48: Claus Eilersen, Senior Vice President, Novo Nordisk

Claus Eilersen, Senior Vice President of Novo Nordisk, Japan,
provides deep insight in leading in the pharmaceutical industry
in various countries including the US, Canada and Japan. Mr.
Eilersen first entered Novo Nordisk after graduating from
business school as a liaison between the headquarters in Denmark
and Japan, as well as the US doing business development. He
initially lived in the US but in 1995 moved with his family to
Japan to become the CFO and eventually became the President of
Operation in Canada. In 2005, Mr. Eilersen returned to Japan to
step into his current role as Senior Vice President in the Japan
office.


 


Having led in multiple cultures within the same organization, Mr.
Eilersen describes doing business deals in Japan as a “complete
immersion in a different culture” with a “very steep learning
curve.” To build trust amongst his team, Mr. Eilersen held
one-on-one meetings with his direct reports and set ambitious
targets while establishing the company’s own distribution system.
By having a clear common goal, Mr. Eilersen believes this
strengthen the motivation and engagement of his employees.
Additionally, in order to establish mutual respect, Mr. Eilersen
tried to see things from his employees and customers perspective.
For example, by making numerous visits to clients across the
country, Mr. Eilersen gained a clearer understanding of what
particular question or service is expected from a particular
customer and was able to provide a better solution. By talking to
customers Mr. Eilersen saw first hand the meticulousness of
Japanese consumers, who will only accept the exact number of
products or else doubt the brand’s quality and lose trust. Having
worked in North America where defect products were accepted if
for a discount, Mr. Eilersen calls this an important lesson
learned. Under Mr. Eilersen’s leadership, Novo Nordsik of Japan
came up with with innovation by creating a centre of excellence
for quality to detect early signs of quality issues, which was
implemented globally. Mr. Eilersen believes that these consistent
and sincere effort to understand how business is done in Japan is
appreciated and over time forms trust.


 


To encourage people to stay accountable with high engagement, Mr.
Eilersen delegates responsibility to staff with a clear message
telling them this is their responsibility and they need to make
their own decisions. Mr. Eilersen takes a bottom-up approach to
gain input and feedback from people in many layers of the
organization to create a project plan with high team engagement.
The company also encourages people to come up with ideas on how
to make the business better and gives out rewards for the best
ones in order to create a culture for people to think in terms of
improvement on a daily basis. To further stimulate innovation,
Novo Nordisk forms project teams with a specific focus to solve a
particular problem with leadership monitoring the execution. From
such projects, Mr. Eilersen noticed people becoming more excited
and productive, coming up with proposals that improved work
efficiency by 15%. Additionally, Mr. Eilersen emphasizes the
importance of having some degree of tolerance for mistakes and
use them as a learning opportunity instead of blaming an
individual.


 


Mr. Eilersen also realizes that rather than rewarding people
individually, team rewards were more effective in boosting morale
as Mr. Eilersen believes that for his Japanese employees, the
“sense of belonging to a team is very strong and important.”
Moreover, Mr. Eilersen has come to think the ultimate driver of
engagement for his Japanese team comes from the satisfaction of
doing a good job for a good cause and having the haraochi, the
gut feeling that this is the right thing to do. Mr. Eilersen
believes that this haraochi can be achieved through various
discussions from several different perspectives of the
organization.


 


To newcomers of Japan, Mr. Eilersen advises to dive in and
immerse oneself completely in the culture and see things with
one’s own eyes on how business is done in Japan. He recalls from
his first real experience in Japan, he spent much time observing
how people interacted to understand the culture and way of
communication. Mr. Eilersen also advises to stay approachable and
spend time with your employees and customers through
nomunication. Lastly, Mr. Eilersen advises leaders coming into
Japan to form allies within the company and make improvements by
following the Japanese guidelines of how things are done, instead
of having a “I can fix this” mentality.