The show’s guest in this episode is Mark Sherkey. He’s a retired US Army colonel. And he’s currently serving in Johnson and Johnson’s experienced military veteran leadership development program. They bring in people who are really good leaders in one context. And then they put them into different contexts within J and J. And they help them develop as leaders in the corporate world. His last role that he did was the director for global commercial strategy.

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Experimenting with Long-Term Strategy with Mark Sherkey

Hi there, it’s so great to be with you live today, I think thinking about leadership, and I’ve been thinking about, you know, curating our own experience, but as humans and as leaders, and as leaders, it also sort of translates to Curie at curating the experience of our direct reports. So I know that when I, when I book a trip or do something, for myself, I get really hungry for the best experience. I’m getting on a plane and going to New York. This weekend, I managed to get Hamilton tickets right when Broadway opens. So I’m pretty excited about that. And we’re going to, uh, we’re going to go to Aqua VT and the restaurant there. And then I wanted to sort of curate some spaces, I’m going with my husband, and I just really wanted to have some spaces where we could wander, we could think we could talk, we could go to the bar downstairs. I just like any I wanted a world of infinite possibilities. And so I’ve been thinking about that. And I’ve also been thinking about like, this is the first trip we’ve taken together as a couple, just for fun, since January of 2020. So it’s been a really long time. And so, you know, I think about where I’m thrifty and where I’m not. And I just decided while we’re checking bags, because that makes it easier and and then what will we do? How will we get to the airport, you know, all of those little parts of it. But this translates to leadership, because we’re always curating the experience of the people below us. What what do we want it to feel like to work for us? And I think about you know, it’s a tough market right now, for employers like it’s there’s employee shortages, there’s people looking for new jobs, everybody, I just read a statistic that said that 70% of people believe they’re underpaid right now. And that’s exactly what I’m hearing from my one on one clients right now. They feel like they’re underpaid, which I think is really interesting. And, and so in this market, one thing that we can do as leaders, is to curate a positive work environment. And the same things I think about on my trip about how I want it to feel apply to how, you know, we take a minute to talk to somebody at work. It isn’t just tactical, or super gritty, every time we get together. I am really conscious of saying to my team members, how are you how’s your family, what’s going on in your life, and they want the opportunity to share those things. And it’s super important, because I want the people that work with me to feel great about the work that they do. I also want them to have as much responsibility as they possibly can. That’s part of curating their experience. So I just thought it was fun going into the holidays, just to think about how we curate our own experiences. And then I just want to challenge you to think about how you’re curating the experience of those in your organization.

And I’m super excited about our guest today. His name is Mark Sherkey, and he’s a retired US Army colonel. And he’s currently serving in Johnson and Johnson’s experienced military veteran leadership development program. And so this is the coolest program. So they bring in people who are really good leaders in one context. And then they put them into different contexts within J&J. And they help them develop as leaders in the corporate world. And I’m not going to go into all the areas that he’s done. But he is his last role that he did was the director for global commercial strategy. So I want to talk to him a little bit about strategy today. 

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And Mark, it is so great to have you on my show.

Thanks, Melanie. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

It’s great to have you we I think we met on LinkedIn. And I just thought you were so interesting that I wanted to invite you to be here on my podcast, and we just really had a chat. There was no purpose to it. It was really just talking. And I guess that’s a shout out to anybody who wants to reach out to have a chat with me. You might end up on my podcast, but more than that, we might, you know, learn something about each other. And I’m always up for those kinds of connections. I would love to just dive in Mark, what have you been up to with work and with leadership? Tell me a little bit about your journey.

A lot. Thank you for asking that. Melanie. So you mentioned previously that I’m a part of the what they call the EMV LDP program. Think of That is the older people with gray hair that have served in the military kind of 20 plus years retired officers noncommissioned officers, we go through an interview process. And it’s right now they’re taking basically about four per cohort. We’ve already I was in the first cohort in the first one going through this program, and then there’s another cohort behind us, and another cohort will come later. And so what they do, which I think is just phenomenal, is they place each of us based off of our own skillset and talents into different areas of the business, whether in this case, I am on the Ansan, pharmaceutical side, where someone else could be on potentially, in another area where it could be consumer, or it could be medical device. And we’re all put into different leadership roles. And it’s more of a constantly learning and getting more familiar with their language, but still seeing the similarities between our previous roles. And so we can kind of understand where they are and that building out of a strategy.

Well, and I’m super curious when I hear about this program. How has it been for you? How’s it working?

It’s, so let me tell you a little bit more about the program. It is for the EMV ODP, folks, we have two nine to 12 month rotations, again, different parts of the company. And after the second to like little, maybe a little mini third rotation, then at that point, we’re going to try to land in role inside the company. And so this is kind of a we’ll call it a lot a somewhat of a long lead. Time to come in to get be a part of the J&J is culture, live by the credo and at the same time, be able to get the necessary skill sets within our kitbag at that point, and then continue on to serve and apply our leadership styles and methodology to their problem sets.

I think this is fascinating, because we’re talking about long term strategy and a two year training program or two years, you know, introduction period is certainly a long term strategy. In terms of onboarding someone, what do you think J&J gets while you’re in that two year program?

What they get is someone that has 2025 plus years of leadership experience in all kinds of different environments and settings, knows how to manage time knows how to manage policy, right strategy, lead, and train others and truly senior leaders of all services, we know how to manage talent and mitigate risk.

Well, I think the what they saw was that there was a gap. And also, I think they saw that there was a tremendous opportunities slash pipeline into the company, if they actually looked at senior military folks, because I know a lot of other companies. And I’ve been wanting to try to help stand up a lot of different programs with other companies in the past. They’re more tailored toward the junior ranks coming in. And then they want you to start at the bottom and move all the way up, which, which makes sense for some companies, J&J took a kind of a different approach. They also do the junior level, too. So this is the first time they’re doing now more at a senior level. And what they get is someone that has 2025 plus years of leadership experience in all kinds of different environments and settings, knows how to manage time knows how to manage policy, right strategy, lead, and train others and truly senior leaders of all services, we know how to manage talent and mitigate risk. And so those two key things, I think, is why they’re bringing us into the company.

And how do you find like, it’s a huge investment in you. I just had a question that popped into my head, which was, how are you received by other people at J&J who don’t get that kind of investment?

Well, the beauty of J&j is they have a lot of we’ll call LDP, leadership development programs and EMV LDP is just another LDP program. It’s certainly unique. But all LDB programs are unique. So we don’t try to we’re very humble. We’re very excited to be a part of their team. But it I think they’re used to having different LDPE. So it’s not so much of a shift in mindset, or like who are you and how did you get here though, when people ask me my journey, my journey is kind of a little not the anomaly. And so they think it’s kind of cool, and they’re excited to see what I can bring to them.

I think it’s kind of cool too. And I have to chuckle I did some work in J&J A few years ago. And I have to chuckle at the acronyms like nobody does acronyms better than J&J.

Oh my gosh, that is one of the hardest parts of our transition. Is it? The first meeting I said in I think one person, you seven acronyms and one Senate and I just raised my hand and said, I have no idea what you just said, then so they were kind enough to tell me what they said. But from that point on, I kind of got myself a little coach that kind of helped me through the acronym process. And every time you move to another rotation, it’s more acronyms. And sometimes acronyms look the same as the previous but they’re different. It is definitely a new language.

Yeah, I, I know that language. And I’m curious what you’ve noticed, as you know, you’re skilling up within an organization, you already had a lot of skills. I’m sort of interested in the pedagogy of all this, like, what did you know, you knew? What did you not know that you didn’t know? You know, what, what’s all of that? What do you what did you learn in this process.

But when I talked to a lot of transitioning service members, and I try to help them as they go through their transition process, and so I’m already on the other side of the curtain. And it’s scary going through transition. But the what, what I have been able to do, in the very most simplest terms is kind of divide everything into kind of three groups, which are exactly the same from my previous environment, the military, to a J&J environment. The first category is about people. And no matter where you are, you’re going to be about influencing people, you’re going to be about potentially leading people. But ultimately, you got to communicate with people. The second is process. And so the military has our military decision making process, we have our processes for supply chain or for whatever different types of things we’re going to do. Well, J&J has their process. And so what we try to do is use J&J words into their process, but we understand and map it in our head is from our previous roles. And then the third is delivery. So it’s people process delivery and the delivery aspects. From the military, we would, you could see as deliver humanitarian aid to certain parts of the world, you could also see is delivering unique type of capabilities, sometimes lethal, sometimes non lethal. But ultimately, we were delivering some sort of resource or capability to change conditions and environment. And what will I see a J&J is specifically on this product that we’re working on. Now, there is a delivery of either goods, drugs, cell therapies into the market, and where in the past, I may have been trying to go after terrorists are terrorists here is cancer. And so we are trying to apply these types of things into a cancer role, at least in the area that I’m working.

I think that’s really interesting. I want to shift gears for just a minute. And your last role was in long term strategy. I think it’s in our title today that we wanted to talk about experimenting with long term strategy. I think strategy is something that you did a lot of in your military career as well. I’m not even sure exactly the right question to ask you, Mark. And I think that was pretty much my job today. But um, I can help you. Yeah. What should I be asking you about one strategy and how it applies to leadership?

Strategy I see as like an overall overarching framework. That may be we’ll call it longer in duration than a plan. Some people have seen it written, you know, five years plus is strategy less than that’s plans.

Well, I think that’s the perfect question. I think a lot of people get confused between strategy and plans. Strategy I see as like an overall overarching framework. That may be we’ll call it longer in duration than a plan. Some people have seen it written, you know, five years plus is strategy less than that’s plans. But I mean, that’s not kind of how I look at it. Here at J&J, I mean, they there’s probably three or four years on the left side before they even get their product approved from the FDA. And then there is the strategy posts that to actually launch it into different communities, whether global or or write domestically in the military. And both of these, I believe there’s an art and a science to this. The art is understanding how to describe and explain to senior leaders as to the complexities of the environment you’re working in. Because there’s a lot of tensions, there’s a lot of things moving, not everything stable. So writing something. Normally as soon as you write it, it’s obsolete because the environment has changed. The way we have to write in long term strategy for senior leaders is really being able to help them understand kind of what the root cause is. based off of the research we’ve done, and at the same time, be able to come up with good assumptions, as well as just tell the senior or the strategic sponsor, these are the unknowns that we still do not know. But there are ways that we can get after to make those unknowns known. And ultimately, what we’re trying to do is provide senior leaders with plausible options, not putting them in a box, but trying to describe and explain through apotheosis as to where we think we are in time, how long we think it will take before we can actually do something positive, or do something to counter a competitors type of an advantage. And at the same time, at what points in time, would that strategic leader need to commit resources? And so that’s one of the first questions senior leaders always want is when do I have to make a decision? When do I have to commit something? And how much do I have to commit when I do it. And so thinking that way, we’re trying to provide them what I would call a light and a heavy touch. And that could be again, all peaceful, or it could be looking at a competitive environment where there’s already multiple drugs or gene cell therapies in the market. And now you’re getting ready to be second or third into the market. So not everybody’s probably going to want you there. So therefore, what is the communication to external stakeholders? What is the communication internally? What types of marketing campaigns? How do we gain market access? Or our supply chains sets? At what point will we outrun our supply lines, you know, all of these different things, so that we can kind of be able to describe and explain that to a senior leader to where they can then visualize the environment they’re operating in, or come back and tell us I understand that’s what you think we’re operating in. But there’s some other things here you’ve left out, and then that is a dialogue between us so that the planners can go back and plan and keep keep us moving? Because a plan is always in draft, a strategy is always in draft, you’re constantly updating it based off of the new information you find.

I love this idea of when do you have to commit resources? Because it kind of is an idea until that moment? You know, that’s the decision point for leaders is, okay, yeah, we’re gonna, and there’s a feeling of leaping, I see it in contracts I write and things like that. There’s, somebody can know, they’re gonna hire me. And things will sit on their desk until that moment that they leave as soon as they leap. There’s a commitment of resources. And I think that’s true that there’s an edge to that commitment of resources.

The key for the planner, or the strategist to the strategic sponsor, which could be a senior director could be a vice president, it could be a commanding general. But the ultimate thing is, is where how far in advance will we know that we have to commit resources then or change direction. And so those early warnings in the military, we would call trip players, I mean, just  you know, as to okay, we now know, something has entered our space and is going to do something, or here in a business setting. We know that all of a sudden, someone just received their FDA approval, and now they’re in a market faster than we thought they would be. So we kind of have to use the market access lane to be able to what we would call the intelligence field in the military to be able to kind of understand what is happening around us. And what are we actually doing at the same time? And does one gain an advantage over the other?

Well, in and I’ll just say here, from a coach perspective, I watched people come up against these times when they have to commit resources. And if you’re actually looking to increase your impact, if you can study this reaction in yourself, to slow down when you have to commit resources, like if you can overcome your fear in that one area, you can actually move many things forward more quickly, and increase your own impact. Now, that means you have access to the resources and a zero sum game with resources is often a different problem.

I mean, you can think of FEMA planning when a natural disaster happens. And you know, when you hear that the President has signed a certain bill that allows or emergency declaration that allows FEMA to move resources for before the event is already occurred. What is the same kind of mentality for us, both here in pharma, as well as in the military, and it’s a different different type of resource.

It’s true for every veteran prisoner, anybody who manages a budget, you know that there’s that moment in time where you have to commit resources and who you are you define who you are as a leader, how in how you approach that moment.

The key to that is to being able to have time to build these plans outside of and an actual. Let’s say, crisis situation or an event, you gives you time to think through this more in rational terms, and at the same time, be able to actually what we would call taking a red team, someone looking at the lens from an opposite view, that could then help us make better decisions.

I think that’s really cool. Um, is there any place that people can find you, Mark, if they want to talk about leadership more? Or is this something you want? I don’t know. Ask for.

My name is on LinkedIn. Feel free to connect with me there. I’d be glad to entertain anybody’s questions or just have a conversation.

Well, it has been amazing to have you on today. It’s been so much fun to talk to you. Thank you so much for your generosity and sharing your journey.

Thank you. I appreciate it. It’s been a pleasure. Hope you bring me back some time.

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Well, I’d love to hear what happens next in your journey. It’s I’m it’s great to have you. Well, I’ve been talking with Mark Sherkey, and I’ve loved our conversation. And I love that he differentiated between strategy and plans. Because I kind of hate strategic plans. It’s like they are out of date. The second that you do them because you’ve made a plan based on the current condition. But then your plans need to change because every time you start implementing whatever the plan is, the whole system changes. So in my book, The experimental leader, I talked about strategic intents. That’s the framework that I like to think of in terms of strategy that will help you have an intent to move forward and intent about what you want to do and then you have operational intents to move things like the budgeting process forward. I also would love to give you a FREE KATA CARD. If you have been reading the book and you want to practice the concepts of the experimental leader and you can just send me an email at melanie@experimentalleader.com, and I will send that out to you. It’s been great being with you today. Go experiment.

Important Links: 

• Mark Sherkey – LinkedIn

Mark Sherkey

Mark Sherkey is a retired U.S. Army Colonel currently serving in Johnson & Johnson’s Experienced Military Veteran Leader Development Program (EMVLDP). Within this program, Mark was selected to serve on the Janssen North America Crisis Management Team for Business Continuity Operations during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Later he served as a Strategic Business Improvement Director assigned to Oncology, where he served as the deputy to the Cilta-cel Market Access Workstream lead and later moved into the role responsible for the overall North America Cilta-cel project launch lead. Currently, Mark serves as a Director for Global Commercial Strategy, assigned to global marketing and to the global launch of Cilta-cel.

Throughout his 25 years of active-duty military service, Mark has been selectively entrusted with the most complex and arduous assignments spanning both command and staff tours in the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. In these assignments, Mark has served as a Battalion Commander, Regional Director, Chief of Staff, Strategist and a Senate Liaison. Mark has led, managed and directed organizations in scale from four to twelve directly reporting managers in a matrix organization; as well as, written plans and lean strategies to increase operational capabilities and efficiencies, and to reduce process lead times.

Mark has routinely been sought after for his maturity, breadth of knowledge and ability to effectively communicate with senior military leaders, executives, congressional members and staff regarding policy, security and compliance related issues. In command positions, he embraced significant transformation and growth to the mission, organizational structure and programs. His portfolio consisted of managing human resources, operations, intelligence, strategic communications and supply-chain functions while mitigating risks to service delivery, infrastructure and community relations.

His education, training, and global experiences have informed his decision making and has been further enriched by his selection to represent senior leaders in multiple high-profile engagements where messaging, delivery, coordination and allocation of resources were critical and information remained fluid and often ambiguous. Throughout Mark’s career, he has passionately focused on developing people leaders through active talent management and fostering cultures of learning and growth.

Mark holds multiple degrees including a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Virginia Tech, Masters of Public Policy from Georgetown University, Masters of Business Administration from Murray State University, Masters of Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College and a Masters of Military Science from the Command and General Staff College. Mark has served three tours in Iraq and one tour in both Afghanistan and Korea. His most notable military service awards and decorations include three Bronze Star Medals, the Ranger Tab and the Czech Minister of Defense Service Abroad Medal for commanding multiple Czech units in combat. Mark additionally serves as a Character Does Matter Mentor for the Travis Manion Foundation, an advisor to the CFA Society of New York Veteran Roundtable, and an Advisory Board Member to the Training and Consulting Consortium, LLC.

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