DIALOGUE WITH @TIZIANA MELE INNOVATIVE LEADER in COVID TIME

I am very happy to share this dialogue about Tiziana Mele, MD at #LUNDBECK Italy and, I am proud to say, a good friend of mine as well. In this hard historical time, Tiziana is developing her leadership style even more, due to the unprecedented complexity that leaders like her have to face. 

MR: Many people are living this time as a very powerful opportunity to learn. Everyone talks about it, but what are you learning personally?

Tiziana: For me this is an incredible learning experience. Since the 22nd of February I have learnt many things both from a management and leadership point of view. For the first time, I found myself dealing with something completely new: the company was totally paralysed, and I had to decide what to do.  The alternatives were either to stop completely our operations or to push forward, fully aware of the fact that the majority of our work is done on the field. Naturally my first thought was for our employees and for what could have been done to keep everyone safe and able to contribute. From that first moment of uncertainty, we had an extraordinary improvement in terms of our digital competences and technical tools in particular. Over the past few years, digitalisation and its main drivers were a common topic of discussion. Now, I can say that for us it was Coronavirus and the time we are living now that pushed us to embrace new ways of working. At Lundbeck Italy, we have adopted smart working for people that would normally beoffice based two years ago already, but we had never imagined that one day we would have a field force working virtually as well. I have learnt that it is possible; if you do it with determination and passion and with a desire to experiment, then it can be done. 

I am very lucky to be part of a company that is very well disposed towards experimenting new ways of doing things. The people who work with me are willing to take up challenges and be disruptive, and in a way, we are also having fun, despite of the terrible circumstances.

Since the 22nd of February, when the lockdown started in some parts of Italy, we have implemented an extraordinary training programme for the field force. We made sure they had access to the right digital tools and could follow a widespread training so that they could feel comfortable using them. Among all of this, the most beautiful thing I see is that on top of what the Company offers in terms of trainings and webinars, single employees started offering free classes (for example yoga) outside of working hours. People want to be together, we need to feel connected. This is, in my view, what makes this difficult time an extraordinary learning experience. 

MR: From a more personal perspective, what are you learning as a leader? 

Tiziana: I am sharing much more and I am learning to count more on the strengths of my team. Since February, my team and I started a plan for an even more transparent communication within the rest of the company. For the first few weeks we sent out almost daily emails to keep everyone updated on what was happening. I have learnt the value of listening, and I don’t mean to sound full of rhetoric, but listening and making people feel that we are close to them (despite being apart) is especially important during this time. Every week we hold a town hall meeting with the whole company, where we talk about projects we are implementing and discuss results we are bringing in. We also shared with every employee the reasons why Lundbeck Italy decided not to put anyone on Wages Guarantee Fund - “cassa integrazione”.

I also keep finding proof that one of my mantras is true: where there’s a will there's a way. At the beginning there was a lot of confusion, I even thought for some time before the full lock down: “I can’t stop”. But then I learnt that things can be done in a different way and that’s what we did from the 9th of March onwards. We have set up a fundraising involving other Danish companies as well. In three days, we designed and launched the project as it was important to give an immediate help, and we did it!

From a more personal standpoint, I have a five year old son Gregorio, and one of the challenges I had to face as a mother was his birthday last week. I was afraid it would be a very sad one. Then I thought I didn’t need to be sad, I could organise a birthday party with all of his friends from all over Italy connected digitally. It has been a beautiful opportunity to connect everyone and everyone got a piece of cake… at their house.

MR: When I look at you during this time, I can see that you have an even bigger impact. It is as if the circumstances before coronavirus held you back. Now you seem to me more innovative, more creative and full of energy to bring results. Is that something you feel as well?

Tiziana: Coronavirus has given me more strength, it’s as if it’s pushing me to do more. I have to thank my team and everyone who is supporting me at Lundbeck. For example, the donations we made were new in respect to the rules that we would normally use, it wasn’t written anywhere that we could donate gloves, masks or respirators, but we worked to make that happen as the situation is extraordinary. Again, where there’s a will there's a way. We could not hide behind internal regulations and simply say it couldn’t be done. It can and has to be done, we have a responsibility towards ourselves and also towards society, and we found the correct way to do it. 

MR: What I like about your mantra “where there’s a will there's a way” is that you are not working alone. Everything that you are doing is not to show off. You are working in a systemic way, creating connections that were thought to be very difficult, like the one between psychiatry and psychology. You are bringing together Pharma companies, Danish Companies, and the whole healthcare system. To me this is a unique way of working and I see you bring to life. 

Tiziana: I try, and sometimes I fail… But what is really pushing me is that I haven’t stopped when someone said “no”, I told myself “I will ask someone else and someone else will listen to me, because I can’t be the only one who wants to do more”. The most beautiful thing about our fundraising is that we did it with companies we didn’t know. We had a shared mission and when there is a common goal there is incredible power as well. What we had in common with those companies was being Danish and operating in Italy, and we wanted to give something back to the Country that welcomed us. 

MR: After Coronavirus, will you keep creating connections and building relations that weren’t there or will you give up? 

Tiziana: I will absolutely keep building relations, because I believe in the strength of bringing together different competences. We are working on a project and one of the questions I received by our partner is “do you want it to be a Lundbeck project or are you willing to share it?”. My answer was that to me being able to share a project and to find professionals who have the same goal is a very powerful and rewarding accomplishment. 

When I put together my management team I looked for people who could share the purpose of Lundbeck and this is now our biggest strength: we are all very passionate about our common goal. This is what makes everything possible: having a common goal that transcends individuality.

MR: What is your goal then? Is it to grow your profit? 

Tiziana: My firstanswer is: no. Profit is important, but I want to underline that people who work at Lundbeck embrace the mission of this company. Lundbeck has always had a very specific focus on mental health and has kept it its only objective. Mental health is a very difficult area. Lundbeck has always been determined to invest in this area and has done so with incredible competence. We know we can make a difference in the mental health. People at Lundbeck are proud to be able to do something extraordinary for those affected by psychiatric or neurological disorders. This is what brings us together, everything else follows naturally. 

MR: A year from now, what would you keep as part of your life among all the things you learnt and experienced during this period? 

Tiziana: Professionally I want to keep the desire to innovate. I was talking about it with some psychiatrists as we were acknowledging the fact that we are working incessantly now, there are no weekends anymore. What pushes us is our desire to foster innovation. We are designing new projects, tackling new challenges. I don’t want to lose this attitude and I will ask my team to keep it too. It is fantastic now to receive a text from my sales manager on a Sunday afternoon that says: “I have an idea, I haven’t slept last night because I was thinking about it. I have to tell you what it is”. From a more personal perspective, instead, I had the precious gift of spending more time with my family and especially with my son. I have never been so present in his life as in the past month and a half. He isn’t used to see me in the morning or to go to bed with me every night. Being able to do yoga or drawings together are privileges I never had and I really love. I will try not to lose all of that. I have missed a lot about him, and now being able to see him grow and to hear his reasonings is truly beautiful and I don’t want to lose it.

MR: One last question: you are the MD of a pharmaceutical company with a focus on mental health. As MD of a modern pharmaceutical company, after this period, what do you think is the mission of pharmaceutical companies in a Country? Do they have a common mission?

Tiziana: Bringing value to the world. Bringing value to the world doesn’t mean only through pharmaceutical products, as we are born as pharmaceutical companies, but it is not enough to create value through services anymore. This product and service approach follows a 1980’s logic which is now obsolete. Pharmaceutical companies do not normally organise fundraisings, but my Company felt the need to do it for Italy. At the time I entered the pharmaceutical world, there was a motto: “beyond the pill approach” that called for something beyond the pharmacological solution. This is what I am experiencing first-hand during this period. I want to go beyond my business as usual and add value, I want to create value together, and not just in the pharmaceutical sector but with other actors and players in the healthcare system. 

This is something unique and beautiful that I have started experiencing in the last few weeks. Co-creating with professionals with competences, knowledge and points of view so different from my own fosters the potential for successful disruptive solutions. Only the union of diverse competences and experiences can actually create something new and unique. If I only work with pharmaceutical companies, innovative as it can be, it will always be limited and partial. 

The exciting challenge here is to bring together different sectors. What we need to realise as pharma company is to generate value together with all the other actors and players in the system, to create an experience that is finally new and positive for the patient. This is the point, as pharmaceutical companies we are called to look at the whole patient’s experience of cure and treatment in its totality. We need to generate an experience able to enhance clinical outcomes and capable of making the patient feel completely looked after and treated in every aspect of both the pathology and the person. 

There is more, as final result of this common effort we need to conceive an experience able to ensure such a sustainability of the system that it will liberate different kind of resources including economic wealth as well.

MR: Thank you Tiziana, this conversation was truly wonderful! I am very happy to have had the opportunity to listen to your experience and see strong leadership in action! 

#INNOVATIVELEADERS

#INNOVATION

#NEWSTRATEGY