Posted on December 2, 2016 by Bill George |
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Fred Hassan, Warburg Pincus partner & managing director, and Bill George, Harvard Business School professor, weigh in on if President-elect Donald Trump will redefine the government’s relationship with business and the Time Warner-AT&T deal.
Tune in to CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” at 10am Tuesday. Bill George will be a guest.
The disregard for children’s health that Mylan CEO Heather Bresch demonstrated in her testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee directly harms consumers.
Less directly, Mylan’s exceptionally high price increases erode public confidence in all medical companies, including those investing billions in research to help people suffering from life-threatening diseases.
When companies like Mylan, Valeant and Turing Pharmaceuticals — which have grown profits through financial engineering, not drug discovery — take advantage of loopholes in our health-care system, they create public outrage against all medical companies. I have a growing concern this outrage will have dire consequences for research-based pharmaceutical companies, and could even lead to price controls.
Rather than acknowledging her mistakes in raising EpiPen prices 500 percent from $100 to more than $600, Bresch has tried to obfuscate her actions by shifting the blame to health plans and pharmacy benefits managers that have instituted co-payment and high deductible plans to keep premiums low for strapped consumers. Mylan’s largest price increases came shortly after the FDA pulled its competitors off the market, leaving the firm with a monopoly.
Meanwhile, Bresch claimed Mylan was not making much money on EpiPens while admitting it earned $100 on a net selling price of $274 (after normal discounts). In her testimony she said Mylan earned $100 on a net selling price of $274 (after normal discounts). It turns out that Bresch misstated Mylan’s profit on Epipens – it’s actually $160, not $100, as the Wall Street Journal reported. That is a profit margin of 60 percent – exceptionally high by any standard. Yet she could not answer basic questions from Congress about revenues from EpiPens and their contribution to Mylan’s profits.
Bresch used EpiPen’s success to fuel her rapid rise to the CEO’s office, yet she proved in that testimony that she is not stepping up to the responsibilities her role demands. Publicly, she led with her chin by saying, “I am running a business to make money” as if she were running a financial fund.
Bresch may feel protected from the wrath of Congress and the public by Mylan’s highly unusual governance procedures, established when the company executed a tax inversion to The Netherlands in 2015 after it turned down a purchase offer from rival Teva valued at more than twice today’s stock price. Under its procedures shareholders don’t get to nominate board members; only the board can do that.
Authentic health-care companies from Mayo to Merck understand they are in business to restore people’s health, and if they did that well, profits would follow. Mylan seems to be ignoring Merck founder George Merck’s admonition, “Medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear.”
At Medtronic, our founder Earl Bakken charged us with “using biomedical engineering … to restore health.” As Medtronic revenues grew from $400 million in 1985 to $30 billion today, every CEO has faithfully followed Bakken’s mission through good times and difficult ones. Medtronic’s proudest achievement over these 31 years is not its growth in shareholder value from $400 million to $120 billion, but fulfilling its original mission by expanding the number of new patients restored each year from 150,000 to 30 million today.
In 1990 in response to public concerns over rising health-care costs, Medtronic instituted a “no price increase” policy. This put pressure on us to reduce our costs while spurring investment in more advanced products. It paid off with rapid growth and high profits, which were invested in research and development, expansion into emerging markets, and acquisitions to broaden the company’s base.
One of Bresch’s only defenders in this experience is disgraced former hedge-fund manager Martin Shkreli, who resigned as CEO of Turing after his outrageous 5,500 percent price increases on an AIDS drug fueled public anger. To Bresch’s credit, she tried to answer questions, while just Shkreli smirked in his Congressional appearance while taking the Fifth Amendment. He later arrogantly called the congressmen, “imbeciles.” The public furor these bad actors have stirred up will not subside soon, especially in this election year, and are stimulating legislative actions rather than market-based solutions.
Pharmaceutical companies have long argued that they need patent protection and pricing freedom in order to justify returns on large investments in research. Yet that argument falls flat in the cases of Mylan, Valeant and Turing, which historically have not invested in research. As long as these types of companies stay in news, public pressure will mount for government price controls or at least the ability to negotiate prices. The unintended consequence of such actions could be cutbacks in high-risk research aimed at curing and healing the most threatening diseases that require high returns to justify high costs.
In contrast, the major pharmaceutical companies base their success on high-cost, high-risk science with long lead times and no assurance of returns. In recent years some short-term investors have argued for cutting back research and simply buying drugs from others. Yet those who have committed to research without hesitation — Merck, Amgen, Genentech and Novartis, just to name a few – have created breakthrough drugs that saved millions of lives and generated high returns on their investments for their long-term shareholders.
With pharmaceutical prices now under public scrutiny, responsible leaders of medical companies should call for and demonstrate restraint in setting prices for their products, especially when they enjoy protected positions. Thus far, the only CEOs to speak out publicly against these abuses are GSK’s Andrew Witty, Merck’s Ken Frazier and Allergan’s Brent Saunders. They should be voluntarily joined by other CEOs and industry associations like PhRMA and AdvaMed.
The time for health care’s leaders to act is now, before Congress acts for them.
Commentary by Bill George, a senior fellow at Harvard Business School and the former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic. He previously served on the board of Novartis. He is also author of the book “Discover Your True North.” Follow him on Twitter @Bill_George.
For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.
This article was originally posted on CNBC on 09/27/16.
The Forum was thrilled to have Bill George as our closing speaker on Day 3. Former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Business School, and author of Discover Your True North, Bill discusses finding your own True North – the internal compass that sets one on a path toward their fullest potential as a leader. Today’s global business community calls for leaders who will change the world for the better and inspire others around them to do the same.
This content was originally posted to stthomas.edu on 05/19/16.
MPR News host Kerri Miller talks with Bill George, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Business School, and Washington University law professor Adam Rosenzweig about corporate tax inversions and why the issue seems to have taken a timid foothold in this year’s presidential election. With both Democrats and Republicans taking aim at companies who employ tax inversion, Kerri delves into the reasons why, what the concerns are with this sort of corporate maneuvering and what might be done to get at the root causes behind U.S. companies taking their operations overseas.
CNBC Contributors Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management, and Bill George, former Medtronic chairman & CEO, talk about the leadership challenges facing Alphabet with the various companies in the corporate structure.
This article was originally posted to CNBC.com on 3/29/16.
Bill George of Harvard Business School, and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of Yale School of Management, discuss the proxy fight launched at Yahoo by Starboard Value and how the current and proposed boards could do.
This article was originally posted to CNBC.com on 3/24/16.
Discussing the Brussels attacks and the importance of security in the European Union with Bill George, Harvard Business School professor, former Medtronic Chairman & CEO and CNBC Contributor.
Bill George, Harvard Business School professor, former Medtronic CEO and CNBC Contributor, weighs in on the Valeant Pharmaceuticals leadership change and gives his pick for who should replace Michael Pearson as CEO.
They’re know-it-alls and braggarts. They rule with an iron fist. It’s their way, their idea, their direction – or nothing at all.
No doubt we’ve all encountered a dictator boss, or one with so little humility, we’re really not sure they had any to begin with. Is there any way to tame these characters at the office? It’s a topic several LinkedIn Influencers weighed in on this week. Here’s what two of them had to say.
Daniel Goleman, co-director of the Consortium for Research and Emotional Intelligence in Organizations and co-founder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning
Is there any hope for a dictatorial leader? Goleman tells the story of a manager named Allen. Behind his back, his “staff called him ‘Mr. My Way or the Highway’… Allen ruled his department with an iron fist, making every decision big and small with little input from others.” Allen’s staff didn’t dare make suggestions, he wrote in his post How to Coach a Dictatorial Leader.
With so much evidence showing that dictator leaders negatively impact team performance, it’s not just a personality problem. Executive coaches say dictatorial leaders can be tamed, sometimes. Goleman cited the work of Daniel Siegel, author of Mindsight and executive coach and speaker who tries to understand what makes a person a dictator leader.
According to Siegel, people need three “S’s”: To be seen, to be soothed, and to be safe. “When you’re safe, soothed and seen in a reliable way, you get the fourth S, security.”
The bottom line, Goleman wrote, is that when people don’t have these three S’s, they lack a sense of security, a state of mind that can make them prone to acting like a dictator in an organisation.
But changing a dictator’s style only starts with understanding why they behave that way. Goleman would ask a dictator two questions — first, do they care, and second, do they want to change? If they do want to change, dictators have to see themselves the way others do, he wrote. Yes, the dreaded 360-review (where the employee’s closest workmates are asked to provide feedback on him or her) can be a useful tool for homing in on the problem, Goleman wrote.
Next, he wrote, find a positive career model for your dictator. This could be “someone in their own career they loved as a leader… a very positive model rather than the way they’re being. Then, help them practice steps that will make them that kind of person … where they see the value of a different form of leadership.”
Ready to give up on a stuck-in-his-ways dictatorial boss because you think it’s no use changing someone so set in their path? Not so, wrote Goleman. “It’s never too late.”
Bill George, former chief executive officer at Medtronic and professor at Harvard Business School
Every day, news headlines seem stuffed with examples of not-so-humble leaders.
“Listening to the media these days one would think that our leaders have lost all sense of humility, if indeed they ever had it,” wrote George in his post Are Our Leaders Losing Their Humility?“ Donald Trump brags that he used a $1m inheritance to create $10bn net worth” and chief executives “hype their quarterly results by focusing only on the positive aspects, only to see their company’s stock prices collapse at a later date.”
“Whatever happened to humility as a virtue for leaders?” George asked. The finest leaders, he wrote, “are keenly aware of their limitations and the importance of teams around them in creating their success. They know they stand on the shoulders of giants who built their institutions.”
They also exhibit humility, he wrote, not just in their interactions with others, but also in the actions everyone can see. Perhaps it’s the concept of humility that’s been lost, he added.
“The word humility is often misunderstood. Dictionaries define it as ‘a modest opinion of one’s own importance’, ‘the quality of not thinking you are better than other people’, and ‘self-restraint from excessive vanity’”. But most importantly, “humility derives from an inner sense of self-worth….Ultimately, they know to lead is to serve their customers, employees, investors, communities, and ultimately, society through their work.”
But, he wrote, leaders who lack humility don’t seem to have that sense of self-worth. “Leaders who brag and tout their achievements often do so from a deep sense of insecurity. Outwardly, they act like bullies and try to intimidate people, but inside they feel like imposters who may be unmasked at any time.”
This article was originally posted to BBC.com on 3/11/16.
William George, Sr. Fellow at Harvard Business School and Former Medtronic CEO, weighs in on the latest action coming from Twitter and their business strategies.
This article was originally posted toCNBC.comon 01/25/16
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