The vast majority of 2020 has seen much of the world and our very ways of life firmly in the grip of Covid-19, leaving the worldwide population and global industry with little alternative but to adapt to a raft of new risks and challenges. Much of this adapting has been seen within the healthcare industry, which has been at the sharp end of the battle to quell the virus that has been responsible for such unprecedented change.
Adelphi Group, a leading global healthcare agency headquartered in Macclesfield, Cheshire, is one business that has found itself having to work hard to chart a course through the pandemic storm. The agency acts as a consultant and provides services to develop new healthcare interventions, embracing drugs, to improve therapies and the lives of patients and the wider community. Adelphi typically works with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, the medical profession, patients, and the decision-making bodies around the world.
To better understand the challenges that Adelphi Group and the healthcare industry have found themselves entangled with during this time, The Leaders Council spoke exclusively to Stuart Cooper [pictured], who has been CEO of the company since 1998. He oversees Adelphi’s work with virtually all the headquarters of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies and others, who are based out of countries such as the US, Switzerland, Germany, France and Japan, as well as here in the UK.
Appearing on The Leaders Council podcast to share his thoughts, Cooper informed us that a key element of leading the healthcare industry and indeed all industries through the crisis thus far has been strong and robust leadership, and leadership models and strategies have been forced to adapt along with working practices.
Cooper said: “The first thing that comes to mind when we think of leadership in any context is leading by inspiration and by example. It is about inspiring those around you, not telling them what to do but inspiring them to make the best decisions for themselves and developing the right people in the right way. In this sense, leadership is so often about personal contact and speaking to others, not just formally but also by listening to others and understanding what their challenges are. Clearly, with the challenges thrust upon us by Covid, we have had to adapt to new ways of doing that.”
Although moving over to a more remote leadership model was less than ideal for Cooper’s preferred leadership style, he had been left impressed by the ability shown within Adelphi to adapt to a new working lifestyle.
“Some of our working conditions through the last few months are less than ideal but I can honestly say that our people at Adelphi have risen to the challenge of communicating via different means and are in regular touch with myself, their teams, and we continue to operate in this different virtual setting where needed.
“It has been seamless moving over to that remote side of working when we have had to use it. We have an excellent IT team here at Adelphi who facilitated that transition for us, and in some ways, we were actually ahead of the curve with it.”
Elaborating on how the group had prepared itself to operate under remote procedures, Cooper added: “As the pandemic escalated in March, we had a test close-down day roughly two weeks before the initial lockdown was called to see how it would work and what the teething problems were likely to be. This way, we could make sure people had the right equipment appropriately installed in their homes ready to work. That voluntary lockdown day around two weeks before the real one was extraordinarily useful in preparing us for the challenges ahead.”
While Adelphi has demonstrated decisive leadership in-house to work around the challenges posed by Covid-19, Cooper disappointingly told us that, in his view, the same could not be said of central government and at times their leadership could have been more decisive.
He said: “At times, I do not think that guidance coming from ministers has been clear at all, throughout all of this year. It has not been clearly conveyed, and there are a lot of conflicting opinions. There seems to be a real lack of leadership and firm guidance at times, however once we know the conditions we have to work under, especially when full national lockdowns have been happening, we take on the mantle ourselves and lead our own people within the group.”
As a global business, Adelphi has not only had to adapt to the challenges of working around restrictions on home shores, but also those put into place by various governments abroad.
Cooper explained: “For us as a global business with important operations in places like Amsterdam and the US, we have had to keep an eye on all government activities and restrictions in place within different territories. We have had to be mindful of different timings of people returning to work and the various challenges we have to get round in places we operate in.”
Although at the time of writing, the emergence of a Covid-19 vaccination programme in the UK suggests and end to the crisis which has blighted 2020 is in sight, Cooper remained cautious that the exact state of the post-Covid normal remains all but certain, but given the ability of Adelphi and wider industry to adapt thus far, he was confident that the group and the wider world will be ready for whatever the future holds.
“We do not know what the new normal will be like post-Covid, but I am sure we will continue to adapt to it. We have remained active during the pandemic because healthcare physicians worldwide, including the opinion leaders, general practitioners and hospital specialists all cover a range of health challenges that go beyond respiratory illnesses or infection. It is about oncology, cardiovascular, rare diseases and more, too. The healthcare profession wants to continue to provide patients in these areas with the best and most up-to-date care and that is contingent on trials going ahead, real world investigations, economic evaluation, and studies being published to allow the profession to take the best decisions. We have been so busy as has the industry in fighting to get all of this going again and as we emerge from the pandemic; we will play our part as we always have.
“Industry, citizens and people have adapted fantastically to these challenging circumstances, and I do believe a lot in the British and European populations and our ability to adapt and be ready for whatever the new normal may be and influence it as we go along.”
In Cooper’s eyes, the removal of Covid-19 as an immediate danger to our physical health will not work as a magic bullet, and instead the legacy of the pandemic will be felt for some time to come and leaders must continue to lead by example and find a way through.
“Even when the virus is gone, there will be large-scale mental health challenges. The issue of mental health awareness and therapy was being raised pre-Covid and we were bringing it into our company ethos and onto our agenda. Similarly, diversity was already on our agenda, but it has been rapidly moved up the agenda with the traction around the Black Lives Matter movement this year.
“In the future, we have to lead by example, not sympathise, and truly make sure we are doing things and not simply talking about doing them.”
One of the first pieces of decisive action Cooper wishes to see from the world’s leaders is to ensure that the UK and the European Union are able to enjoy a positive relationship, irrespective of the outcome of negotiations over a trade deal.
Cooper highlighted: “At Adelphi we recruit a lot of people from outside the UK as well as inside. We take on talent wherever it is based and based on whoever applies to join us. We have much talent across the company and working across boarders is critical. 80 per cent of our clients if not more are headquartered outside the UK. We are working with Germans, French, Swiss companies and more all the time, so that contact with the EU or unofficial EU is important to us.
“We know that we are leaving the EU at the end of this year, and come what may with the form Brexit takes, we need to focus on establishing a positive relationship with the European community.”
