Garth Sundem   00:00

Welcome to this episode of the Medical Affairs Professional Society podcast series: “Elevate”. I’m your host, Garth Sundem, Communications Director at MAPS. And today we’re speaking with Jill Donahue, author of three books, including her most recent, “A Dose of Inspiration: 100 Purpose Stories from Pharma Leaders”. So, Jill, I thought our purpose was just to do our jobs. What is and what made you want to write this book?

Jill Donahue   00:32

Oh, great question, Garth. Thanks. Yeah, what is purpose? And what made me want to write this book. So I’ve been in the industry a long time. And when I joined the industry, I noticed that we were really good at the life sciences, that muscle was really strong. But there was another side of it, the behavioral sciences, how do we help our people be engaged and engaging. And that muscle I thought was a little weaker. And that became my fascination, how to strengthen that muscle. And so I did, you know, a master’s in adult education with a focus on influencing healthcare behavior change. And then when I was 35, I watched my father die as a result of a prescribing error. Oh, and yeah, and you can imagine being in the industry, the frustration, right, and maybe, you know, I suspect some of the listeners have similar stories. And what it made me reflect on amongst other things was, man, you know, what if, what if dad’s doctors, MSL FMD, whatever you call them? Rep. Campbell, or whomever? What if that person had been better able to access and engage my father’s doctor? Right? So he would know, the right product at the right time for the right patient? So that has driven me ever since? Sorry, go ahead.

Garth Sundem   02:03

Well, no, so purpose, it sounds like, you know, you’re looking at this very interpersonally, where your own purpose allows you to connect with other people maybe through through their purpose, is that how you see purpose in front?

Jill Donahue   02:19

When we connect around our common purpose. So you can look at purpose three ways only ask somebody you know, what’s, what’s your purpose? Immediately, you’re probably picturing family, faith or friends. That’s common, right? My purpose, everything I do is for my three daughters, my husband and my, my mother, right? Well, that’s your personal purpose. And then you can think of, well, I also go to work. And there’s my work purpose. And we’re so lucky in our industry, right? Because we all work for organizations that put it in big, bright lights, we’re here to improve lives, you know, what a blessing to work for that as a purpose. The purpose that I find missing, and a lot of our peers in the industry is role purpose. So that’s the third leg of this stool. Okay. So that’s where you connect with why is it important to you, that you work for a pharma company, where you connect the dots between your role and ultimately helping patients. And what I found is for people in medical, often that purpose was super clear. And not just medical people in our industry, right? That purpose was super clear once upon a time. Yeah. And then like, tell me if this makes sense to you guys. But sometimes over the days, weeks, months, pandemics to do less bureaucracy downsizing, rightsizing, right, that flame kind of diminishes? Does that make sense to you?

Garth Sundem   03:45

Well, it’s almost like, you know, everyone connects with the pharma industry’s purpose as a whole to benefit patients. But it seems general it’s, it’s almost like what can I do for climate change? You know, I want to have a purpose and that I want to do everything I can. But it just seems so big and intractable. Is it that you need to look for your purpose? That is like a stepping stone to the overall purpose? Or I guess, what do you mean by role purpose?

Jill Donahue   04:16

Yeah, so I love that you use the word stepping stone, because I always talk about connecting the dots. Yeah, right. So so yeah, people will say, Yeah, whatever patient centered AI, my company is all about the patient, but I don’t touch the patient. So I just, you know, put my blinders on and do my work. Well, when we actually look up and help our teams this is about culture, right? When we help our teams connect around this common purpose, to save and improve lives ultimately, like whether you sit at the front desk, reception office, up to the C suite office, everything that you do in your organization ultimately is about helping improve lives. Like you guys at MAPS, right helping Medical Affairs professionals do better so they can help more patients, right. Like the big picture. Sure, is when people are connected to that when they see how their job makes a difference. They’re the ones who are the standard people like, you know, the famous story of, of JFK at NASA, probably in the 60s, when he approached the janitor. Do you know that one?

Garth Sundem   05:15

No, I absolutely do not tell me the story.

Jill Donahue   05:19

So apparently he approached, you know, back in the 60s, everyone was focused on getting a man to the moon. So he approached the janitor and said, What do you do? And that guy stood up tall and proud and proud and shook his hand and said, Mr. President, I’m helping to put a man on the moon. Yeah, cool. So you can imagine.

Garth Sundem   05:38

See, that’s like connecting with organizational purpose. And I feel like it’s her employee who, whose organizational purpose is enough to drive their every day purpose. Yeah, I can imagine someone in market access saying I’m going to make my purpose is to make sure that this subgroup gets the product that they need, or, you know, I can imagine someone in Medical Affairs and evidence generation, saying, you know, I’m going to create the evidence that shows efficacy in this group that wasn’t part of the registrational trial, you know, that the kind of role specific purpose that you would recommend people find.

Jill Donahue   06:21

So what I have found is that person like, like that janitor, who can to the organizational purpose was probably very connected inside to his own personal purpose, Daniel Pink, who’s an author I really admire, and I’ve had the privilege of interviewing him a couple of times. And he talks about organizational purposes, the big P, capital P, we help save lives. He says what we’re missing that helps you connect with that big P is the little p, and that’s your, your role purpose, your personal world purpose. Why do you care? Like, what is it about you, Garth, that makes you so incredibly curious?

Garth Sundem   07:00

That’s a great way to raise that. From why do you care? Okay, so for our podcast listeners, yeah. Maybe that’s something that they would take away from this. Why do you care that connects to your personal purpose? You know, you were talking about your family, your father’s experience with with xx writing air. And so it’s not just connecting your role purpose to your organizational purpose, but maybe it’s connecting your role purpose to your personal purpose?

Jill Donahue   07:25

Yes, into your life, your background so often, you know, when I do this exercise with people, they say, Oh, I don’t have a story. I like it. You know, it’s just happenstance. I’m there it just happened. And then when we dig into it, when we go through the exercise, people like, oh, my gosh, now I see that golden circle through my life, of what it was what seed was planted, right? It could have been something in your childhood and your adulthood or something that happened three weeks ago that made you go, Wow, this work can be meaningful to me. Right? Where does that come from? And that’s what the book Yeah, that we captured 100 of those stories, like why people care? Why do you care?

Garth Sundem   08:02

The dose of inspiration is 100. In there. Do you have favorites?

Jill Donahue   08:08

Yeah. oh, I would never say a favorites are all but but some sounds fine. But I remember more readily. Sure. So you think about you know, Kevin Williams is in there. He was CMO at Pfizer, when we captured his story, and he talks about growing up in the Deep South, a young, black gay man trying to find his way. And you know, there’s so much to his story. One of the key things was watching his father, a physician, who would have lineups outside of his office early in the morning until late at night. And he would wait and see every one of those patients Kevin says he learned about patient Centricity from his father and then working with AIDS patients at a time where he was helping them transition, you know, to through through life to death. His compassion came from that you know, and and that his curiosity to do better and to help and so, you know, there’s so much to his story. But when you go back to you picture, that little boy watching his father treat people was where he first got his first notion of what Patient Centricity means. Well, so yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Garth Sundem   09:23

No, I was gonna say that the second we get off here, I’m gonna go read a story because I wonder what specific purposes then grow from those experiences, because, you know, we’ve all had experiences with with life and death and and with challenge and with health and with sickness and injury, and with recovery, and, you know, and I wonder, the it seems like there’s a myriad different directions that those experiences could point with purpose. It’s not just, I know, life is hard. I want to help people. But I wonder where I wonder where Kevin Williams what what, what is his purpose now because of those experiences, it’s not just to help people, but to, to represent back to his population, the possibilities of his career could be part of that as well. I just, I wonder if there are interesting purposes that come out of this besides just I want to help people?

Jill Donahue   10:27

Yeah, well, and often it’s combined with other interests, right. So people will say, plus, I love sciences. And I was curious about this. And it’s not all that because people are saying, oh, man, I don’t have any sickness in my family. No, there’s other, you know, we identify in the book, and we outline there, we figured out from all the interviews that we’re about eight categories of origins of purpose. And some of them were a personal health challenge or health challenge of some new love. Sometimes it was experience in their past around equity, or, or, in some cases, some grace that they had received, and they wanted to, to give back. So there’s, there’s different origins, that everyone’s story is unique, but we sort of said, well, it seems like these are some of the general things, if you had if we had to categorize them. So it can help people think about their, their bat past and find that golden thread. And the more that we find that golden thread and shine it, the better we do, the more engaged we are in our work. And the more we engage, we are with other people. Because, you know, we have this stereotype. So MSLs, you know, I just wrote an article called, Are you tired of being told you’ve gone to the dark side, right? So I was I was medical people, often, you know, their PhDs MDS Form DS, and then they come to industry, and there’s a stereotype of them. But when you connect with someone, when you share with them, why do I care? You know, where’s that come from? It’s not just that I’m here to help improve lives. Yeah, yeah. Well, because, you know, I watched from a young age my father, but but whatever their story is, then people like, Oh, okay. Come on, in.

Garth Sundem   12:08

That’s so interesting that people might not and I love your phrase, the golden thread. And it’s so interesting that people might not know their golden thread, and where would take them? And, and also, maybe how much? I don’t know better and more successful, if you want to call out that they could be if all of that golden thread where it led? I mean, do you see leading to? I don’t know, a better connection? Yeah, better outcome?

Jill Donahue   12:41

Yes, tremendously. In fact, it’s not just me. So 90% of people are not are no longer are connected to their purpose studies show. Studies also show that those people who are not only live longer, they’re said to be more attractive. Like, there’s some really fun things like that. But also, they’re the ones they’re your top performers, right. And then when you look at an organization, when you find a culture of purpose, that’s where the literature is really strong, saying those are the organizations that outperform the others. You can probably reflect back. Yeah, that’s, so there’s a direct link between being purpose driven. And it’s not just about Yeah, yeah, we’re helping, you know, with the mission statement of the organization. But the fire within that makes it personal for you to connect with that, when you light that fire when your team and then, you know, we have experiences when we do this exercise with the team then shares their purpose stories with each other. And it’s unbelievable, right? Like the silos go down. Kevin, for example. He shared his purpose story for the first time, because like I said, people haven’t thought of this or it’s not they’re not aware of it. And he decided to dare to share, I call it and I wrote this story in the book as well, but dare to share and he did it on Fireside Chat. During COVID, I guess. I don’t think it was anyway, it was a big Fireside Chat. He couldn’t see any faces. Okay, you know, 400 people online or something like that. And he shared his whole story. And he said, and then there was silence, and he was like, Oh, man. Oh, what I’d just do.

Garth Sundem   14:13

Right and then back. Oh, that’s brutal. I’m sorry. That’s really Yeah.

Jill Donahue   14:18

He didn’t know like, right. Okay. Did they just right? And then he said, and then everything started exploding his email filled up with people saying, oh, my gosh, that was amazing. I’m so excited to be on this team. He said, You know, I’ve heard this so many times when people dare to share let alone at a smaller scale like an MSL, for example, trying to get a meeting with a doctor changes everything. Dare to share.

Garth Sundem   14:43

That’s so interesting. We talk about and MAPS I don’t want to say we’re guilty of this but you know, we talk about how to do our jobs. And I think we talk about why we do our jobs. It point out is that you know, you You make a really good point that there’s not only a reason for an individual to learn their purpose story to find their golden thread, but there’s reasons for organizations to help their team members find their goals as well. So the individual level…

Jill Donahue   15:17

And fuel it. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. Use word how and why. Yeah. And that goes back to Simon Sinek, who I suspect you have have read or watched Simon Sinek start with why. famously said start with why and that really popular TED Talk. And that’s what we’re building on here. Right? Oh, this guy.

Garth Sundem   15:36

I looked him up. Yep. I’m there. I gotcha. Yeah. You know, um,

Jill Donahue   15:38

Yeah. A lot of people know him. But that that whole start with why and in pharma is not just about starting with why we’re here to improve lives. But But because we have that trust deficit where people don’t trust us. We need to prove that and that’s why, you know, it is personal to me. This is my why beyond my organization’s why because people frankly don’t believe our organizations why?

Garth Sundem   16:01

And it’s almost like we need a a why we didn’t get different versions of this word. I’m thinking of the why. Elevator Pitch that something that uses an MSL, working with an HCP? Or let’s, let’s just sort of peripheral thought.

Jill Donahue   16:19

Okay, well, that’s exactly what we do. Garth, exactly. We help people create that three sentence version that makes them go and, you know, they’ll say, oh, gosh, the doctor finally looked at me, I didn’t realize it’s wise, you’re gonna make a change changes things.

Garth Sundem   16:34

Let me point out that this book is free. I should have said that at the beginning. Yeah. How do we get the book?

Jill Donahue   16:41

Yeah, sure. So you just go to my website, so it’s excellerate.ca. So that’s an excellerate e x c. excellerate.ca/freebook/. Cool. And people wanted us a hard copy of it. So it’s also on Amazon. We don’t make any money from that. But Amazon does, but you can get a hard copy of it if you want. But you can get a nice download at that.

Garth Sundem   17:04

Alright. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. We might have to find an excuse to get you on with with someone from the book with a purpose story too. But for now, thanks for joining us. MAPS members, don’t forget to subscribe. Yeah, anytime and we hope you enjoyed this episode of the Medical Affairs Professional Society podcast series: “Elevate”.