Charles C. Krulak is a retired General in the United States Marine Corps. During his extended marine career, he held a variety of command and staff positions: commanding officer during the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War.

The Three-Block War is a concept devised by Gen. Krulak to illustrate the complex spectrum of challenges likely to be faced by Marines on the modern battlefield. (1)

He writes in his article that within the space of just three adjacent city blocks, Marines may be required to conduct:

1.   Full-scale military action.

2.   Peacekeeping operations.

3.   And humanitarian aid.

Gen. Krulak’s conclusion is that modern militaries must be trained to operate in all three conditions simultaneously, and that to do so, leadership training at the lowest levels needs to be high.(1)

To conduct their missions to positive results, the need arises for a new kind of military – the strategic corporal. Krulak defines strategic corporal as low-level unit leaders able to take independent action and make major decisions.

Krulak’s Law of Leadership states that: “the future of a country is in the hands of the privates in the field, not the generals back home”.

In our fast evolving Pharma Bangladesh and India, supported or rather disrupted by digitization and phygitalization, entrepreneurs, CEOs their HR and training departments need to nurture the strategic corporals of their companies, the strategic Jawans, our medical representatives.

Can Krulak’s Law of Leadership be applied to Pharma Bangladesh and India?

 “The future of a pharma company is in the hands of the medical representatives in the field, not the General Managers, the Vice Presidents, the CEOs back home.”

Medical Representatives in the field who continuously interact with doctors and retail pharmacies, day in and day out are the most important elements of pharma brand building.

Borrowing from Seth Godin in his blog, “The experience people have with your brand is in the hands of the person you pay the least. Act accordingly. This involves training, trust, responsibility, leadership, dignity, authority, management and investment. It mostly means seeing the front-line people in your organization as priceless assets, not cheap cogs.”

How do you interpret Krulak’s Law to Pharma Bangladesh and India? 

In Pharma Bangladesh and India, within the space of just three adjacent city blocks, our medical representatives may be required to conduct full-scale military-like marketing warfare. Which are those three adjacent city blocks? 

1.  Calling on doctors and retail pharmacies under adverse conditions.

2.  Executing the corporate and brand strategies to build powerful brands.

3.  And warding of external competition.

Training the training leaders and HR leaders of Pharma India have a vital role to play in shaping this shift.

Training managers and HR have to change their mindset and train medical representatives for the current and future roles, post-2020. What made them successful in the 1970’s, 80’s, the 90’s and the early part of this century, will not make the medical representatives successful post-2020.

If the training managers and the HR continue to impart training to the medical representatives and do the same things which they did in the yesteryears and expect different results, they should recall the line famously attributed to Einstein “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

What are those areas where medical representatives need to be trained?

1.  Calling on doctors and retail pharmacies under adverse conditions.

They should be trained in developing mental toughness. Mental toughness is the ability to resist, manage and become resilient so they excel at their task of superior performance outcome. Psychologists say mental toughness i.e. the strength of character plays an important role than anything else for both a jawan in the battlefield or medical representatives out there in the tough milieu of the marketing battlefield.

Cadets who join the National Defence Academy have to undergo some ferocious tests to build up mental toughness. HR and Lamp;D teams can develop such tests during the induction training program itself to test the very limits of the trainee’s physical, emotional, and mental capacities. Only after qualifying these tests, they should be sent into the field. Mental toughness and resilience should be the threshold level entry for the medical representative’s post-2023.

Building mental toughness is the first step in applying Krulak’s Law of Leadership. Pharma India really needs medical representatives, the leaders of tomorrow, who are mentally tough and become strategic Jawans in the marketing battlefield.

2.  Executing the corporate and brand strategies to build powerful brands.

The medical representatives should be trained to execute future strategies. The archaic the transactional marketing model may not work anymore. The training managers should liaison with the marketing and sales teams to know the future brand, marketing and corporate strategies. The marketing teams too should use the Fair Process when crafting strategies and involve their sales teams.

Patient centricity is the future of pharma marketing. Without digital support, this may not be possible. Have the medical representatives been trained on these two aspects? Do they understand what ‘The Patient Journey’ is? Do they understand what “No decision about me, without me” means?  

Are your medical representative’s phygitally intelligent? Are they generous in using the digital tools available to implement strategies? Are they being trained to know that doctors are not looking for your products, but they are in search of solutions which can help their patients?

These are the areas which the training managers should look into, to sync with the future needs and requirements of their organization.

If our strategic Jawans are nurtured and empowered to take local decisions, progress would be faster. Today there is no time for taking decisions at the top and passing them down to low-level ranks. Again, the Krulak’s Law is in action.

3.  Warding of external competition.

To ward of external competition, the first step is to compete with yourself. Have you invested in yourself to be better than yesterday and investing to be better than tomorrow? Are you introspecting and reflecting on your successes? Are you learning from your failures? If not, it will be difficult to face external competition.

As the medical representative’s access to doctors continues to decline and the competitive environment grows more complex, you are under constant pressure to find ways to differentiate yourself in the marketplace. Strategy execution can be the differentiator.

The new model which medical representatives should learn is to integrate sales, and brand management and at the same time leverage digital technology to facilitate a better in-clinic performance. The post-2020 era medical representatives should help drive a more patient-centric approach and boost your reach, engagement and in-clinic performance. Medical representatives of today should be transformed to phygitally intelligent knowledge workers of tomorrow.

By supporting traditional in-person medical representative’s visits with digital initiatives and strategies, you can boost in-clinic performance. 

Continues Seth Godin: “Hire better people. Trust them more. And be prepared to make it right when they don’t.”

Reference

(1) Gen. Charles Krulak (1999). THE STRATEGIC CORPORAL: LEADERSHIP IN THE THREE BLOCKS WAR. Marines Magazine