The primary job of a CEO isn’t just the face of

The primary job of a CEO isn’t just the face of the company. It’s defining the strategy and setting the direction of the company. It’s evaluating “events on the ground” and interpreting them as either “stay the course” or “change course”. Sound simple ? Well NP did just this last year in the Spring. When Covid hit , he could have decided to stick to “ our bread and butter” of HIV and cancer or go all in on Covid. Then came Covid..This was a huge decision which may make him a hero or a goat. The learning curve was big. Will the FDA change how they do business to fight a pandemic. Will trials be sped up to get drugs to market . If we get approved will we have a decent amount of inventory? Do we have the money or do we need to borrow to do all of this?
So he jumped in head first. The early results are poor to mixed . We found out the bureaucracy of the government health care agencies were stuck in the mud and were not very flexible in altering their current procedures. Bad drugs got EUAs , good drugs from small companies were back burnered because of the risk averse nature of the fda. Go with big Pharma!. We also have been 2 steps behind in the virus in other nations. But we did get a solid baseline from cd10 to structure our LH phase 2 trial. Preliminary results are strong with the detail and remainder of the analysis due out very soon. The Brazil trial kicks off this week . And the delta variant is on the rise in countries who have poor vaccination track records which means another wave may be coming.
So the jury is out but it must play out to the end .Lincoln could have thrown in the towel to Jefferson Davis by the end of 1862 because the South was pummeling the North. But Lincoln hung in there, ended up deploying great generals including US Grant, and the rest is history.
A strong phase 3 preliminary result down the line may bring in parallel, an EUA for LH. The pressure is mounting on this crisis and will get airplay. Brazilis still a mess and we have a good idea how the trial will come out now as we have tuned the trials for covid.
But if it all fails , NP will have failed because the shift in strategy he implemented would have failed
So this was a Long story but the short of it is, the most important role of a CEO is the strategy and it’s success or failure. The face of the company is not the measuring stick..