Virtual leadership – how to build a successful company in a global world

Eli Lilly was founded in 1876 in Indianapolis by a Mr Eli Lilly, whose ancestors were Swedish emigrants. Today, the company has approx imately 42,000 employees in some 150 countries around the world. The company’s pharmaceutical products are treating diseases in areas such as diabetes, psychiatry, oncology, and osteoporosis.

Changing world – changing businesses
The pharma industry all over the world is under pressure to minimize costs, changing regulation and customer needs, which means that traditional methods and processes are no longer sustainable. As a result, the Lilly leadership saw the potential of creating a true virtual organization with clusters around the world. Patrik Jönsson was assigned to build a Scandinavian cluster combining the three affiliates of Sweden, Norway, Denmark.

Today, there is no Scandinavian headquarters office – there is only a Scandinavian Management Team, consisting of people from all three countries. Instead of three separate country managers for each brand, there are Scandinavian Market Managers, Scandinavian Brand Managers, etc, who are responsible for their area/function in all three countries.

Challenges and benefits
There are quite a few challenges in managing a team, building the corporate culture and getting people engaged – when you are running a team that might never meet face-to-face and that may be spread around the world. Patrik also told the AmCham audience that there had been obstacles when bringing three countries together to one unified organization, such as cultural and language barriers. It takes time to get used to not having one’s manager close--by, and not everyone is familiar, or comfortable, with using technology as a communications tool. Good tools, both technical and management-oriented, and helping employees use them, are critical for a virtual organization.

But there are many benefits in a virtual organization, such as replication of best practice, shared learnings and synergies, which lead to cost reductions, time savings and most of the time – a better end result. Diversity is a benefit when different experiences and competences are being utilized. For Lilly Scandinavia, the cluster also meant a stronger voice internally in the cooperation as Scandinavia is now the 6th biggest affiliate in Europe.

Making technology work for you
Being a global company, Lilly has for many years been actively working with technology to create seamless boarders between countries and employees. The company uses tools way beyond emails, to allow colleagues around the world to be connected, communicating and collaborating efficiently. All employees have a chat program installed to enable immediate communication between colleagues, regardless of location. Virtual@lilly is a collaboration share that gives support to both employees and managers how to best work in a virtual organization. Here employees find handbooks, tips and links to resources, such as online training at Harvard University on virtual teams. GlobeSmart is a reference and awareness-building tool that helps managing global accounts that span geographic and cultural boundaries, negotiating with negotiators in different cultures, sell to global buyers and more.

Management also frequently uses mass voice messages, i.e. phone messages that are recorded and sent to all employees around the world, or just selected groups. As an example, Lilly’s President, based in Indianapolis, is sending a five minutes voice message to all his Lilly colleagues around the world every month, giving a recap of what is going on in the company, highlighting successes and challenges. His voice thus reaches all employees around the world, at the same time.

Leadership skills for a virtual manager
Leadership is the key to any successful team, but to lead a virtual team requires excellent skills in a few areas. Interpersonal and networking skills are important as you need to be able to get people motivated and build relationships with people you rarely or never meet. When working with different time zones, with different countries, and different languages, you also need to be extremely skilled at project management. It is critical to be technically competent to be able to use the tools for communicating, yet it is not required, or even recommended, to be technically obsessed. All your team members also need to be able to use the technology you are using. A virtual leader must be a great communicator – leading from a distance calls for the ability to present ideas and thoughts clearly, provide rational explanations, and consistent messages. Misunderstandings can be very costly, both in time and money.

…and a virtual team member
When hiring, Patrik said Lilly were looking for employees that enjoyed delivering independently and unsupervised. Approximately one third of all employees in the Swedish office have their manager in another country. Employees in a virtual company are also expected to be generous with sharing their skills and knowledge to others, as shared learning is one of the pillars in a virtual organization. Since virtual team members may be working on various projects, it is good to be a "structured multitasker" who can juggle various assignments.

The VisionJam
Patrik shared an example of how Lilly is working with virtual leadership on a global scale. Last fall, Lilly’s CEO Sidney Taurel presented a white paper that described the company in the year 2020 – Lilly’s vision for the future. This vision was sent out to all employees all over the world. But how do you get over 40,000 people, scattered around the world to embrace a new vision, described by someone else, picturing the company 12 years into the future, on a few pages or paper? What the Lilly CEO did was to organize a worldwide brainstorm meeting online, a "Vision Jam", hosted on an IBM platform, which was open for 72 hours during December, to give each Lilly employee all over the world a chance to give input on the company’s vision for the future.

When Lilly employees logged onto the Jam website, they entered a start page where four key topics were available with forum discussions, in which moderators and subject matter experts helped guide participants and get discussions going. During the Jam, ten thousands of employees contributed with thousands of ideas. The management is now reviewing these suggestions and later this year, selected suggestions will be implemented.

Business results
Erik Schmidt, CEO of Google, once said in an interview: "Technology is always evolving, and companies… can't be afraid to take advantage of change." Lilly dares to take advantage of the opportunities advanced and traditional technology brings, and there have been great results. The Lilly Scandinavia organization has reached and exceeded all the goals that were set for creating a Scandinavian cluster. Lilly in Sweden is one of the fastest growing companies in the industry and is also listed as number two on the "Great Place To Work" ranking list over mid-sized companies. And Lilly is continuing to find solutions to help employees work smarter thanks to the development of technology. The next project: Moving the entire Scandinavian intranet to an interactive collaboration share.