From Pharma to Future: How Bold Leadership Transformed Pluri

The one thing that is also connected to your previous question about the culture of the organization, employees believe what the management is saying. They believe what I said because they know that I will never tell them anything that I don't believe in, and even if it's something which is not nice to hear or not easy, I'm going to be very transparent and share it with them. So they feel that they know what's going on. They feel that they're part of the organization. They feel that it belongs to them. I think that's the essence. We want to make sure that we belong to something, to trust it, and to be ourselves. Plur is a very, very safe place to be for the employees. I have, you know, I'm blessed to have a dominant power of quite a lot of female managers or women managers in our company, and I always tell them none of you is here because you are women or anything else. You're here because you are excellent managers. So they know, and the one thing that they always ask top management is to be yourself, because you are just at your best when you are yourself. So don't hide behind anything. Just be yourself and find the right way to do it, and people feel very comfortable to work with the company because they can be themselves. And as I tell all the guys, nobody in the world is better at being yourself than you. So please be at your best and try to make things happen. They appreciate that, and that bonds us together. So they care about the company, they care about us, they care about me, I care about them. So it's the feeling that we have a strong business commitment to the company and our shareholders, but we are working as one.

Thank you very much for this. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Well, I kind of remember it as if it was this morning. I always valued culture and we built Plur as a company that allows our employees, I believe, to be at their best, but as you said, it was something that we were doing and we were doing culture like most of the companies, and the culture organization which was strong. The day that I understood that this is probably the most powerful tool that I have in my bag as the CEO. So it was during COVID. It was a rough time, if you remember, it looks like a different world or a different era, but it was only five years ago during COVID. Part of it was massive layoffs through Israel, I think globally people just lost their jobs because companies couldn't operate. And very early in the process, I took the management team and we told them we're not going to fire anyone, but we need to protect the company. So we're going to do some serious cuts to our salaries, starting with me. So I'm going to take 50% off my salary and the VPs need to take 30% off, and the lower management will do 25% off, while we're going to protect the employees that are making relatively less money. It was a rough thing. People were very worried, people were nervous. Nobody knew what's going to happen around the corner, and the decision first of all that we're not going to lay off anyone but we still maintain our cash flow was something quite interesting. And the day was one of the management meetings, we have weekly management meetings that we are following certain procedures, and one of the employees stepped in and told me, 'Yaky, can you bring the management team down? We want to show you something.' And we actually stepped down, all of us management team, and all the 120 employees of the company just been there cheering to us, clapping their hands, and they gave all of us a beautiful note to say their appreciation that from one hand we're able to protect the company while maintaining our KPIs and OKRs. And from that moment, that was one of the biggest successes. We had some great opportunities during COVID that the company survival improved during COVID, but that was the day that they understood and they told us, 'We are here for you. I mean, you trusted in us, you didn't let anyone out, and you earned the trust, so we are here for you to do whatever is needed.' And that was like a pure moment of joy in a career as a manager. You say that's quite amazing. Since then, I know that they will be there for anything that we need because we also earned the trust. It's not a one event process over two decades, but that was a one point in time that I can really measure and understand the impact of it on the company.

Well, you should see our facility. We are surrounded by all these giants. We have Google and Apple and Intel and all the big names that you can think of are actually in our semi-industrial park. I believe it's the combination that from one hand, it's very clear the vision of this company and what we like to achieve, and for me as a manager and my management team, we are very transparent about what's going on. The employees truly feel they're part of the company. And one of the things that I insist is that every employee, after three months of employment, they're going to be part of the plan, so all of them are actually shareholders. And one of the ways that I speak with the employees and also ask my management to do it as well: speak with employees as partners, not only as employees. They are part of the company, they own the company, they hold the stock, so that's their company, and that's something that they need to understand in the decision making. That's your company, make it work. And it's not that you're getting this salary and that's it, so you need to act that way, but also to provide the means, like make sure that all of them will own part of the company. That's something that we do. I'm very blessed with extremely talented management team and HR team that of course we work across the entire year with employees and making sure that we are able to make them at their best, both professionally and on the personal level. But the one thing that is also connected to your previous question about the culture of the organization: employees believe what the management is saying. They believe what I said because they know that I will never tell them anything that I don't believe in, and even if it's something which is not nice to hear or not easy, I'm going to be very transparent and share it with them. So they feel that they know what's going on. They feel that they're part of the organization. They feel that it belongs to them. I think that's the essence. We want to make sure that we belong to something, to trust it, and to be ourselves. Plur is a very, very safe place to be for the employees. And I have, you know, I'm blessed to have a dominant power of quite a lot of female managers or women managers in our company, and I always tell them: none of you is here because you are women or anything else. You're here because you are excellent managers. So they know, and the one thing that they always ask top management is to be yourself, because you are just at your best when you are yourself. So don't hide behind anything. Just be yourself and find the right way to do it, and people feel very comfortable to work with the company because they can be themselves. And as I tell all the guys, nobody in the world is better at being yourself than you. You know, please be at your best and try to make things happen. They appreciate that, and that bonds us together. So they care about the company, they care about us, they care about me, I care about them. So it's the feeling that we have a strong business commitment to the company and our shareholders, but we are working as one. And that's something which is the culture of the organization. It's about earning the trust of the employees, not any small things.

Yes. That's the make them will make them want to be successful and that the company will be successful.

That was a bold move. It wasn't an easy one. It's been about three years ago when we made a decision to focus on Pluri's key competitive advantage. Pluri is a company that for over two decades is expert in developing products starting with cell-based products for pharmaceutical, but this is what we do: developing cell-based products for a variety of today for different industries. The company had a legacy of developing placenta cell products for therapeutics, which is quite an amazing and unique product, which is going to make a very significant impact on the way that we are treating human beings. But years ago, we understood that we thought for 15 years we are a pharmaceutical company, but Pluri is actually a technological company that our key competitive advantage is the knowledge base of how to develop cell-based products, and we are holding this bioreactor system which is protected by 250 patents, which is probably the most effective system in the world for expanding cells. And after seeing what we did to date and understanding that the company of course needs to be successful financially, that was the minute that we did the transformation, changing entirely the company from 15 years doing pharma only to using the same platform to create different cell-based products that can be pharmaceutical product, cultivated meat, or plant-based product like coffee, cocoa. But no, that was a big shift because people say, you know, people were recruited to Pluri for saving lives. That was the mission. And I know still, you know, that's a very novel thing to do. But making this shift was a two months process. That's the longest two months I had in my life. Really, it was a nightmare, I can tell.

Yeah, but that was like the intense and you know everything. Everything starts with a good crisis, and this case was a failure in one of the Phase three studies. And as Churchill said, it's a waste not to be able to use a good crisis to make a change. But that was the time that we said we're going to need to make things differently. We're going to make this company profitable. We're going to use our key competitive advantage to be the best in the world in what we are doing. And it's something that started with the management team to make the buy-in from the board level to the management team. I had a clear vision from day one. You know, I just saw it what need to be done. I prepared it, but it takes time to communicate and to make sure that there's going to be a buy-in into it. And I'm very stubborn but very patient. And even though you know, it's part of that I can say, 'This is what we do, let's start tomorrow to do it,' I rather sometimes take the long path and to make sure that everyone eventually will be in line or understand the rationale of what we are doing, even if it's going to take longer. And it started with the management team to show them the vision, the concept, starting from scratch, and to show them what we need to achieve and when and why. I believe this is so important: transforming the big opportunity that we have in front of us. And yes, pharma is an amazing thing, and creating stem cells for therapeutics is amazing; we're still going to do it but in a different scope while we're going to use the same platform for additional applications. First in kind, nobody is doing it. I mean, that's the only company that was crazy enough to think of something like this. But we said and I expanded the rationale with a lot of backed by the way that I see the roadmap, the way that I see the market, the opportunity, the need in our key competitive advantage. And I was keep asking my management team: 'What is the one thing that we can be the best in the world? Not second, not third. I want to be the best in the world. Show me the one thing that we can do.' And eventually through this process, we came to the conclusion that this is what we are the best in the world. We are the best cell-based technology platform in the world. We can create different cells. It can be human cells, animal cells, plant cells. This is what we know to do. We can create a product and to provide the technology to do it on a very large scale. And when you start to imagine and to see how it's going to look in the future, people start to realize that. Not easy at all. But it was very intensive two months, and probably took a year until it was fully incorporated into the new DNA of the company. This is also the time when I made the change in the name of the company from Plurist to Pluri, you know, just scrap four letters, but it was a big difference. And that was the challenge that we did non-traditional, but we're not traditional guys, so I don't care as long as it makes sense and the business is going to be there and I can convince that that can be the best company in the world in what we are doing. I love it, and we're going to pursue it.

Yeah, that was probably the most difficult thing to do. When people say, 'I was recruited for doing only pharma, so why do you think that making coffee in a bioreactor is a mission that I should do?' And it started from all levels actually, from the board of directors because we are talking about the employees, but you need also to manage the culture from the board of directors. Yes, I agree with that by the way as a good statement. So I did quite an interesting outing to this concept on the first board meeting, basically telling them: 'Guys, you know, for 15 years we thought that we are a pharmaceutical company, but we are actually a technological company.' And they were looking at me, they said, 'What do you mean?' And I started to show them the assets that we have in the company, and these are the assets that we have. These are our assets which are more relevant for a technological company, not necessarily a pharmaceutical company, and this is our key competitive advantage. Getting them to the SWOT of the company, getting them to the vision, and the way I see it, and that was brutal. So first of all, making sure that I'm going to have the consent from the board to push it forward. But for me, even more importantly was the management team. This is like the heart of the company. And if I'm able to convince my management team, they will convince all my employees. It was important for me to convince them, not to instruct them, to show them what they see. And that was like a day by day for two months. I literally stopped all the activity of the company. All the activity, we told the employees, I mean things that need to be done, but that was the only thing that the management team was doing for two months. They screamed, they yelled, they couldn't believe that I'm getting them through this process, but I was very consistent. And we actually discussed it day in and day out of what and see where we see the advantages, the risk, and do we believe that we can build a profitable business and a company that can change the world. And suddenly, even expanding the purpose of the company or the vision from only pharma, we said okay, now we are actually tackling much more than that. We're talking well-being, sustainability. We're going to be the one that will be able to face challenges like climate change because we need to produce product differently. So we actually expanded, I always say we expanded biotechnology. We thought that it's only pharmaceutical biotechnology, no, but biotechnology is everywhere. It's in food, it's in plants, it's everywhere. This is the thinking about the source, the nature of this planet, and the different organisms, and we play on the cellular level. And that's quite amazing to see the creation and what we can do with the technology in order to promote it and to give solutions to human beings. And for me, it's all the same thing. And yeah, I got a lot of pushback during these two months, definitely.

Um, so of course you need to start. It's been a process, and not all the management team was able to accept it in a similar way, and I knew. So for example, my CTO, which is a great technological guy, we discussed this concept even ahead of time. So I mean, we started to build this vision around, and I told him this is what I see and this is what I think the main power of what we are doing. I need to know that you're going to be part of it and actually understand the vision. And very quickly, I was able to get his buy-in, and for me, that was a very, very critical point. And then like one by one, and you need to understand how it's going to impact the company and how it's going to change their life or their vision or their importance in the company. Think of a company, Pluri or then Plurist, used to run two Phase three studies for regenerative medicine. The clinical department, R&D department, we were at their peak, I mean this is what we were doing. And as part of the decision that I made, it's not only changing the vision, it was also followed by very difficult steps like I'm going to terminate the Phase three studies that I believe are not the right one for us. That was a very, very significant and very not easy thing to do also for themselves. But the concept was first of all, build the teams that can work. It's not all the team working together. So we actually built the teams that are doing the assessment of each and every part of the strategy and where what can we achieve. And I'm saying 'based technology platform', okay, what the hell does it mean? I mean, what I'm going to do with that? It's a nice phrasing, but what we're going to sell tomorrow? So identifying the industries, doing the analysis, bringing our analysts to come with real figures, real numbers, what is the potential, where is the competition, building the strategy itself, looking at the long-term vision and strategy of the company, what how it's going to be defined, and what will be the business model that we're going to operate. So we had a lot of small teams working together that every few hours came together and presented the work. We called it the Phoenix Project. That was the name of the project. Like Phoenix, I told them we need to burn Plurist and get birth again to Pluri. It's a really unique experience. I mean, for me, it was the most amazing things that I did in my life as a manager. Very rough, you learn a lot about yourself, about your team, about what is important to you and the company. It was quite a unique experience.