Good morning.
Our guest this week on the Leadership Next podcast was an ex-CEO whose career I consider to be a profile in courage. So allow me to take a little more space than usual to share some of what he had to say. He is Kenneth Frazier, former CEO of Merck, who held that job for 10 years before retiring in 2021 and joining General Catalyst. Here’s the story he told about his first year on the job:
“I took over Merck January 1, 2011. At that time, Wall Street was encouraging CEOs in the biopharmaceutical industry not to invest in R&D. There was a company called Valeant, you’ll remember, whose stock was going through the roof, and their philosophy was we don’t invest in science, we invest in management.
