The pharma and medtech companies I study sometimes call me a strategy doctor and there is some truth in that. Like most doctors, the ‘patient’ companies I advise are usually sick in respect to their strategising. But not always. Sometimes, I meet the equivalent of the patient who exercises, eats well and is the acme of wellness. In many ways, these exemplary companies offer the most to learn and so it was with one of my recent encounters, so let me share the lessons of a great company with you.

I’d advised this mid-sized European pharma company some years ago. My principal contact then had since climbed the career ladder and now led all commercial activity. He’d asked for an informal lunch meeting and I was delighted to visit his office. I was greeted with a warm “welcome back” and the conversation began with a review of what had happened since it last engaged me. It was a story of success, both commercially and, to the point of this story, organisationally. My client was effusive about how improving the company’s strategising had “positive side effects”, including better teamwork, better recruitment and retention, and better team morale. He was soon to present to an internal conference on that topic and he wanted my help, saying: “You’ve always got good metaphors to explain things, Brian. What can I say at my meeting?” I knew this man well enough to have a little joke, so I replied: “You can recommend promiscuity.” With a laugh, he said: “That’s a brave approach in today’s working environment,” and asked me to expand on the idea.

I wasn’t, of course, suggesting anything inappropriate. Rather, I was suggesting that he use the metaphor of promiscuous enzymes, a concept I’d learned from Andreas Wagner’s excellent book Sleeping Beauties. These are enzymes that, as well as their primary task of accelerating a particular biochemical reaction, can also catalyse reactions with other molecular partners. Wagner explains this by comparing the enzyme to a glove, which fits five fingers perfectly but can also accommodate a three-fingered hand. As Wagner explains, enzyme promiscuity helps us to understand antibiotic resistance. It was this ‘made for one job, does others too’ idea that I was suggesting to my listener. He warmed to the idea but, quite understandably, wanted me to be clearer about the parallels between enzyme promiscuity and the positive side effects of effective strategising. Since it is an effect I’ve seen in many companies, I was happy to help.

The primary purpose for which effective strategising processes have evolved is to create strong strategies. That is, strategies that have a high probability of success. As I’ve written about elsewhere, there isn’t a single best way to create strategy – it is contingent on both the market situation and the firm’s culture. But there are some prerequisites that all good strategising processes need. They need to be crystal clear about what certain terms mean: segment, value proposition and strategic choice, for example. They must also be clear about who does what. And they need to incorporate organisational learning. All these things are essential to good strategising. But they all lead to secondary, what geneticists would call pleiotropic, effects.

This explanation helped my client. He immediately grasped that his effective strategising process had defined the key terms tightly and so reduced misunderstanding within his cross-functional teams. Equally, being clear about responsibilities for strategy execution had reduced the political ‘turf wars’ that used to be common. And embedding organisational learning had made the teams feel they were continually improving their own competencies and their teams’ capabilities. And, of course, feeling like they’re growing is one of the things that makes good people stay in a company. So, as my client had observed, better strategising had led, coincidentally, to happier people and more effective teams. In our conversation, I’d merely explained his own observations with the theory that, just as enzymes can be promiscuous in their outcomes, so too can organisational processes like strategising, if you do it right.

So what was the take-home message? When we consider it, we tend to focus on the intended outcomes of installing or improving an organisational process. But we should also think about any ‘promiscuous’ consequences too. And, in doing so, we should design the process to have those wider outcomes, because those benefits help to justify the costs of the process change.

References are available on request.