I really do hate to harp on one major company's woes that are in the news, especially as I'm not a plaintiff's attorney and they are sure to do an excellent job highlighting the various ways that Merck failed to provide needed evidence regarding Vioxx research results. However, the latest bit to come out about Merck merits some discussion, if for no other reason but as guidance for other companies of all shapes and flavors about what not to say or use for lingo in your internal documents.
It was reported by the Wall St. Journal on Nov. 1 that Merck's internal documents to its Vioxx salesforce was peppered with the word "DODGE!" and seemed to imply that Merck was urging the salespeople to dodge certain questions doctors might ask about the drug's safety (subscription required for WSJ articles, but here">is a shorter, free article).
Trying to control the damage from the internal documents, Merck is now claiming that the DODGE! comments were part of a game that is played in training their salesforce. The document in question is called "Dodge Ball Vioxx," and consists of 16 pages. The first 12 pages each have a difficult question that doctor might raise, and the last four pages have a simply "DODGE!" written on them.
This is the crux of their explanation from their general counsel:
"the sales-training game was set up like the game show "Family Feud," where two teams played against each other. A person from each team would draw a card with a physician's typical question on it. The goal was to be able to answer the physician's question in the appropriate way with language consistent with the drug's label. If the representative answered correctly, the team got a point. If not, the other team got a chance. If a team member picked up a card that said "dodge," they were given a pass and weren't required to answer -- and gain a point.
The dodging of a question referred only to the game during the sales training session, not to real life, Mr. Frazier said. "Merck representatives have a reputation for answering questions based on the science," he said. "It has never been a policy of Merck to evade or dodge questions."
Now, I'm not going to get into whether it really was just some part of a training game because no matter why it was created it represents a major failure in the corporate culture in addition to displaying a valuable lesson in internal procedures. Plainly put, using verbs like "dodge," "hide," "pass," etc., when trying to come up with ways to train people to sell your product and answer relevant questions is a bad idea. No matter the intention of the game-maker, telling someone to "dodge" and reinforcing that kind of behavior by gaining points in the game rarely leads to good things (not to mention how sketchy it looks by outsiders). If you don't want your employees to dodge the hard questions when it counts (in front of the docs), then don't let them do it from the get-go. A culture that somehow thinks it is appropriate to award people for a "dodge" of the question in a game such as this likely has leaks elsewhere in its system. Or, at least, it is going to make your company look really bad in the press (and the courtroom).
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