Reinvention after 10 years with Novartis

At the end of January, I moved on from Novartis after 10 great years, including eight as CEO. I feel privileged to have worked alongside the best and brightest in our industry and am proud of the incredible progress we made together toward changing the practice of medicine. I will forever remember the personal stories of those patients and their families our work touched.

While we hear a lot about how companies transform over time to stay competitive, we don’t often hear about the importance of reinventing one’s self. However, I believe that personal reinvention every so often is essential for career longevity, and fulfillment both on and off the job.

Because if you don’t change and your industry transforms around you, you may never have the deep insights that are needed to succeed. This can negatively impact not only your personal satisfaction at work but also importantly, your ability to lead a team through change.

The ability to reinvent oneself can seem daunting, but it shouldn’t. Here’s how I think about it:

Have the courage to be an industry outsider, because it’s a huge advantage. Sometimes reinvention can mean switching to a new industry. Don’t be afraid of this. Before I joined Novartis, I was in consumer packaged goods. I’ve written before about how my background as an outsider was beneficial. I wasn’t afraid to challenge the way things had been done before, and infuse a mindset shift in our team. I was able to use the lessons I’d learned from the fast-moving consumer packaged goods industry to help the team focus more on the outside world and on patients.

Embrace lateral moves, not just linear ones. For instance, shifting to a job with a similar level of responsibility but in a different area that challenges you to develop new skills. Because looking for a promotion at every change in your career is not always necessary to succeed. I took a lateral career move earlier in my career, and went from managing a $300 million business to a $10 million new product startup in the same company. While it was a hard choice at the time, the experience I gained has helped me tremendously over the years.

Know that you don’t have to change jobs to reinvent yourself. Personal reinvention can also happen in your current role. I never like to hear when a team plans to continue doing what they’ve been doing simply because it is working. Instead, I challenge them to think of how to do it even better. So if you’re not ready to change jobs, know you can change your perspective, sharpen your skillset, and be open to solving problems differently. I always encourage my teams to do this.

Change is never easy, but it is a fact of life, especially in business. That said, I know how hard it can be to evolve one’s self. However, continuous learning and self-improvement should be a lifelong journey, regardless of whether you’re the CEO or the intern.