I help organisations figure out what their customers actually need, then build the systems to measure and improve it.

Currently, Manager Citizen Experience at Gemeente Den Haag, but my background is all over the map: 20 years across healthcare, consulting, and public sector. I've managed teams from 3 to 130+ people in 50+ countries, and I'm still figuring out what works and what doesn't.

I write a weekly newsletter called "Don't Mind Rick" about leadership and creativity. I've swum across the IJsselmeer multiple times, which is approximately 25km. I believe the best systems are invisible—they get out of your way so you can focus on what matters.

Dutch, English, and German speaker. Direct communicator who values evidence over eloquence.

I'm genuinely interested in conversations about customer experience, measurement challenges, public-sector innovation, and why most productivity tools create more work than they solve. Let's grab coffee if any of that resonates—I mean, actual coffee or tea, not a sales pitch disguised as networking.

Rick Mans

Leadership | Strategy | International Marketing | Digital Health | Marketing | Product Development | Digital Marketing | Customer Experience | Business Development

Most HealthTech and MedTech companies don’t fail because of weak products — they fail because their commercial story is broken. I help CEOs and PE firms fix the clarity gaps that stall revenue and traction. 

And no amount of marketing spend, sales hiring, or inbound/outbound activity can fix a flaw in the foundation. You cannot execute your way out of a clarity problem.

I spent 24 years leading commercialization at Roche, watching strong technologies stall for one reason: the teams lacked Commercial Clarity.

Now I help Founders, C-suite, and PE firms fix the root causes of stalled growth:

❌ Selling to the wrong ICP
❌ Leading with clinical accuracy instead of economic value
❌ Chasing pilots with no path to paid contracts
❌ Running GTM motions that don’t match buyer behavior

I built Genevius Health Advisors to deliver what most consultants don’t:
A systematic commercial operating system that creates the clarity required for early traction, repeatable revenue, and investor confidence.

My methodology and product, the Commercial Clarity Engine, installs the prioritized ICP, economic narrative, and sequenced GTM structure needed to accelerate growth in 30–45 days.

If your product is strong but revenue isn’t scaling, you're not facing a sales problem.
You’re facing a clarity gap.

Let’s fix it.

Jim Lefevere

After some personal reflection and synthesizing 30 articles and close to 80,000 words I have written on LinkedIn over the last 10 years, it all boils down to this (at least professionally). 

#HealthcareTransformation #LifeSciences #MedTech #DigitalHealth
 #AIinHealthcare #HealthcareStrategy #B2Human
 #Leadership #Innovation #ChangeManagement #HealthEcosystems

Commercial Clarity for Medtech & HealthTech | Former Roche Commercial Leader | Fixing ICP, Narrative & GTM Breakdowns for CEOs & PE Firms | Genevius Health Advisors

Over the last decade, I have written roughly thirty articles, or about 75,000 words in total, trying to make sense of what I have lived and witnessed 

Open article: A Personal Manifesto: Designing for Humans in a System That Forgot Them by Jim Lefevere • 6 min read

A Personal Manifesto: Designing for Humans in a System That Forgot Them

Psst. I'll let you in on a learning. Pharma doesn’t buy software the way Silicon Valley sells it.

Yet most AI vendors still price like it’s SaaS — per seat, per month — and wonder why adoption stalls.

Meanwhile, privacy, security, and MLR aren’t “checklist items.” They are table stakes. 

See my article based on what I have learned over the last 18 months. 

#Pharma #MedTech #AI #DigitalTransformation #Compliance #ChangeManagement #CommercialExcellence

Here’s the other side of the story: even great AI dies in procurement if you price it like generic SaaS and bolt compliance on at the end. If you want

Open article: Building AI Pharma Will Actually Buy: Privacy-First, Audit-Ready, and Priced for Outcomes by Jim Lefevere • 3 min read

Building AI Pharma Will Actually Buy: Privacy-First, Audit-Ready, and Priced for Outcomes

Most MedTech, Healthtech, and Pharma commercial strategies do not fail due to lack of funding or poor execution. They fail because they are built around control rather than reflecting real-world conditions.

We often design brand plans, launch roadmaps, omnichannel journeys, and sales models based on the assumption that healthcare professionals and patients will behave exactly as projected.

They don’t.

In response, we add additional layers:

->More governance
->more approvals
->more reporting, and more so-called optimization.

And when results stall, we call it an execution problem. It isn’t. It’s a design problem. AI isn’t breaking commercialization models in healthcare. It’s exposing how many of them were never designed to learn in real time.

Static plans cannot keep pace with human behavior, and hierarchical structures are unable to sense what is actually happening in the field.
Control does not provide insight; it only creates a sense of security.

In the next era of MedTech, Healthtech, and Pharma commercialization, success will not go to the companies with the most rigid plans.

It will go to those willing to loosen their grip,
listen more effectively, adapt more quickly, and design systems that respond to reality rather than enforce. This approach can be uncomfortable, especially for those who have built their careers mastering the previous model. However, discomfort often signals that change is imminent.

How I Use AI.

If Your AI Always Agrees With You, You’re Using It Wrong. I don’t ask AI to help. I ask it to push back and act as the best analyst possible. Anticipate competitive moves. Test new marketing channel plans. Use synthetic personas to test and react to your 2026 planning. 

I want to know:
 • Why this will fail
 • What an executive would challenge
 • Where I’m overestimating demand
 • What sounds smart but won’t survive in reality

Most people use AI for reassurance. I absolutely use it for resistance. Pressure testing and what could go terribly, horribly wrong. 

Markets are competitive and hostile. Your thinking partner should be, too. If you are not using it to test your ideas, act as a competitive analyst and consider how competitors may react, or test your real-world work, I think you are using it wrong.

Healthcare isn’t slow because it’s broken. It’s slow because it’s safe.

Life inside a large healthcare company follows a familiar rhythm.
The badge scan.
The executive elevator.
The comfort of a system that prints billions without ever asking who’s personally accountable if patients lose.

I lived inside that rhythm for 24 years.

Diagnostics. MedTech. Pharma.

Big brands. Big budgets. Zero excuses.

I believed in the mission. I still do. But I no longer believe the lie we tell ourselves about why change is “hard.” 

Healthcare isn’t broken. It’s optimized. Perfectly.

Optimized for predictability.
Optimized for risk avoidance.
Optimized for career preservation.

From the inside, this feels like dysfunction.

Silos.
Legal reviews.
Endless alignment.

If you work here, you’re nodding right now. But once you step outside, once there’s no boat to return to, the truth becomes obvious:
The friction is the feature.
The complexity is the moat.

Not to protect patients, but to diffuse accountability.

In healthcare, “safety” often means doing what’s approved, funded, and career-neutral, even when it no longer serves the patient.

The most dangerous thing about this system isn’t that it blocks innovation.
It’s that it imitates it.

Innovation labs without P&L ownership.
Digital leaders without budget authority.
Pilots designed to win slides—then die quietly in operations.

We tolerated it because it was safe.

Inside the harbor, activity is rewarded more than outcomes.

Managing the matrix matters more than solving the problem.
The best leaders I’ve known weren’t the busiest. They were the clearest.
And clarity is a threat in systems that thrive on ambiguity.

Here’s why real change almost never comes from the inside:

The risk is asymmetric.
In startups, the risk is existential.
Solve the patient’s problem, or you don’t survive.

In legacy healthcare, the risk is political. Challenge the status quo, and you become the problem. AI is exposing this faster than ever before.
AI doesn’t care about silos, org charts, or planning cycles. It adapts in real time, while we take months to approve a vendor.

You cannot cross that gap with another pilot.

And you cannot cross it with one foot still in the harbor.

So here’s the question I had to ask myself, and now ask you:

Are you staying because you can fix the system? Or because the system is safe? Be honest.

The future of healthcare won’t be built in the harbor.

Healthcare isn't Broken. It's Perfectly Optimized. 

Deloitte recently released a new State of AI report; here is a summary. Putting this through a MedTech filter, the implications are clear: there is a lag in MedTech as a whole.  

#MedTech #MedicalDevices #AIinHealthcare #DigitalTransformation

A new Deloitte survey, The State of AI, finds AI adoption in the enterprise is high, but operational impact is limited. AI tools reach 60% of employee

Open article: The State of AI (2026): Why Most Enterprises and MedTech Remain Stalled in Progress by Jim Lefevere • 2 min read

The State of AI (2026): Why Most Enterprises and MedTech Remain Stalled in Progress

Influence = Surround Sound 🎶

True influence in an organization doesn’t sound like a solo performance. It sounds like surround sound.

I learned this the hard way. Early on, I thought influence was about being right, having facts and data, and delivering my message as clearly and persuasively as possible. But real influence is about creating echoes across the organization.

When your message shows up in a hallway conversation, in how a manager coaches their team, in how a deck frames a strategy — that’s surround sound. It means the idea has been internalized, repeated, and owned by others.

Influence = resonance. It’s when your leadership creates a shared melody that others want to play.

The question isn’t: Can you say it well once?

The question is: Can you embed it so deeply that it keeps playing even when you aren't in the room?

#Leadership #Influence #Communication #OrganizationalCulture #Alignment

Beyond the Hype: 7 Truths About AI in Pharma (From Someone Who’s Lived Both Sides). 

#Pharma #MedTech #Biotech #AI #MLR #ChangeManagement #CommercialExcellence #CRM #AgenticAI

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Founder & Managing Director

Chief Strategy Officer (CSO)

Roche Diabetes Care

After years inside a life sciences organization — and now building on the startup side — I’ve learned a simple pattern: AI doesn’t fail because the te

Beyond the Hype: 7 Truths About AI in Life Sciences (From Someone Who’s Lived Both Sides)

Lead Yourself First

Early in my career, I thought leadership meant having all the answers.

I quickly learned that people don’t follow titles, well some do, but generally speaking they follow the actions of their leader. If the leader is blunt and short with others suddenly you'll see that behavior pop up in other people.  

The a-ha moment came for me when I realized I wasn’t managing myself well. I was showing up for my team exhausted, scattered, and reactive. How could I expect them to bring their best if I wasn’t modeling it?

I started with the basics: time-blocking, morning workouts, and holding myself to the same standards I expected from others. Over time, that shifted everything. I didn’t have to preach discipline, people saw it.

The toughest person to lead is yourself. But once you get that right, the rest of leadership feels less like pushing and more like pulling.


#Leadership #SelfLeadership #LeadByExample #GrowthMindset

Has everyone seen "Your Year in Review with ChatGPT?" 

I decided to ask a few clarifying questions. 

Where do I actually rank in my use of GenAI?

The answer: roughly top 1% overall, and top ~0.1–0.3% in using it for real commercial work. 

Surprised, but not shocked, not because I have better prompts. And not because I use it more. It’s because I don’t use AI as a tool.

Most people use GenAI to:

 • Search faster
 • Write better
 • Produce more

I use it as a thought partner to pressure-test strategy, identify non-obvious insights, challenge assumptions, act as a contrarian, think through what could go wrong, and find weak spots. 

Apparently, that’s when AI stops being a productivity hack and becomes an advantage.

And all learning has been practical, hands-on, roll-up-the-sleeves, trial-and-error learning. 

Of course, it could be saying that to everyone...

I'm interested to learn more about where most people actually are on this curve. Who is an active user and brave enough to leave a comment?

Leadership Is Like Driving an F1 Car 🏎️

In Formula 1, drivers don’t win races with wild, dramatic turns. They win with small, precise steering adjustments at 200 mph.

I’ve found the same is true in leadership. The biggest shifts often come from small, intentional adjustments — not sweeping overhauls. For me, one of those “steering corrections” has been learning each person’s motivation and leading them as individuals within the team structure.

One person may desire public recognition to thrive. Another valued quiet trust and autonomy. A third needs to see their work connected to the bigger mission. 

By adjusting my approach just slightly for each of them, the whole team moved faster and more cohesively.

It wasn’t about changing direction — it was about steering with precision.
Big moves may get the headlines, but small, steady adjustments win the race.


#Leadership #Teamwork #Motivation #Coaching #ResilientLeadership

Are You Batteries Included? 

As leaders, we are the battery. People don’t just look to us for answers — they look to us for energy. If we show up drained, distracted, or disengaged, people and teams feel it immediately. 

I’ve tried to live by: “batteries included.”

For me, that means:

🔋 Guarding my sleep and prioritizing being fully rested

🔋 Building movement into my day, even if it’s just a walk between calls.

🔋 Taking 10 minutes to breathe and following a 4-7-8 breathing process to center and calm my mind. 

🔋 Remembering that energy is contagious — mine sets the tone.

It doesn’t mean being fake or pretending everything’s perfect. It means stewarding myself so I can show up with presence, positivity, and power. 

Leadership is hard enough. Don’t make your people carry you up the hill. Bring your own battery.

How do you recharge so you can show up fully for your team?


#Leadership #EnergyManagement #BatteriesIncluded #SelfLeadership #Resilience

Section recently released an AI Efficiency Report, and well, folks, the results are a bit surprising and damning for health care companies. 

A quick read article below. 

#AIGovernance #PilotToProduction #AIExecution #ScalingAI

Section, an education platform focused on AI training, recently released a research report on AI Proficiency. Key finding: Most executives believe AI 

Open article: The AI Proficiency Gap (2026): Why Value, Not Access, Is the Real Challenge by Jim Lefevere • 2 min read

The AI Proficiency Gap (2026): Why Value, Not Access, Is the Real Challenge

How I use AI, part 2.

Most people use AI to get answers. I use it to see my own thinking more clearly. When I put a strategy, message, or plan in front of AI, I'm not looking for polish. I'm specifically looking for where the logic is weak, the assumptions are sloppy, or the story doesn't hold up outside my head.

AI doesn't replace your human, earned, and lived experience, or your judgment. It exposes it.

And whatever thinking you bring to it, good or bad, will scale fast. 

That's why AI isn't just a productivity tool. It's a mirror. It's a Contrarian. It is a Thought Partner. Use it to identify leaps in logic. Holes in theories. Flaws in your work. That's where the magic can happen.

Here are four lessons that changed how I lead, influence, and solve problems. 

#Collaboration #Influence #TeamPerformance

A summary of recent posts on leadership. These focus on communication, candor, and collaboration as the new currency of execution. After 24 years in g

The Communication Advantage: Why Every Problem Is a People Problem

If you are a MedTech or Healthtech leader facing challenges defining your target ICP and the right messaging and channels for your customers, Genevius Health Advisors helps teams and companies find and achieve commercial clarity.

B2B SaaS Case Study 

A B2B healthcare-focused SaaS platform had strong technology but was stuck. Their narrative wasn’t landing with executives, their ICP was fuzzy, and outbound volume wasn’t translating into pipeline.

The messaging was centered on features instead of outcomes that executives care about. The ICP was broad and attracted interest, but not buyers.
The outbound sequences are misaligned with how buyers and targets actually evaluate solutions.

How Genevius Health Advisors addressed the challenge:

->Rebuilt the narrative around a modern, forward-looking product solution. 
->Installed a precise ICP + psychographic profile to separate economic buyers from enthusiastic users.
->Re-architected GTM sequencing, demand activation, and outbound to reflect executive priorities and the U.S. Evidence Ladder.

The Outcome?
->The company gained a unified commercial story, a validated ICP, buyer-aligned content, and an outbound motion that produced stronger signals with far less volume. 

Most SaaS commercial teams fail because their story is unclear—not because the product is weak.

If this sounds familiar, DM me “CLARITY.”

#medtech #healthtech #commercialclarity

B2B SaaS Platform 

Are you thinking about a US product launch? The US is a different game, with different rules. Reach out to learn more.

The Strategy Bridge — From EU Proof to U.S. Traction

What got you CE Mark won’t get you FDA approval or U.S. market traction.

An EU launch proves your product works. But the U.S. market is a different game:

-No centralized payer → fragmented pathways.
-FDA clearance requires more evidence.
-Patients expect brand-driven, digital-first experiences.
-In-depth and targeted launch plans that don't burn unnecessary cash 

At Genevius Health Advisors, we act as the bridge between EU proof and U.S. traction. Our launch strategies translate European success into U.S. adoption—fast, focused, and de-risked.

We’ve done it for medtech devices, diagnostics, and digital health platforms. Now, we’re guiding EU start-ups to do the same.

 If you’re ready to move from proof to traction, let’s connect.

#ProductLaunch #GrowthStrategy #MarketingOperations #DigitalHealth
#HealthTech #MedTech

How I Use AI, part 3. 

The most expensive place to use AI is after execution. After the pilot. After the hire. After the messaging is locked.

That’s when AI becomes a polishing tool.

I use AI upstream when decisions are still low-cost to change, and ego hasn’t hardened around them yet.

AI doesn’t save time. It saves "face."

Planning starts now for a successful 2026. reach out to learn more.

Need strategic planning? Psychographics? Buying triggers? How to frame emotional appeals? Verbatims?

Segmentation? Customer Prioritization? Archetype Development? Customer Journeys? Message Architecture? 

GTM planning? 

Genevius Health Advisors has spent the last year refining the ability to develop and deliver all of the above for 20% of the price of market research co's and agencies.  

If you are a revenue positive startup up to mid-market #medtech #healthtech #biotech company struggling with strategy, competitive intelligence or GTM. Reach out.

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Jim Lefevere

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