Culture, Clarity, Purpose: Driving Lasting Organizational Change

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Welcome to the Rethink Sales podcast. I'm Mark Danolo, CEO of Sales Globe, and we're talking about a topic called Transformation Delusion. Why do you expect big results when we repeat the same old patterns and how do we change that in our businesses and our lives? We're talking with C level executives about their experiences and what they've seen for barriers, what they've seen for patterns and pattern breakers and how to make transformation successful. Today we're talking with Christine Ann Miller. Christine is CEO of Malinta Therapeutics and she's going to talk to us about what she's experienced and the transformation she's made at Malenta. Well, hey Christine, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

And we're super excited to talk to you. We've had an opportunity to chat a little bit about some of the things you did in your organization. But I wanted to start off perhaps by you talking about how you became CEO of Melenta and just the transition in. Because you came in in a really interesting period, which was during the pandemic. So tell us a little bit about, like how that, how that happened and kind of what you encountered as you. As you came on board.

Well, you know, I joined Malenta as, as you, as you noted, at a very unusual time. Get private. With the intention of transforming the company. Melissa was once known as an antibiotics company and it had, you know, some missteps that led to needing to file for bankruptcy and restructure his obligations. If it didn't do that, it would run out cash. And it was. The company is very fortunate because dear fil2 was the debt owner, really agreed to, you know, take full equity ownership of the company. And they brought me in to do the transformation. And it was really interesting because not only was it a critical time for the company, but really it was a critical time for the world. Right. There was a lot of uncertainty both for the organization and the world we were living in at the time. And it was really important that coming in that I helped to try to provide clarity as well as stability. Right. People needed to know where we were going and how we were getting there.

And you said that when you came on, you actually came into the office and. And there was nobody there. And so that was kind of your first day in the office by yourself.

Yeah, they mailed me my. Because I actually wanted to go into the office. Right. Unlike a lot of people at the time, I wanted to go and no one had a problem with it because nobody else was there. So they mailed Me, my laptop and my key card. And yeah, I showed up to the office and the lights were off, and I switch on all the lights and, you know, make my way into the office to figure out where, you know, my. Where I actually would sit. Fortunately, there was. Someone had gone in and kind of put my name on the door. So I knew where to sit. Yeah. And I sat there all by myself for some time, actually.

So one of the things you talked about was around transformation was the ability to connect with people. And that culture is a big driver of transformation. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that. Like, when you got there, how did you get to lay of the land? How did you connect with the organization? And how did you figure out that to do this transformation? And we should talk about what you were trying to accomplish, but to do this, that culture was a key to doing that. You get started with it.

Yeah. So, you know, Melissa had historically been known as an antibiotics company. And if you know anything about this space of our industry, it's a very difficult one to navigate. And, you know, really, companies haven't been successful in this space for. For a variety of reasons, which, you know, I can share a little bit more later. But, you know, really we had to think about what. What did we want to do kind of going forward. And I had some ideas about what that. What that would look like, but I wanted to hear from everyone else. And I also had this thesis that rather than focusing primarily on transformed cultures, that it has a big business impact. And I wanted that opportunity to do that. Malenta. So when joined, because I was in the middle of the pandemic and I didn't have to fly everywhere, and people have become adept at using, you know, at the time was go to meetings, actually, you know, I don't think you hear about that anymore. I quickly realized I didn't, like, go to meetings and switch to Zoom.

Yep, yep.

I. I remember the time, you know, saying, well, let me, as a part of kind of my assessing the organization, let me meet with some people. And I asked three questions, either in one on ones or small groups. And the questions were, what is the culture of Malinta today? The second question is, what do you want the culture of Malinta to be like? And the third is, if you were CEO sitting in my chair, what would you do with the company? And I have to tell you, when I started off having these meetings, my intention was to do an assessment, right. Really just hear from as many people as I could. But because I wasn't flying everywhere, I Was like, you know what? I think I could actually pull off meeting with every single person in the company. And. And so I quickly did that with the help of an amazing executive assistant, figured out how to actually make that happen. And that was so enriching and something that I hope I'm able to apply, even if it's at a larger scale, because giving people the opportunity to be heard was so powerful in our journey.

Yeah, I bet that had a big impact because. To connect with you.

Yeah, it was. It was actually really cool because, well, one, I had people comment that they'd never spoken to a CEO kind of that directly in their careers. And we have some tenured people, so I was like, wow, that's kind of crazy. But I can appreciate, you know, the different experiences. And then actually, surprisingly enough, even though a lot of people have been in the company for quite some time, come together and they can ask me anything, they can tell me anything, they get to meet each other and do a little mingle. And it's just been so amazing to be able to enrich our culture and build that, I would say, clarity and transparency that people really need in order to feel psychologically safe in an environment and to be able to do their best work.

So when we went into the conversation here talking about transformation, we're just kind of assuming, okay, something big needs to change. At Malenta, you've come on the scene, the company was in bankruptcy, There was a lot going on. When you step back from a bigger perspective, when you think about transformation in a business, how do you define that? What does that mean to you? Because everybody uses the word transformation now we're doing a, you know, a company transformation or sales or operations transformation. But. But what is that? It's not just any kind of change.

Yeah, no, it's not. It's. It's when there is a recognition that you need to rethink. Think your approach to people, processes, your products and performance. It's. I call it the four P's. And whenever you need to change and rethink a few of those P's, that's what I call a transmit. That's when you need a transformation. And, you know, being able to define up front for the organization. Actually, my first town hall, I talked to my organization about the four Ps and how we needed to rethink our approach to each of those things. And I actually invited people to go on a journey with me to reimagine and reimagine our approach to all of these things to our people, to Our process, to our products, and to our performance. And I promised them that if they were to join me on this journey, that it would be a legendary one. Promise that it was going to be easy. I didn't promise that we wouldn't have difficult moments and have difficult decisions to be made, but I promised that the experience that they would have, that we would have together on this journey would be one that they would be able to look back in their career and point out this very space and time that we're working together to do something amazing together, that that is something that would always stay with them and would be a fulfilling part of their lives and their career journey.

So what kind of reaction did you get? Because it sounded like one of the challenges you ran into was people maybe didn't believe that this was going to happen. And so when you make a promise to them like that, what kind of reaction do you get?

Some people are like, well, it's about.

Time.

I did get that. So some people were like, yeah, like, it sounds good, but I don't know. I don't know if that's possible. Some people were, you know, a wait and see. And some people are like, no, I don't believe you. I'm out. And, you know, it's. It's okay. People have their different perspectives and, you know, people are different parts in, you know, their lives. And if they had experienced, I would say, you know, that realizing those hopes and dreams was actually still possible.

So when you start out on something like this, Christine, you know, and you make the announcement that you're going to make this change, how do you do that in a way that's going to be motivational for the organization? Because a lot of times, you know, we hear these big aspirational announcements, but that's not always the biggest motivator. Sometimes, you know, a really big motivator is people avoiding pain. Right. Avoiding maybe the situation that they're in or avoiding the pain. It'll happen if we don't fix it. But how did you create that message to get people motivated?

Yeah. So one of the things was necessary was actually providing clarity, because I think that's the biggest challenge that the organization had as I was having all these different conversations, is that people didn't know where we were going and how we were going to get there. So after I had all of the discussions with people, I also did an engagement. We, as an organization, did an engagement survey. We had about 89% participation in this engagement survey, which told me that people cared.

Right, Right.

You take the time to fill it out, you cared. So at 89% respondents. Well, also is a great place to start.

But you did talk to every person individually. So they're like, okay, I talked to Christine, the CEO, so I better fill out this survey. Right.

So it was very interesting because the survey results came back and I remember it was a Friday. It was very difficult Friday because the response showed that we had a 69% engagement score, which is, you know, on a scale of 100 in any, you know, situation is a fail.

Yeah. So you got 30% of people that aren't engaged. Yeah.

So basically we, what we saw from when we part, when we got into the data is that people actually really love their jobs. They actually really like their manager. What they didn't like was the culture of the wider organization and they had no clarity on where we were going and how we were going to get there. And so what we did with that information is one, we shared it with everyone to say like, you're, it's not just you. Everyone is feeling this way by and large. Okay. And what we did is we said, okay, we're going to work to address the concerns that have been raised in a very systematic way. Okay. And so what we did is we started off by providing. Well, we started off by doing some work on mission and vision. What do we want to rally around in terms of our mission as the organization. So before that it was kind of like we fight bugs. You know, I'm being like general, like we, you know, we're here to fight, you know, bugs and pathogens and diseases.

And.

But when, when I talk to people, I didn't hear any of that in the, you know, the mission kind of said that. But when I talk to people, they talked about patients, right? That's why they were here. That's why they were doing what they were doing and why they stayed. And so we redid our mission and vision to make it, make sure that it was patient and people focused. So our mission is to provide innovative therapies to people impacted by acute and life threatening illnesses. And our vision is that all people who need our therapies receive them. Because that's the challenge that we have in the antibiotics industry, is actually creating access for patients to receive our medicines. And so we wanted to make sure that we were really focused, vision wise, on making sure that we enabled access for our patients. And then we took time to define what are the essential behaviors that we all want to see show up as an organization so that we create an environment that everyone can thrive in that they can be their best selves, that they could do their best work and they can deliver in the best way for patients. And we also put together, you know, strategic priorities. We have four strategic priorities that drive everything that we do. And we put together a strategic plan, a five year outlook that basically said this is where we're going, this is what we're trying to achieve and exactly how we're trying to achieve it across our four strategic priorities. And our four strategic priorities are very simple. It's one, building a high performance culture. The second is driving profitable growth of our current portfolio. The third is focusing on operational excellence. And the fourth is expanding our portfolio. And we did a whole rebranding of the company. We kept the name, but we launched new branding that we felt that helped to really capture what who we were now, who we aligned around. Then we communicated, communicated, communicated. We set a bigger goal of becoming the recognized leader in acute care. We set a timing goal for how much revenue we wanted to achieve and also when we wanted to achieve profitability. And we communicated all this to the organization and got everybody to rally around it. And then when we fast forward a communication thing, providing the clarity that people need in communication. But if what people were experiencing in their daily lived experience was inconsistent or incongruent with all the things that we now said we wanted to have in terms of mission and vision and our seven essential behaviors and our strategic priorities, if those things were incongruent, then we wouldn't have gotten the response that we, we had. It was about, you know, really living in to, to, to who and the, what we said and the how we, how we said we wanted to achieve it, which really helped to drive results. And last year we did the same exact survey again. And who would think that it could get any better? But it did. We got to 95%. And what's more important, I think is the results, the business results that we were able to drive. That I think is what was even more cool.

So you set some big goals in terms of business results. What kind of things did you see in terms of the results themselves?

Yeah, so in four years we were able to achieve an 85% growth in our top line, in our top line revenue. We had set a really ambitious goal of becoming profitable by December 31, 2022. We actually specifically wanted to design a sustainable business model that drove profitable growth. And we were able to achieve that. And it has been quite remarkable because we've been able to sustain growth over, you know, these four years. And Continue to drive growth as well as profitability and to be able to see both our level of engagement and people's connectivity to the organization and what we're doing. We see that increasing and then we also see the business results to increase. It's pretty cool. It's something that I am really excited about.

There's a little bit of an irony in this. As you describe it in terms of culture is the most important thing. But then your background, you studied chemical engineering, so you think, okay, well here's a scientist, here's a total left brain thinker. How does culture fit with that? And then taking a little bit further, you're working with a private equity firm and you know, I've worked with a lot of pes where the soft stuff like culture, you know, there's like, well, what are you going to get me for numbers? It's not just about, you know, that soft stuff, but a lot of times they say that the soft skills are actually hard skills, they're hard to do. But kind of talk a little bit about, you know, your background in chemical engineering, the private equity firm looking probably at financial results and you come back with this idea about culture. How does that fit together?

Yeah. So, you know, I always say when people ask like chemical engineering, to be able to see both our, our level of engagement and people's connectivity to the organization and what we're doing, you know, we see that increasing and then we also see, you know, the business results to increase. It's pretty cool that I am really excited about.

There's a little bit of an irony in this. As you describe it in terms of culture is the most important thing. But then your background, you studied chemical engineering, so you think, okay, well here's a scientist, here's a total left brain thinker. And you know, how does culture fit with that? And then taking a little bit further, you're working with a private equity firm and you know, I've worked with a lot of pes where the soft stuff like culture, you know, there's like, well, what are you going to get me for numbers? It's not just about, you know, that soft stuff, but a lot of times they say that the soft skills are actually hard skills, they're hard to do. But kind of talk a little bit about, you know, your background in chemical engineering, the private equity firm, looking probably at financial results and you come back with this idea about culture. How does that fit together?

Yeah, so, you know, I always, when people ask like chemical engineering, I'm not really sure how that all Goes together. And how do you make, you know, become CEO? Well, you know, engineering is all about problem solving. And there's a lot of like, the process for problem solving is a, is a big thing when it comes to engineering. I also believe that it's important to have purpose, to know your purpose. And for me, my purpose is to help people live better lives through problem solving. So if you look at my entire career, you know, it kind of looks like I don't know how all this kind of goes together, but in every role that I've taken, there was some problem to be solved. And my, you know, thesis in this situation when I spoke to Deerfield was, you know, I don't believe that the company would have been aware it was when we started on this journey if it had a high performing team. Because what I believe is that high performing teams will, somebody on the team will see the wall and will prevent the organization from running into it. That was my theory, right? Is that I'm not saying that mistakes can't happen, but somebody will see the wall. And, and that's what I told my team. I was like, just tell me where the wall so I run into it. Just please, I don't want to have to learn things the hard way if I don't need to.

So, so how did, how did Deerfield respond to this idea of culture? Did they, did they get it right away or was it okay?

I absolutely, because I said to them, I was like, I told them, I was like, listen, I actually know this portfolio. I think it's, I think the company has great products. I think that, you know, there's a lot of potential here and I have very concrete ways for how we can unlock this potential. I actually walk them through the way that I was going to go about assessing where the company stood from a 4Ps perspective, right? And it was going to be an inside and an outside view, not only talking to people internally, but also talking to customers. I also, so I did a similar thing. I didn't get to talk to all customers. You know, I talked to a lot of customers as well, as well as our suppliers, you know, to try to get a holistic view. But I told them, I said, but I really believe that where we need to focus is fundamentally on providing clarity and developing a culture. And they said, okay. They're like, let's do it. And so actually when my first board, my first board meeting was like 90 days basically after I started. And so by that time I had done a full kind of 360 view of the organization and then was able to lay out to them, like, what the plan was, what are we going to do next in terms of strategic planning and really laying out for them what they could expect. I think it's really important, especially from a stakeholder perspective, from a board perspective, whether they're private equity, whether it's a public board, to me, it doesn't really matter, is providing clarity and transparency around where you're going and how you're going to get there and really be able to bring people on that journey over time. And, you know, I think that by doing that, you end up building credibility, you build trust with people, and people are willing to go to stay on that journey with you, even if you have some bumps in the road, which I think is really important.

So when you talked about what your. The vision and mission, it's like you took. We talked about problem solving. It's like you took the problem and you redefined what the problem is. And we see this a lot, which is leaders, companies in general can be running down a path of trying to solve a different problem than what is the real problem. So when you talk about this idea of we shifted from, you know, the performance or the company, the focus on the company or the growth of the company, to patience. Right. So a couple things are happening there. One is you're coming up with something that's more maybe intrinsic and motivational for the organization, because they can envision that. But the other is what you did, in effect, Christine, is you said, well, we're not. We're solving for a different problem here. We're not solving for how do we become the best at whatever we're trying to solve for, how do we do a better job for patients and connect to them. And by doing that, you tapped into a bigger, bigger vision, something that's inherently more motivational for people, and you started solving for probably the better or the right problem.

Absolutely. One of the challenges in the antibiotics industry, particularly in the space that we work in, which is hospital, Our products really serve the hospital industry, and hospitals under immense pressure to keep costs down. And so as a result of that, they really scrutinize the use of novel, innovative products. And so it ends up becoming an access issue for patients to get our new novel antibiotics. And why is that important? It's important for people to get access because unlike other kind of therapeutic areas like oncology or neurology or any of that, the thing that we're trying to address, which is bacteria or fungi, these are living organisms that evolve and they outsmart older, cheaper drugs that were not designed to make sure that there isn't any resistance to the treatment. We have to do a lot of education with our customers to let them understand it's really important for you to use the latest innovation and what that actually means for patients. And because hospitals are under a lot of pressure and because actually there are thousands of hospitals across the United States alone, every customer has very unique needs. And so it really takes a very resilient and persevering team, but also a team that's motivated by a clear mission and vision to actually get the job done. And so we are really focused on delivering for patients. And so that allows our, especially our customer facing folks, but it's really our whole organization be relentless in their pursuit of realizing our vision that all people who need our therapies receive them, especially when things are difficult.

So if you take the hospital perspective though, if they're trying to manage costs, because these are businesses and they're trying to keep their costs down and you come in and you say, look, you know, the, the bacteria, the fungi outsmart previous drugs that maybe are cheaper, you could, you could say, well, the motivation for the hospital being a price or cost motivation may be stronger than making people well. Right. And sometimes people don't always get well in hospital. So how do you get over that barrier where the hospital itself has this big financial motivator and you say, well yeah, people are going to get better if you actually do this, how does that sync up?

There is a lot of data that we need to be able to provide and educate our customers. So one of the things that we're able to show is the sooner you use one of these innovative products, the higher likelihood that you will be able to save a patient's life and you'll be able to treat their infection faster and better and potentially get them out of the hospital sooner. And so every day that we can save from a patient being in the ICU or being in a bed within the hospital and allow them to get home, that is, is actually a cost savings for the hospital. And usually, okay, what we find is that the cost that they would incur to use an innovative product is the return on, that is greater because they're able to get a patient out of the hospital faster. And in some cases we have one product example that if, if someone shows up in the ER and they have, you know, a skin structural infection and they take one of our cellulitis, I should say, and they take one of our, one of our products, we can actually prevent that patient from potentially being admitted into the hospital altogether. And what we, we see as an alternative, they use kind of the older, cheaper, you know, product that patient sometimes has to be admitted into the hospital just to get treated. So, you know, it's really about, you know, thinking, you know, about what are your customers needs and making sure that you're putting together solutions, including the cost of those solutions that, you know, that overall is a win, win for both sides and really educating, doing a lot of work to educate people around what this all means. And that's what our team is actually really great at doing.

Yeah. So you're making a really, really strong business case for them. That, that's a great point. Great, great point. So as you're, as you're moving through this, Christine, what do you see as the biggest barriers to transformation? So you talked about the vision, you talked about the culture, you talked about communication and connection. What kind of challenges or barriers did you run into either at this company or maybe in previous experiences that you've had to being able to make change in an organization?

Yeah, I think not having everybody on the same page and kind of the lack of clarity is, I think it's usually the biggest barrier, which is why we, you know, had to be so, you know, clear on communications. A few years ago, I heard, I had the privilege of hearing Ken Frazier speak about his experience as CEO of Merck. And I remember him saying, you know, I, he's like, every time I get a chance to speak to our organization, my goal is not to, you know, share anything new. Basically he's like, I don't have to come up with something new to tell them each time. Right. What I need to do is keep on reinforcing the things that they need that, you know, kind of, what is our goals, what is our mission, what is our vision, what are we trying to achieve and really get, get to a point where everyone is clear on where we're going and how we're going to get there. And so that's what I do every time I have an opportunity to talk to anyone in the organization. And it's really about reinforcing the same messages and driving the clarity and doing that in a multimodal fashion. Right. So whether it's newsletters, whether it's town halls, whether it's Coffee with Christine or we also have Ask the ec, there's, there's so many different ways that we go about doing that really to drive home and to drive the alignment that's necessary to drive transformation.

So have you. In this business, did you. So you. So you had some disbelief. Was there any resistance to change in terms of people wanting to keep things the way they are, or was it a situation that was, you know, dire enough that people wanted to make a change?

We. We did have. We had mix. You know, we did have. There were people who, you know, just either weren't up for it. Like, they actually. I actually had people who, like, believed, but they were like, you know, I'm, you know, I'm tired. Right. You know, I've kind of been on this journey with this company, and I just got to try something new. And I was like, big hug. Go, go. You know, it's all good. Right? And then we had people who they were. There are a couple people who either, you know, didn't believe that, you know, they thought there was a better way or they. A common thing was didn't really want to live into the behaviors that we had established. And so for either those individuals that kind of didn't believe in kind of where we were going or how we're going to get there. From a behaviorist part, you have those kind of coaching discussions to see if you can get people on board, but if they can't, then they can't stay.

Right? Right.

Because you really have to have everybody on the same page. And so you have to have that kind of clear discussion with people so that they know where they stand and what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. And hopefully they come to the choice on their own to make a change, whether that is changing their behaviors or changing their perspective and, you know, aligning or making a decision to leave. But if they can make the decision, then, you know, then as an organization, as a leader, you know, it's important to take the decision, because the one. A big deterrent from transformation is when people see the incongruency, when they see that you allow for misalignment to where you say that you want to be, that is the biggest. That's the biggest killer of transformation.

And you make a really good point, Christine, because you have to deal with these kind of things, whether it's active resistance, apathy, passive resistance. And if you don't to kind of, you know, look at it as a metaphor for what you do, you've allowed an infection, right. You've allowed something to come in and grow that's going to hurt the organization. So the inaction in dealing with that as a leader can spread and infect the organization.

Exactly. And no decision is a decision. It's a decision that, you know, what, you don't, you don't really want to stand up for. What you say is where we're headed. Right. You don't want to take the tough decisions. And so whether it's me or other members of my team, we had to take some tough decisions. But it's important that you really treat people with respect, that you treat people with clarity and all of those things and be true to the behaviors that you say that you. That you have, that you espouse to. And when you do that, you know, everybody will respect the situation and respect what it is that you're saying that you want to achieve. And that's where you build the trust and what really helps to drive the momentum over time.

So in the transformation itself, you talked about keeping it alive. You talked about coffee with Christine. You talked about just the touch points and connection points. I want to learn a little bit more from you just about who needs to be involved. And you've talked about your leadership team. So it's not just about you. And you've also talked before about evangelists, like employees becoming evangelists. So how do you do at least those two things in terms of getting your leadership team to become the drivers and representatives of this, that it's not just the CEOs program. And then how do you create those evangelists?

Yeah, so we have a. We have a few different ways that we do it. So actually, I will start with maybe one of the. One of the most effective ways that we've been able to do this. We have what we call a cultural advisory board. And this board is, we call it the cab. They are made up of employees across the organization, different regions, different offices, different functions, different roles. And there's an executive sponsor. There's one person like our cfo, Susan Blum. She is an executive sponsor for the CAB now. And, and basically what happens is this. These groups of people are basically cultural ambassadors. They take, I would say, ownership of a group of people within the organization that they. Each of this board, you know, takes care of. And they, they have their, their as a cab, they have cultural priorities that they put goals around and that they execute towards, and they act as a sounding board for the executive committee, and they also provide feedback to the executive committee. So they have their ears to the ground. They are checking in with people. They're seeing what the needs are. And, and they're also, you know, ensuring that they're doing activities with, you know, the organization to as evangelists for our culture. Right. So they see Something that's incongruent, right. They're able to speak up and say, like, hey guys, like this is what we're seeing. We actually had the CAB at our executive committee meeting last week, so we got to hear from them. We do check ins with them. So they are really an integral part of the organization, have been really instrumental in our transformation. Also our executive committee, my team, we spend a lot of time as a team focusing on building a high performing team for ourselves, right. As you know, as an executive committee, making sure that we're aligned, that we're on the same page, and that we're all bringing our unique perspectives, but then aligning around what it is that, you know, where we're taking the organization and how we're going to do that together and make sure that like, you know, people are getting consistent messages from us. Because if the organization sees a misalignment within, you know, the senior leaders, that creates, you know, kind of mistrust, it creates doubt, etc. Right. So that's, that's really important. And you know, we have different opportunities for engagement and for leadership when it comes to culture throughout the organization and throughout the, throughout the year. That really helps to drive the culture. Whether it's volunteer day, you know, we do a lot of volunteering as an organization, you know, so I think, as I said, it's a very multimodal approach. But the biggest, the biggest, I think, way that we actually create evangelism within the organization is when people have such a great experience at the company that they tell their friends and family. That's, you know, they tell their friends, they tell their family, they tell their customers, they tell people who. When people say, where do you work? And they say, you know what? I work at this company and I've never experienced anything like it in my entire career. Everything from, you know, the patients that were served to, you know, the, the organization and our culture and the way we show up for each other and the fact that one of our essential behaviors is we've got your back. Right. And I don't have to be worried about being misunderstood because we have an essential behavior of understand before being understood. You know, all these things that people can talk to. It really, it really makes a difference.

So with the Cultural Advisory Board, was that something that you started initially or did you realize that you needed it along the way or how did that come to, to be.

Yeah. So we worked with a great firm, the Velocity Advisory Group, and they helped us to develop our mission, our vision and our essential behaviors and you know, even our strategic priorities. And they, the, the question was, well, you know, how are we going to embed this? And they, they were like, oh, no, no, no, this is. We know exactly how to embed it. You need to have a culture advisory board. And they told us exactly, exactly how to set it up. And so we, I think we had a culture advisory board stood up In January of 21, so pretty, you know, within like six months. Five, six months of, of me starting. And yeah, it was, it was, it was really because we started initially with, you know, focusing on culture that allowed us to be able to, to do things like implement the cap and, and really embed that. So now our organization, they, they, you know, people know that the CAB is there. We had, you know, two people just recently actually had one person came to coffee with Christine a few weeks ago and they were like, you know, I'm thinking, I want to join the cab. It's, you know, I've done all these other things in the organization and I haven't done this before. And I was like, go for it. I'm like, Because I know the person. And I was just like, I think they'd be a great addition to the team. And we do like a. Every two years, we kind of, two or three years we get. We add new people to the advisory board and it kind of keeps it fresh and keeps ideas going. So it's pretty cool.

So talking about who's involved in the transformation, you, as a result ended up getting much better performance. From a revenue standpoint. That would mean something's happening in terms of customers. Right? So what role, if any, did customers have in the transformation other than being buyers or customers of your product? Was there any kind of repositioning you did with them or how did you engage them, if they were involved at all?

Yeah, so they definitely were involved. As I mentioned earlier, you know, part of my assessment of, you know, when I, when I came here and tried to get the lay of the land was spending time with customers. And once. What's very, what was very interesting is Malinta was. It was actually founded in 2000, but really no one had a kind of commercial view of the name Melinta from a customer perspective, I would say until 2018 and about 2018 is when Melinta acquired a portfolio as well as people from another company called the Medicines Company. And when I talked to customers, I had some customers who they were like, yeah, I don't even call you guys Melinta. I call you the Medicines Company. And I was like, What?

Oh, interesting. Okay.

Because, because they also have people in the field that were still kind of identifying as the medicines company. They never actually were integrated. So I was like, okay, you know, we need to define for customers, like who we are and what we stand for and, you know, why we're doing what we're doing and what role they can play in this journey to reimagine Melinta and what role they can play in delivering for patients, you know, leveraging our products. And so we have a lot of opportunities to engage with customers and when we do education. And so one, you know, a few of our customer facing people said, you know what, we are so proud of who we are now and where we're headed. And we would love to be able, at the beginning of our kind of product and education sessions, we would love to be able to give a short presentation to our customers about who we are. And I was like, I love it. And so we created content for them to be able to proudly present to our customers about the new Melinta. I also spend a lot of time, as well as other members of our executive committee, we spent a lot of time in the field with customers. That was also a very big change within the organization. And so we've had a lot of different ways to communicate who we are and invite. We also invite customers into our meetings to present and tell us about their needs. And we have a lot of collaborative sessions to see how we can develop kind of win win solutions. And that has just kind of progressed and really, I would say, as, you know, accomplish a momentum of its own, which we've been really able to leverage and see the growth as we have the customer engagement. And so now people proud. Oh boy. People want a lot of swag because they proudly represent our team, proudly represents Melinta and who we are. And our customers love to be able to see our team and hear more about what they're doing and how they can work with us to help patients.

Yeah, your team is the personification of your vision and of your mission. And that's kind of the finishing point there. So, last question, Christine, which is three words of advice. So if you were talking to another CEO and they were going to embark upon a transformation and you're having coffee with them, what, what three words or three points of advice would you give them to remember as they're doing a transformation?

Yeah, people first. People first. Put people first. And you know, and, and you can make that, you know, kind of really broad. Right. You know, you put your employees first, you Put your, Your. Your patient or your customer first. Right? Like, put people first. Right? Think about how you want to show up for people you can never lose with the strategy and, and all the great leaders that I've kind of, you know, followed and been able to have a connection with, anytime I hear their stories, it's always because they put people first. That's what drives sustainable results. Providing clarity and transparency. I would say would, you know, be the other piece of advice that I would give to a CEO, you know, just. And try to be as congruent as you possibly can. If you make mistakes, own them, because that's also living in, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know a company who does it espouse in some way to have some, you know, expectation of accountability. And it really starts with you to, to be accountable. And then maybe the last piece I would say is know your purpose. If this advice is to a CEO, know your own purpose. I believe that, you know, God has given each one of us a purpose and know your purpose and wake up every day recommitting yourself to live that purpose every day.

I mean, the purpose is the. The thing that gives us motivation, gives us drive, gives us reason, like you said, to get up every day to do what we do. And the purpose is the thing that gets beyond the surface of, you know, we just want to get certain results. Well, why is that? Right. So people will, you know, go to battle and put their sacrifice themselves for purpose, but they won't necessarily do it for results.

Right.

So that's a very big driver. Great, great point.

Absolutely. You know, people sometimes ask me, like, well, how do you. How do you, like, distinguish purpose, you know, and if purpose is supposed to be about serving others? And so actually, I was just listening to something that Jay Shetty is said about purpose the other day. He said, you know, think about the things that you are very passionate about and then kind of take that and show how can that be of service to others. That's purpose. And that's like, to your point, that's what gets people out of the bed every day. That's what gets people to, like, you know, run their fastest and to persevere and to be resilient is when they can see how they are living their purpose to accomplish whatever mission is before them.

Awesome. Great point. Christine, thank you so much for spending time with us and sharing what you did at Melinta Therapeutics and all of your experience in this area. I think these are some great enlightening points. I think everybody's going to really benefit from pulling some of these nuggets out and leveraging them. And people, purpose, mission. I mean, all very powerful points. Because when we're making change in business, it's all about people in the end. So thanks very much for being on. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to represent my amazing team at Melinta, because they're the ones that are actually making it happen every day. I just get to represent it. So thank you.

Awesome. Thanks, Christine.

Thank you.

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