The Orchestrator
Scaling people and moving parts into one working whole.
Alex Gorsky reads as The Orchestrator because leading Johnson and Johnson meant channelling an extraordinarily complex network of stakeholders, divisions, and partners into coherent outcomes. A company spanning consumer, pharmaceutical, and medtech sectors across more than 250 subsidiaries demands relational coordination as much as executive authority, and Gorsky supplied both.
“Or should we evolve the purpose and what should be done? And they said, gosh, that sounds like something that the governance committee should deal with. And so that was given to me as a mission to say, hey, what should we do? And look, we looked very broadly. We reached out to a lot of stakeholders.”
“Just questions, but that we actually find better very specific pathways to find out what it is that we can be diagnosed with so we can get the right kind of treatment in the right kind of care.”
“Sure. Yes, I was leading up the governance committee for the business roundtable at the time, and we had a discussion that started among the leadership of the VRT. And actually emanated from some criticism that we were receiving probably rightfully so from those who would go to our website.”
“Well, look, as we all know, success has so many different faces for everybody. But in my case, look, it boiled down to one, you know, frankly being able to be a good family member, a good husband, good father, because that's just such an important part of my life. I come from a big family. I have five brothers and sisters.”
The David Rubenstein Show: “Alex Gorsky”
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