the best regardless of who they come from. I have always believed that while there is definitely a wrong way to do something, there can be multiple right paths to take to achieve the same outcome. We shouldn’t be bogged down by what Ray Dalio calls the “Narcissism of Small Differences.” This is occurs when you end up fighting over the small inconsequential stuff and become enemies in the process, when you actually agree on the big things. Healthy conflicts are needed if an organisation wants to thrive. But been strong headed and always taking a “my way or the highway” approach to decision-making will be a recipe for disaster.
You are a custodian of mPharma’s mission and values. We can only get better by keeping each other in check. Learn to take criticisms for what they are — an opportunity for improvement and not an attack on you. Those that offer criticisms should learn to be thoughtful in their delivery.
As mPharma grows in size, new employees will look up to you to understand mPharma’s culture. They will embrace what you do and not what you say. Become a life-long learner by embracing curiosity. Listen more and speak less. It is okay to make mistakes but unacceptable to not learn from them.
In Amazon’s 2016 Annual Shareholder letter, Jeff Bezos’s wrote about the difference between Day 1 and Day 2 in a company’s life. Day 1 companies are always at the beginning of their potential while Day 2 companies are in state irrelevance. We always want to be a Day 1 company. We can achieve this by obsessing over customer satisfaction and excellence in service delivery.
Welcome back. May 2018 be the best of our best years.”
