January 17, 2024 • 62 mins
- Boost R&D team efficiency through collaboration and accountability
- Address inefficiencies in most R&D projects
- Cultivate a successful life sciences workplace culture
- Refine data for actionable insights and shared ownership
- Align project goals with corporate objectives
- Optimize equipment scheduling for lab efficiency
- Balance detailed monitoring with key metrics
- Promote teamwork, real-time communication, and delay prevention
- Streamline project management
- Foster accountability, leadership, and process improvement for innovation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lawrence Wong (00:00):
We're all on the same team and you have to kind
of move in that direction,because you can't have
everything silent.
It doesn't make any sensebecause it's a lose-lose for
both sides if you do that.
Oscar Gonzalez (00:18):
Welcome to Lean by Design Podcast.
I'm your host, Oscar Gonzalez,alongside my co-host, Lawrence
Wong.
We are former MBA classmatesturned business partners, with
over 25 years of combinedexperience in life sciences,
from R&D to manufacturing.
Our experiences have shed lightinto the complex, ever-changing
challenges experienced by thisindustry and many others.
(00:40):
We took a risk quit oursix-figure paying jobs in Boston
biotech and pharma to startSigma Lab Consulting.
Journey with us as we explorethe relationship between people
and workflow design, the goal Tolearn, inspire and deliver
practical tips to navigate theseever-changing challenges.
Stick with us and learn to worksmarter, not harder, and be
(01:03):
lean by design.
In today's episode, we dive intothe heart of efficient project
execution Collaborativeworkflows.
60% of R&D projects arehindered by inefficiencies.
But what if we told you the keylies in fostering seamless
(01:26):
teamwork?
Today, we're going to explorethe transformative power of
standard processes,accountability and the art of
distilling complex data intoactionable insights.
From the intricacies of assetmanagement to the nuances of
laboratory operations andeverything in between.
We're going to unravel thesignificance of
(01:50):
cross-collaboration and sharedownership.
Come with us where we createthis future, where projects
thrive on effectivecommunication, concise messaging
and their strategic use of dataand tools.
This conversation isn't justabout overcoming collective
challenges.
It's about building a cultureof success through shared
(02:13):
experiences and insights.
Join in to redefinecollaboration in life sciences.
Lawrence Wong (02:28):
We're trying to figure out the next project on
my queue, so there's a fairamount of stuff that you can
(02:58):
standardize, but right now allthey use is emails and then they
have a ton of meetings and allof the things that you would
consider to be in a process isthere, but it's in pieces.
I think talking aboutcollaborative workflows allows
you to put those things alltogether into one mechanism to
(03:21):
manage those types of activitiesthat should be streamlined.
Oscar Gonzalez (03:26):
Yeah, it's funny that you have that experience
and that perspective because Isee the same in a number of my
clients where it's almost likeall the data is there, all the
information is there.
But we're so close to it that ifyou just take a couple of steps
(03:46):
back and usually you'reremoving yourself which is why
people ask for us to come inbecause we can come right in,
remove ourselves and look at,okay, what do you guys have to
play with?
And then when you start tounderstand, oh, this team
collects this type ofinformation, that team needs
this kind of information youstart to make this sort of web
(04:08):
relationship of what thefunction is actually doing.
It's been more than one occasionthat I've worked with a client,
developed a process map oftheir current process, and their
response is whoa, that's whatwe're doing, but it takes a
little bit to actually manifest.
And so today, in talking aboutthose collaboration workflows
(04:35):
and in development projects,asset management, there's a
couple of different spaces inthere, from the collaboration
workflows to agile management,the importance, the strategies,
all those things we want to talkabout today, and it's all super
important.
And I like the fact that thisis one of the earlier episodes
(04:57):
in 2024, because it starts tohelp you think about where do
you want to be at the end of theyear.
I know some folks have alreadydetermined what their goals are,
but there's others that arestill trying to figure out what
those goals look like, and Ithink having some sort of
collaboration, data mesh, datamixing, information sharing
(05:21):
workflow is key to have asuccessful 2024.
Lawrence Wong (05:27):
Yeah, you want to know where you're going to be
by the end of the year and Ithink starting with what things
require a collaborative workflowis really good to think about
at the beginning of the year soyou can track and monitor your
progress towards whatever you'retrying to do by the end of the
year, rather than again having alot of these fragmented pieces
(05:51):
of information that, by the timeDecember 2024 rolls around,
you're going to be looking backat emails and SharePoint and
PowerPoints and all sorts ofsources of information to figure
out okay, did we actually dowhat we were supposed to do and
(06:12):
how well did we do it?
Right, I think that's.
The other thing, too.
Is is not only did you achievewhat you wanted to do, but how
well did we do in those areas toget us to where we needed to be
?
Oscar Gonzalez (06:25):
We often focus on the end product, whether it's
a project, some sort ofinitiative, as representation of
the success of a project.
But that is just a point intime.
That is literally a singlepoint in time, rather than
looking at the journey, becauseI've seen some successful
(06:47):
projects in the sense ofachieving their goals, but when
you look at the process it tookto get there, it was an absolute
train wreck.
There were colleagues that wereyelling at each other, there
were people that were dismissedfrom meetings and to understand
that that actually happened inthe project and to not do
(07:11):
something about it in terms ofthat workflow, of that process,
that's negligence from not onlyjust leadership but from the
folks that are working in there.
No one likes that kind ofstress, that type of stressful
environment that you see thatmakes good television, that
makes a terrible place to work.
Lawrence Wong (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I think you know
, if we want to maybe focus theconversation a little bit more
on some of the nuances inprojects and what you've seen,
where do you think it's mostbeneficial to have these
collaborative workflow set up?
Because I think not everythingrequires a collaborative
(07:53):
workflow, because there are somethings that, to be honest, it's
just open ended and you don'treally know what pieces of
information you're going to needto gather to kind of make a
specific decision.
It may be brainstorming oranything like that.
It's more open loop and notclosed loop.
So for closed loop decisions,I'm more thinking of okay, how
(08:15):
do we just manage tasks on aproject, right?
How do we know if we'reprogressing on the timeline and
where are we in relation to thetimeline and how far or close
are we from achieving thatmilestone or whatever that year
end goal is?
What are your thoughts on whereto really focus these workflows
(08:38):
?
Oscar Gonzalez (08:39):
I mean, that's a really good question because it
can be daunting.
There are so many activitiesthat are happening toward the
project goal and in a perfectworld, you would have corporate
goals that inform on the typesof goals that your project
should include, and thoseproject goals will inform on
(09:01):
what those functions shouldinclude and those functional
goals should involve, or shouldinclude, components of what the
employees in that function aregoing to execute on.
So in a perfect world, it looksjust like that a pyramid.
You have your people goal atthe bottom, the next level is
(09:26):
the project goal, the next levelprobably the program, the
portfolio goal, and then youhave some corporate goals as
well.
So it becomes a little bitdaunting to try to go okay, well
, how do we capture all thesethings that we need to?
Well, let's just take a project, let's just call it, let's just
say, an R&D project.
In that sense, there are thingsthat you know that have to be
(09:50):
completed.
You know, no matter whathappens, these five, six
elements of this project need tooccur.
Okay, what do you need to knowin each of those stages and who
are the stakeholders?
So that's a common thing wherewe, you know, sort of go to like
the functional line manager,and that's great.
(10:12):
But that functional manager isprobably on seven or eight
projects.
So where I tend to get the bestinformation from, I start to
create relationships with thedirect stakeholders of those
initiatives.
So I'll always check and verify, so I will work directly with
(10:32):
that person and then verify withthe, you know, with the
functional lead kind of thebigger picture.
Hey, I saw Sally was working onthis.
We're expecting this.
And then Kyle mentioned thatwe're going to get the shipment
in for XYZ, so we should beprepared to make a decision on X
.
Do you see any any issues ofthat happening?
(10:53):
And and you know, that sort ofstarts the conversation.
Now, these are things that weknow and so there's sort of a
two edges here that we have tolook at are the things that we
know that need to happen and theunknown.
So, mind you, all thesedifferent things that we're
talking about, like how to focusand where to focus, it's really
(11:16):
going to depend on the end goalof your project.
You know the things that youknow.
You can run those throughworkflows, you can run those
through timelines and havingthat stakeholder engagement.
I can't stress this enough.
You cannot wait until the nextproject meeting to have these
conversations.
(11:36):
You know, slack has a reallynice function where you click on
a huddle and you could justmessage somebody and say hey, do
you got 10 minutes for a huddle?
Hey, I was looking at thisinformation.
I was looking at thatinformation and I want to know
you know, is this on par?
Are we expecting anything?
Any snags here?
(11:56):
On the other side of things,there are so many unknowns that
accompany many stages, not justin the R&D stage, but even in,
you know, a clinical stage wherewe have no idea what's going to
come back from the regulatoryagencies.
They may tell us to run a newtrial.
So there's a mentality in aframework that is more agile in
(12:23):
that sense.
So, although we have thecomfort of knowing these are the
exact moments that are supposedto take place, we have to be
prepared to also take on thingsthat may be nuanced in that
sense where this data suggeststhat this.
So now we have to run this setof data before we can do any
(12:45):
more in vivo data, before we cando any more in vivo experiments
.
Why?
Because the data that wereceived from here was a little
bit dirty, which makes us assumethat there are some impurities.
We have to understand whatthose impurities are and if they
impact the mechanism of thisparticular compound.
You know there's a plethora ofthings.
So you have your known items,which would be more of your
(13:08):
standard workflow mapping,connecting with stakeholders In
your unknown, that agilerelationship needs to be super
tight with your project leads,with your project teams and
functional owners to say, okay,well, now we have new
information, let's build on thatinformation and find the way to
(13:28):
drive forward and, as we'retalking about today, the
collaboration network, aframework.
You're not always going to havethat information ready to
cascade throughout the team, soit's nice to have sort of a
almost like a I forget what dothey call that telephone list
(13:49):
where you call all yourneighbors.
You used to call all yourneighbors that now everybody
just posts a Facebook message tothe town Facebook page, but
used to call all the neighbors,okay, now you call a phone tree.
It's almost like doingsomething like that, that you
need to make sure that thingsthat are not standard need to be
communicated, and I thinksometimes that we forget that
because we live in this sort oflike.
(14:12):
Well, this is the status of howthings go and I don't need to
say anything because we'remeeting somewhere in two days.
But those two days can movesomebody else's timeline a week.
Lawrence Wong (14:24):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like from a very high
level, the the.
Where you want to really focuson these collaborative workflows
is from like a top downperspective, like what, what
kind of is the end goal?
And we know, you know, theseare the requirements to kind of
get there, and and having astandardized way to track and
(14:44):
monitor the progress is going tobe key.
But you also want to beflexible enough where there are
certain nuances to some of these, like subtasks that you want to
incorporate so it doesn't kindof get lost in the weeds.
And if it is some decision thatimpacts another function, you
want to, you want to capturethat.
But you don't want to kind ofbog down your workflow with like
(15:06):
oh, here are all the thingsthat I do, and like we need to
monitor every single one,because at the end of the day,
we only care about, you know, isthese maybe three metrics that
are driving this particulartimeline Exactly?
And you know from from whatyou've seen, how have you seen
the opposite end of it from?
You know, having workflows thatare just way too complicated,
(15:30):
where you can't even make senseof how far or close you are to
the end goal, because theystarted from like a top or a
down or bottom up perspective.
It's a.
Oscar Gonzalez (15:46):
You make me laugh because in a recent
experience we were and I mayhave talked about this on one of
the other episodes, but we werelooking at improving the
process of onboarding externalparties.
So myself, being a consultant,I was very involved, not only in
(16:07):
the process, but I was livingthe issues that were happening
as we were delayed with SOWs,delayed with signing contracts
and things getting stuck andgetting pushed back.
I was actually involved in thatand showing guys you're, you're
approving our point here thatthis is a problem.
I can show you the emails, thedate, the timestamps, everything
(16:29):
Like this is why these needs tobe fixed.
And what I received was a fivestep workflow.
What I gave was a 23 stepworkflow and it actually was met
with some laughter of there'sno way that we can show people
that it's this complicated.
(16:50):
Now here's the catch Everysingle step was determined to be
necessary by the functions thatwere involved.
So we have to be really carefulabout building these workflows
where it's easy to just say letme word vomit everything.
(17:12):
I'm going to put every ideathat you know, every possible
scenario, but why are wedeveloping workflows for a
scenario that may occur 1% ofthe time?
You know, and at that thatscenario probably has some
subtle nuances that you canactually just find a way to work
(17:36):
around.
You know that that is notreally something that you can
standardize.
So when I, when I talk topeople about building workflows,
if there is room for scenariodrivers, I would suggest on no
more than two, two to three atthe most, because at every point
(17:59):
of decision you can start tohave something that changes.
Well, this is a no buy.
You should also go back to dothese three steps, but only if
this is the case, only if youknow.
So you start to get these, likeyou know, scenarios that may be
fresh in somebody's mind but inthe reality of it only occur in
(18:22):
such a small subset.
So what ends up happening isyou get this giant workflow that
you know you could probablyspeak to, that looks like a
circuit board schematic, andyou're thinking this is just for
me to turn in the document.
It's like how, where do I start?
(18:43):
Where am I supposed to start?
And in those scenarios that youhave those large workflows, if
they are key to your operations,there needs to be training
available, and I'm not talkingabout email me if you guys ever.
Of course, everyone knows thatyou can just email, but we're
always so bogged down we tend toforget what we need to email.
(19:06):
It's the last minute becausewe're so busy doing this and now
I have to work on this processthat I haven't done in nine
months.
Schedule a training.
Schedule a training.
If these are issues that arehappening over and over and over
again, you need to establish abaseline, a foundation for the
understanding of that workflowin the organization so that at
(19:27):
the very least, as people areworking together with their
teammates, they can get 80% ofthe way there and maybe don't
have to ask the simple questionsof where do I get a login for X
?
You're listening to Lean byDesign Podcast and we'll be
right back after a quick break.
(19:48):
Do you suspect your lifesciences company could do things
more efficiently?
Maybe you're seeing costlyworkflow issues or maybe the
work feels more difficult toperform than necessary,
affecting Team Oral.
If any of this resonates, reachout to the team at Sigma Lab
Consulting for a freeconsultation on how we can
develop and launch a customsolution fit for your team.
(20:10):
Our consultants will build acustom workflow solution for
your team to reach peakefficiency.
Find out more atwwwSigmaLabConsultingcom.
Lawrence Wong (20:27):
Yeah, no to your point about planning or
developing processes around the1% chance that some process
might occur in that particularway and just going way overboard
on considering all differenttypes of possibilities.
You really have to look at thefrequency of the types of events
(20:47):
that would drive timelines togo a certain way.
For asset management, I thinkthe collaborative workflows are
especially useful and I wouldsay even required for the
operation and maintenance phaseof your asset lifecycle.
At this point you're looking atmaintaining and operating your
(21:11):
piece of equipment andinstruments that you have in
your biopharma research andproduction facilities.
You think of the threedifferent types of activities
and the first is going to beyour planned routine events.
These are going to be yourpreventive maintenance
activities, your calibrations,things that you would normally
do day to day, but there's justa large volume of those.
(21:35):
The second category is going tobe your planned non-routine
events.
These are hey, we're going tohave a shutdown, we need to
replace a certain component.
There's a lot of differentconsiderations, but we've done
this before and we may do this,not often, but at some sort of
frequency.
Then the 1% is going to be yourI'm not going to say 1% because
(21:56):
it's having way more often thanit should be.
Are these unplanned,non-routine events?
These are going to be your adhoc customer requests that come
from manufacturing, or yourscientists that sit at the bench
?
These are going to becorrective maintenance.
Something failed when youdidn't know and you have to come
(22:18):
up with a way to fix thatparticular problem.
A good example I like to thinkof is for oil change.
You want everybody tounderstand how to do this
consistently and you want it tobe done at a certain time.
You want consistent performancethroughout.
But if there's a tree that fallson my car, I don't expect the
(22:39):
mechanic to have some sort ofplan together to fix the car
because he doesn't think aboutthat when somebody brings their
car and oh yeah, this tree fellon my car, that's just
ridiculous and nobody's going tobe planning that far ahead or
for those scenarios, becausethey just don't happen that
often.
My opinion on this is reallyjust focus on the activities
(23:02):
that have the most volume, whichare going to be your planned
routine events.
Optimizing for that largevolume, not only because it
occurs a lot, but because it'sgoing to take up the majority of
your time, your money, yourresources.
It's going to be the mostdirect contact that you have
with your customers, yourclients.
(23:22):
As an example, if I can't trustyou to do something simple, why
would I trust you to dosomething extremely complicated
and long in duration?
Establishing that rapport andtrust allows your stakeholders
to say okay for those big issues.
I'm going to trust you to dothis.
Oscar Gonzalez (23:41):
Isn't that funny , though we don't like to do
these very simple tasks, thatit's not my job or I'm above
that task You're asking a simplequestion there.
Well, if you can execute onthis flawlessly, then I feel
confident to give you thislarger scope, this larger, more
complex scope to continueworking with.
(24:04):
When you're working with assets, are you looking at everything
that's within that facility?
Are you looking at a certainsection of the line to determine
what those routine tasks are,or do you tend to look at the
(24:26):
workflows separately, but howthey connect?
I'm wondering, have you foundyourself where there's a routine
high volume task that after itleaves this space, it no longer
becomes routine for the nextgroup, or the volume decreases
for the next group?
Can you touch on that a littlebit?
Lawrence Wong (24:47):
In asset management you're going to find,
at least for the bio-pharmamanufacturing side of things,
that the types of activitiesaround preventive maintenance
and calibrations are going to bepretty standard for each type
of asset.
A really good example is hey, Ihave to calibrate a certain
(25:08):
scale.
That is going to be done in avery streamlined and specific
way.
I think the variance doesn'tcome in Obviously.
I think there are nuances inthe different types of equipment
.
You may need to approach it acertain way, but for the most
part I think there's a lot moresimilarities than there are
differences in the work that isperformed on the equipment.
(25:31):
I think the variance reallycomes in planning and scheduling
the equipment, because when youwork with different owners of
the equipment, they're going towant things scheduled at a
certain time because they havesome overlapping activities and
so really understanding whatscheduling constraints are going
to prohibit you from doingthose things, that'll help you
(25:54):
move quicker.
If I understand that, mike herehas a lot of media prep
operations in the morning, I'mgoing to try to schedule that in
the afternoon when his team ismaybe in the office doing
training or something like that.
But you have to keep track ofall these different owners of
the equipment so that you canallocate the resources at a time
when it's not interrupting themin their operation.
(26:15):
I think an example that you canuse for the lab is when
somebody needs to certify abiosafety cabinet and they show
up with all their equipment andthen somebody's doing some sort
of operation in the hood.
You don't want the person tostop whatever they're doing and
to get up and let that personcertify the hood.
You want to be able to schedulethe time when the scientist is
(26:38):
not working on it, becausethere's going to be a lot of
downtime at certain times of theday.
So, really understanding whatis your process for planning and
scheduling that activity?
That should be streamlined andyou should be able to monitor
how well you are schedulingthose activities.
Oscar Gonzalez (26:56):
That's a really good point and a great example,
ones that I've been involved inbefore along that line, because
when you're, let's say, you'rein a biosafety cabinet, you're
working with cells.
A lot of times in the morningthat's when you're sort of going
in there, you're doingtransfections, you're doing
separations, you're kind ofknocking out all your stuff so
(27:18):
that you can allow it to takethat six hour incubation and not
leave at 8 pm.
So it's a very good example ofhow to sort of schedule those
things out.
So I'm curious to understandfrom your perspective in many
situations you'll have sort ofan operations manager or a
(27:42):
program manager, program projectmanager, that sort of you know.
Does all of this pulling ofinformation and where do you see
the expectations of the teammembers within the collaboration
workflow?
And I want to understand alittle bit of what your
(28:03):
expectation is and what inreality you see.
Lawrence Wong (28:08):
Yeah, I think the where you're going to see the
most engagement is at the.
It sucks that it has to happenthis way, but at the day or the
time that something is supposedto be performed, the worst thing
that can really happen is youshow up and then the equipment
or the instrument is notavailable for the work to be
(28:29):
performed.
Right, having that availabilityis going to be key and so okay.
Well then the question is howdo we track the equipment
availability?
And that's a lot of engagementon behalf of the equipment owner
, but also the team, to makesure that the resources are
available to work on theequipment or instrument.
(28:50):
When we decide that it's goingto happen on a Wednesday at 9 am
, right, if we show up at theinstrument at 9 am, it's one
thing to say you know, thescientist is still working on it
, but it's another thing to say,hey, my guys are not here to
work on it, because then thatcauses a lot of, I would say,
stress and anxiety over.
(29:10):
Okay, now we have to rescheduleand change the date, and then
now we have to get another slotfor when this thing is going to
be available.
And I think having this cancome in many different shapes or
forms.
You can have meetings, to kindof have these meetings where you
pick a date and time, or youcan have some sort of request
(29:32):
open for asking the owners, okay, which time slots are most
applicable for you Pretty muchlike setting up a meeting, right
, you don't want to schedule ameeting when someone or
something is not available, Ithink so when you think of the
equipment owner, I think havingaccurate time slots for when
(29:56):
something is available andreally communicating, hey, these
are some of the things that aregoing to be happening in the
areas that you should be awareof, I think, disclosing as much
information as possible to makesure that, when the work occurs,
there's less interruptions fromtheir end.
And I think, on the other sideof it, the service side, they
(30:17):
should be upfront about how longthis is going to take, right?
And so I love using the analogyof bringing your car into
service.
You don't want to bring yourcar in for an oil change and
then realize it's going to takeeight hours, when I showed up,
for this thing to be done in anhour, right.
So, being upfront about whenthere are going to be delays and
(30:40):
then, just if there is a delay,just being open about it and
saying, hey, we found this andit's going to take a little bit
longer.
But establishing thatcommunication with the equipment
owner as you're doing the workand then when you complete it, I
think is going to be key,because everyone needs to
continue back to what they weredoing before, and we understand
(31:00):
that these maintenance andcalibration events are going to
be pockets in time wheresomething's not available, and
so there's a schedule thatpeople follow and they're
expecting this thing to be doneat this time, and if it's not at
this time, it's great.
And if they return back to thework and they're able to do what
they need to do, that's theperfect scenario.
But the reality is there'sthings that come up and there's
(31:23):
going to be delays.
But you have to communicatethose things.
You can't wait till the personshows up and go oh yeah, we're
actually going to take anotherfive hours, because that's
usually disruptive to not onlythem, but you've got to think
about all the other people ontheir team that are expecting
that individual to do that typeof work right.
And so when you delay something, you've got to think not just
(31:44):
for that person, but what doesthat do to that department?
What does that do to the team?
And yeah, you have to be openand be able to have some form of
communication with thatparticular person.
Oscar Gonzalez (31:57):
So we've touched on a couple of things that I
think there's translation,translatability into R&D and
even into the clinical space.
One thing I think that there'sa little bit of a subtle
difference is that the I guessthe appearance or the equipment
(32:21):
owner that exists within assetsand facilities doesn't
necessarily occur within R&D oreven in the clinical space, for
example.
So I've seen organizations thattry and create like a signup
sheet or create some sort ofcheck in, check out system.
(32:42):
Now it's riddled withinconsistencies because you're
expecting A a person to comeover here, sign their name, put
a time that they need to usethis particular piece of
equipment.
They go back oh this wasn'tactually ready, I forgot that I
had to actually go sign up forit, or I forgot to take my name
(33:04):
off.
Somebody needs to jump in rightaway.
How do you see the relationshipof being able to essentially
function collaboratively onthese types of things without
having that owner that may bepresent as an actual position
(33:25):
elsewhere?
So we have a lab manager, buttheir focus on shipments coming
in, fixing things, coming andgoing, getting access to people,
making sure that the chemicaland the fire safety, all of that
stuff is up to date, there'smonthly check-ins et cetera.
So you won't necessarily findan equipment owner for standard
(33:49):
pieces of equipment across alaboratory.
How would you approach that?
Lawrence Wong (33:55):
Yeah, I think this is a really good situation,
just because I think it's verydifferent than in manufacturing
facilities, because there iswhat you would call a production
schedule that ensures thatcertain activities are occurring
in a certain cadence, justbecause things start to converge
when you go further downstream.
I think for labs particularly,my opinion is that you should
(34:20):
design it into a workflow, right, so some sort of mechanism.
If that individual does notexist is the lab manager or the
equipment owner or the scientistthey need to work with your
facilities team to understand.
Okay, if I have a maintenanceevent happen on this particular
equipment, what is the way thatwe would request service and how
(34:47):
do we schedule that?
And then take a look at what isthe process map for doing this
and really design thatscheduling and planning and
scheduling into the process.
So that may look as a maybethere's some shared file or some
database where you can checkoff that something's available.
(35:09):
And then on the other side, theplanner schedule sees that it's
green and then now you can kindof assign someone to that.
Again, that role traditionallyhas been an individual, but I
think there are technologies outthere that you can use.
Again, smart sheet, really goodexample, right, you're almost
managing these I would say, workorders as individual projects
(35:33):
and you look at a project, right, there are predecessors, there
are dependencies, andunderstanding what those
relationships are will help youdesign what that process is.
And I would say, just becauseyou don't have a person who is
responsible for that, doesn'tlet everybody off the hook to
say that they're not responsiblefor contributing to that
(35:55):
process.
Right, so you know whensomething needs to be serviced.
Oscar Gonzalez (35:59):
You're talking accountability.
Lawrence Wong (36:01):
Yeah, I'm talking accountability, and you know
when something needs to getserviced, it's not just hey,
we're doing this on your behalf.
Like us as a company, we wantto make sure that the equipment
is functioning optimally for ourscientists or our manufacturing
team.
Oscar Gonzalez (36:16):
You need good data.
You need good data, you needgood data you need to get.
Lawrence Wong (36:20):
You need good data, but you also need
everybody to play the same game.
You need everybody to say whatcan we do as a team to make sure
that this work gets done?
Not, oh so, and so says thisisn't available, so I'm not
going to do it, and like no,that's not what we're doing here
.
At the end of the day, we wantscience to continue.
We want things not to bedisrupted.
Okay, so work with me.
(36:41):
What do we do here to make surethat this gets done?
Oscar Gonzalez (36:45):
I mean, I think that's a fantastic point.
There's such a need foraccountability.
You know, from my perspectivewithin the laboratories, I think
that it's easy for us to lookand say, well, somebody's been
here for longer, this is theirdeal, I'll just send them a
(37:07):
quick note, and that notedoesn't get sent for two or
three days and that person neverknew that the system was down.
You know, these are these arethings that I see, that I have
seen in my experience,especially when I was working as
a lab manager of.
You know things that were downand you would find that there's
a post-it note on it.
Well, I don't come to this wingof the laboratory every day, so
(37:31):
that post-it note screwed me onthe day that I set up all of my
cells.
And now I have to try to find acollaborating lab somewhere
within this, within thisdepartment, if I can use their
equipment.
You know, or use that lab'sequipment or that lab's
equipment.
This is when I was working inacademia, where you had multiple
(37:52):
labs in the same space and, ofcourse, you know, usually things
do work out.
But every time that you runadditional experiments,
additional assays within thesesystems, it does take a toll.
They'll eventually have to getrecalibrated, et cetera.
It's just like driving a car.
It's not a big deal forsomebody to drive my car, but if
they're using my car all thetime, they should start taking
(38:14):
foot in the bell here.
You know, I think accountabilityis something that we don't talk
enough about.
Early stages of ourprofessional development, in
life sciences, in biotech andpharma, you know there is a
level of accountability.
You know the whole idea of yousee something, you say something
, you know.
If it's not the, you know, ifyou don't have a product owner,
(38:37):
talk to someone who is, you know, your guide, your mentor, your
colleague who's been there for alittle bit longer.
Hey, what's the process forthis?
And you know, don't be scaredto learn something new.
Maybe you will be tagged to.
Hey, do you want to take onthis system?
Like you work on it a lot.
Take that as an opportunity NowI have.
(38:57):
You know, what people I thinkfail to understand from time to
time is, the farther you go upthe ladder, the more
responsibility you have.
So if you want to, you know, bea manager someday.
If you want to, you know, bethis workforce for good, and
collaboration, etc.
You better start showing thosecollaboration attributes as soon
(39:22):
as you can early in your career, because that's really what's
going to drive that developmentand you know.
Again, I'm going to put out thatthe one of the things that you
mentioned was about designingthese labs into the workflows of
the activities.
That needs to be a focal pointfor the laboratories themselves.
(39:44):
So this is how it works.
This is where we can jump in,for, you know, to hold ourselves
accountable at these differentstages.
This person may be the productowner, but you are using it 90%
of the time.
So that's also yeah, I get thatthat person has that title, but
it's up to you to make surethat you know these things are
(40:04):
actually appropriately workingso that we don't stop and we
think, well, it's just two days.
I have seen a two day and if weuse the example of regulatory
submissions, two day delay overhere means that you can't submit
again for a month.
So a two day delay is not a twoday delay in every scenario.
A two day delay could be amonth delay, depending on what
(40:28):
that item is.
So we have to really understandwhat those workflows are and
how our work impacts the rest ofthe folks that we're working
with, the rest of the team, allof the other functions.
Your work is not silent.
The work you do impacts thework of the people that you're
(40:51):
working with.
Lawrence Wong (40:54):
Yeah, and I completely agree.
And, you know, one of the otherthings I want to add is both
from the the scientists,manufacturing side and the
facilities and engineering side,is I think both groups hate
when you have unplanned, nonroutine events, and a way to
(41:14):
avoid that is to have thisshared accountability and
responsibility for making surethat when something needs to be
serviced, it gets serviced right.
And so you know there, if you'reable to, on the, the science
system in manufacturing side, um, be able to spot things that
(41:35):
may be not working well withyour equipment or your
instrument and to tell these,these little events to the
facilities team, they may beable to proactively fix
something before somethingcatastrophic happens, right, yes
, like it's almost akin to youknow, talking to your PCP and
saying, oh, but noticing thisthing, with you know my body
(41:57):
getting sore in certain placesand and they can say, okay, well
, maybe you need to stretch moreor something like that and kind
of give you some sort of earlyon diagnosis so that it could
prevent something catastrophicfrom happening.
And I think on the other side ofit, you know, having those good
relationships with yourcustomers and your stakeholders
(42:18):
allow you to get in front ofsome of the bigger things that
may be happening down the linethat you may not be exposed to,
right.
So a really good example isgoing to be hey, you know, we're
bringing in a new asset interms of like a drug candidate
that requires like so and soequipment to be moved in, and so
(42:40):
, okay, well, that's good toknow from a facility's
perspective, because then theyneed to understand okay, do we
need movers?
Do we need to, you know, reroutesome plumbing, electrical like
keep something cold keepsomething cold, you know things
like that that allows them toagain foster this collaborative
workflow, right Understandingthe needs of one another,
(43:00):
understanding what drivers willchange each other's you know
scope of work and really justunderstanding that at the end of
the day, this we're all youknow, on the same team and you
have to kind of move in thatdirection, because you can't
have everything silent.
It doesn't make any sensebecause it's a lose-lose for
(43:22):
both sides if you do that.
Oscar Gonzalez (43:26):
It is.
I mean, you know, the onlything I can say is that if
you're somebody that wants tojust kind of stay in your space,
just do your thing and go home,it's probably not going to be
science, because there's alwayssome level of collaboration that
is needed, because, you know,despite what anybody may think,
(43:46):
the answers to a lot ofquestions that you have is
probably what somebody elseknows.
You know we have to learn tocollaborate, we have to learn to
be, you know, collaborative,thought-provoking, accountable.
You know to be proactive ratherthan being reactive, which is,
(44:07):
I think, very common in smallorganizations that maybe don't
have any redundancies.
And I think the lack ofredundancies is a way for
organizations to say, yes, we'relean.
I don't mean redundancies byhaving multiple people that are
(44:27):
doing the same task.
I mean it in the sense of, toyour point, shared
responsibility.
You can have an owner, but havesomebody else that also knows
what the heck is going on.
If this is a critical piece ofequipment, if this is a critical
part of the workflow, if thisis a critical part of the
development of your new asset,your new compound, etc.
(44:50):
Somebody else should also havea pretty good understanding with
how things are working.
I'm not saying they have to bethe owner, but, you know, put
somebody in that you know, allowthem to grow from there.
Maybe somebody that's a littlebit more junior, that wants to
sort of shadow.
That's a really greatopportunity, you know.
(45:10):
So, actually, along the linesof what I'm talking about, how
do we, how do leaders, fosterthese different needs of
collaboration and strategies forcross-functional development,
cross-functional collaboration?
(45:32):
How do leaders really bringthat to the forefront of their
culture, within their functionor within their project?
What are some strategies thatthey could do to, you know,
start helping people become moreaccountable and, you know,
really have this two-way flow ofinformation, rather than I only
(45:57):
give information when somebodyasks a question.
Lawrence Wong (46:03):
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Yeah, so I would say my, Idon't have any.
(46:40):
You know multiple strategies.
I have one strategy and it isto call it what it is right.
So if you're in a situationwhere there a process should be
there and it doesn't exist, or aprocess exists and it sucks,
you just have to call it what itis and say this is shit.
And if we know better, we cando better.
(47:01):
So you know where are thosebottlenecks and gaps?
Let's get everybody in a roomand start brainstorming or start
plotting out the process andidentifying why is this taking
so long?
Ask those questions to reallybring out the.
You know the honesty in peopleto say, yeah, this doesn't
really work because so-and-so isno longer here and this person
(47:23):
used to do this.
Or maybe you know we don't havea system of record for keeping
track of how things are servicedand you know really, just
calling it what it is and being,you know, open about it, and so
everybody can kind of bringtheir ideas to the table to see
what we can do to improve it.
And I think where I see peoplenot doing that or they maybe
(47:46):
they don't want to shake thetree or they're afraid that
speaking up will lead to themowning it.
I think again, like you saidbefore, it's an opportunity for
you to grow, don't you want towork in a process that is not
only simpler but better, and theway that you do that is
recognizing yeah, this is shit.
We can do better.
Oscar Gonzalez (48:07):
You know it's funny.
I will say this the more youlearn about how to communicate
with individuals of differentshape, sizes, backgrounds, etc.
The more likely you are able tohave these discussions where
the work does not drop into yourlab.
I just got called out of thisand one of my clients a couple
(48:30):
weeks ago Actually it might havebeen a couple months ago from
now, but I sort of brought upguys, this isn't working.
And you know, we started toelaborate and talk about it.
All of a sudden one person goeslike, all right, yeah, I'll
take that on.
And then I see two other folkslaughing, two other project
managers laughing or thisdirector's laughing.
It goes just the way that Oscarbrought up this challenge and
(48:54):
this issue.
And then, you know, this Q&Aemployee over here jumped in and
volunteered for it.
It's like you don't have toalways, you know, take in
everything that comes in and,quite frankly, that's a danger
zone.
That's a danger zone becausethen you're going to start
choking out what you believeyour best workers are.
(49:16):
Oh, let me give them everything.
That's not a good idea.
That's not a good idea.
They become resentful, you know.
They become this notion of justlike.
All these things fall on me butI don't get paid more.
You know that's a very commonthing to happen and so you have
to be very cautious with doingthings like that.
And I think, if we all are ableto spread, you know the work
(49:39):
that needs to be done andleverage our expertise, leverage
our minds, leverage ourabilities, you know, I think
that's where leadership can stepin, and leadership could be the
leader of your project or theleader of the department.
But, you know, if I'm assumingthat most of these folks have
(50:00):
one-on-one conversations,one-on-one project, you know,
individual calls with those thatreport to them, you know, have
the conversation.
How do you feel about the youknow relay of where do you get
your information from?
That's a really good questionto ask when do you get the
information you need to do, thework that you need to do?
(50:22):
And if they say, well, I get alot of it from the project
meeting, there needs to be achange because there's so much
that is missed from there.
Why don't you start to look atthis?
This is a really good source,this gets updated, blah, blah,
blah.
You know, let's have aconversation with such and such.
I think you guys could also, youknow, learn to share something.
So I think it's also in theleaders camp to say hey, I see
(50:47):
all these connecting pieces thatare right now in silos and
where we like to think that ourfunction is not siloed from
itself.
A lot of times, I find that toto not be the case.
It is siloed from itself.
You know this.
One person works differentlythan this person.
Well, why does it take thisperson four weeks to accomplish
(51:09):
that task and this person doesit in three days?
It's because this person cameup with a new process and didn't
tell anybody about it.
You know you will get thecredit.
You will get the credit.
It will come back to you thatthis was something that you
established.
Share.
Only thing I can say is share,share, share across your team,
(51:32):
across your function, acrossyour project.
Share the responsibility.
Share new insights that you mayhave gotten.
Share new updates.
If you developed a new macrosfor Excel that cuts down time,
if you went into Smartsheet andcreated a new workflow that
answers six or seven questionswhen before it was only pulling
(51:54):
out, you know two or threeanswers.
Share those things with yourteam.
It makes no sense to be thebest, fastest, you know, most
outstanding athlete on your team.
If you are just ignoringeverybody else, that's also on
your team, because you can't.
You can't win that by yourself,right?
Lawrence Wong (52:17):
Yeah, I agree as well and, you know, from a
leadership and managementperspective, really give people
the room to creatively designsome new workflows if they see
that this is an issue.
Yes, because the last thing youwant to do is call people out
(52:39):
or tell them that what they'redoing is a waste of time.
If it really impacts what theydo and I like this term,
collective pain, rightUnderstanding if everybody is
feeling the same way, then whyare we not doing anything about
it?
Right, it should be a nobrainer, obviously making sure
that it aligns with the you knowthe objectives and the goals
(53:01):
for the organization.
But again, looking at thefrequency and the type of task
that it is, if it happens a lotand it's really critical, yeah,
you should definitely fix that.
Oscar Gonzalez (53:14):
I couldn't be more in agreement with you there
.
So I guess I want to end on onething and I want to get your
thought on this when do you seeyou know everything now, if you
look at the last I don't knowfive, 10 years, from job
(53:35):
descriptions a lot of crossfunctional collaboration, cross
functional, you know,discussions, cross functional
leadership, everything is crossfunctional, matrixed environment
, everything.
And we've seen the progress orin some cases, lack thereof,
moving into that space.
(53:56):
How do you see this crossfunctional collaboration I guess
you could say evolving, giventhe plethora of new data sources
, of new project managementfunctions, of new AI.
How do you see all of thesethings sort of working together?
(54:19):
And I'll prompt you with thisit's my belief that as we have
evolved in our collection ofdata, of information, of trend
data, insights, that we'vealmost become less collaborative
because we have all of thisinformation here.
It's my belief that that's notgood enough, that we need to
also share this information,because insights don't just come
(54:41):
from your bucket of data.
Insights come when you startcollecting, when you start
connecting that bucket of datato the other functions.
Then you start to develop thoseinsights on your goals, on your
(55:06):
people, on the organization.
Where do you see our futurewith cross collaboration?
Lawrence Wong (55:17):
I think there's a lot of different tools out
there and there's a lot of datasources that you can collect.
I also think that most peopleactually everybody is probably
experiencing communicationoverload, where it's so easy to
type on your keyboard and send amessage and gather whatever
(55:41):
information you need Especiallyif you're managing a project or
assets or work orders to reallydistill it down to what are the
key pieces of information and tofind out what is the simplest
way to measure those things.
(56:01):
I think we still want to keepthat human touch part of it
where, just because you see anumber, that doesn't
automatically mean that ittranslates to X on your timeline
.
I still think there needs to besome sense of what do you think
(56:22):
of this data point or this setof data.
I think there needs to be afilter for certain things,
especially if people don't knowwhat to measure.
Don't measure everything.
I think there's a saying thatsays just because you measure,
it doesn't mean it's important,and just because you don't
measure, it doesn't mean it'snot important.
(56:42):
So, really understanding thedrivers for the project that
you're working on and distillingthe information down, because
things are just really, reallycomplicated when you measure
everything under the sun and Ithink, if you look five, ten
years down the road, I think thepeople that are going to be
really successful are the onesthat are going to be able to not
(57:05):
only communicate effectively,but people that are going to be
able to distill the data down tothose essential points.
And you know this from your highlevel management meetings with
some of your clients.
There's too much going on andthey need information to be
(57:26):
concise, accurate, they need tobe translatable, not only to
their audience, but maybe someof their groups that may not
have the same background asthose people in the meeting.
And the easier that you makethe information to digest, I
think, the more powerful themessage is going to be delivered
(57:48):
.
So really distilling it downand simplifying it allows that
to go much further than youwriting a 30 page dissertation
on why we missed the target lastmonth, like that's not just,
it's not going to work.
Oscar Gonzalez (58:06):
Beautiful example and you know I think
we'll end with that that.
You know it's not enough tosimply regurgitate your data
input.
There's a lot of data out there.
There's big data, small data,however you want to call it, and
(58:27):
there's a saying if you can'texplain the science that you
conducted, it never happened.
Data is explaining your output,your discussion, your
conclusions.
Those are the main points thatyou're trying to have people
leave with.
So to your point.
(58:49):
Leaders need to allow for thatroom to expand on new workflows,
on how to become more crosscollaborative.
Folks need to become moreaccountable, that they are the
sum of their team the sum oftheir team.
They are not an individual MVP.
(59:11):
That is not how it works.
You all are to work together.
You guys find ideas orsolutions in your space.
Echo those ideas or solutions.
That's a really good thing.
Don't keep it to yourself.
So yeah, it's, it's.
I think that there isavailability there and, for
(59:33):
those that are curious how toeven initiate those things,
there are a lot of careeropportunities with being that
owner.
To really facilitate crosscollaboration.
There's a lot of leadershippositions mid level leadership
that really puts you in positionto take in the data and be able
(59:54):
to distill the finer points ofthe project, of the execution of
the goals, and that's very,very critical.
So, accountability, providethat space and take that time to
also build those insights, notjust spitting back numbers and
(01:00:19):
here it's 50%, over there it's22, over here it's 35.
Well, what does that mean?
Put that together into aconcise message of what that
means.
And if you struggle with that,talk to your neighbor.
What does this tell you?
Because there may have adifferent look at the same data.
(01:00:46):
Today we talked about the vitalrole of collaborative workflows
in efficiently managing teamworkloads and achieving project
outcomes, and it looks into thenecessity of accountability and
responsibility for smoothcollaboration, especially when
working with matrix teams.
Open communication, sharedownership and acknowledging
(01:01:07):
collective challenges iscritical for successful teamwork
.
Collaboration can now seem as abuzzword for a great place to
work.
Sure, you can ask anyone aquestion without a feeling of
angst.
But how collaborative are youtruly?
Are you feeling of activelypushing information out and
somehow still out of the loop?
(01:01:28):
That's not collaboration.
The future of collaboration islinked to how effective we can
be with our data and our tools.
That future serves to highlightthe need for simple data
measurements, distilling intoclear and concise messaging.
Get there, acknowledge the needfor cross collaboration, foster
(01:01:54):
idea sharing with leadershipand build that comprehensive
understanding of your assets.
Thanks for listening.
Don't forget to leave us areview, like and share on
(01:02:15):
Spotify, apple and GooglePodcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts, and if you'reinterested in being on the show
or becoming a sponsor, send us amessage at Lean by Design at
SigmaLabConsultingcom.
We're all on the same team and you have to kind
of move in that direction,because you can't have
everything silent.
It doesn't make any sensebecause it's a lose-lose for
both sides if you do that.
Oscar Gonzalez (00:18):
Welcome to Lean by Design Podcast.
I'm your host, Oscar Gonzalez,alongside my co-host, Lawrence
Wong.
We are former MBA classmatesturned business partners, with
over 25 years of combinedexperience in life sciences,
from R&D to manufacturing.
Our experiences have shed lightinto the complex, ever-changing
challenges experienced by thisindustry and many others.
(00:40):
We took a risk quit oursix-figure paying jobs in Boston
biotech and pharma to startSigma Lab Consulting.
Journey with us as we explorethe relationship between people
and workflow design, the goal Tolearn, inspire and deliver
practical tips to navigate theseever-changing challenges.
Stick with us and learn to worksmarter, not harder, and be
(01:03):
lean by design.
In today's episode, we dive intothe heart of efficient project
execution Collaborativeworkflows.
60% of R&D projects arehindered by inefficiencies.
But what if we told you the keylies in fostering seamless
(01:26):
teamwork?
Today, we're going to explorethe transformative power of
standard processes,accountability and the art of
distilling complex data intoactionable insights.
From the intricacies of assetmanagement to the nuances of
laboratory operations andeverything in between.
We're going to unravel thesignificance of
(01:50):
cross-collaboration and sharedownership.
Come with us where we createthis future, where projects
thrive on effectivecommunication, concise messaging
and their strategic use of dataand tools.
This conversation isn't justabout overcoming collective
challenges.
It's about building a cultureof success through shared
(02:13):
experiences and insights.
Join in to redefinecollaboration in life sciences.
Lawrence Wong (02:28):
We're trying to figure out the next project on
my queue, so there's a fairamount of stuff that you can
(02:58):
standardize, but right now allthey use is emails and then they
have a ton of meetings and allof the things that you would
consider to be in a process isthere, but it's in pieces.
I think talking aboutcollaborative workflows allows
you to put those things alltogether into one mechanism to
(03:21):
manage those types of activitiesthat should be streamlined.
Oscar Gonzalez (03:26):
Yeah, it's funny that you have that experience
and that perspective because Isee the same in a number of my
clients where it's almost likeall the data is there, all the
information is there.
But we're so close to it that ifyou just take a couple of steps
(03:46):
back and usually you'reremoving yourself which is why
people ask for us to come inbecause we can come right in,
remove ourselves and look at,okay, what do you guys have to
play with?
And then when you start tounderstand, oh, this team
collects this type ofinformation, that team needs
this kind of information youstart to make this sort of web
(04:08):
relationship of what thefunction is actually doing.
It's been more than one occasionthat I've worked with a client,
developed a process map oftheir current process, and their
response is whoa, that's whatwe're doing, but it takes a
little bit to actually manifest.
And so today, in talking aboutthose collaboration workflows
(04:35):
and in development projects,asset management, there's a
couple of different spaces inthere, from the collaboration
workflows to agile management,the importance, the strategies,
all those things we want to talkabout today, and it's all super
important.
And I like the fact that thisis one of the earlier episodes
(04:57):
in 2024, because it starts tohelp you think about where do
you want to be at the end of theyear.
I know some folks have alreadydetermined what their goals are,
but there's others that arestill trying to figure out what
those goals look like, and Ithink having some sort of
collaboration, data mesh, datamixing, information sharing
(05:21):
workflow is key to have asuccessful 2024.
Lawrence Wong (05:27):
Yeah, you want to know where you're going to be
by the end of the year and Ithink starting with what things
require a collaborative workflowis really good to think about
at the beginning of the year soyou can track and monitor your
progress towards whatever you'retrying to do by the end of the
year, rather than again having alot of these fragmented pieces
(05:51):
of information that, by the timeDecember 2024 rolls around,
you're going to be looking backat emails and SharePoint and
PowerPoints and all sorts ofsources of information to figure
out okay, did we actually dowhat we were supposed to do and
(06:12):
how well did we do it?
Right, I think that's.
The other thing, too.
Is is not only did you achievewhat you wanted to do, but how
well did we do in those areas toget us to where we needed to be
?
Oscar Gonzalez (06:25):
We often focus on the end product, whether it's
a project, some sort ofinitiative, as representation of
the success of a project.
But that is just a point intime.
That is literally a singlepoint in time, rather than
looking at the journey, becauseI've seen some successful
(06:47):
projects in the sense ofachieving their goals, but when
you look at the process it tookto get there, it was an absolute
train wreck.
There were colleagues that wereyelling at each other, there
were people that were dismissedfrom meetings and to understand
that that actually happened inthe project and to not do
(07:11):
something about it in terms ofthat workflow, of that process,
that's negligence from not onlyjust leadership but from the
folks that are working in there.
No one likes that kind ofstress, that type of stressful
environment that you see thatmakes good television, that
makes a terrible place to work.
Lawrence Wong (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I think you know
, if we want to maybe focus theconversation a little bit more
on some of the nuances inprojects and what you've seen,
where do you think it's mostbeneficial to have these
collaborative workflow set up?
Because I think not everythingrequires a collaborative
(07:53):
workflow, because there are somethings that, to be honest, it's
just open ended and you don'treally know what pieces of
information you're going to needto gather to kind of make a
specific decision.
It may be brainstorming oranything like that.
It's more open loop and notclosed loop.
So for closed loop decisions,I'm more thinking of okay, how
(08:15):
do we just manage tasks on aproject, right?
How do we know if we'reprogressing on the timeline and
where are we in relation to thetimeline and how far or close
are we from achieving thatmilestone or whatever that year
end goal is?
What are your thoughts on whereto really focus these workflows
(08:38):
?
Oscar Gonzalez (08:39):
I mean, that's a really good question because it
can be daunting.
There are so many activitiesthat are happening toward the
project goal and in a perfectworld, you would have corporate
goals that inform on the typesof goals that your project
should include, and thoseproject goals will inform on
(09:01):
what those functions shouldinclude and those functional
goals should involve, or shouldinclude, components of what the
employees in that function aregoing to execute on.
So in a perfect world, it looksjust like that a pyramid.
You have your people goal atthe bottom, the next level is
(09:26):
the project goal, the next levelprobably the program, the
portfolio goal, and then youhave some corporate goals as
well.
So it becomes a little bitdaunting to try to go okay, well
, how do we capture all thesethings that we need to?
Well, let's just take a project, let's just call it, let's just
say, an R&D project.
In that sense, there are thingsthat you know that have to be
(09:50):
completed.
You know, no matter whathappens, these five, six
elements of this project need tooccur.
Okay, what do you need to knowin each of those stages and who
are the stakeholders?
So that's a common thing wherewe, you know, sort of go to like
the functional line manager,and that's great.
(10:12):
But that functional manager isprobably on seven or eight
projects.
So where I tend to get the bestinformation from, I start to
create relationships with thedirect stakeholders of those
initiatives.
So I'll always check and verify, so I will work directly with
(10:32):
that person and then verify withthe, you know, with the
functional lead kind of thebigger picture.
Hey, I saw Sally was working onthis.
We're expecting this.
And then Kyle mentioned thatwe're going to get the shipment
in for XYZ, so we should beprepared to make a decision on X
.
Do you see any any issues ofthat happening?
(10:53):
And and you know, that sort ofstarts the conversation.
Now, these are things that weknow and so there's sort of a
two edges here that we have tolook at are the things that we
know that need to happen and theunknown.
So, mind you, all thesedifferent things that we're
talking about, like how to focusand where to focus, it's really
(11:16):
going to depend on the end goalof your project.
You know the things that youknow.
You can run those throughworkflows, you can run those
through timelines and havingthat stakeholder engagement.
I can't stress this enough.
You cannot wait until the nextproject meeting to have these
conversations.
(11:36):
You know, slack has a reallynice function where you click on
a huddle and you could justmessage somebody and say hey, do
you got 10 minutes for a huddle?
Hey, I was looking at thisinformation.
I was looking at thatinformation and I want to know
you know, is this on par?
Are we expecting anything?
Any snags here?
(11:56):
On the other side of things,there are so many unknowns that
accompany many stages, not justin the R&D stage, but even in,
you know, a clinical stage wherewe have no idea what's going to
come back from the regulatoryagencies.
They may tell us to run a newtrial.
So there's a mentality in aframework that is more agile in
(12:23):
that sense.
So, although we have thecomfort of knowing these are the
exact moments that are supposedto take place, we have to be
prepared to also take on thingsthat may be nuanced in that
sense where this data suggeststhat this.
So now we have to run this setof data before we can do any
(12:45):
more in vivo data, before we cando any more in vivo experiments
.
Why?
Because the data that wereceived from here was a little
bit dirty, which makes us assumethat there are some impurities.
We have to understand whatthose impurities are and if they
impact the mechanism of thisparticular compound.
You know there's a plethora ofthings.
So you have your known items,which would be more of your
(13:08):
standard workflow mapping,connecting with stakeholders In
your unknown, that agilerelationship needs to be super
tight with your project leads,with your project teams and
functional owners to say, okay,well, now we have new
information, let's build on thatinformation and find the way to
(13:28):
drive forward and, as we'retalking about today, the
collaboration network, aframework.
You're not always going to havethat information ready to
cascade throughout the team, soit's nice to have sort of a
almost like a I forget what dothey call that telephone list
(13:49):
where you call all yourneighbors.
You used to call all yourneighbors that now everybody
just posts a Facebook message tothe town Facebook page, but
used to call all the neighbors,okay, now you call a phone tree.
It's almost like doingsomething like that, that you
need to make sure that thingsthat are not standard need to be
communicated, and I thinksometimes that we forget that
because we live in this sort oflike.
(14:12):
Well, this is the status of howthings go and I don't need to
say anything because we'remeeting somewhere in two days.
But those two days can movesomebody else's timeline a week.
Lawrence Wong (14:24):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like from a very high
level, the the.
Where you want to really focuson these collaborative workflows
is from like a top downperspective, like what, what
kind of is the end goal?
And we know, you know, theseare the requirements to kind of
get there, and and having astandardized way to track and
(14:44):
monitor the progress is going tobe key.
But you also want to beflexible enough where there are
certain nuances to some of these, like subtasks that you want to
incorporate so it doesn't kindof get lost in the weeds.
And if it is some decision thatimpacts another function, you
want to, you want to capturethat.
But you don't want to kind ofbog down your workflow with like
(15:06):
oh, here are all the thingsthat I do, and like we need to
monitor every single one,because at the end of the day,
we only care about, you know, isthese maybe three metrics that
are driving this particulartimeline Exactly?
And you know from from whatyou've seen, how have you seen
the opposite end of it from?
You know, having workflows thatare just way too complicated,
(15:30):
where you can't even make senseof how far or close you are to
the end goal, because theystarted from like a top or a
down or bottom up perspective.
It's a.
Oscar Gonzalez (15:46):
You make me laugh because in a recent
experience we were and I mayhave talked about this on one of
the other episodes, but we werelooking at improving the
process of onboarding externalparties.
So myself, being a consultant,I was very involved, not only in
(16:07):
the process, but I was livingthe issues that were happening
as we were delayed with SOWs,delayed with signing contracts
and things getting stuck andgetting pushed back.
I was actually involved in thatand showing guys you're, you're
approving our point here thatthis is a problem.
I can show you the emails, thedate, the timestamps, everything
(16:29):
Like this is why these needs tobe fixed.
And what I received was a fivestep workflow.
What I gave was a 23 stepworkflow and it actually was met
with some laughter of there'sno way that we can show people
that it's this complicated.
(16:50):
Now here's the catch Everysingle step was determined to be
necessary by the functions thatwere involved.
So we have to be really carefulabout building these workflows
where it's easy to just say letme word vomit everything.
(17:12):
I'm going to put every ideathat you know, every possible
scenario, but why are wedeveloping workflows for a
scenario that may occur 1% ofthe time?
You know, and at that thatscenario probably has some
subtle nuances that you canactually just find a way to work
(17:36):
around.
You know that that is notreally something that you can
standardize.
So when I, when I talk topeople about building workflows,
if there is room for scenariodrivers, I would suggest on no
more than two, two to three atthe most, because at every point
(17:59):
of decision you can start tohave something that changes.
Well, this is a no buy.
You should also go back to dothese three steps, but only if
this is the case, only if youknow.
So you start to get these, likeyou know, scenarios that may be
fresh in somebody's mind but inthe reality of it only occur in
(18:22):
such a small subset.
So what ends up happening isyou get this giant workflow that
you know you could probablyspeak to, that looks like a
circuit board schematic, andyou're thinking this is just for
me to turn in the document.
It's like how, where do I start?
(18:43):
Where am I supposed to start?
And in those scenarios that youhave those large workflows, if
they are key to your operations,there needs to be training
available, and I'm not talkingabout email me if you guys ever.
Of course, everyone knows thatyou can just email, but we're
always so bogged down we tend toforget what we need to email.
(19:06):
It's the last minute becausewe're so busy doing this and now
I have to work on this processthat I haven't done in nine
months.
Schedule a training.
Schedule a training.
If these are issues that arehappening over and over and over
again, you need to establish abaseline, a foundation for the
understanding of that workflowin the organization so that at
(19:27):
the very least, as people areworking together with their
teammates, they can get 80% ofthe way there and maybe don't
have to ask the simple questionsof where do I get a login for X
?
You're listening to Lean byDesign Podcast and we'll be
right back after a quick break.
(19:48):
Do you suspect your lifesciences company could do things
more efficiently?
Maybe you're seeing costlyworkflow issues or maybe the
work feels more difficult toperform than necessary,
affecting Team Oral.
If any of this resonates, reachout to the team at Sigma Lab
Consulting for a freeconsultation on how we can
develop and launch a customsolution fit for your team.
(20:10):
Our consultants will build acustom workflow solution for
your team to reach peakefficiency.
Find out more atwwwSigmaLabConsultingcom.
Lawrence Wong (20:27):
Yeah, no to your point about planning or
developing processes around the1% chance that some process
might occur in that particularway and just going way overboard
on considering all differenttypes of possibilities.
You really have to look at thefrequency of the types of events
(20:47):
that would drive timelines togo a certain way.
For asset management, I thinkthe collaborative workflows are
especially useful and I wouldsay even required for the
operation and maintenance phaseof your asset lifecycle.
At this point you're looking atmaintaining and operating your
(21:11):
piece of equipment andinstruments that you have in
your biopharma research andproduction facilities.
You think of the threedifferent types of activities
and the first is going to beyour planned routine events.
These are going to be yourpreventive maintenance
activities, your calibrations,things that you would normally
do day to day, but there's justa large volume of those.
(21:35):
The second category is going tobe your planned non-routine
events.
These are hey, we're going tohave a shutdown, we need to
replace a certain component.
There's a lot of differentconsiderations, but we've done
this before and we may do this,not often, but at some sort of
frequency.
Then the 1% is going to be yourI'm not going to say 1% because
(21:56):
it's having way more often thanit should be.
Are these unplanned,non-routine events?
These are going to be your adhoc customer requests that come
from manufacturing, or yourscientists that sit at the bench
?
These are going to becorrective maintenance.
Something failed when youdidn't know and you have to come
(22:18):
up with a way to fix thatparticular problem.
A good example I like to thinkof is for oil change.
You want everybody tounderstand how to do this
consistently and you want it tobe done at a certain time.
You want consistent performancethroughout.
But if there's a tree that fallson my car, I don't expect the
(22:39):
mechanic to have some sort ofplan together to fix the car
because he doesn't think aboutthat when somebody brings their
car and oh yeah, this tree fellon my car, that's just
ridiculous and nobody's going tobe planning that far ahead or
for those scenarios, becausethey just don't happen that
often.
My opinion on this is reallyjust focus on the activities
(23:02):
that have the most volume, whichare going to be your planned
routine events.
Optimizing for that largevolume, not only because it
occurs a lot, but because it'sgoing to take up the majority of
your time, your money, yourresources.
It's going to be the mostdirect contact that you have
with your customers, yourclients.
(23:22):
As an example, if I can't trustyou to do something simple, why
would I trust you to dosomething extremely complicated
and long in duration?
Establishing that rapport andtrust allows your stakeholders
to say okay for those big issues.
I'm going to trust you to dothis.
Oscar Gonzalez (23:41):
Isn't that funny , though we don't like to do
these very simple tasks, thatit's not my job or I'm above
that task You're asking a simplequestion there.
Well, if you can execute onthis flawlessly, then I feel
confident to give you thislarger scope, this larger, more
complex scope to continueworking with.
(24:04):
When you're working with assets, are you looking at everything
that's within that facility?
Are you looking at a certainsection of the line to determine
what those routine tasks are,or do you tend to look at the
(24:26):
workflows separately, but howthey connect?
I'm wondering, have you foundyourself where there's a routine
high volume task that after itleaves this space, it no longer
becomes routine for the nextgroup, or the volume decreases
for the next group?
Can you touch on that a littlebit?
Lawrence Wong (24:47):
In asset management you're going to find,
at least for the bio-pharmamanufacturing side of things,
that the types of activitiesaround preventive maintenance
and calibrations are going to bepretty standard for each type
of asset.
A really good example is hey, Ihave to calibrate a certain
(25:08):
scale.
That is going to be done in avery streamlined and specific
way.
I think the variance doesn'tcome in Obviously.
I think there are nuances inthe different types of equipment
.
You may need to approach it acertain way, but for the most
part I think there's a lot moresimilarities than there are
differences in the work that isperformed on the equipment.
(25:31):
I think the variance reallycomes in planning and scheduling
the equipment, because when youwork with different owners of
the equipment, they're going towant things scheduled at a
certain time because they havesome overlapping activities and
so really understanding whatscheduling constraints are going
to prohibit you from doingthose things, that'll help you
(25:54):
move quicker.
If I understand that, mike herehas a lot of media prep
operations in the morning, I'mgoing to try to schedule that in
the afternoon when his team ismaybe in the office doing
training or something like that.
But you have to keep track ofall these different owners of
the equipment so that you canallocate the resources at a time
when it's not interrupting themin their operation.
(26:15):
I think an example that you canuse for the lab is when
somebody needs to certify abiosafety cabinet and they show
up with all their equipment andthen somebody's doing some sort
of operation in the hood.
You don't want the person tostop whatever they're doing and
to get up and let that personcertify the hood.
You want to be able to schedulethe time when the scientist is
(26:38):
not working on it, becausethere's going to be a lot of
downtime at certain times of theday.
So, really understanding whatis your process for planning and
scheduling that activity?
That should be streamlined andyou should be able to monitor
how well you are schedulingthose activities.
Oscar Gonzalez (26:56):
That's a really good point and a great example,
ones that I've been involved inbefore along that line, because
when you're, let's say, you'rein a biosafety cabinet, you're
working with cells.
A lot of times in the morningthat's when you're sort of going
in there, you're doingtransfections, you're doing
separations, you're kind ofknocking out all your stuff so
(27:18):
that you can allow it to takethat six hour incubation and not
leave at 8 pm.
So it's a very good example ofhow to sort of schedule those
things out.
So I'm curious to understandfrom your perspective in many
situations you'll have sort ofan operations manager or a
(27:42):
program manager, program projectmanager, that sort of you know.
Does all of this pulling ofinformation and where do you see
the expectations of the teammembers within the collaboration
workflow?
And I want to understand alittle bit of what your
(28:03):
expectation is and what inreality you see.
Lawrence Wong (28:08):
Yeah, I think the where you're going to see the
most engagement is at the.
It sucks that it has to happenthis way, but at the day or the
time that something is supposedto be performed, the worst thing
that can really happen is youshow up and then the equipment
or the instrument is notavailable for the work to be
(28:29):
performed.
Right, having that availabilityis going to be key and so okay.
Well then the question is howdo we track the equipment
availability?
And that's a lot of engagementon behalf of the equipment owner
, but also the team, to makesure that the resources are
available to work on theequipment or instrument.
(28:50):
When we decide that it's goingto happen on a Wednesday at 9 am
, right, if we show up at theinstrument at 9 am, it's one
thing to say you know, thescientist is still working on it
, but it's another thing to say,hey, my guys are not here to
work on it, because then thatcauses a lot of, I would say,
stress and anxiety over.
(29:10):
Okay, now we have to rescheduleand change the date, and then
now we have to get another slotfor when this thing is going to
be available.
And I think having this cancome in many different shapes or
forms.
You can have meetings, to kindof have these meetings where you
pick a date and time, or youcan have some sort of request
(29:32):
open for asking the owners, okay, which time slots are most
applicable for you Pretty muchlike setting up a meeting, right
, you don't want to schedule ameeting when someone or
something is not available, Ithink so when you think of the
equipment owner, I think havingaccurate time slots for when
(29:56):
something is available andreally communicating, hey, these
are some of the things that aregoing to be happening in the
areas that you should be awareof, I think, disclosing as much
information as possible to makesure that, when the work occurs,
there's less interruptions fromtheir end.
And I think, on the other sideof it, the service side, they
(30:17):
should be upfront about how longthis is going to take, right?
And so I love using the analogyof bringing your car into
service.
You don't want to bring yourcar in for an oil change and
then realize it's going to takeeight hours, when I showed up,
for this thing to be done in anhour, right.
So, being upfront about whenthere are going to be delays and
(30:40):
then, just if there is a delay,just being open about it and
saying, hey, we found this andit's going to take a little bit
longer.
But establishing thatcommunication with the equipment
owner as you're doing the workand then when you complete it, I
think is going to be key,because everyone needs to
continue back to what they weredoing before, and we understand
(31:00):
that these maintenance andcalibration events are going to
be pockets in time wheresomething's not available, and
so there's a schedule thatpeople follow and they're
expecting this thing to be doneat this time, and if it's not at
this time, it's great.
And if they return back to thework and they're able to do what
they need to do, that's theperfect scenario.
But the reality is there'sthings that come up and there's
(31:23):
going to be delays.
But you have to communicatethose things.
You can't wait till the personshows up and go oh yeah, we're
actually going to take anotherfive hours, because that's
usually disruptive to not onlythem, but you've got to think
about all the other people ontheir team that are expecting
that individual to do that typeof work right.
And so when you delay something, you've got to think not just
(31:44):
for that person, but what doesthat do to that department?
What does that do to the team?
And yeah, you have to be openand be able to have some form of
communication with thatparticular person.
Oscar Gonzalez (31:57):
So we've touched on a couple of things that I
think there's translation,translatability into R&D and
even into the clinical space.
One thing I think that there'sa little bit of a subtle
difference is that the I guessthe appearance or the equipment
(32:21):
owner that exists within assetsand facilities doesn't
necessarily occur within R&D oreven in the clinical space, for
example.
So I've seen organizations thattry and create like a signup
sheet or create some sort ofcheck in, check out system.
(32:42):
Now it's riddled withinconsistencies because you're
expecting A a person to comeover here, sign their name, put
a time that they need to usethis particular piece of
equipment.
They go back oh this wasn'tactually ready, I forgot that I
had to actually go sign up forit, or I forgot to take my name
(33:04):
off.
Somebody needs to jump in rightaway.
How do you see the relationshipof being able to essentially
function collaboratively onthese types of things without
having that owner that may bepresent as an actual position
(33:25):
elsewhere?
So we have a lab manager, buttheir focus on shipments coming
in, fixing things, coming andgoing, getting access to people,
making sure that the chemicaland the fire safety, all of that
stuff is up to date, there'smonthly check-ins et cetera.
So you won't necessarily findan equipment owner for standard
(33:49):
pieces of equipment across alaboratory.
How would you approach that?
Lawrence Wong (33:55):
Yeah, I think this is a really good situation,
just because I think it's verydifferent than in manufacturing
facilities, because there iswhat you would call a production
schedule that ensures thatcertain activities are occurring
in a certain cadence, justbecause things start to converge
when you go further downstream.
I think for labs particularly,my opinion is that you should
(34:20):
design it into a workflow, right, so some sort of mechanism.
If that individual does notexist is the lab manager or the
equipment owner or the scientistthey need to work with your
facilities team to understand.
Okay, if I have a maintenanceevent happen on this particular
equipment, what is the way thatwe would request service and how
(34:47):
do we schedule that?
And then take a look at what isthe process map for doing this
and really design thatscheduling and planning and
scheduling into the process.
So that may look as a maybethere's some shared file or some
database where you can checkoff that something's available.
(35:09):
And then on the other side, theplanner schedule sees that it's
green and then now you can kindof assign someone to that.
Again, that role traditionallyhas been an individual, but I
think there are technologies outthere that you can use.
Again, smart sheet, really goodexample, right, you're almost
managing these I would say, workorders as individual projects
(35:33):
and you look at a project, right, there are predecessors, there
are dependencies, andunderstanding what those
relationships are will help youdesign what that process is.
And I would say, just becauseyou don't have a person who is
responsible for that, doesn'tlet everybody off the hook to
say that they're not responsiblefor contributing to that
(35:55):
process.
Right, so you know whensomething needs to be serviced.
Oscar Gonzalez (35:59):
You're talking accountability.
Lawrence Wong (36:01):
Yeah, I'm talking accountability, and you know
when something needs to getserviced, it's not just hey,
we're doing this on your behalf.
Like us as a company, we wantto make sure that the equipment
is functioning optimally for ourscientists or our manufacturing
team.
Oscar Gonzalez (36:16):
You need good data.
You need good data, you needgood data you need to get.
Lawrence Wong (36:20):
You need good data, but you also need
everybody to play the same game.
You need everybody to say whatcan we do as a team to make sure
that this work gets done?
Not, oh so, and so says thisisn't available, so I'm not
going to do it, and like no,that's not what we're doing here
.
At the end of the day, we wantscience to continue.
We want things not to bedisrupted.
Okay, so work with me.
(36:41):
What do we do here to make surethat this gets done?
Oscar Gonzalez (36:45):
I mean, I think that's a fantastic point.
There's such a need foraccountability.
You know, from my perspectivewithin the laboratories, I think
that it's easy for us to lookand say, well, somebody's been
here for longer, this is theirdeal, I'll just send them a
(37:07):
quick note, and that notedoesn't get sent for two or
three days and that person neverknew that the system was down.
You know, these are these arethings that I see, that I have
seen in my experience,especially when I was working as
a lab manager of.
You know things that were downand you would find that there's
a post-it note on it.
Well, I don't come to this wingof the laboratory every day, so
(37:31):
that post-it note screwed me onthe day that I set up all of my
cells.
And now I have to try to find acollaborating lab somewhere
within this, within thisdepartment, if I can use their
equipment.
You know, or use that lab'sequipment or that lab's
equipment.
This is when I was working inacademia, where you had multiple
(37:52):
labs in the same space and, ofcourse, you know, usually things
do work out.
But every time that you runadditional experiments,
additional assays within thesesystems, it does take a toll.
They'll eventually have to getrecalibrated, et cetera.
It's just like driving a car.
It's not a big deal forsomebody to drive my car, but if
they're using my car all thetime, they should start taking
(38:14):
foot in the bell here.
You know, I think accountabilityis something that we don't talk
enough about.
Early stages of ourprofessional development, in
life sciences, in biotech andpharma, you know there is a
level of accountability.
You know the whole idea of yousee something, you say something
, you know.
If it's not the, you know, ifyou don't have a product owner,
(38:37):
talk to someone who is, you know, your guide, your mentor, your
colleague who's been there for alittle bit longer.
Hey, what's the process forthis?
And you know, don't be scaredto learn something new.
Maybe you will be tagged to.
Hey, do you want to take onthis system?
Like you work on it a lot.
Take that as an opportunity NowI have.
(38:57):
You know, what people I thinkfail to understand from time to
time is, the farther you go upthe ladder, the more
responsibility you have.
So if you want to, you know, bea manager someday.
If you want to, you know, bethis workforce for good, and
collaboration, etc.
You better start showing thosecollaboration attributes as soon
(39:22):
as you can early in your career, because that's really what's
going to drive that developmentand you know.
Again, I'm going to put out thatthe one of the things that you
mentioned was about designingthese labs into the workflows of
the activities.
That needs to be a focal pointfor the laboratories themselves.
(39:44):
So this is how it works.
This is where we can jump in,for, you know, to hold ourselves
accountable at these differentstages.
This person may be the productowner, but you are using it 90%
of the time.
So that's also yeah, I get thatthat person has that title, but
it's up to you to make surethat you know these things are
(40:04):
actually appropriately workingso that we don't stop and we
think, well, it's just two days.
I have seen a two day and if weuse the example of regulatory
submissions, two day delay overhere means that you can't submit
again for a month.
So a two day delay is not a twoday delay in every scenario.
A two day delay could be amonth delay, depending on what
(40:28):
that item is.
So we have to really understandwhat those workflows are and
how our work impacts the rest ofthe folks that we're working
with, the rest of the team, allof the other functions.
Your work is not silent.
The work you do impacts thework of the people that you're
(40:51):
working with.
Lawrence Wong (40:54):
Yeah, and I completely agree.
And, you know, one of the otherthings I want to add is both
from the the scientists,manufacturing side and the
facilities and engineering side,is I think both groups hate
when you have unplanned, nonroutine events, and a way to
(41:14):
avoid that is to have thisshared accountability and
responsibility for making surethat when something needs to be
serviced, it gets serviced right.
And so you know there, if you'reable to, on the, the science
system in manufacturing side, um, be able to spot things that
(41:35):
may be not working well withyour equipment or your
instrument and to tell these,these little events to the
facilities team, they may beable to proactively fix
something before somethingcatastrophic happens, right, yes
, like it's almost akin to youknow, talking to your PCP and
saying, oh, but noticing thisthing, with you know my body
(41:57):
getting sore in certain placesand and they can say, okay, well
, maybe you need to stretch moreor something like that and kind
of give you some sort of earlyon diagnosis so that it could
prevent something catastrophicfrom happening.
And I think on the other side ofit, you know, having those good
relationships with yourcustomers and your stakeholders
(42:18):
allow you to get in front ofsome of the bigger things that
may be happening down the linethat you may not be exposed to,
right.
So a really good example isgoing to be hey, you know, we're
bringing in a new asset interms of like a drug candidate
that requires like so and soequipment to be moved in, and so
(42:40):
, okay, well, that's good toknow from a facility's
perspective, because then theyneed to understand okay, do we
need movers?
Do we need to, you know, reroutesome plumbing, electrical like
keep something cold keepsomething cold, you know things
like that that allows them toagain foster this collaborative
workflow, right Understandingthe needs of one another,
(43:00):
understanding what drivers willchange each other's you know
scope of work and really justunderstanding that at the end of
the day, this we're all youknow, on the same team and you
have to kind of move in thatdirection, because you can't
have everything silent.
It doesn't make any sensebecause it's a lose-lose for
(43:22):
both sides if you do that.
Oscar Gonzalez (43:26):
It is.
I mean, you know, the onlything I can say is that if
you're somebody that wants tojust kind of stay in your space,
just do your thing and go home,it's probably not going to be
science, because there's alwayssome level of collaboration that
is needed, because, you know,despite what anybody may think,
(43:46):
the answers to a lot ofquestions that you have is
probably what somebody elseknows.
You know we have to learn tocollaborate, we have to learn to
be, you know, collaborative,thought-provoking, accountable.
You know to be proactive ratherthan being reactive, which is,
(44:07):
I think, very common in smallorganizations that maybe don't
have any redundancies.
And I think the lack ofredundancies is a way for
organizations to say, yes, we'relean.
I don't mean redundancies byhaving multiple people that are
(44:27):
doing the same task.
I mean it in the sense of, toyour point, shared
responsibility.
You can have an owner, but havesomebody else that also knows
what the heck is going on.
If this is a critical piece ofequipment, if this is a critical
part of the workflow, if thisis a critical part of the
development of your new asset,your new compound, etc.
(44:50):
Somebody else should also havea pretty good understanding with
how things are working.
I'm not saying they have to bethe owner, but, you know, put
somebody in that you know, allowthem to grow from there.
Maybe somebody that's a littlebit more junior, that wants to
sort of shadow.
That's a really greatopportunity, you know.
(45:10):
So, actually, along the linesof what I'm talking about, how
do we, how do leaders, fosterthese different needs of
collaboration and strategies forcross-functional development,
cross-functional collaboration?
(45:32):
How do leaders really bringthat to the forefront of their
culture, within their functionor within their project?
What are some strategies thatthey could do to, you know,
start helping people become moreaccountable and, you know,
really have this two-way flow ofinformation, rather than I only
(45:57):
give information when somebodyasks a question.
Lawrence Wong (46:03):
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Yeah, so I would say my, Idon't have any.
(46:40):
You know multiple strategies.
I have one strategy and it isto call it what it is right.
So if you're in a situationwhere there a process should be
there and it doesn't exist, or aprocess exists and it sucks,
you just have to call it what itis and say this is shit.
And if we know better, we cando better.
(47:01):
So you know where are thosebottlenecks and gaps?
Let's get everybody in a roomand start brainstorming or start
plotting out the process andidentifying why is this taking
so long?
Ask those questions to reallybring out the.
You know the honesty in peopleto say, yeah, this doesn't
really work because so-and-so isno longer here and this person
(47:23):
used to do this.
Or maybe you know we don't havea system of record for keeping
track of how things are servicedand you know really, just
calling it what it is and being,you know, open about it, and so
everybody can kind of bringtheir ideas to the table to see
what we can do to improve it.
And I think where I see peoplenot doing that or they maybe
(47:46):
they don't want to shake thetree or they're afraid that
speaking up will lead to themowning it.
I think again, like you saidbefore, it's an opportunity for
you to grow, don't you want towork in a process that is not
only simpler but better, and theway that you do that is
recognizing yeah, this is shit.
We can do better.
Oscar Gonzalez (48:07):
You know it's funny.
I will say this the more youlearn about how to communicate
with individuals of differentshape, sizes, backgrounds, etc.
The more likely you are able tohave these discussions where
the work does not drop into yourlab.
I just got called out of thisand one of my clients a couple
(48:30):
weeks ago Actually it might havebeen a couple months ago from
now, but I sort of brought upguys, this isn't working.
And you know, we started toelaborate and talk about it.
All of a sudden one person goeslike, all right, yeah, I'll
take that on.
And then I see two other folkslaughing, two other project
managers laughing or thisdirector's laughing.
It goes just the way that Oscarbrought up this challenge and
(48:54):
this issue.
And then, you know, this Q&Aemployee over here jumped in and
volunteered for it.
It's like you don't have toalways, you know, take in
everything that comes in and,quite frankly, that's a danger
zone.
That's a danger zone becausethen you're going to start
choking out what you believeyour best workers are.
(49:16):
Oh, let me give them everything.
That's not a good idea.
That's not a good idea.
They become resentful, you know.
They become this notion of justlike.
All these things fall on me butI don't get paid more.
You know that's a very commonthing to happen and so you have
to be very cautious with doingthings like that.
And I think, if we all are ableto spread, you know the work
(49:39):
that needs to be done andleverage our expertise, leverage
our minds, leverage ourabilities, you know, I think
that's where leadership can stepin, and leadership could be the
leader of your project or theleader of the department.
But, you know, if I'm assumingthat most of these folks have
(50:00):
one-on-one conversations,one-on-one project, you know,
individual calls with those thatreport to them, you know, have
the conversation.
How do you feel about the youknow relay of where do you get
your information from?
That's a really good questionto ask when do you get the
information you need to do, thework that you need to do?
(50:22):
And if they say, well, I get alot of it from the project
meeting, there needs to be achange because there's so much
that is missed from there.
Why don't you start to look atthis?
This is a really good source,this gets updated, blah, blah,
blah.
You know, let's have aconversation with such and such.
I think you guys could also, youknow, learn to share something.
So I think it's also in theleaders camp to say hey, I see
(50:47):
all these connecting pieces thatare right now in silos and
where we like to think that ourfunction is not siloed from
itself.
A lot of times, I find that toto not be the case.
It is siloed from itself.
You know this.
One person works differentlythan this person.
Well, why does it take thisperson four weeks to accomplish
(51:09):
that task and this person doesit in three days?
It's because this person cameup with a new process and didn't
tell anybody about it.
You know you will get thecredit.
You will get the credit.
It will come back to you thatthis was something that you
established.
Share.
Only thing I can say is share,share, share across your team,
(51:32):
across your function, acrossyour project.
Share the responsibility.
Share new insights that you mayhave gotten.
Share new updates.
If you developed a new macrosfor Excel that cuts down time,
if you went into Smartsheet andcreated a new workflow that
answers six or seven questionswhen before it was only pulling
(51:54):
out, you know two or threeanswers.
Share those things with yourteam.
It makes no sense to be thebest, fastest, you know, most
outstanding athlete on your team.
If you are just ignoringeverybody else, that's also on
your team, because you can't.
You can't win that by yourself,right?
Lawrence Wong (52:17):
Yeah, I agree as well and, you know, from a
leadership and managementperspective, really give people
the room to creatively designsome new workflows if they see
that this is an issue.
Yes, because the last thing youwant to do is call people out
(52:39):
or tell them that what they'redoing is a waste of time.
If it really impacts what theydo and I like this term,
collective pain, rightUnderstanding if everybody is
feeling the same way, then whyare we not doing anything about
it?
Right, it should be a nobrainer, obviously making sure
that it aligns with the you knowthe objectives and the goals
(53:01):
for the organization.
But again, looking at thefrequency and the type of task
that it is, if it happens a lotand it's really critical, yeah,
you should definitely fix that.
Oscar Gonzalez (53:14):
I couldn't be more in agreement with you there
.
So I guess I want to end on onething and I want to get your
thought on this when do you seeyou know everything now, if you
look at the last I don't knowfive, 10 years, from job
(53:35):
descriptions a lot of crossfunctional collaboration, cross
functional, you know,discussions, cross functional
leadership, everything is crossfunctional, matrixed environment
, everything.
And we've seen the progress orin some cases, lack thereof,
moving into that space.
(53:56):
How do you see this crossfunctional collaboration I guess
you could say evolving, giventhe plethora of new data sources
, of new project managementfunctions, of new AI.
How do you see all of thesethings sort of working together?
(54:19):
And I'll prompt you with thisit's my belief that as we have
evolved in our collection ofdata, of information, of trend
data, insights, that we'vealmost become less collaborative
because we have all of thisinformation here.
It's my belief that that's notgood enough, that we need to
also share this information,because insights don't just come
(54:41):
from your bucket of data.
Insights come when you startcollecting, when you start
connecting that bucket of datato the other functions.
Then you start to develop thoseinsights on your goals, on your
(55:06):
people, on the organization.
Where do you see our futurewith cross collaboration?
Lawrence Wong (55:17):
I think there's a lot of different tools out
there and there's a lot of datasources that you can collect.
I also think that most peopleactually everybody is probably
experiencing communicationoverload, where it's so easy to
type on your keyboard and send amessage and gather whatever
(55:41):
information you need Especiallyif you're managing a project or
assets or work orders to reallydistill it down to what are the
key pieces of information and tofind out what is the simplest
way to measure those things.
(56:01):
I think we still want to keepthat human touch part of it
where, just because you see anumber, that doesn't
automatically mean that ittranslates to X on your timeline
.
I still think there needs to besome sense of what do you think
(56:22):
of this data point or this setof data.
I think there needs to be afilter for certain things,
especially if people don't knowwhat to measure.
Don't measure everything.
I think there's a saying thatsays just because you measure,
it doesn't mean it's important,and just because you don't
measure, it doesn't mean it'snot important.
(56:42):
So, really understanding thedrivers for the project that
you're working on and distillingthe information down, because
things are just really, reallycomplicated when you measure
everything under the sun and Ithink, if you look five, ten
years down the road, I think thepeople that are going to be
really successful are the onesthat are going to be able to not
(57:05):
only communicate effectively,but people that are going to be
able to distill the data down tothose essential points.
And you know this from your highlevel management meetings with
some of your clients.
There's too much going on andthey need information to be
(57:26):
concise, accurate, they need tobe translatable, not only to
their audience, but maybe someof their groups that may not
have the same background asthose people in the meeting.
And the easier that you makethe information to digest, I
think, the more powerful themessage is going to be delivered
(57:48):
.
So really distilling it downand simplifying it allows that
to go much further than youwriting a 30 page dissertation
on why we missed the target lastmonth, like that's not just,
it's not going to work.
Oscar Gonzalez (58:06):
Beautiful example and you know I think
we'll end with that that.
You know it's not enough tosimply regurgitate your data
input.
There's a lot of data out there.
There's big data, small data,however you want to call it, and
(58:27):
there's a saying if you can'texplain the science that you
conducted, it never happened.
Data is explaining your output,your discussion, your
conclusions.
Those are the main points thatyou're trying to have people
leave with.
So to your point.
(58:49):
Leaders need to allow for thatroom to expand on new workflows,
on how to become more crosscollaborative.
Folks need to become moreaccountable, that they are the
sum of their team the sum oftheir team.
They are not an individual MVP.
(59:11):
That is not how it works.
You all are to work together.
You guys find ideas orsolutions in your space.
Echo those ideas or solutions.
That's a really good thing.
Don't keep it to yourself.
So yeah, it's, it's.
I think that there isavailability there and, for
(59:33):
those that are curious how toeven initiate those things,
there are a lot of careeropportunities with being that
owner.
To really facilitate crosscollaboration.
There's a lot of leadershippositions mid level leadership
that really puts you in positionto take in the data and be able
(59:54):
to distill the finer points ofthe project, of the execution of
the goals, and that's very,very critical.
So, accountability, providethat space and take that time to
also build those insights, notjust spitting back numbers and
(01:00:19):
here it's 50%, over there it's22, over here it's 35.
Well, what does that mean?
Put that together into aconcise message of what that
means.
And if you struggle with that,talk to your neighbor.
What does this tell you?
Because there may have adifferent look at the same data.
(01:00:46):
Today we talked about the vitalrole of collaborative workflows
in efficiently managing teamworkloads and achieving project
outcomes, and it looks into thenecessity of accountability and
responsibility for smoothcollaboration, especially when
working with matrix teams.
Open communication, sharedownership and acknowledging
(01:01:07):
collective challenges iscritical for successful teamwork
.
Collaboration can now seem as abuzzword for a great place to
work.
Sure, you can ask anyone aquestion without a feeling of
angst.
But how collaborative are youtruly?
Are you feeling of activelypushing information out and
somehow still out of the loop?
(01:01:28):
That's not collaboration.
The future of collaboration islinked to how effective we can
be with our data and our tools.
That future serves to highlightthe need for simple data
measurements, distilling intoclear and concise messaging.
Get there, acknowledge the needfor cross collaboration, foster
(01:01:54):
idea sharing with leadershipand build that comprehensive
understanding of your assets.
Thanks for listening.
Don't forget to leave us areview, like and share on
(01:02:15):
Spotify, apple and GooglePodcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts, and if you'reinterested in being on the show
or becoming a sponsor, send us amessage at Lean by Design at
SigmaLabConsultingcom.
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