Question of trust

Build trust and mitigate risk

When counterfeit drugs flood the market, mitigating the risk requires mobilising an ecosystem at every level, from C-Suite to pharmacists and deploying the appropriate technology, communication and governance.

During times of uncertainty, transparency becomes one of your strongest assets. Communication teams, whether in-house or external, must be integrated with your technical and C-suite teams to ensure proactive, accurate and controlled external messaging that builds trust, prioritises safety and educates the public on why regulatory timelines exist.

Equipping those who act as your ‘frontline’ with the tools they need to act as a first line of defence is also crucial. For pharmacists, this will look like identification checklists, warning materials and clear paths they can follow to counsel patients who have been exposed to false social media marketing.

Making technology available to locate fake versions of the drug quickly also allows you to mitigate the risk of counterfeit or unregulated products reaching your patients. This can include using AI-powered monitoring to scan social media platforms for counterfeit listings. This automated detection will allow you to find threats before they go viral.

Unlicensed products hitting the market is becoming a recurring threat that is growing in sophistication, therefore building an organisational muscle that can pivot and rapidly react is crucial.

Establishing cross-functional governance teams that have pre-authorised budgets and decision rights means they can respond efficiently and effectively to any new threats within hours of spotting the activity.

When R&D, regulatory, legal, comms and digital join forces routinely and understand the mission they are working towards, you embed the adaptability and agility into your organisation’s DNA required to act appropriately in this volatile landscape.

Respond and capitalise on uncertainty

As counterfeit cases continue to rise and patients unknowingly purchase products that may cause real harm, leaders must move beyond treating this as an emerging threat and establish robust and proactive response frameworks.

Pharma leaders that acknowledge the seriousness of the issue and take decisive action will not only mitigate risk but also uncover meaningful opportunities that are hidden within the disruption.

Working with your communications team to ensure crisis-communication protocols are implemented for these types of scenarios, ensuring they are rigorously and regularly tested, not filed away until the next emergency, is a key first step.
By doing so, when the next surge of illegal products appears, stakeholders will understand their role and be prepared to coordinate in real time with clear, open lines of communication.

This level of readiness makes the pressure far more manageable. Removing any internal barriers that will prevent employees from making faster and bolder decisions helps people to feel aligned and empowered to act. Decentralising decision-making powers also enables teams to act on threats without waiting for more senior approval.

This doesn’t mean abandoning governance but defining clear escalation paths with pre-authorised budgets before the crisis hits. This approach, which prioritises outcomes over hierarchy develops agile response teams who are crucial when uncertainty is at an all-time high.

Once these ‘change muscles’ are developed, enabling your organisation to pivot and respond quickly, you can begin to reframe the crisis as an opportunity where you can showcase the operational excellence and patient-centricity your organisation prioritises.

Not only are you managing the crisis but you’re also building a movement where patients feel informed and reinforcing the associations of your brand with trust, safety and innovation.

Shifting the narrative around the opportunities that the disruption can unlock is critical to maintain momentum.

Create adaptive governance models

In environments where threats emerge overnight, leaders must create governance frameworks that operate quickly whilst maintaining the high regulatory standards that protect patients and preserve trust.

To keep up the pace, quarterly risk reviews must be replaced with continuous monitoring systems that track counterfeit activity, social media trends and regulatory signals in real time.

The aim is to create a model that will give you awareness to act before a threat escalates. Next, re-evaluate your operating system. Switching to a dual operating system that combines a traditional hierarchical structure with an agile, network-based approach will help you adapt to any changes while maintaining stability.

Whilst the hierarchy remains responsible for day-to-day tasks and daily operations, the network will form a responsive system that is flexible and able to respond to any new threats. This structure gives permission to step forward and motivates individuals to volunteer, ensuring hierarchy provides support whilst the network drives strategic initiatives.

This model has been created specifically for organisations to adopt when a threat emerges. A siloed organisation cannot act quickly, as employees will often primarily communicate with and trust their own business unit. Addressing threats effectively requires all people from all levels to be aligned.

In order to break down these barriers and act as one force, leaders can create a ‘guiding coalition’ made up of employees from various divisions of the company that empowers employees to identify opportunities, surface ideas and participate in rapid-response teams.

This will mobilise the organisation as a movement rather than a mandate that in turn leads to accelerated change.

Leading with trust, agility and alignment

The Retatrutide counterfeit crisis is a preview of pharmaceutical leadership challenges in the digital age. When innovation goes viral before approval, leaders must be prepared to cross organisational boundaries and build governance systems that are able to operate at the speed of digital culture.

To adapt to these new norms, pharmaceutical leaders must embrace these three imperatives:

• Build trust proactively both internally and externally through multi-stakeholder communication, technology-enabled authentication and transparent crisis response systems
• Transform disruption into opportunity by preparing for volatile environments with agile response frameworks
• Create governance structures that mobilise people at all levels and break down silos.