TECH OUTLOOKDecember - 20209culture at its core. A "performance culture" that attracts and retains the best people, provides the drive to win, and increases productivity is vital to the success of business, but so too is a "compliant culture" that fosters the respect, trust, and goodwill of employees, avoids fines and penalties, and ensures a company's long-term sustainability. Both of these essential goals can be achieved through a balanced culture. But the current culture at many companies continues to inadequately balance the time, energy, and rewards placed on performance versus compliance.The New Commitment to Patients and the PublicIn January 2020, two hundred and fifteen biopharma CEOs and industry leaders signed a New Commitment to Patients and the Public in which they proactively re-affirmed their personal commitment, and that of their companies, to act with the highest level of integrity and social responsibility. This was an excellent first step toward rebuilding pharma's reputation in the community. But for this commitment to lead to meaningful change in the real world, it is now incumbent on each of these leaders, along with the rest of pharma, to take the concrete steps needed to fully embed and operationalize that commitment into the daily activities of their companies.Concrete StepsThe concrete steps we've taken at Amicus to foster a global culture of business ethics are centered around the following seven building blocks (figure 1). 1. Select a Small Number of Prioritized Values: Integrity Leadership is one of only four key values so that our focus on it is meaningful.2. Connect Values to Bonus: Our four values are together worth fifty percent of the bonus.3. Deeply Define Integrity Leadership: We have not just added the word integrity to a list of values. We have deeply defined the specific Integrity Leadership behaviors we want to visibly and consistently see.4. Embed Integrity Leadership Into All Aspects of Management: Including, for example, talent decisions, onboarding, leadership and other management courses, awards programs, etc.5. Continuously Coach the Leadership Team: Leaders set the tone and are a company's most important group of role models. Quarterly coaching sessions with leaders are vital to continuously teach and reinforce how they can be great Integrity Leaders themselves, and how they can assess the Integrity Leadership of their teams.6. Continuously Measure Integrity Leadership: Managers are better able to assess the Integrity Leadership of their teams if they get multiple sources of data, like skip-level data from the employees who work for their direct reports and cross-functional data from employees in other departments working with their direct reports.7. Audit Bonus Rationales: When Integrity Leadership is part of the bonus, auditing a cross-section of the bonus ratings and rationales is critical to ensuring this concept is well understood by management, or whether more training is needed to properly assess Integrity Leadership. In the end, the raison d'être of our entire industry is to serve patients. We believe this to be one of the most important guiding lights when it comes to compliance and business ethics. When you authentically put patients, rather than profits, at the center of everything you do, you will not only fulfill your mission, but also have a strong and sustainable business. John F. Crowley
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