Open letter from Pfizer Inc. scientist to CEO: If PFE was a restaurant, it would take $1,000,000 and two months to cook a hamburger.

I know you read this board - you mentioned that in your visit in the Atrium recently.

You want to know why colleague engagement is low. Here's a start:

Why do I have to write in an anon board? TRUST ! If I contacted you via PFE email, the only thing that would happen is that I'd either get fired ASAP, or somehow be put on a perf plan and then fired. Shoot the messenger! (Yes Jeff, no one will tell you "you, the emperor, have no clothes on". Unfortunately, you and your direct reports DO NOT get the true information. I KNOW! I've heard colleagues at lunch say "I can't tell them (upper mngt touring the GTN site) the truth to their questions - my manager would fire me!!! I have to give the "party line -- all is wonderful".

PFE always said they only hire the best. Why are there the "bottom 10%" to be fired? And then another bottom 10% And so on. Do you think that atmosphere fosters ENGAGEMENT?

I'm worried about a management team that needs a survey to figure out whether or not colleagues are engaged.

Do you think an individual or a team ultimately gets the project over the goal line? Jeff- its a TEAM. BUT, the perfromance management system is aimed at the individual. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? So you need teams to get the job done, but pick out INDIVIDUALS to reward. Backstabbing and posturing are rampant !

Efficiency??? Make scientists earning $100K+ figure out how to order stationary via Ariba rather than pay a stockroom clerk min wage to have a stationary stockroom???? Makes sense???????????????? Make scientists figure out how to reconcile hotel bills on the one or two annual trips? have to fill out an expense report for the monthly teleconf bill? have to do perf management 12 months of the year (goals, review of goals, harmonize goals, mid-year, year-end, IDP, review IDP,.......... WASTE OF TIME) SOPs GBPs ..... If PFE was a restaurant, it would take $1,000,000 AND TWO MONTHS TO COOK A HAMBURGER in PGRD!!!

Your managers (ADs, directors,...) are EXPERTS at scamming the system - their goals are designed to be able to be checked off to show a good years performance. Don't believe me! Look at Discovery - they rewarded CANs. Why were SO MANY people promoted for their CANs - and we still don't have new products on the market. They knew CANs = PERFORMANCE = PROMOTION. NOT, CANs = PRODUCTS = Performance !!!!!!

You want me to give 200% AND tell me I could be laid off in 2008, my pension plan is reduced, if I'm let go - no vacation pay,..... You don't see a problem

If Pfizer told its people "DO YOUR BEST - NO LAY-OFFS for 5 years - REASONABLE GPM - PERHAPS A FIXED % salary increase for all - rewarded risk taking - VALUED IT PEOPLE AS MUCH AS PFE WANTS US TO VALUE PFE, ....." maybe you would get your new products to market!

Bottom line - you have MANY high quality scientists that want to do a GREAT job - they are tired of the daily beatings, aggressive GPM, RIF, ATS, ATS2, transformation, .......

AND, the "big guys" get $100Ms packages for BAD PERFORMANCE. If I screw up, can I get a $5Mill package - PLEASE!!! Do you think reducing PFE diversity is good? sell fish food, sell consumer health, sell sell sell! NOW all of your eggs are in one basket! And it's a tough basket to fill - between FDA/MHRA, lawyers and insurance plans --- selling fishfood may be more profitable.

Jeff - somehow you have to figure out how to get the real information from the bottom of the pyramid. Otherwise, you will fail.

From,

"The PFantom"

Comments

[gregory]

would be great to know how this turns out... endemic to almost all organizations, but a happy ending, in the form of a reply or some policy changes, would be cool....

updates, ok?

[Willie]

I have no IDEA what you're talking about here. Is this supposed to LET us know that a huge coporation OPERATES inefficiently???????????????????????????????????????????? If so THANKS a bunch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Luther]

Is your comment supposed to LET us know that you don't understand PUNCTUATION or CAPiTAliZATION?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!??!?!??!?!??!?!??!?!??!?!??!?!??!?!??!?!??!?

If so, THANKS a bunch.

Back on the topic, it's no wonder pharmaceuticals are so expensive - gotta pay those executive bonuses, and reward mediocrity and underachievement.

[FooFoo]

Um... dude??? This is a problem with every single large corporation.

It is a big problem. It's not about Pfizer. It is something wrong with our culture. Greed. Self-promotion. Milking of companies once they go public. Once the executive is set for life they have no problem running the company into the ground. What's the worst that will happen? They can't get a job? BWAHAHAHAAH... They don't have to work. That's why they are interested in kick-backs and shady deals where their uncle will provide a service to the company for a truckload of cash and on and on and on.

It's a cultural issue.

Positive reinforcement is never used. Negative reinforcement is used almost exclusively. The company may give everyone 2k at the end of the year, which is absolute peanuts and call it "positive reinforcement". LOL. They may say they care about you, but then use their actions, like outsourcing and failing to replace broken water coolers and taking away free towels (all peanuts) to tell you that they despise you and that they want to take a giant shit on you.

Every company I know is like this. The difference is not of kind but of a degree.

Good luck.

[CMM]

Well done!

Your boss might hear about this, he might even read it but we all know he will do nothing about it.
The pharma industry is about 1/2" away from total corruption. When was the last time anyone heard of a cure? No cures but plenty of lifelong pills to take.
The only way to fix that is to make it a 'jailable' criminal offence to hide or not report a cure, or to destroy records upon discovery, even in the opening stages of research.
Everyone knows fixes have been found but they are too often 'not profitable' and therefore shelved.

Anyone want to guess at how many people die every year from correctable maladies because of this profit margin?

[wavey_dave]

Well done for posting this, i have a feeling someone from PF will try to find out who are you are and get you fired anyways.

Good luck man, CEO's need to know that everything under their lovely cloud is not always roses and smiles

[Gerry]

You'd get a lot more attention and sympathy if you weren't so incoherent. Try rewriting, and next time leave the alcohol out of the equation.

[Legitimizer]

@Gerry Wow, that's so impressively arrogant that you assume alcohol is the only thing that could lead to a moment of clarity. Let me guess...your an AD or director at pfizer and you see how well it works to attack someones credibility in order to destabilize the statement they are making, and decide to 'posture' as this posting mentions. The lack of morale structure in such a baseless and ridiculous assumption shows that you have long ago lost your credibility and are now.....wait for it.....A TOOL.

[scott]

Sounds like the Julie Day from RadioShack is running the place. Except, when you screw up at RadioShack (like lying about your resume)they only pay you one million to go away quietly.

Typical corporate America (insert my raised middle finger here).
Wish I could tell you to go freelance and you'd be a million times happier, but I imagine no one would buy (legal) pharmaceuticals from a freelance scientist.

[Joe]

It would be nice if the person writing the letter would have a better grasp of the English language and common sentence styling. This was a painful article to read. It makes me want to break out a red pen and go to town on my screen.

[john schlabotnick]

thanks for your ip...now we know who you are john and yerrrrrr fired

[ttocS]

To the fools that attempt to derail this post by pointing out the fact that it's hastily written: sod off. Yes, all-caps are annoying. And yes, this could have been edited. But this isn't a published newspaper article. It's a post by an employee who's got a lot on his mind, and who probably doesn't have a lot of time on his hands (probably busy filling out all those goal reviews or whatever they are). Of course it's no surprise to anyone that American corporate culture stinks to high heaven, and that scientists should be the last people subjected to its BS. But maybe..just maybe..whoever is in charge of the company will read this and take it to heart (since it's written by an actual employee). To the CEO, if he indeed reads this stuff: seriously - you already have your damn money, all the money that you could possibly need in your lifetime! Focus on maintaining the dignity, integrity and professionalism of yourself and your company for once.

[Blue Man]

Have you ever talked to anyone who worked at IBM? Same, same. The bigger the company, the more systems and policy glue is required to hold it all together. That's just how human organizations evolve.

[mike]

At least 90% of large companies are like this. Every CEO knows it all as well as the author of this letter, and either doesn't care or doesn't know how to fix it -- I'm betting on doesn't care. Everyone who works for a mega- (or even kilo-) corp should draw the conclusions for him/herself, but the following seem obvious to me:
(a) Stop investing yourself emotionally in your work or your company (like the poor guy in PFE).
(b) Realize that you are working for $$$ and not for the good of the company.
(c) Use the said $$$ wisely so you don't have to be a corporate slave your whole life.

[pawn]

I work at a high tech company with 35,000 people and it is the same as described. It is, unfortunately, the only way to hold something that big together, and get the BOD wealthy. if income is measured in billions the company will run that way. that is how it is taught.

[Forge Dunzump]

Great post, great rant, succinct, poetically licensed and hyperbolically discreet.

Grammar Nazi's and wet blankets be damned.

Your insight is admirable, and your passion enviable. Good to see your heart is in it.

The problem, as implicit in this spectacular post, is hard to see, and if seen, in no small part requires balls to resolve.

I hope you get called out and you stand up, to take both the credit and the heat.

[Jim Rogers]

The summary that I have seen on Forced Ranking is at:

http://corporatedeformation.blogspot.com/2007/07/forced-ranking-corporate-fiasco.html

[Don]

Spent six years working at a different big pharma company, and saw exactly the same things going on there. Heard the same story from a dozen friends in a dozen different companies in the industry.

It's the same anywhere you go, take your money, go home at night, and forget about it. I'm much happier since I gave up caring about my day job.

[zoyadog]

I'm not a pharmecutical employee, but....quite simply, this "glue" for large organizations is really a toxin.

The problem, from my point of view, having worked in various places, including one with a budget in billions, even trillions if truth be told, is quite simple:

"Process" has replaced "Products" (or real time performance) as the objective, for all extents and purposes.

The way you do things is reviewed endlessly, and scant time, if any, is devoted to what you produce, invidually or collectively. What products that exist are almost accidental.

That kind of system rewards failure, primarily because it can't recognize success.

As other comments have said, it is our corporate and government disease, a potentially fatal one.

[Marty Neumeier]

As a consultant and business author who routinely peaks under the hoods of various corporations, this discussion is so familiar that it seems lifted from any one of our employee surveys---the kind that the scientist argues (rightly) should be unnecessary.

My professional view is that we're witnessing the breakdown of the 20th-century organizational model in which authority came from the top. The problem is that we haven't yet figured out the 21st-century model, in which authority and direction will come from the talent and creativity of the frontline employees and their customers. As a result, we're now experiencing all the pain of the old model, with little of the payoff of the new model.

If you're looking for hope, however, you can find it in the daring efforts of companies like Google. And you can read more about it in recent management books such as "Mobilizing Minds" and "The Future of Management." Help is on the way, but it will depend on the courage and creativity of those in the middle to make it happen.

Don't give up.

[Tim]

First...good job author. Thank you for being one to stick your neck out from the "bottom of the pyramid" Second...to those who ignorantly comment about grammar...not every one has English as a first language. What?? Really?? There are other languages? Idiot. Thanks for mentioning the performance reviews. What a joke. It is such a fixed system and a waste of time. The ratings are predefined for all of those at the bottom. Extra work effort truly doesn't pay off. That is a fact. It is dependant on your seniority. Managers make themselves look like Gods while they make you look like a peon. You left out the part about having meetings to discuss how to cut down the number of meetings or how top managers have fully furnished offices with solid oak furniture and who knows what kind of things setting around that were purchased with department money. That is time and money well spent in the industry I guess. Why do companies tank again? I forget...Oh yeah, lack of money…must be from patent losses. Back to my performance reviews...

[Nike Shox Rivalry]

"Because of the fundamental moral is a bad, though. You have some knowledge and skills, nor very useful."Do you think so?

[air jordans]

At some point it all becomes an embarrassment to the professional status of those economists who tell us that Krugman is a good economists .