In late 2015, senior executives at AstraZeneca came to Pushkala Subramanian with an unusual job offer: Would she head up a new effort to simplify the way the 60,000-employee pharmaceutical giant worked?
Subramanian, then the head of operations for clinical services at AstraZeneca’s MedImmune division in Gaithersburg, Maryland, was wary. The company had employees all over the world, working on manufacturing, sales, and research and development. Given that AstraZeneca was a science-driven company with entrepreneurial values, each unit had the freedom to operate and develop solutions that met their local needs. This culture aimed to foster innovation and creativity, but limited the ability to simplify and standardize across units.
“I thought it was daunting, and maybe a crazy thing to even attempt. It was a career risk,” said Subramanian. “I wondered: Will I be able scale my experience of simplifying within one function to the entire enterprise? Where would I start? What kind of people would I hire?”N
Not that she would have a big team to do the work; Subramanian would get perhaps four employees, and no real budget. Making matters worse, the company was struggling with a steep decline in revenue. While CEO Pascal Soriot insisted that “simplification” wasn’t just a code word for downsizing, previous attempts to introduce “lean thinking” at AstraZeneca had limited traction in pockets mostly in manufacturing, and became associated with cost-cutting and job reductions. Moreover, scientists were liable to chafe at anything that might stifle creativity and innovation.
Subramanian wondered how she could tie simplification into three major strategic objectives Soriot had outlined for the company:
Achieve Scientific Leadership
Return to Growth
Be a Great Place to Work
She also thought about three levels at which simplification might be achieved:
Within business units – for example, one office or group reduces meeting times, eliminates paperwork, or changes some procedure that benefits their group alone
Across business or functional units – for example, a process or task, such as onboarding new employees, that touches on multiple divisions (such as IT and Human Resources) is streamlined
Company-wide – a policy, procedure, or practice is modified at the central level and affects employees and units around the globe
Subramanian took the job and got to work. Her first task was to figure out whom to bring onto her team: insiders who knew AstraZeneca well, or outsiders who could see its problems with a fresh perspective? “You need a cocktail of people, or a team like a Swiss Army knife,” she thought.
Added Quynh Szuba, who would end up becoming Subramanian’s deputy: “This organization is very relationship-based. A lot of the employees here, especially at the global level or more senior folks, they’ve been with the organization for many, many years.”N
One of the team’s first proposals was to create a “million hour challenge,” asking business units around the world to find ways to save time in their offices. When Subramanian took the plan to Soriot, she was a bit taken aback by his response.
“I like this million hour challenge, but I don't want people to be counting hours,” she recalled him saying. “You know, simplification should not create complexity.”
Watch how AstraZeneca executives introduced the Million Hour Challenge to the company:
As you read through the case, consider what AstraZeneca can do to get its employees to embrace simplification in an era of uncertainty and declining revenue. Is AstraZeneca properly positioning or branding its simplification campaign to get employees to buy in to the effort, without making them worry that they are going to simplify themselves out of jobs? How can Subramanian verify that simplification is happening, without creating a complex reporting and tracking bureaucracy? How can she ensure best practices are shared from unit to unit?