Fred Hassan
Jonathan:
So what is your one leadership behavior or leadership trait that you have seen probably derail more leaders’ careers, if you like?
Fred:
In my opinion, people’s – the biggest leadership trait that leads to a derail is a sense of – it’s not arrogance, but a sense of complacency in someone’s leadership style in management that also is a form of arrogance that starts to creep in when people have been very successful, and they have risen up to a level because of certain very strong project management skills or certain leadership traits or quantitative skills that they might have had, and they believe that those traits are going to make them very successful once they are at a senior level. And what they start to miss is having a leadership style in management in tune with the environment and being in tune with themselves.
So many times people get derailed because they don’t have a good balance and a good sense of what the reality is when they face challenges. So when hard times hit suddenly or problems hit, they are left thinking and wondering. They are not – they’re not ready to move with speed and flexibility that hard times and adversity requires. This, I think, is the biggest issue. So if one stays in tune, then one can stay flexible and stay nimble so to deal with issues.
Jonathan:
With regards to your leadership style in management, how do you get in tune and stay in tune with your business, but on a daily level?
Fred:
There are many different ways. Of course, one can read a lot. One can meet people in the industry. One needs to be a listener – always engaged. One approach I’ve used in my leadership style that works is that when a group makes a decision, it’s almost a good idea to encourage one of the group to be a naysayer or to be the devil’s advocate and to show the other side of the case. So as we discuss a problem, it’s always good to look at the other side and prevent this group-think problem from creating bad decisions.
People like to be affable and agreeable with each other, and sometimes it creates a group-think problem, so I encourage one or two naysayers in the group to bring up the other side. And even in my private decision making, I have one or two confidants at the minimum who are my naysayers in terms of things I want to do. And I like to bounce those things off of them recognizing that they might have the negative point of view, which might in many cases be a breaking mechanism on what I’m about to do.
It’s very important to have balance when it comes to decision making and leadership styles in management.
Jonathan:
It’s said that making mistakes makes a successful business. What would you say is your favorite mistake or leadership trait?
Fred:
My favorite mistake or leadership trait often is not moving fast enough when I go into a new situation, and then later on regretting that I did not do it fast enough, but then hopefully learning so the next time I see something like that I would move faster. In the case of Schering-Plough, I moved faster than I normally would have because I did not move as fast as I would have wanted to in pharmacy in Upjohn in 1997. I was probably taking my time on the cultural changes and the cultural transformation.
That happened a few years after I was there. In Schering-Plough, I didn’t lose a lot of time; even though I had imperfect information, I moved pretty fast. So the key is to recognize one’s mistake and to learn from it and to get better the next time. The best learning, in my opinion, actually occurs when one makes a mistake.