"Ruthless" Resourcing Rules For CEOs

By Ron Cooper, former president and CEO, Albireo Pharma

The Right People Provide the Right Advantage

I remember being excited about my first general manager position, leading all functions across a major pharma business. In my first days I attended an industry meeting and met a grizzled, grumpy highly tenured GM who gave me eight simple words of advice: “Half your job is HR, half your job is PR.”

As a young up-and-comer, I thought, “What does he know? With my wide range of important business responsibilities, that can’t be true.” But in that job and the three president and CEO roles I’ve held since then… I learned he was very close to being right!

Strategic Human Resources And Strategic Communications

CEOs have two primary responsibilities: build a high-performing team and ensure that the strategies to exceed growth targets are effectively executed and communicated to all stakeholders. While both are equally important, this article focuses on the people side of building an effective life science business.

Why HR

I believe that companies are primarily made up of three key components: products, processes, and people. Pharma and biotech companies use these three components as levers to compete in a highly regulated industry. Differentiated products are one way to compete. Yet, the choice of these products is usually made very early in a company’s life cycle, and, with the long development times, it is almost impossible to change your mind. Life science firms frequently inherit a scientific platform or a group of products.

Processes offer fewer opportunities to beat the competition compared to many other industries. The rigorous regulations we must follow make it difficult to break out in this space. In my experience, taking a thoughtful, strategic approach to simplifying processes improves efficiency and unlocks energy but it is rarely a major competitive advantage.

So, the biggest lever life science CEOs can pull is people – attracting, hiring, engaging, refocusing, and retaining top talent. Easier said than done. But the payoff is huge – for your customers, their families, investors, and the team.

In my CEO and general management roles, I applied six “Ruthless Resourcing Rules” to ensure our people were a competitive advantage. I’ve listed them below, with a few details on how to activate them in your organization.

Note the word ‘ruthlessness’ often evokes a negative connotation. Not so when it comes to creating superior standards to build high-performing teams.

Ruthless Resourcing Rules

Ruthless Ownership – While your head of human resources facilitates talent acquisition and the employee life cycle; you have to own it. I have been fortunate to partner with some amazing human resources leaders. I choose the word partner carefully – CEOs are partners in talent acquisition, not just advocates. As the captain of the ship, CEOs ultimately choose their team members and create the culture that drives success. You can’t delegate that responsibility.  

Ruthless Business Cycle Understanding – Life sciences companies have three distinct phases: discovery, development and commercial. Understand the phase you are moving toward and hire accordingly. With limited cash and rapid business cycles in biotech, seats should be ‘rented’ in many key positions, versus making long-term hires. It’s all about getting the right people for the cycle you are in. When you move from one stage to another, for instance from discovery to development, different competencies are needed, and you invest more in that new team. And when you move to the commercial phase, you shift your focus to top marketing and sales talent. Some people have the ability and desire to grow and scale to the next stage, but many do not. As CEO, you must continually shift your focus to where the company is going – and make tough decisions to ensure you have the right talent to triumph in that phase.  

Ruthless Standards – As CEO, your standards set the tone for hiring, at every level. Make them high, and don’t compromise. Ensure you are clear on what you need in each role – both technical and leadership skills. Then take the time to find the exact, right person. In my experience, it’s well worth the short-term pain inflicted on other team members to keep searching and interviewing and assessing to ensure you get the absolute right candidate. If you settle, the wrong person can cause significant disruption and be extremely costly across multiple aspects of the business.

Ruthless Risk-Taking – CEOs need to take risks – it’s part of the job. And that includes talent acquisition... but only in certain areas. You can’t take risks on character, or capacity to learn. But when it comes to functional skills, taking calculated risks can earn big rewards. I made strategic hires of high-integrity, intellectually curious and collaborative people who were a little green, needing to gain more experience but were on their way ‘up the mountain’. These higher risk hires regularly became top performers, eager to prove their value to me and the team. They worked hard, demonstrated extreme loyalty, delivered great results, and had a longer runway with our organization. A risk worth taking.

Ruthless Recruiting – As CEO of Albireo Pharma, I interviewed every employee that joined our team. Did it take time? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes, again.

With new direct reports whom I was hiring, I always screened candidates first to determine cultural fit rather than consuming a large amount of organizational time and resource. People who met the cultural requirements then interviewed with key members of my team, where I directed each of them to probe for one priority, like top-quartile technical skills or how they handle pressure. Following a positive consensus meeting, I did a final, more formal interview with the lead candidate, and then met them for a meal together. That last step was important – I watched how they interacted with the restaurant staff and got to see how they operated in a more relaxed setting. If they passed each level, we hired them.

With all other employees, I had a short interview with every final candidate, including administrative assistants. The hiring manager always made the final call, but I looked for cultural fit. I would send a brief note to the hiring manager after my discussion, sharing my observations.

You may be wondering, “Why would a CEO devote so much time to these discussions?” It goes back to half the job being HR. Every person matters – especially in small companies and, by having candidates meet the CEO, we often differentiated ourselves from the competition.

Ruthless Employee Engagement – I believe CEOs should be hands-on in hiring talent. But employee engagement continues, far beyond that. Each time a new team member started working at Albireo, I met them on their first day (or as close to Day 1 as possible) to welcome them and let them know how happy we were that they chose our company. Then each month, I hosted a new hires meeting to share Albireo’s mission, objectives, and specific priorities for the year. These actions mattered. In many cases employees said they had never met a CEO. Building relationships at all levels of the organization became a competitive advantage as we created a more personal and open culture making it easier to raise difficult issues.

Wrapping It Up: Ruthlessness Not a Negative

In my experience, a ruthless approach to high standards for your team results in robust returns, respect, and reputation. Follow these rules, and you will help your company achieve all that – and a competitive advantage.

About The Author: Ron Cooper is former president and CEO of Albireo Pharma and current board member of Generation Bio. He also served in leadership roles at Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals.