Mercky Research
Not long ago, an article in the New York Times discussed how Merck created what appeared to be an independent, peer-reviewed journal, and then used that journal to convince doctors to prescribe Merck products.
What is particularly amazing about this story is that Merck is the same company that 20 years ago created a cure for River Blindess, even though they knew that the people most in need of that cure would never be able to pay for it. At the time, the cost to the company was estimated at $200,000,000. Then CEO Roy Vagelos said that he felt that there was really no other choice: he was living up to Merck’s ideals of “health before wealth” and “do good and good will follow.”
As things worked out, the long-term benefits to the company, in terms of prestige, being able to attract top-notch researchers, and access to emerging markets, were immense. Merck did good, and good did indeed follow for the company and its shareholders. It just wasn’t obvious at the time that things were going to work out that way.
So what happened? How did a company that lived up to its ideals as Merck did come to be the same company that used rather questionable practices to convince doctors to use its products?
Now I have no particular contacts or channels into the brains of the people at Merck, so what follows is purely supposition based on observing similar patterns of behavior in sports and business.
It’s well known in sports that athletes who are solely focused on winning do less well than those who are focused on personal excellence and skill mastery as well as winning. Indeed, a total focus on the outcomes and not the process can lead to a number of problems, including depression, burnout, and reduced enjoyment in the activities. Failure, instead of being a learning experience or an opportunity to evaluate and adjust, becomes something to avoid at all costs.
Ways of avoiding failure might involve only facing easy opponents, or it might involve cheating in various ways. Fear of failure is a very powerful force; the most successful athletes are those who master the art of learning how, and when, to not care if they win or lose.
When a business becomes totally focused on making money, it falls into a trap similar to that of the athlete. Milton Friedman to the contrary, a business cannot be solely about making money. Rather, a business is about producing innovative, or at least useful, products and services. These products and services must, in some demonstrable fashion, provide value to people. Money is how the business knows it’s succeeding.
Like sports, however, when the focus becomes too short-term and too outcome oriented, it becomes increasingly easy to justify behaviors that make money now instead of behaviors that maintain the product pipeline. It’s really no different from the athlete who sacrifices long-term health or career for a victory today. Living up to ones ideals is easy when things are going well; it’s when things get difficult that the real test comes.
Being a successful athlete, at any level, takes a great deal of work and dedication. There are always people who are looking for short-cuts. Being a successful company takes work and dedication as well; staying successful is, arguably, even harder. Over the years, very few have managed it. The tendency to take short-cuts is always there. It’s the businesses that stick to their ideals and are not captured by the fear of failure that last the longest and are most likely to survive the inevitable tough times.
Just as in sports, it’s all about learning how, and when, to not care.
