Optimizing Talent in Drug Development R&D
The foundation for improving execution
Written By John Harman
I have many topics planned (in fact, started) which address what I believe to be the greatest challenge we face in drug development today - execution. One issue is foundational to all other execution improvements - talent management.
Observation
In every meeting with customers, peers, colleagues I have seen this resonate almost without exception when discussing productivity in R&D:
“Your people are busy with non-value adding activities because you have the wrong people in the right roles or you do not have the right roles for your organization in its current state.”
More explicitly, my observation is that 30-40% of people are working below the “expected value” for their role within drug development R&D. Examples include an individual in a role no longer needed in the organization (but still exists), a critical team member who is bogged down by non-value adding activities, or it might be an individual who is not aligned with the role they are in.
Symptoms
Some symptoms you may want to look for:
Your project team meetings are round-robin style progress updates which “update” the project schedule as you go
Everyone loathes review and promotion time
Your company does restructuring or reductions in force periodically
You have strained vendor relationships
Capital budget planning time is adversarial and competitive
Different teams or departments are performing the same experiments on the same samples
You are generating data in your organization that are not used to make decisions
Your organization has to make titles for people being added to the organization to perform work which should be attributed to existing people in existing roles
These symptoms all have complex remedies which start with aligning your talent profile with your business needs.
Non-value adding activities
Young organizations start with a core group of people who have critical expertise in the product of that organization - so naturally a biotechnology or biopharma will have a strong emphasis on traditional scientific roles. As an organization evolves there are new duties and functions which divert your core team’s focus toward new tasks outside of their core value to the organization. This pattern occurs in new companies but also in new groups within existing companies.
Any industry vet can rattle off many of the tasks which detract effort from their “day job”. A few R&D examples include: aggregating disease target literature, instrument maintenance, reformatting data for storage or analysis, sourcing materials and placing orders, preparing slides for a meeting just to show data rather than make decisions, waiting on a CRO to finish their work. This mis-alignment of expected versus actual work effort is generally considered to be non-value adding work. These activities are of high value to the organization but should be performed by the right roles in the right talent distribution.
Fortunately there are technology and process solutions available to you NOW to streamline those non-value adding activities; however, implementing technology almost always requires new roles to make it effective. You also have the option to create roles where the expected value is defined explicitly to perform those tasks. Two quick examples from my past:
Chemists spend time asking other chemists or searching through drawers randomly to find reagents needed for their next synthesis. Technology solution - start using the inventory feature in the LIMS/ELN you likely have already.
A molecular biologist speaking with vendors to find enough supply of a single lot of an assay reference standard to support 12 months of assays. New role solution - add a laboratory operations role to handle this task for all biology teams to ensure supply chain robustness.
Pro-Tip on time management visibility
I learned years ago that we already have a tool we can use to analyze our time: your work calendar. Set up categories/colors for your work time. After you are done spending time on something, retroactively enter that as a meeting on your calendar (delete the reminder default) and assign a category. Do it as soon as you finish any activity but before you move on to something else. Of course, work meetings are already on your calendar, but you can assign categories. It should take you less than 2min/day. Most calendars analyze this for you using those category assignments.
If you ask a team or larger organization to do this - ensure that the objective is to prioritize headcount and technology expansion and not to be used as a performance metric…. it is unfair and illegitimate to extract individual performance metrics from flawed talent distribution.
The wrong people in the right roles
When a new employee doesn’t work out or when an existing employee loses motivation it requires corrective action. Interestingly, it is the role of the manager of that individual to take corrective action. When corrective action is not taken, that means you have a second person in your organization NOT meeting their expected value which requires further corrective action. If you find this pattern repeats as you traverse vertically in your org chart, you have some work to do at the top of your organization.
This underlying gap in training and development of managers should be addressed as part of organizational and talent management strategy; however, in the near term you should evaluate this group of people who are not currently right for their roles as candidates for new roles that may benefit your overall productivity. Perhaps a new support role maintaining instruments is filled by a well organized and mechanically inclined researcher who is currently an antibody formulations scientist who does not understand the mechanics behind maintaining protein structure in various buffers. It is possible that re-distributing instrument maintenance within the formulation group will actually increase overall team capacity without adding headcount.
Not having the right roles
The decision to procrastinate creating roles (which is absolutely necessary at times) or the lack of awareness that roles are needed is common. There is an unfortunate under-appreciation for the critical support roles which make the “inventors and pioneers” effective.
This also includes having roles that are no longer relevant or needed. For example, a drug company narrows focus by dropping neuroscience disease targets to expand their immuno-oncology efforts could make a behavioral neuroscientist role obsolete.
Rebalancing talent
As a starting point, I have summarized years of my own observation below by listing the most commonly neglected roles which have a significant impact on execution. These roles should all be attributed and accountable to the R&D function directly - I advise strongly against making any of these G&A functions based upon years of observing mis-aligned objectives. Some primary impact and responsibilities presented below are meant to help your thought process.
Take action
A straightforward implementation tactic (again, as a starting point for your consideration);
Assemble a team of your highest level process oriented thinkers (not necessarily your managers or best scientific minds).
Find roles which are no longer needed and find existing people who are not in the right role.
Identify the roles which are missing and roles which will improve the effectiveness of your organization (consolidate non-value adding activities).
Reflect on these roles and describe them in better detail asynchronously then reconvene the team and prioritize them.
Address the people you have - this might be moving them into new roles (preferred) or it might mean terminating them (sometimes necessary). **If you wince at the word “terminate”, please think about yourself or colleagues who have left jobs unwillingly - don’t they usually end up better? Terminations are part of management.
The remaining open roles should be filled following the priority the team has decided as a priority over other resource allocations such as new hardware or software tools.
Once the initial corrections have been made - don’t repeat your mistakes! One success pattern in talent management is recognition of the importance of the people who have made the choice to work in your organization. The value of the two way trust between employees and the employer cannot be overstated. Ensure that you never need to go through the sequence above by continuously evaluating and training the people you have before adding or eliminating employees. It is often (not always) more cost effective to upskill or re-skill your existing employees; however, act swiftly when specific employees need to be terminated.
Maintain your list of prioritized roles as a living document. Get this list in front of all of your leadership. It may need to expand across different divisions within your organization. By managing upward, ensure that the top levels of management revisit this list frequently. A dedicated article on agile practices in pharma is forthcoming, but in that spirit, retain the flexibility to refactor the team and/or reprioritize and adjust this list.
Conclusion - Talent Before Tech
There are dozens of shiny widgets available which can accelerate your execution; however, without preparing your talent pool for those technologies you will expend resources for limited gain (and in some cases, negative impact). You should assess and rebalance your talent pool continuously as you change the tactics you use to achieve your business objectives. Use your existing people by helping them gain new talent and skills to support your organization, they and your organization will benefit from building trust and achieving goals together.
If you have other ideas or feedback, I would love to hear them. If you have a business case which is adjacent but these examples don’t quite resonate, please reach out.
