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Market Access Strategic Execution Consultant

Leadership

Flying Together

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Flying Together

Once a hunter cast a net over a flock of birds busy pecking at grains. Flustered, the birds scrambled to escape in every direction—but in vain. Until a wise leader amongst them said, ‘We can still escape. Stop trying to fly in all directions. All of you fly in this direction,’ as he pointed up. ‘One, two, three!’ As ordered by their leader, the birds took off together. And they took the net with them.

How many birds needed to move upwards in order for this escape plan to work? ALL. Could any single bird have managed to escape alone? Absolutely not.

There is an important lesson about teamwork in this kids’ story. Think about the laggards in your team. A team is only as strong as the weakest person.

By definition, humans make mistakes (otherwise we wouldn’t be humans, we would be God). We’re in this together.

Even if they don’t have the self-confidence to say, ‘today I’m going to do the best job,’ I don’t believe anyone intentionally comes to work saying, ‘today I’m going to do a terrible job.’

We can all benefit from encouragement and upliftment.

Catch 3 people doing something right everyday (and I don’t mean false praises). Challenge yourself to do this for a month. This is the posture of good-finding. Blaming undoes us, whereas good-finding nourishes us (both the person on the giving as well as receiving end).

Pandurang Shastri Athavale (my friend, philosopher, and guide) puts it very simply: ‘The other is not another, he is my Divine brother.’

How can we all fly upwards TOGETHER (because we NEED to fly together)?

Your Customers Should Feel Heard

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Your Customers Should Feel Heard

Everyone has a problem.

Believing that your customers have no problems is just as true as believing that everyone posting smiling photos on Instagram has no problems.

What’s the problem of your customers? What keeps them up at night? What makes it dreadful for them to come back to work the next day? Why are they right to think this way?

The sequel to this would be: How can you show up to delight them? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

Customers feeling like they’re heard is in itself a TREMENDOUS stride forward.

Nurture trust. Nurture relationship.

If your neighbor knocked at your door with freshly baked cherry pie, would you accept it? What if a stranger did the same thing: would you accept it?

Dance With the Struggle

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Dance With the Struggle

The J Curve has come up in several of my conversations over the past couple days. I first learned about it in Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well.

The journey towards a goal is not a straight upward line, but rather a J curve.

When tracing the letter ‘J,’ we start in the middle>>dip down>>then swing back up to the top.

The Dip (also called the Valley of Death by some sources) is inevitable in the J curve. The dip is when we feel the struggle and discomfort. It’s in the dip where the majority quits. The deeper/wider the dip, the more likely it is that people will give up and go home.

Be ready for the Dip. When it arrives, do not run away. Tell it, ‘I’ve been waiting for you—there you are.’ Embrace the pain. Lean into the Dip in order to come out the other end. Dance with the struggle.

Once I saw the J curve, it was hard to un-see it. It’s everywhere: career development, relationships, spirituality, education, physical fitness, learning a new skill, sales, manufacturing, distribution….

It’s easy to be a CEO. What’s hard is getting there.

You do 8 reps in weight training so that you can get the benefits from pushing through the last 2.

Staying in the game is magical.

When you face the Dip, how do you stay in the game?

Meal Planning Saves Projects

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Meal Planning Saves Projects

I have nothing against eating out. Except when I INTEND to have a homemade meal, but it’s already dinnertime by the time I finally decide what to make.

The archenemy of homecooked meals in the Patel household is not its complexity, unavailability of ingredients, or lack of time—it’s the surprising culprit of indecision.

Meal planning helps because it’s a TEMPLATE that solves my single biggest obstacle to homemade meals.

Templates work. They establish boundaries backed by science.

Market access projects are as much science as they are art. When engineered by experienced professionals, templates make the science part straightforward.

Templates can take on many forms. Useful templates are simple yet profound. Questions that MUST be answered before diving into projects. Items that MUST be checked-off before handing over projects to Clients.

Once the science part is taken care of, the fun part begins: making art.

What are the most common reasons for project failure? Failure of specific PARTS of a project? How can you flip these obstacles on their head?

Do Your Best. It’s Good Enough Around Here

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Do Your Best. It's Good Enough Around Here

‘Do your best. It’s good enough around here.’

There are 2 reasons I like it when we say this.

First, it takes off the pressure of expectations. The release of this weight in itself improves performance. 

Carefree is important. Carefree is not the same as careless.

Secondly, it’s a shortcut to getting in touch with my Self that cuts through the noise. I hold no one else accountable for my actions except myself. This is my chance to see what I can really do. It’s a journey of Self discovery that makes me feel focused, clear, and alive.

I give it my all–so much that I can look God in the eye and say, ‘I did my best–now it’s Your problem.’

How do you strive to set your personal records?

Triple Your Time Estimates

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Triple Your Time Estimates

Harvard Business Review happened to discuss something today which has been on my mind for several weeks: timelines. 

Here’s an excerpt: ‘It’s no surprise that many of us overload our workday, assuming we can take on many tasks in a small amount of time. Yet, at the end of the day, we’re stunned to find that work remains unfinished. Despite past evidence, our predictive engines gum up, and we’re convinced we’ll be able to achieve the extraordinary in an ordinary day. This is called “magical thinking,” and it can cause you to disappoint others, miss deadlines, feel depleted, and lose your inspiration.’

Heather Chavin of GoGoDone (a thriving online community where people stop procrastinating and get the work done) provides a brilliant recommendation. Estimate how long the task will take. Multiply the time estimate by 3. That’s right: TRIPLE your time estimates.

Heather’s advice may sound a bit extreme, but I agree with it.

Anyone who knows me would be shocked to hear me recommend this. I haven’t missed a single deadline in the past decade where everything is always ‘due yesterday.’

You can later negotiate the time so it works for all parties—but start with the tripled time as your baseline.

I have NEVER seen people lose clients due to long deadlines. I HAVE seen people lose clients by delivering messy work to meet unrealistic deadlines.

Who are you really serving by setting fast deadlines without thinking through them? Who would you be serving by carving out sufficient time?

I’m Difficulty For Difficulty

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I'm Difficulty For Difficulty

Katherine May’s book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times has become the unofficial Covid book as it has given strength to many who are struggling in the face of the pandemic.

An excerpt from the book:

‘Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.’

There are difficult parts of our job that we sometimes wish didn’t exist: 3 deadlines back-to-back; Client meeting with the team leader unable to attend; work in a new therapeutic area; working with someone whose standard answer is ‘no’ to all requests; working for a difficult Client.

How do we react during those difficult times?

Do we fall flat on our faces and accept defeat? Feel self-pity and dream of escaping to a beach? Or roll up our sleeves and get to work?

Marketing is not just for the account managers or account VPs. EVERY single person on the team plays the critical role of a marketer because EVERY single part of our work (even the meetings and the work itself) is a form of marketing.

Pandurang Shastri Athavale explains that Chapter 2 Verse 40 of the Bhagavad Gita means: ‘there is no such thing as difficulty. Because I’m difficulty for difficulty.’

Experiment Like Amazon

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Experiment Like Amazon

Today STAT published a story about Amazon officially starting its ascent to the national telehealth stage — and its nationwide expansion is putting the rest of the telemedicine industry on notice.

AP provides more details.

This topic is interesting and relevant to market access in SO many ways.

Besides the fact that Amazon is disrupting the health care system right before our very own eyes, it’s important to appreciate the company’s willingness to experiment.

Amazon partnered with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase 3 years ago to solve America’s problem of high-cost health care system. This sent shock waves throughout the world of health care.

Then, in January 2021 we learned that this joint venture, called Haven, was disbanding and the stakeholders would individually continue to push forward in their efforts. While some considered this venture a failure, the news today suggests otherwise.

Today, we see what Amazon had been up to. I imagine that this is just the beginning.

Ironically, Fast Company wrote about experimentation today itself. The article asserts that leaders should democratize experimentation because their teams are bursting with untapped ideas. They just need tools and the authority to help drive continuous innovation.

It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the world hangs on experimentation.

If we open our eyes, we’re surrounded by problems. How can we solve them? How can we measure the effectiveness of our proposed solutions? What would change if we decided to avoid experimentation and live with the status quo? Who would step up if we didn’t vote ourselves for this experiment?

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

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What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Today I was reminded of an experiment by Professor Carol Dweck of Stanford University. This experiment is also narrated in Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen’s book Thanks for the Feedback.

When we fail, do we go back into the shadow OR assert, ‘I haven’t succeeded YET’?

Dweck brought children to her lab and had them engage with progressively tougher puzzles. As the puzzles got more challenging, about half of the kids grew frustrated, disengaged, and finally gave up.

The other half kept going.

  • Fixed mindset: The ones who gave up quicker did so out of discouragement, impatience, and embarrassment. They enjoyed the puzzles that made them look smart, but decided to quit as the puzzles made them feel dumb.
  • Growth mindset: In contrast, the kids who persisted viewed the tough puzzles as fun games that challenged them to improve. They didn’t even think they were failing—they thought they were learning.

Dweck noticed that the progression through the puzzles had little to do with interest or aptitude, and more to do with the OUTLOOK.

So many times throughout the day, I notice ourselves (including me) shy away because we’re afraid to look bad.

We’re afraid to speak up in meetings, try a new approach, ask for a raise, apply for a new position, or say our names in the Indian accent (still work-in-progress for me). What learning opportunity did we just lose when we did that? What would it look like if we side-stepped our fear of looking dumb and just did it? What’s the worst that could happen?

We Get a Chance to Begin

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We Get a Chance to Begin

Today was my Commencement from Seth Godin’s altMBA workshop. I started it 4 weeks ago in the spirit of professional development. To put it lightly, this workshop transcended professional development and into personal metamorphosis.

In short, the altMBA program is a 4-week workshop that promises the experience of a 2-year MBA program. There are no tests and no lectures. It’s one of those things where you get what you put into it—and it requires tremendous amount of emotional labor.

My biggest revelation from this experience has been that I had, in a way, put a snuffer on my spark by keeping my enthusiasm and passion from my colleagues. For me, passion and purpose for my work comes from spirituality—which I had somehow compartmentalized out of my professional engagements. What I have come to truly understand now is what Einstein stated in 1940: ‘Science without religion is lame.’

Now for a personal story: 3Q2020 was the most successful quarter yet for my consulting business. For 2 months (October and November), I worked 70-80 hours/week, with most work happening after 9pm. Thanks to the pandemic, both of my little ones were at home, so I took care of them during the daytime so that my husband could attend his meetings during business hours. I didn’t know when the schools would re-open or when the work would die down (basically, there was no end in sight). Although I was tired throughout these 2 months, I was stress-free, happy, and left everyone around me delighted: my clients, kids, husband, and myself. What kept me going during this trying time? After all, there is no amount of money you could’ve paid me to create slides on p-values at 2am when everyone else is sound asleep—day after day. To willfully take up struggles beyond all reason requires a higher purpose.

For me, I take my career AS seriously as family and spirituality. The reason is: WHAT I HAVE IS GOD’S GIFT TO ME; WHAT I DO WITH IT IS MY GIFT TO GOD.

The funny thing is…none of this was taught in the altMBA. What it did provide, however, was the space to experiment with my baseline ideas and a supportive network to tell me like it was.

Seth Godin himself showed up at the Commencement to share some insightful thoughts:

  • Change can be done to us or by us. If it’s done by us, then we get to do the work that we’re proud of.
  • Given the injustice, illness, and trauma in our society, we can think our way out of this by WORKING our way out of this.
  • Commencement is not the end, but it’s actually the beginning. Go forward because you can’t step in the same river twice. Now what do we do with it? We get a chance to begin.
  • Go make a ruckus everybody. The work matters.

I would love to hear from you! What keeps you going during trying times in your career? What give you the spark?

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