Leadership Lessons

A big part of the innovation challenge for large pharma companies is that while researchers are very good at technical innovation, the business end is not.

It’s easy to say we value different perspectives. It is quite another thing to really mean it, especially when it comes to views that feel dangerous, unscientific, and just plain wrong.

Here’s what employers concerned about healthcare, and for that matter, productivity and employee retention, need to do.

For life science leaders who manage diverse teams, with members spanning geographic, disciplinary, and even organization boundaries, here are some powerful leadership practices that help improve innovation.

The next evolution of leadership may be navigating paradox, which means learning to adapt rather than managing paradox which finds a solution.

Why is it so difficult for leaders to discuss personal accountability? The closer it gets to the leaders of the company, the more it may be avoided.

Serial breakthrough innovators have some interesting commonalities that serve up some important lessons for how we can unleash the breakthrough innovation potential in us all. Here are three of them.

How do today’s healthcare executives stay focused on the right things, productive in the face of immense pressure and competing demands, and proactive and strategic in the way they lead? It all starts with taking a pause.

The pharmaceutical and healthcare industries are at a crossroads, with the traditional business models experiencing what some have described as “fatigue.”  Like many other industries facing profound shifts, this creates the imperative to bring together the disparate fields of competitive strategy, innovation, and organizational change.

Innovation and rules may seem like an odd couple. Aren’t innovators rule breakers, people who are willing — even eager — to challenge the status quo? For the most part, they are. Yet innovations rarely result from a genius having a single flash of insight. Instead, they emerge from a collaborative process of individuals with diverse perspectives generating a portfolio of ideas, testing and refining them, and finally, choosing a solution — most often one that combines seemingly competing ideas.

John, an exemplary employee, was promoted into a key management position. He wanted to address the team he would now be leading and gathered the group together in a training room. The new leader’s boss was part of the assembled group.

After being expelled from Harvard for a computer hack that altered his transcript, Ajay Thomas changed his name, scored a Wall Street job, and then insider-traded shares of two public life science companies to the tune of $275 million. Typical interview questions about ethics won’t weed out these types of low character individuals.

Recently I did a study of more than 10,000 high-potential employees at leading companies around the world. The people I interviewed were the best of the best, the sort of employees that any organization would love to have on their team. I call this type of person a “voluntary employee,” because they are so good at what they do that if they quit their job at 9 in the morning they would have a job at the competition by noon. Which means they work at a certain company because they want to, not because they have to.

Because drug R&D is likely to remain difficult even as technology advances, the challenge for you, as a leader, is this: How do you maintain the motivation of talented researchers, young and old, when progress is slow?