Episode #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.