Learning leadership

This article is part of the Contemporary leadership series

A while ago I had a conversation with Joe Jimenez, the CEO of the pharmaceutical company Novartis. It was July 4^th, Independence Day in the US, but he was hard at work doing what a modern corporate leader does. What especially interested me about Jimenez was that he was an outsider to the pharma industry when he joined the company. He was not a scientist when he became the head of the pharma division at Novartis in 2007.

I thought that it must have been awkward, indeed very difficult, dealing with the company’s scientists, working at the leading edge of pharma, knowing nothing about the interior workings of molecules and so on.  It was a point I made to Jimenez. “I felt it was very important that I study not just our medicines but the diseases that our medicines are involved in, as well as the mechanism of the molecules that we have discovered and developed,” he agreed.

Stuart Crainer is the former editor of the award-winning magazine Business Strategy Review and co-founder of the Thinkers50. According to Personnel Today he is one of the most influential people in British people management. His book credits include The Management Century and a biography of the management guru Tom Peters. His work with Des Dearlove in business thought leadership led Management Today to describe them as “market makers par excellence.” Stuart is an adjunct professor at IE Business School.