It’s March 12 2023. Somewhere deep inside Europe, several work councils are about to make one of the most important decisions in post-Covid history. The fate of the employees and their families are up in the air.
For the past months, Leadership has been slowly building up troops and material. Political tensions are on the rise, due to some combination of bad management, failed projects, high costs, quality issues, costumer complaints etc.
There are concerns about the long-term sustainability of Janssen, the compliance status is for one.
Local management teams are desperately trying to downplay expectations that a shut down will occur. Officially, management isn’t acknowledging that a potential total shutdown is occurring.
But in fact, all of, Leadership pieces are in place, and they told their “generals” to begin final preparations for an “attack”. What Leadership does not yet realize is that the local employees have collectively dropped the ball. It will become clear that top management had made a major mistake. Employees will not turn this war into a cakewalk.
It became fashionable to blame the situation on some fundamental and anecdotal part of Janssen’s culture, its core is rotting and its democratic backsliding. Leadership is not getting any better advice from their “soldiers”, the incentive to exaggerate one’s own coercive capability is high, Leadership still believes what they are saying.
Leadership’s confidence is what had been happening over the last ten years at Janssen. Vaccines “annexation” was a clean operation that made Leadership feel like a strategic mastermind. Janssen was and is still such a mess that the Leadership hardly responded to ongoing compliance issues. Janssen had racked up “casualties” over the years, having employees coming and going month every month. While some essentially remaining “fighting” with one or two hands tied behind their back.
Developing COVID vaccine Leadership predicted a quick victory thanks to local employees. Without official and capable Leadership support, there were no purpose going on in the fight with the competition. Leadership just imagine how successful Janssen would be if they launched a traditional "new product".
The plan called for a rapid hit which would allow Leadership to obtain complete dominance in the market. That would then allow for smooth sailing into further areas. Timetables given to the Leadership had the expectation that they would develop a vaccine within months. Leadership was not alone with these optimist assessments, also local management.
In 2023, the information Leadership is receiving is still fare from the truth. The problem for Leadership and local management is its “autocratic system” which has created sycophants.
Far from an apparently CREDO minded organization, local management is known for releasing contrarian employees, sometimes even before the person in question could leave the building. Obviously, this is a terrible way to get good information. Employees started playing a guessing game of what management wants to hear rather than transmitting information about the truth. Worse yet, employees have no incentive to put in the hours to figure out what the actual good advice would be. If they are never going to tell management bad news anyway, why bother trying to look for the truth?
This may seem crazy from a management’s perspective, as eventually it will cause management to make major policy mistakes. Nevertheless, a management’s desire to repress potential challengers can take precedence, which is something of Janssen has a long tradition of favoring. Speaking out against the preferred policy will draw a management’s scrutiny, as doing so marks the employees as a potential challenger. And even if the employees have no inherent interest in mounting a challenge, now they are on the record as having a dissenting opinion. That’s could be a problem. Imagine that management pursues what everyone ultimately learns is a terrible idea. Other employees may become angry and demand changes at the top. Now whichever of these employees was the contrarian becomes an obvious replacement candidate. Releasing employees in the middle of a meeting for “disobedience”, is not an option. But dissenting voices are liable to have nasty end year conversations. As a result, any of those contrarian viewpoints from the management were unlikely to reach the surface.
The different quality departments have not provided better guidance. In contrast to earlier, though, this was less about drawing the wrong inference and more about systemic rot. Quality folks in every country have incentive to be lazy, and that includes all layers. If your contribution to the system is minimal and no one is going to call you out for slacking off, why bother putting in the effort at all?
This attitude permeates compliance mindset from top to bottom, and it is easier to just go along with the system rather than disrupt the corrupt harmony.
What separates Janssen from other organizations here again is its known marketing tool "CREDO". Imagine other pharmaceutical company, also a giant paper tiger, with nothing actually working properly despite the billions of dollars spent on it. And the fault is just about everyone, top to bottom, with a rotten culture of laziness.
Do you know who would love to hear more about that?
The media. It would be the biggest scoop of the year, headline news for weeks.
And that is why you are here at Cafepharma!
All it would take is handful of employees who care about their costumers and want to see reforms. But top, middle, lower management, officers, engineers technicians etc, and everyone in between is well aware of that.This, in turn, keeps everyone in line.
In theory, autocratic management could have similar “media” oversight. The problem is that unregulated media can turn critical of management.
And given how important coordinating expectations is for protestors to succeed, if an autocratic management wants to control one, it’s sop's/documents/records etc.
All policymakers wants to operate in a world of uncertainty.
