The Art of Small Steps (ignore the naysayers)

Dennis Urbaniak of Sanofi-Aventis (VP, U.S. Diabetes) shared his wisdom on how to make the first steps if you feel tentative about it.

Here are a few other points for you to consider if you find yourself having stepped up to the blocks to run, in terms of your personal intent, but are having trouble taking the first step:

1. Start with describing your new idea, new project, or new skill that you want to test in just a few brief sentences.  If it takes a power point slide presentation to describe an idea,  then either  you don’t really have one or you haven’t focused enough on what it is you really want to do.
2. After describing it, be able to say why you want to do it, or what you hope to learn from trying this – what’s the reason you want to do this?
3. Then develop 2-3 prospective metrics that you will use to determine how you will evaluate your progress.  The trick here is the prospective part– this forces you to take a little risk and avoids debating later if something really worked or not. Agree on the metrics up front.
4. Put a time frame around the project and just get started!

If you can nail these four simple points, you will greatly improve your ability to actually try something new, actually learn something new and actually manage risk in a responsible way, so that you can learn fast and adjust your course based on what you learn.

Yeah, man!
Many of you have probably heard the story about how to eat an elephant (one bite at a time!) and some of you may also be fans of one of my favorite movies “What About Bob?” with Bill Murray, where “Bob” learns the magical power of baby steps to do things he never dreamed possible.

These ridiculously simple concepts remain both highly relevant and highly overlooked in corporate America today as business professionals try to keep up with the latest trends, hot spots, and shiny objects in marketing and communications.  In the pharma marketing world, it’s nice to see that we are finally moving beyond the need to continue to trash the “old model” and evangelize the new “digital” path forward.  Our debates have shifted from “Can pharma ever participate in social media” to now such ordinary topics as ‘How can Pharma Company’s best deal with the latest set of new Facebook rules?”.  The pace of the discussion on digital marketing and especially digital marketing in pharma is evolving rapidly.  We now have content development experts, content management and distribution experts, social media experts, channel experts, segment experts, search experts, m-health experts, industry observers, critics and supporters – just to name a few of the voices in the dialogue today.  (Note to self: please beware of experts, particularly those who are self proclaimed!).

Personally I think all of this activity is great because, along the way, many of us who work in the pharma industry are learning new skills, meeting incredible new people, and starting to develop a new way of working that can create a new standard in making a real difference in the lives of the patients and health care professionals that we serve every day.  Yes, there is a lot more to be done; and yes, there are dozens of bad examples if you look for them, but I prefer to see the multiple dozens of good examples being developed which gives me a lot of optimism for the future.

But for many of the people working in our industry every day who are accountable to run businesses, brands and teams, the pace of the discussion in this “digital” area can be overwhelming.  Balancing the day-to-day demands with the need to try and keep up can be a real challenge and many individual marketers and business professionals may find themselves frozen or stuck, unsure even where to begin on moving down this new “digital” path.

This is where the elephant and the wisdom of Dr. Leo Marvin (the psychiatrist played by Richard Dreyfuss in “What About Bob” who teaches Bob about baby steps) come in to play.  If you find yourself tentative, unsure or frozen, start with these two main concepts:

• Keep your “baby steps” short and simple
• To reach your second and third steps, you actually have to take the first one

I apologize if this sounds sarcastic, that is really not my intent.  For many of us who get to spend their days in the magical land of corporate America, the simple act of moving in a different direction can be a major challenge for certain individuals.  I also know that there are many people who want to make a difference and break new ground, but they are struggling with how to begin.  In most cases the difference makers are the ones who actually just got started while others stood on the sidelines, discussing, debating and analyzing.

Here are a few other points for you to consider if you find yourself having stepped up to the blocks to run, in terms of your personal intent, but are having trouble taking the first step:

1. Start with describing your new idea, new project, or new skill that you want to test in just a few brief sentences.  If it takes a power point slide presentation to describe an idea,  then either  you don’t really have one or you haven’t focused enough on what it is you really want to do.
2. After describing it, be able to say why you want to do it, or what you hope to learn from trying this – what’s the reason you want to do this?
3. Then develop 2-3 prospective metrics that you will use to determine how you will evaluate your progress.  The trick here is the prospective part– this forces you to take a little risk and avoids debating later if something really worked or not. Agree on the metrics up front.
4. Put a time frame around the project and just get started!

If you can nail these four simple points, you will greatly improve your ability to actually try something new, actually learn something new and actually manage risk in a responsible way, so that you can learn fast and adjust your course based on what you learn.

Along the way you will meet others who will be very critical of your idea – others who will simply say, “No you can’t do that,” others who will want to do more analysis, and you may even meet a few who actually want to go with you.  For all of these different personalities, tell them all the same four points: what you want to do, why you want to do it, how you will measure progress and how long you will evaluate the idea.  Then ignore the critics and naysayers, tell the analytics that new markets can’t be measured, and grab those who want to go with you and go!

I hope these simple points can help you make a difference in getting started on your new digital projects, digital skill development, or really any other new initiative that will take you completely out of your comfort zone.  If you are uncomfortable and others are saying you can’t do it, it’s usually a good sign that you are going down the right path. ..and you usually wind up really glad that you just took that first step.

Dennis Urbaniak
VP, U.S. Diabetes
sanofi-aventis