In interview with The Leaders Council, Adelphi Group CEO pays tribute to the adaptability shown across global industry through Covid and emphasises its importance for the post-pandemic future.

The majority of 2020, and now into 2021, has seen much of the world and our very ways of life firmly in the grip of Covid-19, leaving the worldwide population and global industry with little alternative but to adapt to a raft of new risks and challenges. Much of this adapting has been seen within the healthcare industry, which has been at the sharp end of the battle to quell the virus responsible for such unprecedented change.

Adelphi Group, a leading global healthcare agency headquartered in Cheshire, is one business that has found itself having to work hard to chart a course through the pandemic storm. The agency acts as a consultant providing services to improve therapies and the lives of patients and the wider community. Adelphi typically works with pharma, biotech, the medical profession, patients, and decision-making bodies around the world.

To better understand challenges that Adelphi and the healthcare industry have found themselves during this time, The Leaders Council spoke exclusively to Stuart Cooper, who has been CEO of the company since 1998. He oversees Adelphi’s work with the top global and emerging pharma companies, based out of countries such as the US, Switzerland, Germany, France and Japan, as well the UK.

Appearing on The Leaders Council podcast to share thoughts, Cooper informed us a key element of leading all industries through the crisis thus far has been strong and robust leadership, and leadership models and strategies have been forced to adapt along with working practices.

Cooper said: “The first thing that comes to mind when we think of leadership in any context is leading by inspiration and by example. It is about inspiring those around you, not telling them what to do but inspiring to make best decisions for themselves. Also developing the right people in the right way. In this sense, leadership is so often about personal contact, listening and speaking to others, and understanding their challenges. Clearly, with the Covid challenges we have had to adapt to new ways of doing that.”
“I can honestly say our people at Adelphi have risen to the challenge of communicating via different means and are in regular touch with myself, their teams, and we continue to operate in this different virtual setting”.

“It has been seamless moving over to that remote side of working. We have an excellent Adelphi IT team who facilitated that transition for us, and we were actually ahead of the curve with it.”

Elaborating on how the group prepared itself to operate under remote procedures, Cooper added: “We had a test close-down day roughly two weeks before the initial lockdown was called. This way, we could make sure people had the right equipment appropriately installed in their homes ready to work. That voluntary lockdown day was pivotal in preparing us for the challenges ahead.”

While Adelphi has demonstrated decisive leadership in-house to work around the challenges posed, Cooper disappointingly told us, in his view, the same could not be said of central government and at times leadership could have been more decisive.

He said: “I do not think that guidance coming from ministers has been clear at all, throughout the year, with conflicting opinions. There seemed a real lack of leadership and firm guidance at times. Hence we take on the mantle ourselves and lead our own people within the environment and group.”

As a global business, Adelphi has not only had to adapt to the challenges of working around restrictions on home shores, but also those put into place by various governments abroad.

Cooper explained: “For us as a global business with important operations in places like Amsterdam and the US, we have had to keep an eye on all government activities and restrictions in place within different territories. We have had to be mindful of different jurisdictions and challenges in the places we operate in.”

“We do not know what the new normal will be like, but I am sure we will continue to adapt to it. We remain active during the pandemic because healthcare physicians worldwide, including the opinion leaders, general practitioners and hospital specialists cover a range of challenges going beyond respiratory illnesses or infection. It is about oncology, cardiovascular, rare diseases and more. The healthcare profession wants to continue to provide patients in these areas with the best and most up-to-date care and that is contingent on trials going ahead, real world investigations, economic evaluation, and studies being published to allow the profession to take the best decisions. We have been so busy as has the industry in fighting to get all of this going again and as we emerge differently from the pandemic; we will play our part as we always have”.

In Cooper’s eyes, the amelioration of Covid-19 as an immediate danger to our physical health will not work as a magic bullet, and instead the legacy of the pandemic will be felt for some time to come. Leaders must continue to lead by example and find a way through.
“Even when the virus is reduced, there will be large-scale mental health challenges. The issue of mental health awareness and therapy was being raised pre-Covid and we were bringing it into our company ethos and onto our agenda. Similarly, diversity was already on our agenda, but it has been rapidly moved up the agenda with the traction around the Black Lives Matter movement last year.”

“In the future, we have to truly make sure we are doing things and not simply talking about doing them.”

One of the pieces of decisive action Cooper wishes to see from world leaders is to ensure positive relationships, irrespective of Brexit. Our scientists and health services have independently done a great job, and we don’t need silly arguments over ownership and distribution of vaccines.

“Come what may we need to focus on establishing positive relationships with Europe and the World.”