Pharma Giles writes ...

From Our Man On The Management Park Bench...

Hello. My name is E. L. Witty. I’m here to tell about the wonderful world of employment opportunities offered to young people by GlaxoSmithKline, one of the largest and most successful pharmaceutical companies in the world.

I myself joined GlaxoSmithKline in 1985 as a management trainee. I can still remember those long ago words of encouragement that my very first manager ever gave to me.

“Witty,” he said, “you’re an idiot”. And I’ve never forgotten those words throughout the rest of my career.

In the past, I’ve been in rooms where I’m not the smartest person present. I’ve been in situations where, when I’ve walked in, I’ve had no idea what we are going to talk about and no idea of the issues. People have sniggered and pointed at me. But that has never stopped me from speaking out and making key decisions. Over the past twenty years or so, I’ve had an opportunity to work in every continent in the world. I’ve had the opportunity to work in multiple functions and I’ve had the opportunity to work with some great people. And all of that time, I’ve been looking for a job where people didn’t roll their eyes and groan every time I’ve spoken.

Well, now I’m the Chief Executive Officer of GlaxoSmithKline. Amazing, isn’t it? GlaxoSmithKline is a company that employs over 100,000 people. Or used to. We have a vibrant prescription development business. We have one of the fastest growing vaccine organisations in the world. We have an emerging biopharmaceutical business based on monoclonal antibodies, and we have one of the fastest growing consumer healthcare businesses in the world, selling world-famous brands.

So why, you may ask, are we closing sites and why are we laying off thousands of talented and experienced workers? You may well indeed be asking these questions right now, even as I speak. Indeed you may.

And the answer to those questions is, “You’re fired Mr. Clever Clever Scientist. Yes, you may be very clever, you Oxford or Cambridge educated swot. You may have helped to develop lots of effective and life-saving medicines. And yes, you may well have laughed at me in meetings, and made me sit in the corner facing the wall, with a dunce’s cap on my head. But now I’m the big boss. You’re not so clever now, eh, Mr Scientist? That’ll teach you to laugh at little management trainees, and beat them up at playtimes, and steal their school caps and lunch money. Yes, indeed. Who’s the clever one now, eh? Yes.” Anyway.

This organisation is an organisation with a tremendous heritage. Now heritage is a wonderful thing if you are a stately home owner or member of the aristocracy. But we aren’t. GlaxoSmithKline spends over $600,000 dollars per hour on executive compensation packages. It’s an organisation with a great amount of money, a passion for making even more money, a belief in making unfeasibly huge amounts of money, and a belief in putting that money at the heart of every decision we make.

So you can stuff your heritage, quite frankly. Give us the money right now, I say, rather than lots of stuffy, dusty heritage.

This organisation invests to improve people’s lives. Principally, those of our executives and our shareholders. But it’s also an organisation full of people. And people cost money. So that’s why I’ve decided to get rid of you all, so that they’ll be more money left for the people who matter, such as our investors and our senior management.

We really look forward to welcoming graduates into our business. That’s because they are so much cheaper than the experienced people we’re currently downsizing.

So despite the fact that we are laying off thousands of workers in Europe and the US, we are still looking for more people to join this company. We’re looking for people who are curious, who want to change things, who want the challenge, who want to think out of the box, people who can really add value, people who can inspire others, people who have a passion for what they do, and people who get excited when they see the results of their team, people who are ready to lead, but who are also ready to share some of the limelight and make sure that the people who do the work get their fair share of the credit.

And, most important of all, people who are prepared to do exactly what they are told and do it for a pittance.

That’s why we’re moving most of our business to China and India, and closing many of our UK and European R&D sites.

So, as they say in China, may you live in interesting times…


Listen to this video clip from 2008 and then ask yourself if it seems richly ironic in the light of recent events…