Leadership By Walking Around

By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL

From The October 2015 Issue
Read the full magazine article: More Than The Rise In Biologics Prompts Reorg At FDA

Leadership by walking around may sound like an antiquated philosophy. However, there is no substitute if you want to know what is going on in your organization than getting out and seeing how things actually work, talking to people, and gaining insight and understanding of who is doing what. During my interview with the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology Products director, Steven Kozlowski, M.D., for the Life Science Leader magazine feature, More Than The Rise In Biologics Prompts Reorg At FDA, he shared that he makes this best practice part of his exercise routine. “I have a Fitbit, and I need my 10,000 steps a day,” he explains. “One of the ways I do that is by wandering through the corridors. In my role, I need to interact a lot with people.” Kozlowski says that since the implementation of the reorganization, now just over six months old, he has used leadership by walking around as a means of gathering information to see how things are going. “My sense is we’ve been pretty successful,” he concludes. “Yet, part of me thinks a good next step is to actually think about a more systematic way of scheduling one-on-one meetings with a list of informal questions to gain a deeper sense for how the reorganization is going.”