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The curent economic crisis has had an impact on every industry.  Pharma cetainly has not been spared.

While the downturn has been harsh on many, it is helpful to remind ourselves that the winds will undoubtedly shift and the skies will eventually clear.  

Times like these call for strength, confidence and leadership.  Here’s what Ram Charan (Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times) suggests you can do to weather the storm and help your team emerge even stronger:

• Be honest and credible – “Your authority derives not from omniscience but from your ability to facilitate understanding and solutions.  Level with people: tell them how you see the world, acknowledge the limits of your understanding, and ask them for their own views.  Doing this may take courage, but together you can piece together better probabilities than any one person can.”  
• Inspire - Work with your team to toughen it’s resolve to get through the storm successfully.  Then help your team members to develop one or two realistically optimistic pictures of what can lie ahead.
• Exhibit realism tempered with optimism - Sure, times are tough.  But, unadulterated pessimism is no more realistic than unbridled optimism!  ”While the first order of a realistic assessment is to understand and accept the magnitude of a problem, the fact is that few problems are insoluble.  Focus your people on a vision of what is possible, and energize them to search for the actions that will realize the vision.”
• Manage with intensity - In times such as these, it is especially important to have hands-on involvement in the work of your team.  You must dig into details with much higher frequency than ever before.

In these times, transparency in your communications is essential to retaining credibility and confidence.  Use your communications to foster information flow as well as motivation. Charan explains: “Your actions have to be bold, not tentative, if you’re going to convey confidence.  You also should be transparent, explaining how you reached your decision, why you think it is the best decision, and how your actions will move [your team] toward your vision…”