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Market Access Strategic Execution Consultant

Leadership

Seize the Limitation

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Seize the Limitation

There will always be limitations: limitations based on market dynamics, resources available to you, data to support the product, and the list goes on.

But what assets do you already have? Challenge yourself to write down 50 assets. What about 100? You may just surprise yourself. And who knows…the limitations themselves just might be your biggest assets!

In the words of the artist Phil Hansen, who was forced to abandon art due to a disability, later channeled it to create art in ways no one else had before him: “instead of telling each other to seize the day, maybe we can remind ourselves everyday to seize the limitation.”

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you” –Gospel of Thomas.

What If

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What If

For the market access strategists and those who are trying to think “outside the box” in order to solve a problem, here’s a profound excerpt from Benjamin Zander’s Art of Possibilities.

A shoe factory sends 2 marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying,

Situation hopeless stop no one wears shoes.

The other writes back triumphantly,

Glorious business opportunity stop they have no shoes.

We all tell ourselves a story—not just some of it, but all of it. And remember, too, that every story you tell is founded on a network of hidden assumptions.

In order to let your thoughts and actions spring from a new framework, ask yourself this question:

What assumption am I making,
That I’m not aware I’m making,
That gives me what I see?

And when you have an answer to that question, ask yourself this one:

What might I now invent,
That I haven’t yet invented,
That would give me other choices?

And then you can invent spaces by thinking outside the box.

Obsession For Service

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Obsession For Service

Service helps to increase sales.

How can you learn what’s working for your customers and what’s not?

Listen to them and seek out feedback. Do this early and often. This is cheap and doesn’t require additional technology.

Furthermore, create a culture where peers inspire peers, in which each employee acts like a leader, pushing the culture forward. This can be done through cross-functional workshops, recurring meetings, or simply engaging in conversations where we seek out creative solutions to interesting problems.

Whose Problem Are We Solving?

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Whose Problem Are We Solving?

When we’re at work, whose problem are we trying to fix?

Mine? (to size up my bank balance)

My organization’s? (to increase their bottom line)

My customer’s? (for whose service my position exists in the first place)

Mine? (to sharpen my own character and practice improving on my weaknesses)

We just made a full circle in a way. For all of these reasons, I don’t have to work, but I GET to work.

Taking Charge of the Narrative

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Taking Charge of the Narrative

What is your calling?

Kindling a burning desire from within + hoisting the strength of the unseen Power = yes, you can.

Are you in charge of your narrative or is the narrative in charge of you?

Safari

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Safari

Imagine a herd of zebras at a safari. It doesn’t matter where they were headed, because they will all race blindly towards the tourist’s feed bucket when they see it, in hopes of filling their bellies. This hope is incredible because in reality only ~5% of the herd will be able to eat while everyone else will starve.

The bucket is bigger than the zebras in this blind race because it’s taking them with it.

Market access professionals who are engaging in a petty fight for limited formulary space are letting payers take charge of the game in the same way that the zebras let the feed bucket take charge of the game.

How can you take back control to ensure that the right drug reaches the right patient at the right time?

When Customers Have Choices

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When Customers Have Choices

What is the customer looking for?

Delighting customers means delivering on what they expect PLUS adding an unexpected element of surprise that makes you remarkable.

Hint: think about how you want them to feel…then work backwards. Feelings are real and they deserve more credit than we give might give them. As intellectual species, we like to think that we make rational decisions–but that’s far from the truth.

When you cannot give them what they came for, they’ll simply continue window shopping until they find what they’re looking for. They have choices.

What’s the Point?

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What's the Point?

Most people are typically in the workforce for 40-45 years.

During that time, those with a good career started with zealous bang, earned a fortune, but lived in a state of doubt and exhaustion for the last decade of their career: “what’s the point of any of this” or “I’m too old for this.”

Millions who pass through the workforce in this way are replaced and forgotten soon after they leave.

In contrast, we remember Socrates, Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, and Lord Krishna hundreds and thousands of years after they left. Why?

These people dedicated themselves to something bigger than a paycheck.

What is your calling?

Who will miss you when you’re gone?

Remembering Hippocrates on Father’s Day

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Remembering Hippocrates on Father's Day

Hippocrates is considered the father of modern medicine. We might not know why, but many of us have heard of the Hippocratic Oath. Pharmacists had to pledge to a variation of this oath at graduation. When we revisit memories, it’s hard not to assess: “where are we now.”

Here’s a modern version of the Hippocratic Oath.

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

—Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today.

The Potential of Just One

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The Potential of Just One

When everyone else is a walking zombie, the easiest thing to do is to become a zombie ourselves (“oh well”).

Majority of people take the path of least resistance because it’s seemingly the safest.

Every now and again, however, someone is brave enough to question the status quo.

The challenge for him is to preserve his own spark despite the surrounding darkness.

Besides, this person is the zombies’ best chance for another life.

“Who will take up my work?” asks the setting sun.

None has an answer in the entire silent world.

An earthen lamp says, humbly, from a corner: “I will my Lord, as best as I can.” –Rabindranath Tagore

Krishna Patel, PharmD
Market Access Strategy and Execution Consultant
info@sojusllc.com
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