Viktoria Friedrich, Country President & General Manager, Pharma Canada, Bayer on Teams, Transformation and Busting Bureaucracy.

Welcome And The Transformation Theme

Welcome to the Farmer Brands Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Follett, and I'm really excited to bring you today's episode. It feels like we are all tackling some kind of transformation challenge these days, whether it's evolving the way we work personally, maybe it's adopting new tools and tech on our teams, or it could be helping to steer a brand or division under the right path for the future. Today's guest is managing transformation at a whole different scale. On this episode, I'm joined by Victoria Friedrich, country president and general manager for Bayer's Pharma Division. As some of you might know, Bayer is undergoing a global change in how the business operates. They've moved to a model called dynamic shared ownership. With candor, humor, and incredible insight, Victoria will share how that new way of working is moving Bayer Canada forward. Here's my conversation with Victoria. Victoria, thank you for joining us on this Monday morning, and thank you for your patience with our technical bumps in the road. Thank you for your support. I have so many questions, and I'm not even certain where to begin. So I'm gonna start with a bit of who is Victoria so that the audience can ground themselves a bit in you as a person before we start to talk about your ideas and what's going on in Bayer, Canada. So maybe give us a little bit of a the short story on your career to date and what you've been up to up to the point of taking your current position.

Okay, sure. So um actually I'm born in Brussels, Belgium, raised there, went to university, um, had my first job as an intern at Bayer, and uh returned then 10 years later. Um in the meantime, I was you know working at Sanofi at Bristol Meyers. I did uh, I would say the typical uh marketing career. I started as a sales rep, uh, I was a brand manager, I became marketing head, was working in Germany, Switzerland, um, Austria, um, and then uh returned to Bayer in 2023 as a vice president in the global team.

Okay, I will start by saying I don't know if it's that typical of a career. Uh I feel like you've landed in a president position probably a bit earlier in your career cycle. Um, I also do feel like this is a huge endorsement of the Bayer intern program. It's a very full-circle moment. Like you moved through a lot of roles fairly quickly, a lot of countries, and then landed here. Do you look back and attribute that career pacing to anything in particular? Was it a certain perspective? Was it a bit of uh sort of serendipity and timing? Like what had you move through those uh set of like really interesting roles at the pace that you did?

Global Strategy Versus Country Leadership

I would say I'm a very driven person, and um, I loved each of the roles, but um, I always had one thought um that you know, maybe one day I will be in a position where I can um help um to develop uh people, shape organizations, and um just you know take some of those experiences from the past and um maybe make it uh better.

I want to get a bit of a sense of what the transition from a senior global role, because you're VP, global head of strategy, what the transition from that global role to the country president role looks like. I imagine that there's parts of that transition that feel I'm guessing like they're larger in scale, but I also imagine there's parts of that transition where it feels like there's like a sort of a different focus or a different proximity to some of the challenges that you're solving. Like what was that, what was that transition like?

So most of my career, I always worked in local country organizations. So for me, it was the exception to work in the global role for two years or two and a half years. So um becoming the country president was somehow like returning home, I would say, where my roots are. Okay. So this was something I was striving for. Um, I was pretty much looking forward to. This was always one of, you know, the goals or like an ambition I had to one day maybe become general manager. I never dreamed of, you know, that um I would become general manager of Canada, such a great, beautiful country. But um no, it was like um coming back to my roots.

Interesting. So the better question would have been what was it like to get in the global world? Exactly. Well, okay, well, then we'll pause there for a second and say, what was that like? Because, you know, again, I think there's there's lots of folks as they imagine their career transition uh their career progression. And Canada especially is both, I think, a breeding ground for folks to then step into global roles. It's also a place where people spend some time to come back in a senior kind of country role. What was it like moving into a global role, especially a global role that had innovation in the responsibility set?

Yeah, you know, being in a global role was a very different pace, I would say. If you come out of a country organization, you know, there was uh not a single day where I did not have like 10, 15 calls on my mobile phone, you know, people like wanting something. You're obviously responsible also for like a living business, right? Um things you need to make quicker decisions that will have an impact immediately. In the global role, your horizon is a different one, right? And it's specifically if you work in strategy, you more look five, 10, 15 years, probably even. And uh it was very different. No one called me. I think in my first year I had like two calls on my mobile phone.

Like you had the is this thing on kind of moments?

Exactly. It was like very different pace, um, obviously way more complex because you have um all those different region countries, you know, US, China. Um, they they work very differently from where what I was used to, like working mainly in Europe, right? So it was a very um steep learning curve for me, definitely. Um, you know, having also kind of this broad responsibility cardiovascular strategy. We had like different um products with the same target group, all in a launch mode. So there was a very high um excitement also around this portfolio, and at the same time, you know, driving innovation. Um is something I would say probably one of the biggest challenges uh in a large organization to drive innovation, because um we are not the quickest on the global level, I always say, and organization normally comes from the bottom up, right? It's like those little um uh topics or like projects that uh emerge from a real need, and that's mostly in the local organizations, and not so much like if you are in some of those global positions where you're somehow also removed a bit from the business.

Yeah, yes, that top-down versus bottom-up innovation, right? Like it's it's often the people who are kind of feeling the friction uh are able to come up with ways to solve that friction very differently than someone in a boardroom in another country kind of determining what's right.

And my role was somehow also trying to prevent from us making the same mistakes um ever, you know, always the same mistakes ever and again. It's like um something if one country is doing a mistake, the other one has not heard of it. So, how do we like are quicker when it comes to distributing ideas, learnings, quick wins, but also failure?

Innovation Inside Regulated Pharma

That's an interesting, I'm gonna hold on that kind of notion of innovation for a second. As I've been chatting with people on the podcast, and often it comes it like AI is the nexus of this sort of change conversation. But I'll I'll zoom out because there's lots of innovation that happens uh beyond just technology innovation. But uh especially I think in a heavily regulated sort of science-based industry, uh there's a tension between uh I think a degree of like necessary discipline and uh desired disruption. And uh like there's a reason that pharma is often, you know, slow to change and slow to adopt, is because uh we do really uh, I think in a lot of ways, quite uh delicate work in systems that aren't uh designed to be under a lot of stress, right? They're designed to operate very efficiently in a very specific way. So uh how have you seen maybe over the last couple of years and and especially at your time at Bayer, that tension between, you know, we need discipline and consistency, but we also are in a time of disruption. Like how have you seen that tension evolve?

So I think we are obviously um working in a highly regulated uh framework, and um you could even say sometimes over-regulated. And what happens is that you somehow um try to colour always within the lines, and I think in many ways, when it comes to compliance topic, this is also absolutely necessary, but um that also means very often um that we do not dare to think outside the box or also to disrupt, and that maybe um we also don't always attract the people who are very creative, who dare to disrupt and make things uh very differently. And I think reflecting um on you know my time at Bayer, and also um since Bill Anderson, our new CEO, well not new anymore, but now I think three years in the role came on board, he really challenged the status quo and he really um urged us to be bolder, more disruptive, and really drive innovation.

And when you stepped into your country president role, I pulled a statement that was up on the Bayer site sort of the press release, and you actually mentioned innovation, basically your opening statement, you know, a shared commitment to innovation and helping patients is at the core of everything we do. Did you find yourself leading an organization a few years ago that was innovating and needed uh some extra accelerance or a bit of focus to drive that innovation? Or was it an organization that needed to start innovating a little bit more? And and and probably the answer is like a little bit of yes and no, depending on the people and the the products or the divisions. But where did you feel the organization was kind of on that innovation scale when you took over?

No, I need to pay attention what to say because people are going to listen, right?

Even as I'm asking that question, I'm like, I don't know if she's allowed to answer.

No, what I can tell you, um, it's a great organization. I think they were very advanced. I think um the Canadian organization had always um an excellent reputation in our, you know, uh beyer world. Um, they were always, or everyone felt that they're very open for innovation, for piloting new things, and also for adapting um very quickly to uh new opportunities. So for me it was kind of easy um to lean on them and maybe just you know ignite the fire a bit more. And you know, you you already mentioned AI. I think everyone, every organization is trying, you know, to find the right level of you know igniting this fire and and and helping people to just use it in their daily, um daily projects, activities. And I think we are all striving to enhance our productivity with those opportunities. So for me, it's more igniting the fire, supporting people to find the time also to upskill.

I'm reading a really interesting book right now about Bell Labs and the amount of innovation that went on there in the sort of 40s, 50s, 60s in the in the US. And one of the things that they're talking about in the book is this sense at Bell Labs where people sort of had the the opportunity to tinker a little bit and they weren't as structured. I feel like fast forward to 2026, you know, every organization, I think it for the most part is in the do more with less category. Uh, people have got lots and lots of responsibility, they've got lots of stuff on their plate, and at the same time, they're being challenged to figure out how to do their individual jobs differently, you know, with AI to innovate at kind of like a personal level. How are you helping people do that in Bayer? Like that's a tough thing for I think a lot of folks is to sort of both do their job well and also figure out how to do their job differently all at the same time.

Yeah. Um, you know, if uh I I figure it out, I will let you know.

Okay. I do you you sighed in your answer where I'm like, oh, I can I can feel I can feel your pain right there.

Dynamic Shared Ownership And 90-Day Sprints

No, no, it's not pain. I see it more as opportunity, but I think there is not, you know, the one solution. There's nothing you can like copy-paste, right? I think every organization is different. And we um we at Bayer, um, and you mentioned it before, we actually introduced a new um way of operating, dynamic shared ownership. And I think what we are striving to do, and I think um where I support the teams is really to focus what matters the most. I think um in in many organizations and also in ours, we just do things because we used to do them. Um there's a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of you know, signing off, there's a lot of consultation, there's a lot of just wondering, or not wondering, but sitting in meetings, um, and maybe also kind of a fear sometimes to take decisions because uh you're afraid of failure. So um I think two and a half years ago or two years ago, we really embarked on this um on this new mission to really bust bureaucracy, um, to work more in 90 day cycles, more sprints, and not you know, to sit down and try to figure out how the world is going to look in two years and to be ready for that, but more focus on the here and now, to eliminate some of those decision-making processes that we had that just take time and are just very lengthy, and give more accountability to the people who are closest to the customers or to the patients, and um empower them to take decisions. So I think that that has been very exciting and very um um, I would say um innovative also. Um, and I think two and a half years later, um, we are still optimizing, um, but it has been a great, great journey to be on and to share it with the teams and uh to figure out how to best operate.

To the extent that you can share, I'd love to dig in a little bit about that journey. I mean, one of the things that we were chatting about last time was the promise versus the practice of implementing something like dynamic shared ownership. I think that probably if you tapped almost everybody on the shoulder and said, Hey, you know, do you want to bust bureaucracy? Everybody would say, like, yes, I totally want to do that. But but then when it comes down to the practice of that, it can be a little bit different. Like one of the potential upsides of bureaucracy is a roadmap. You know, if you do this, then the next thing you do this, and this person signs off. And it gives folks some direction where when you say, Hey, let's figure out a new way to do this, that can cause anxiety for some people as much as it's exciting. But what maybe broad strokes, like what has that been like to shift an organization that was, I'm gonna imagine, fairly structured into one that is in, you know, 90-day sprints and and has a very, very different way of both looking at and tackling challenges. Like, what's that been like?

Um depends on which day you ask me. I would say it has been very good days and also more challenging days, obviously. Um, you know, when I came over to Canada and I took over the organization, we had business units, we had marketing heads, we had product managers, we had juniors and seniors, and we were like structured like probably all the rest of the farmer organizations. And um then um, I think I was like I think two months in this position, and then you know I got the tap on the shoulder and said, Hey, we are going to introduce through the whole organization, so not only in the countries, but also at the global level, a new operating model. And I said, Oh wow, that's great. So help me understand. And by the way, Canada is going to be a pilot country with all other books. So I was new to the role. I just, you know, try to understand the Canadian landscape. Um, and then uh got um this huge opportunity, I think, for the Canadian organization, uh, you know, to step up and role model how it could look like this new operating model. Um, and I think what well, first of all, trying to understand what does it mean. I think we all go, or I, everyone who was like working in the last 10-15 years, we knew we had to go through all those hierarchies to one day maybe become business unit head or general manager, right? And we were like all socialized in a very hierarchical system.

Yes.

The first thing is like, okay, there are way fewer hierarchies, and actually, you know, whether you're a junior or senior doesn't really matter. It's up to the skills that you know bring to the table, and it's about empowering the folks who are like next to the customer. And um, I started to say, okay, well, that sounds interesting, you know, and we got all those information materials. Um, we did many, many workshops on the global level, and then I had a small team who was actually the transformation team who came together and we thought about okay, how can we, you know, translate this theory into real value for the organization and where do we want to focus? Because there was no playbook, there was no guidance how to roll it out. Um, it was really something that um the team came up with um on what to focus first. And one of the I would say leading concepts is also that you should, you know, focus on where you see the quickest maybe um impact also on what you work on, on where your energy drives you towards. I think we all know how draining it can be sometimes to work on on things where we believe the value is very limited, and it's just draining your energy, your motivation. And uh here we really had the opportunity to say, okay, so what do we want to like eliminate? What is like most pressing? What do we, you know, is draining our energy the most? And then we focused on a few things, and um, I think created further quickly some value, and people saw the impact, felt the impact, and I think that's um important for success. That everyone in the organization can see the change, can feel the change, and can say, Oh yeah, it eliminated, you know, three steps and I don't know four hours of my time because I don't need anymore to run to 10 different people to get a sign-off on something that I can decide on myself.

Well, and you know, I think that that pharma's not necessarily known historically for being a first mover and getting early wins. I had an agency for a long time and we had lots of clients and healthcare and clients outside of healthcare, and you know, Royal Bank was a client and they'd be launching a new product and they'd ask us to support, and the product would be launching in like five weeks, right? And and and and one of our pharma clients would be would be launching a product and their their product would be launching in two years. Again, different products, different context, but also a very, very different pace. So it it must have, again, while it's a lot for an organization to absorb, there must have been some energy created through the team feeling some of these early wins, right? Where the the cycle between kind of like effort and impact is shortened down to your point, like to days or months.

100%. Um, and I think that's what motivated um us all and really ignited the fire because people can uh Or could have come up with ideas what to do next, what to tackle next, right? And we had like mission teams really focusing on solving some of those pain points that were identified by the people who are working every day on it. So um, no, it was great to see the motivation and just uh the fire that people had to bust some of those topics, um, or this bureaucracy that uh we had at Bayer. And still to a certain degree, still have, right? It's it's I don't want to like um it's not all shiny and not all, you know, fantastic, but we made some tremendous efforts and um I think we found some great solutions for many of the things.

Well, and and often, I mean, you know, I've been around to see swings, and it's often it's a bit of a pendulum where you know you get to a point where you know you realize, hey, we actually maybe need a little bit of bureaucracy here, right? Like it's uh there's an equilibrium that it takes some time to figure out where the balance is. So it must be interesting. I think about the beginning of this conversation, and you were talking about you know, your drive, your focus, and the pace at which you moved into, were successful at, and then moved on from different roles. Do you feel like you were maybe because of that, while this came very early in your tenure as the president, you kind of had built up some kind of muscle memory around change? Like, do you feel like the pace of your career up to the point where they said, Hey, Victoria, guess what's about to happen, set you up a bit uniquely to lead some of this change?

I'm not sure because what I've observed throughout my career is that, you know, um openness for change or this trans, you know, this muscle is irrespective of experience or age. So um maybe it, you know, I'm I'm just I think I was lucky to be in the position at the right time and had a good match, maybe when it came to change and transformation experience, because I had the opportunity in the past already to lead um some of those projects, but I can tell you what we have done here at Baya is nothing that I have probably ever seen in my career, and I'm not so sure I'm going to see again.

So which is just such an amazing, like what an amazing opportunity. What did you have to do differently as you were yourself being a part of and leading this change? I imagine there were skills, habits, approaches, uh, you know, processes that you just as a person had found successful in the past that you needed to sort of question a little bit. Like, what did you do to drop into this new world of pretty rapid evolution?

Um, I think being brutally honest and transparent, what you know and what you don't know, right? If you're building a new system, a new operating model, and there's no playbook, people ask you and very often for guidance, like what should we do? Is it this and you know, or the other direction? How, you know, should we set it up? How many people do we need in those positions? And I was like, very often I had to answer, I don't know. Let's find out together. And this was probably um something that you know my team needed to get used to, but also I um needed to, you know, challenge myself and feeling comfortable saying very often, I don't know, let's find out together, right? Um, instead of saying, okay, let's go in this direction, because um I was um as new to this as they were, there was no no additional knowledge that I had or any extra briefing. Um, the the great thing about DSO and how we operate is that um nearly no matter where you are in the organization, you have access to the same information and the same level of knowledge, right? So there's 100% transparency, and this was something that um I was not used to, and um, this was something I needed to adapt very quickly, and um still still am adapting to. And I think this probably is also one of the successes when I look back, is just this brutal honesty to the organization. We will find it out together because there is no playbook, right?

Well, and and co-discovery that that takes a lot, by the way, for for you know, any leader, especially someone who's fairly new into the role, um, to say, I don't know. Like the expectation to your point is that you will say, We're gonna go in this direction, obviously, with often with lots of consultation and support and and whatever. So that's a that is a big shift and also I'm imagining models really important behavior for the rest of the leaders who also are probably in a bunch of positions where they don't know the answer and they need to collaborate on it.

Yes, 100%. Um, I I think you know, I I have a very experienced leadership team. Obviously, they were also socialized in a different way, and I think it was at the same time we were transforming and finding, you know, our pace together, how we want to collaborate. And I was getting to know uh the Canadian organization and also the environment. So um lots of things in parallel I had to juggle, but um, it was definitely um when I look back, um, a moment where I'm very proud of what the team accomplished and where we at at the moment.

So, in terms of where you're at, again, like not looking to reveal any sort of you know business secrets, is this the is the DSO program being measured by the type of traditional business metrics that listeners might expect, you know, sales, profitability, uh, you know, maybe speed to market for products, things like that. Or are there new ways of evaluating the organization now that there's sort of a new way of working?

Yeah, that's a very good question. I mean, uh, in the end, obviously, um, I would say I and and a few other people, we obviously look at profitability, we look at overall sales and all those measures that I think any general manager uh would look at. But um for the rest, as I mentioned, we work in 90-day cycles. Um, that's also something that we did not invent, right? Comes from the IT. I think everyone knows um this. And um we are setting ourselves outcomes. So we have long long-term outcomes that normally look like I would say um two to three years into the future. Then we have midterm outcomes that are focusing more on one year, and then we have like the short-term outcomes who are those 90-day um outcomes that the teams are setting for themselves. And um, each team is you know, um working very cross-functionally, um, and they are looking um more, I would say, on different kinds of metrics, so not only on sales, but it's maybe more patient adoption. It's um different KPIs that they are setting themselves up for success. And in those cross-functional teams, we are having customer teams, product teams. So everyone who touches this product um is sitting in there and they are defining together what they want to achieve.

And we're uh you know, just under two years into this program. I say we because now I'm like so invested in this conversation. I don't know if you know, but I'm on your team now, Victoria. Um Canada was a pilot. Yes. Are there other countries that are now in the early phases? What what is the what is the rollout look like in other regions?

Uh so the whole world is operating like this. If I say pilot, it means we had three months to figure it out. So we are really like working since over two years now.

90 days, right? You had a 90-day pilot.

Two years uh in the setup, and um it started with three, four countries, but very quickly um uh there was a rollout around the globe. Um, and in every, you know, from the production um to, you know, in the end, how sales reps are working. So it's really an operating model across Bayer.

I can't even imagine the amount of transformation, learning, new kind of conversations that are going on. And I think it couldn't have come at a better time. So kudos to bear to have taken that step. I it's just disruption, and I think a re-evaluation of traditional business models is something that is just frankly, it feels like it's in the air right now in every organization.

Uh-huh.

Unleashing Potential With AI And Mindset

So I'm gonna tie two pieces together as we sort of come to the end of our conversation. So you just mentioned, you know, you've got maybe three phases of KPIs. You've got the sort of 90 days, one year, and then a longer term, uh, which is maybe two to three years. Earlier in our conversation today, you mentioned the sort of unique horizon when you're in a global role where you're saying, you know, sometimes you're planning five years out.

Okay.

So if you think maybe in between, you know, your long-term two to three years and the and the global five years, um, somewhere out in the future, what sort of characteristics uh do you think are going to be needed organizationally to be successful? And again, not even looking for specifics, but as you as you contemplate a kind of change in the organization, do you have, I don't know, sort of a line in the sand or a benchmark or a goal to say, I I think you know, three to five years out, the organization needs to be able to do like X, Y, or Z?

I think for me, now that we are operating um in this new um, you know, system, it's for me really unleashing the full potential, you know, in the system. And when I say this, I mean it's like through this new mindset and also our ways of working. I think it's very hard uh to let go of many things. And I think you know, we need to constantly challenge ourselves if you know um the the things we are driving, if they're really going um to have an impact. And um I think often, you know, there are limiting beliefs that hold us back. And I think yeah, it's about really daring more things and also increasing our productivity. Um, I think we touched very shortly upon AI, but I think um the we are opening our box, uh, the Pandora box with unlimited opportunities, and I think it's really um to support the people in upskilling and also challenge again the ways we have been working in the past and being open-minded when it comes to the new opportunities that AI will um will help us with.

I love that. I mean, it's much more of a state of mind versus a static output. It's it's about remaining nimble and building on the skills that the whole team is developing right now through the the new program.

Closing Thanks And PharmaBrands Events

Yeah, I think we are maybe uniquely positioned when it comes really, you know, to igniting this fire because we just um, you know, try to really um uh build this mindset of you know, we need to disrupt, we need to dam, or it's okay to make failures, um, like test and learn, small rapid cycles. Um, so um I'm I'm really optimistic when it comes to the um adaptation and to the increase of productivity um at Bayer in this organization because I think we are set up for success.

Well, that feels like an absolutely perfect note to end the conversation on. Victoria, thank you so much. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you setting aside some time to talk to me this morning.

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

A huge thank you again to Victoria for taking the time out of her incredibly busy schedule. After we stopped recording, Victoria and I chatted about her time at university in Belgium. Her school was founded in 1525, by the way, and is home to still. Looking at the PharmaBrands event lineup, Belgium may be the only country that the team is not flying to in the next few months. London, Surrey, Munich, Toronto, Indianapolis have low travel points. Many of those events are meetups that are co-hosted by Real Chemistry, so a shout out to that amazing partner and check out pharmabrands.ca for all the event details.