2020 was a year of change and at NeoHealthHub, the start of a new era. Coming together as a company at the start of COVID, and building a company for today’s challenges in order to provide tomorrow’s solutions, seemed like an gruelling uphill climb but we were witnesses to the effect the pandemic age was having on our clients, and knew we needed to act. We were, and still are, passionate about supporting them in adapting, adopting and adjusting to an ever-changing complex landscape. As businesses that specialise in remote communications across the pharmaceutical industry, we knew we had a wealth of expertise to offer our clients in navigating their new and uncharted obstacles in their brand lifecycles.

Kotter goes further by outlining 8 steps to doing this:

• Establish a sense of urgency
• Create a guiding coalition
• Develop a changing vision
• Communicate the vision
• Empower broad based action
• Generate short term wins
• Never let up!
• Anchor change into culture

Establish a sense of urgency

We began by recognising the urgency of the challenges that the pandemic world was suddenly confronted with. We created NeoHealthHub out of 3 separate brands which were specifically chosen to collectively combat those challenges that the pharma landscape face.

Create a guiding coalition

Following the unifying of these 3 brands, we then created an Executive Leadership Team with a focus on ensuring we have a diverse and strong range of expertise to meet the needs of clients from across the industry. But we knew this wasn’t enough, we needed to consider how the market’s constant improvements were going to affect our business. In order to achieve this, we knew we would need to listen to both our internal and external markets at every point.

Develop a changing vision

With our sense of urgency established and a guiding coalition created, we proceeded to develop our changing vision. Knowing that this was an absolute mission-critical step to our success, we crafted a meaningful purpose and narrative for our Hub, ensuring this was aligned and supported by all the businesses. We began by setting values and core principles to ensure we remain united and have a clear compass in all our actions and decision making. This also included creating a distinct and unique brand that is representative of our purpose at every opportunity.

Communicate the vision

Following Kotter’s article, we knew it was all very well having these internal values but what good were they if we didn’t embed them into our day-to-day working lives? So, starting with our Executive Leadership Team, we began to role model what we believe, swapping and sharing stories from across the business about how we all embed the vision.

Empower broad based action

By stripping away all of the unnecessary bureaucracy and barriers, we gave our business the opportunity to thrive in its own unique way. We want to empower everyone in the business by putting trust into each other and understanding that the people closest to the client knows best. Everyone is accountable for their own business, allowing us to collectively make better and faster decisions.

Generate short term wins

From a business development perspective, collating our short terms wins gave ourselves the opportunity to reflect on wins and losses, to evaluate our strategy, but more importantly, it allowed the team the opportunity to celebrate. Particularly during this difficult year, we wanted moments where we could remotely celebrate our successes with the whole business. Not only did this act as a morale booster but it also motivated us to continue on our journey. The hard work does, indeed, pay off.

Never let up!

We knew it was important to not lose sight of the overall picture, especially having just celebrated our short term wins. By allowing these wins to motivate our success, we continue to acknowledge that there is always more to do! To grow and do more, being better, working faster and all whilst continuing to deliver to our high standards.

Anchor change into culture

It’s important to not give up here. Having dedicated time to building a business with a clearly defined mission and work ethos, John Kotter’s final step reminds us that we need to embed our culture we’ve designed into everything we do. To regularly check-in with our values and remind ourselves to stay on course, and allow insights along the way to continue to point us in the right direction.

When facing any obstacle in your business, knowing where to begin can often seem like the biggest hurdle and as a company born in the pandemic crisis to serve the needs of the post-pandemic age, we are to a degree building the plane as we taxi. It was for this very reason that we knew Kotter’s 8 steps would be essential to building a clear and constructive path to our success. We are not repurposing old models to suit a new world. Instead, we have created what is needed now and in the future. In the complex market that we are all now painfully aware of, we live and breathe our values and core principles to best support our clients and accelerate their success. I would strongly recommend, especially as we begin new projects in this new year, to integrate these 8 steps into any Critical Moment™ of your brand lifecycle to arm yourselves with clear objectives for your entire business to follow. By giving everyone at the NeoHealthHub a detailed understanding of the company’s vision and ethos, the teams are not only actively included on our journey but they are able to carry these objectives with them with every interaction they have, whether it be with clients or colleagues. After all, the pathway to success is not one we can travel alone.

*To view John Kotter’s original article ‘Accelerate’, click here.