Some of the most effective leaders are understated in manner, and patient. Theirs is the pointillist approach, not the broad brush strokes – but the masterpiece still fills the canvas.
For Susanne Hundsbaek-Pedersen, the concepts of the authentic leader and the brave organization are valid and necessary, and may need to be applied with nuance, although the ambition may still be bold.
Authenticity means bringing your true self to the leadership role, but in the service of the company: “The balance in the training was in how authenticity also needs to be engaged while considering what the organization can actually benefit from at that moment – how much of yourself do you bring?”
The brave organization will “not only take small steps, but try to think ahead of a more transformative way of working.”
“My leadership team was expanding and pushing my thinking.”
In this sophisticated approach to her leadership roles in the pharmaceutical industry, she draws heavily on her experience on the EMBA. “I loved being exposed to design thinking at Stanford and design processes at IDEO because it offered a different way to innovate business – so not only product innovation, but business processes as well.”
Inspired by the example, she has taken her own leadership teams on learning expeditions, with the aim of reimagining how they do business processes, including a manufacturing solution to a complex new product, for example. This approach “triggered a learning journey for my organization an opened completely new and radically different solution space.” Every year she sets aside one week of learning journeys for her organization to expand the thinking of her team.
Susanne’s first degree was in industrial engineering in her native Denmark. For more than 20 years, her career has been in the pharmaceutical sector – 18 years at Novo Nordisk, before being appointed to a global role at Executive Vice-President level at pharmaceutical giant Roche in Switzerland. This was in 2021, during Covid-19 lockdown. “That is probably one of the toughest transitions I’ve ever made, because I rely a lot on personal interactions with people. I did evolve a strategic response to where my organization should be headed during the first six months. I needed a little longer than the famous 100 days given the lockdown… But six months in, we had that laid out.”
The culture she inherited at Roche was distinctive – and a strength, for the most part. “It is a nice culture, almost so nice that you shy away from conflict. I designed my organization to hold some healthy tension. Nice is also a strength, but striking the balance between the two is where I spent much of my time.”
She adds: “You can actually enjoy being in a moment of disagreement, if you know that this is not about positional power. It’s not about me liking you or not liking you. It is about exploring the possible.”
Another discipline she has encouraged has been working back from desired outcomes, removing unnecessary process complexities while delivering products of exceptional sophistication, consistently around the globe. This is during a period of rapid technological advances in artificial
intelligence, biologics and applications of genetic mapping.
“You can actually enjoy being in a moment of disagreement, if you know that this is not about positional power. It is about exploring the possible.”
The rewards are huge, and are both commercial and humanitarian. Treatments for genetically inherited conditions, such as spinal muscular atrophy, will enable children with the condition to grow up and live full lives. More treatments of diseases will be tailored, bespoke for the person’s condition. “We will begin to understand some diseases down to an individual level,” she says. New developments are “allowing us to understand and modify diseases in ways we couldn’t in the past”.
During her time Susanne has built supply chains and facilities in a wide range of countries across several continents including Algeria, Iran and China.
Innovation, and courage, have been extended to logistics and supply, as well as product development. She applied thought to how the pharmaceutical industry “served the base of the pyramid”, and authorized projects to overcome barriers to access and better serve people in low-income countries.
Studying for an EMBA both introduced her to new approaches and knowledge, and gave her more confidence in abilities she already possessed. She admits a certain scepticism over whether she needed additional coaching on personal leadership, considering “all the leadership training” she had already completed, but ended up enjoying the interactions and gaining fresh insights. “My leadership team was expanding and pushing my thinking”.
In a very different field of knowledge, the confidence she and many others on the EMBA had regarding the spread of globalization has been shaken in recent years with the re-emergence of conflict and geopolitical tensions, with potentially significant impacts for health services. “We have the means to treat people, and we have patients all over the world, how do we establish solutions that are overcoming potential restrictions? … often medicines are exempted from restrictions, but still, we need to know that the supply chains can remain resilient under all circumstances.”
The pharmaceutical sector is an industry of hope, however, and the pipeline of cures at Roche holds the promise to transform quality of life for patients around the world. She considers herself to be in the latter part of her career, but a long way from retiring. “Something I hope I can speak about with pride when I have some day to pass on the baton, would be that I set the company up well to deliver the full potential of the pipeline of new transformative medical modalities in the service of patients.”
