Takeda’s Take On The Future Of Biopharma Human Capital

In this supplement to our feature on the In Vivo/EBD Academy survey "Future-Proofing Human Capital In Global Life Sciences", Ramona Sequeira, President of Takeda Pharmaceutical's US Business Unit, presents her company’s strategy to anticipate and respond to a disruptive transformation of the industry payer base.

How effectively the biopharma industry deploys its human capital will be a key differentiator of competitive success in the next decade. A new joint In Vivo/EBD Academy C-suite survey of trends in the “people asset” space finds that while companies share some strengths, improvements are needed in critical “soft” management” areas like colleague engagement. (Also see "Future-Proofing Human Capital: Does Biopharma Have The Right Stuff?" - In Vivo, 31 Jul, 2017.)

Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. has defined and institutionalized a new set of leadership behaviors that puts the entire workforce focused on one question that matters: what are Takeda’s customers and patients thinking about today?

In this interview, Ramona Sequeira, President of Takeda Pharmaceutical's US Business Unit, also addresses the key talent issue of finding professionals able to address the need for data and analytics that drive not only payer reimbursement decisions, but how patients and HCP’s can engage with Takeda medicines to improve outcomes.

In Vivo: What are the key trends affecting the biopharma business model and how is Takeda USA deploying its human capital assets to address them?

Ramona Sequeira: As a society, we face unprecedented pressures to provide high quality health care in the context of an aging population. The health care environment is changing rapidly, which is forcing us to reevaluate what we need in terms of essential leadership behaviors among our US colleagues. In the past, we looked for leaders who could execute and work well with clients. Today, we are seeing dramatic transformations on the ground, especially among those key accounts that we see every day. Many of these accounts are moving from fee for service to value based payments. We have to adapt in return, with the same sense of urgency.

What we’ve done is identify – and institutionalize – four transformational leadership behaviors that will help us better address the need to understand, respond and thrive in our healthcare environment. These are:

enterprise thinking, which is about finding new and innovative ways to meet our customers’ needs and support our business;

focus, which means putting time and resources behind the few activities that matter most;

inspire and engage colleagues to see the connection between Takeda’s vision and business mission and the work they do every day; and

elevating our talent capabilities, with the goal of supporting and coaching teams and individuals so we can be “best in class” at those few things that matter.

In other words, leadership is not a spectator sport. Good management always starts with the same simple question: what are Takeda’s customers thinking about today?

How is this philosophy being applied in the commercial space at Takeda? Are you adapting your business organization structure to keep pace?

Our organization has changed dramatically over the years to better adapt to the needs of our customers. Where we once worked just to get patients on our medicines, we now work to get patients healthy with our medicines. What was once a top-down system of sales representatives delivering information to customers is now a diverse, integrated organization including many diff erent customer-facing roles, including sales, key account managers, reimbursement and market access professionals; health outcomes specialists; medical science liaisons; and field-based medical educators. All these people must work together to provide our customers and accounts with what they need to ensure patients can achieve better outcomes for our medicines.

Ramona Sequeira, Takeda USA

To do this, we expect our people to have a deep understanding of our customers and their goals. That in turn requires a critical attribute: versatility. Titles and job descriptions mean less because the service mix is now so variable. A colleague who is a sales rep today might be asked to manage a key account tomorrow. Overall, the size of the organization doesn’t qualify you to be “best in class” in the eyes of the customer; rather, it’s the quality of individuals in these roles. Hence building a talent base around versatility is critical.

Takeda’s new business structure reflects the changing expectations of the customer. When I came on board in 2015, we were organized around functions like sales, marketing, regulatory and medical affairs. That was our C-suite. Everyone stayed in their silos. I ended that structure in favor of Business Units (BU) built around a patient- and account-centric approach, where teams from the different functions coalesce around the needs of customers. The BU leads ensure that all this cross-functional work is aligned to our strategy.

Currently, we have two commercial business units: general medicines and specialty. The leaders of the BU’s have a responsibility to pull all our internal resources together. Among other things, each BU develops a brand strategy to drive customer engagement with Takeda, on everything from contracting for different services “beyond the pill” to the evidence that needs to be generated to show the customer the value of the products we provide. If you describe our C-suite today, I’d say it seeds and facilitates customer engagement, specialized skills, learning and alignment throughout the Takeda USA organization. A very different role than before.

About The In Vivo/EBD Academy Survey

To assess the current and future state of human capital in the life sciences, In Vivo, together with Informa’s newly launched life sciences learning business, EBD Academy, conducted a comprehensive survey during the months of April and May involving 300 leading decision-makers in the life sciences sector in the US and Europe. Our joint survey examines the key drivers affecting workplace culture, skills training, management practices and leadership styles for a cross-section of this diverse industry – today and tomorrow. The full report, Future-Proofing Human Capital In Global Life Sciences, will be available soon. Register your interest at www.ebdgroup.com/ebdacademyreport.

These structural changes require a different set of competencies. How has this fact shaped Takeda’s stance on recruiting talent? Do you have a workforce whose diversity reflects the change in demographics and the customer base?

Diversity is not solely about demographics. It starts with hiring leaders who are comfortable surrounding themselves with people very different from them, so they can see business issues from different perspectives. Diversity and inclusion go hand in hand and are essential to what is now the standard team-based method of finding solutions to challenges that are rarely binary anymore. Diversity allows for different perspectives to come to the table. My own leadership team is equally split between men and women. I actively seek out contending viewpoints further down in the organization. To support our efforts around diversity and inclusion, we created a series of Employee Resource Groups (ERG) where colleagues can work together to create a culture of inclusion within Takeda. Each ERG has an executive sponsor from the corporate leadership team. Groups have been established for women, as well as for Hispanics, African-Americans, the LGBT community, caregivers and veterans. These groups help us on everything from awareness to leadership to recruitment. They are also a vehicle for networking, self-help, community service and solidarity.

Looking ahead, do you see gaps in the competencies required for Takeda to stay at the top of its game in the biopharma business?

One of our biggest current challenges is recruiting data and analytics professionals. This is a relatively new area for biopharma, so what we find is people who have the technology skills on things like wearables, digital aps or behavioral analytics but lack the contextual knowledge around the business of medicine and health care. Attracting people who have both is highly competitive. To address the gap long-term, we are encouraging educational institutions to put more resources into this intersection between technology and the biopharma business. This is critical, because the value to Takeda, like other drug companies, is in obtaining useful commercial insights from the data we retrieve. You need technologists with the ability to “connect the dots.”

This holds true for our management ranks as well. Leaders here must understand hard data and evidence from multiple sources, apply it to generate insights incorporating observations from working out front with the customer, and then pulling all these strands together with a plan to guide the business forward. That’s what we’re really looking for in leaders – the capacity to grasp the essence of a challenge and integrate a response.

You will see here that this is not about raw skills. We presume that. I put the emphasis on curiosity, humility, adaptability and being comfortable with change. If you can’t adapt, you can’t grow. Those who show the capacity to be curious, to abandon the familiar comfort zone and connect those dots to achieve something better will, in my view, succeed in any job. Of course, it is hard to put these attributes perfectly down on paper. They are soft skills that have much to do with emotional intelligence and knowing your core. The point is it’s not enough to be good at process and just moving an assigned project forward.

From your perspective as a CEO, how would you rank the human capital issue as a priority over the next few years?

It’s definitely at the top of the list. A lot of my work depends on ensuring Takeda has both the right decision-making structure and talent to succeed. The Takeda culture compels us to try first to promote from within. The larger truth is biopharma companies basically pursue the same mission – to partner with customers who have increasing leverage in the market. To get closer to the patient, to develop deep insights from information and evidence and to stay grounded in the patient outcome. The one differentiating factor against the competition is the bench strength -- the quality and depth – of your people. I want to ensure we have the right leaders in critical positions to help us anticipate change and execute with speed on a cross-functional basis – and always doing it better than other companies can.