Finding purpose every day

I’m often asked what motivates me, what drives me to come to work every day. The answer is simple: to have an impact on patients around the world. I’m fortunate to work for a company that is truly aiming to change the practice of medicine, and make a lasting impact on people’s lives for years to come. And while our mission is incredibly meaningful, the reality is that our business is complicated. It can be easy to lose sight of one’s purpose amidst the daily crunch.

That’s why I believe one of the most important things I can do as a leader is to unify our team around shared goals so everyone understands why we’re doing what we do. This isn’t always easy, but it is possible. Let me tell you how.

Novartis has about 118,000 associates spread around the world. That’s a lot of people to try to get on the same page. The first thing I had to do when I became CEO was help people understand where I wanted to take the company. And it had to be crystal clear. Every person in the organization had to understand it, have line of sight to that goal, and grasp how their day-to-day work would help us move into the future. I had to distill the strategy down to its essence, articulating how we’re going to win, and what we’re really going after, so people can hold that idea in their heads. I wanted the associate on the plant floor, who’s actually making the medicine, to understand the priorities we have as a company.

One way we do this at Novartis is by focusing on the mission of the company—putting the patient at the center of all our efforts. My very first town hall meeting at Novartis, when I was head of Pharmaceuticals, I included a patient in the program—a teenage girl who suffered from severe asthma. This focus on the patient, and on our mission to discover new ways to improve and extend people’s lives, is a constant refrain that has remained part of the culture of our company. I bring in patients to talk with our employees, to increase the interactions we have with our key customers and highlight the impact our work has on the lives of real people. We also changed our commercial structure to become more customer-focused. 

I also introduced an internal program to rally our people around our mission. We called it Long Live Life, celebrating the fact that normal life is extraordinary, and that we fight to protect this every day. Because when someone is sick, all they want to do is get back to normal. When we launched the program, we showed employees this video to help them understand what this was about, and to see the impact of what we do.

Since its introduction a few years ago, Long Live Life has become nothing short of a movement led by our people. It has become a collective expression of what we stand for and believe in as a company. As a result, engagement with our mission has increased at all levels throughout the company, which I believe translates into better business performance and ultimately better medicines for people who need them.

Over the years, we have asked associates to share photos, stories and ideas to engage with our mission and explain what it means to them. Through this exercise, we have found some really powerful associate stories that bring home how deeply important our work is. We learned the story of Tom Marsilje, a cancer researcher for Novartis based in San Diego, California, who is also a cancer patient. You can read about his journey with cancer here. Tom’s personal mission to fight cancer – both his own disease, and through his work at Novartis – as well as his efforts to live as normal a life as possible, really hit home for a lot of people. His attitude of hope and encouragement in the face of adversity is truly inspiring.

Stories like this illustrate the importance of connecting with our people on the meaning behind what we do. Because when you think about the reason a company like Novartis exists, it illuminates our company’s mission in a human way. This can be a powerful motivator and reminder on why it is so important to deliver on our mission, and our vision for the future.