Why so much Pharma? Do they just naturally want to sing the blues? R & D units, industrial operations, human resources, executive teams, marketing, sales, legal, leadership training—they’ve all done it. Face The Music and MCG have conducted 31 programs in support of various initiatives.

One reason for the Pharma concentration is that MetaSystem Consulting Group, Face The Music’s consulting partner, has a strong presence in the pharmaceutical industry. When MCG consultant Paul Kwiecinski co-founded Face The Music in 1999, they were a natural bunch to speak to about this exciting new approach to organization development using music. The relationships and successes MCG had established with our pharma partners gave FTM a natural connection to talk about the innovations we were pioneering.

One of the main areas where the FTM/MCG programs have added value has been in post-merger situations. In late 1999, Aventis (now Sanofi-Aventis, after last year’s merger) was formed by the merger of Hoechst Marion Roussel and Rhone-Poulenc. In March of 2000 the top 70 or so leaders of the newly formed company met in Baden-Baden, Germany for their first Global Leadership Conference. MetaSystem was brought in by meeting designers to design an agenda that would help accelerate the integration of the two companies, initiate a values-based leadership initiative, and liven up the event with innovation and fun. One of the key elements was a Face The Music interactive event featuring the CEO, chairman of the board, board members, C-level executives and all their direct reports; French, German, American, English, Japanese, etc. The night took on a celebration air as the songs were delivered, people laughed, got to know one another, found out about each other’s concerns and issues, and took a strong, positive first step in defining the new organization. The next day MetaSystem followed up with working sessions where leaders defined actions they would take on the initiatives in their areas that would assure that the integration rollout would support the agreed upon values.

At one point Global New Products and US New Products realized that they could save each other a lot of time and energy and be more effective if they worked together more closely and shared information and common processes. They brought in MetaSystem to facilitate the work, and Face The Music to prime the pump and help identify issues. The song, “The New Products Acronym Blues” outlines the process of launching a new product in the company by using all the various acronyms. In Aventis the work continued into various parts of the organization, as the blues were sung about and worked on by the Global Marketing, HR, Industrial Operations, and Legal divisions, among others. The common element was fun, honesty, and a desire to go Beyond The Blues.

After the Pfizer acquisition of Werner Lambert and Parke Davis in 2000, a Pfizer site in Ann Arbor, MI was looking for innovative ways to accelerate the integration process and get the new units up and running. Pfizer’s Mark Jones designed a series of presentations called “We’re Movin’ On” to get employees on the same page, and commissioned Face The Music to create a song that the site leaders made into a music video; thus “The Integration Blues” was born, and because the song spoke the truth of the issues and problems faced by people in the new organization, it opened the conversation of where to go to get up to speed and start movin’ on. I’ve noticed that that video still shows up at Pfizer events now and again.

At Millennium Pharma, Face The Music is “on the faculty” of the Leadership Forum, a program for developing Millennium’s leaders designed by Executive Development Associates, an alliance partner of MetaSystem and FTM. They have found that the FTM experience surfaces issues of the day quickly, clearly and creatively as participants develop their leadership skills and solve the problems constantly created by the tempestuous environment. And it’s a great chance to have a little fun singing the blues after 3 days in class.

McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharma (the Tylenol folks) also includes FTM as a standing part of their Transformational Leadership series. The series for high potential leaders focuses on breakthrough leadership to attain McNeil’s business goals, and creating company-wide alignment. Valerie Corace, Director of Leadership Development, said, “We decided to bring in FTM as part of our evening event because this was a perfect activity that combined business focus, fun, team building and a totally different vehicle for airing our issues in a non-threatening way. The experience broke down barriers between functional groups and between levels and created a sense of "we are all one organization". People still talk about how great the session was."

Pharma is a business where projects are long term and high risk. How do you leverage the potentially high return? Through innovation, the ability to get out of the box, and finding new ways to collaborate to deliver value as the industry constantly changes. In partnership with Face The Music, MCG delivers programs that help these capabilities become ingrained in your organizational culture. Call us to see how we can add value to what you want to achieve.

“I think we might have found a way to justify playing 18 holes of golf!”, said Chris Brown, President and owner of Wiedenbach Brown, a lighting distribution company at their annual golf event at the Wykagyl Golf Club in New Rochelle, NY.

When Chris heard about our new book, “What’s your lie? Honest leadership from the game of golf”, he was excited at the possibilities of using the book and its concepts of drawing parallels of business and golf practices with his company and clients. Due out in January, ‘What’s your lie? Honest Leadership from the game of golf’ looks at the similarities of what great golfers do on the golf course and what great leaders and managers do in the office. For him, it was a way for his sales force, vendors and customers to come together and have fun playing golf and, have the opportunity to work on their leadership skills!

After considering the points above, participants shared how their approach to the game might be similar to how they do business — perhaps the most unusual perspective to their golf game of all! A good time was had by all during the discussions at the clubhouse after the game. Although it was a new concept for most, they embraced it with open arms. People were fascinated by the accuracy of some of the parallels for them.

So what will these folks do with this new insight? Because this was an informal event and not a leadership workshop, there were no next steps and progress assessments set for the future. We will have to rely on Chris Brown to keep us informed. However, Chris and MetaSystem are now looking at how to incorporate golf and leadership in the development of Weidenbach Brown, and its sales initiatives in the future. We will keep you informed. See you on the green!

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