May 14, 2025 • 52 mins
Have you ever watched a rowing team give it their all only to spin in circles? That’s exactly how we feel when our teams pour in effort without clear roles and responsibilities.
In this episode of Lean by Design, we explore how vague decision‐making and overlapping tasks quietly drain momentum, leading to missed deadlines and frustrated teams. We’ll share how defining ownership, fostering psychological safety, and using simple digital tools can align everyone’s efforts so your boat actually moves forward.
Join us to learn how clarity of roles can transform your team’s productivity and make the journey more rewarding for everyone.
Ready to assess your organization’s efficiency? Connect with us at leanbydesign@sigmalabconsulting.com to uncover high-impact improvement opportunities. 🚀
Learn more about us by visiting: https://sigmalabconsulting.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
we're back with another episode of lean by
design podcast.
I'm your host, oscar, and myco-host here, lawrence, and we
want to talk to everyone heretoday about something that we
think resonates with a lot of usand, uh, in our experiences
through not just in biopharma,but in many organizations in
many different industries.
(00:24):
Now, the reason why we want totouch on this topic is because
there's such a real challengethat is often overlooked when
you think about how to becomemore efficient in an
organization or how you reallyget people to rally around a
central cause to improve the waythat you're working within your
(00:46):
organizations and your abilityto execute those projects, and
that, as plain and unsexy as itmay be, are the clarity of the
roles and responsibilities at anorganization.
These are often overlooked, butwhat can't be overlooked is
(01:06):
their critical positioning as aroot of many organizational
issues, many operational issues.
Whether you're in strategy orin execution, the clarity in
these areas is essential foralignment, progress and purpose,
and that sense of purpose thatyou want your employees to have.
(01:28):
So, lawrence, this is somethingI think that a lot of folks can
resonate with.
Why don't we take these thingsand let's break them down into
each component?
We talk about the roles, theaccountabilities and the
responsibilities.
So let's start off with theroles what do you see as being
(01:51):
that?
What do you see as roles at anorganization?
And let's go from there.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, and I think this is one of those things
where, if it's not clear whatthe roles, accountability and
responsibilities are, peoplereally complain about.
But when it's going well, likenobody says a word, everybody
knows what people are doing.
Um, so I think when we talkabout roles, it's it's in my,
you know definition of it is ismore looking at the the person's
(02:21):
job or title within theorganization and what that role
is within an org chart, and thenif you look at accountability,
that's more of what is theoutcome that person is
ultimately responsible for.
It should be a very shortphrase or sentence, and then
(02:42):
responsibilities are more.
These are the things that Ihave to do and I'm expected to
carry out, and so those you know.
When you look at roles,accountability and
responsibilities, that should bevery clear, especially when you
have a large group of peopletrying to move forward on any
project initiative.
And if it's not clear, you endup in a situation where there's
a lot of friction in what you'retrying to do and that really
(03:06):
hinders your collaboration andany sort of progress you're
trying to make.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
It does.
It absolutely does, you know.
I would want to expand yourdefinition a little bit further,
especially in the space whereyou have smaller organizations,
where I think that there is alot of assumptions as to what
the roles, responsibilities andaccountability layers are in an
organization that is startingout.
(03:32):
And well, why is that?
Well, you have a lot of.
You got to wear a lot of hats,so you know what you find
yourself is that in smallerorganizations you may find that
that job title or position arefar removed from the role a
particular person is playing ina specific project.
(03:52):
You know they may have a roleof, like, a senior director of
strategy and development andtheir role in a given project is
as a research lead, because oftheir background, because of
their ability to navigate sortof the science and its progress
towards those goals for thatportfolio.
(04:12):
So you know, just expandinginto that a little bit, there
are, I think, multiple instancesin our experiences within an
organization that the roles aregoing to change and the
accountability is going tochange and the responsibilities
are going to change.
I think where we fail and we cantalk we're going to talk a
(04:34):
little bit more about this isthe confusion.
You know, we don't put thingsdown, we don't really convey the
messaging and in many cases weare mixing the definitions of
what a role and responsibilityare and the accountabilities are
.
We will find more higher levelstrategic sort of.
(04:59):
You know, this person isresponsible for the study plan,
this person is responsible fordeveloping the strategy toward X
.
But when you look at theworkflow for that particular
project, where does it say thestrategy needs to come in?
Where does it say you have todeliver on a strategy proposal?
Where does it say it doesn't,it doesn't.
(05:21):
So what you're left with isjust sort of these functional
experts, these SME experts thathave a responsibility for
strategy but they never actuallyare responsible for presenting
a well-thought-out strategy.
It's more of like this personis to help your strategy during
the project, the program.
(05:43):
So I think in a lot of ways youend up finding just sort of this
mixed bag of understandings,and that mixed bag really lends
into that confusion, whichconfusion is going to just
amplify the friction, and thatfriction is going to be really
(06:06):
what slows down the organization.
It's really going to slow downyour portfolio.
We said it before, as everyoneis rowing, everyone is doing
something, but the boat is notmoving, you're not making any
progress, and that's a themethat we're going to talk about
throughout this episode, so I'mexcited to dig in.
(06:27):
So what do you think about?
Like?
Well, what is the problem?
Like, what really is theproblem?
Is it that we don't have thingswritten down?
Is it that we don't have theright people in the right spaces
?
How would you describe thisissue, primarily in biopharma,
of a lack of clarity in roles,accountability, responsibilities
?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, I think so.
The problem I think it's goodto frame it in two different
areas.
So what you described beforeabout at teams as they grow, you
have people that wear multiplehats, because when you're small
you have to do a lot of things.
But if you're joining anestablished team with a
framework that's set up, it canbe confusing on that end as well
(07:11):
, right?
So let's start with when you'regrowing a team.
So you may have a few peopledoing a number of things, and as
you're growing the team, peopleget welcomed into the team and
they're expected to do certainthings that contribute to the
whatever project, and so if youdon't have any of that stuff
written down, you can veryeasily be stepping on each
other's toes and you don't knowwho's responsible for what and
(07:32):
who's accountable for what.
So there's a lot of overlapwith some of the work that's
being done and essentiallywasting a lot of time doing the
same things or maybe not doingthe things that you're supposed
to do.
Now, if you go on the other endof it, when you do have a large
team that's already established,I think people tend to assume
(07:53):
that everybody knows whatthey're supposed to be doing,
and so the problem then becomeswell, I don't know what I'm
doing because I'm new, and soyou kind of have to figure out
how you fit into thisorganization.
And so, again, if you don'thave anything written down or
some sort of visualrepresentation of where people
sit amongst these projects, itcan result in a lot of.
(08:15):
Let's just say, some of the redflags are poor communication or
silo and having to missdeadlines, and people get
frustrated, right, right, theylike very low morale, people
burn out.
Those are the things that Ithink come up when you have such
a problem.
But you know, in yourexperience I think you're you've
(08:35):
been more exposed to teams thatare smaller and they're trying
to grow.
I think on my end of it, I seelarger groups where there's, you
know, 30 or so people andyou're joining into this.
It's essentially a village andeverybody's working and
everybody's doing it.
You know their own thing, andit just gets confusing from that
end as well.
So you know, what do you thinkon the I would say, the growth
(08:58):
side of things, what that lookslike.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I mean, I think when you're looking, when you're
looking at growing teams and youknow there is a part of it that
is related to how anorganization has decided to push
an asset, in some cases you mayhave a central team that is
going to carry that project allthe way through the entire
process.
In other ways, what you'restarting to see is sort of like
(09:24):
these little factories, wherethere's a given purpose or
function in a phase ofdevelopment that the team needs
to accomplish and thatparticular phase requires
(09:47):
certain team members is you mayhave people, like a project or
program, lead that sort of carrythe project into each area of
development, each phase ofdevelopment, where the team sort
of cycles in.
There's more earlier scientistsin the front end that are, you
know, really trying to get theseassets and these questions
answered early to see if it haslegs to moving.
You know moving down the lineand then as it progresses, you
(10:13):
start to get others that are inthe discovery and then as you
get down to, you know, finding adevelopment candidate, then you
start to do these IND enablingstudies.
You're really focused ontoxicities.
You're really focused on yourability to scale CMC.
You know you are looking towardwhat's going to happen in the
clinic.
So the composition of your teamchanges as well.
And I think you pose a reallyinteresting point where, in a
(10:34):
smaller team, where justeverybody's sort of kind of
looking at each other in alarger team, you're coming in
and you see people just gettingat it working.
Now it's funny because thatview, what you see, might
actually create this idea thateveryone knows what is going on.
(10:55):
In reality, people understandthe role that they need to be
doing the activities that theyneed to be doing, to be doing
the activities that they need tobe doing.
But in those scenarios there isa layer that you need to
understand what your team isdoing.
You cannot just be payingattention to what your own work
is.
You're all working toward ashared goal and if you have no
(11:18):
idea what anybody else is doing,no matter how perfect your work
is, it's going to falter.
You know if we take, no matterhow perfect your work is, it's
going to falter.
You know if we take.
You know this.
In my history I used to row, Irowed at Virginia Commonwealth
University for a couple ofsemesters while I was there and
I learned a lot.
And it really is, when you takeinto consideration a cruise
(11:40):
show.
It's very thin, it's very longand you have a set of eight
grown men in there.
This is a heavy boat and youare roughly four inches from the
edge of the water.
You're very low in the waterand you have somebody either in
the front or the back of theboat, depending how it's built
that's steering and calling outwhere people are in relation to
(12:05):
you, because when you're rowing,your back is toward the finish
line, so you do not see, becauseof the way that the boat moves
and the way that you actuallyrow a boat, you are using your
tools and you are working witheight people.
Now, the amount ofsynchronicity that you need to
(12:25):
successfully row a crew show andto be good at it with eight
grown men that are, you know,pushing 200 plus pounds, like
and you want this to float onwater and move like it's on
glass you have to be so in tunedwith the rest of your team.
You have your uh, the, theperson that sits all the way in
(12:49):
the front.
Uh, is is referred to as thestroke and you are following
their pace and if you'rethrowing your body weight too
much, they can't maintain thepace that they need to get you
to move down and to last, if youhave short races, your pace may
be faster.
If you have longer races, youneed to have a little bit more
(13:10):
stamina.
So it just it goes to show thatthis idea of everybody rowing
and the boat not moving issomething I think that we see in
a lot of places where you know,we sort of understand our role.
I was hired as a scientist, or Iwas hired as a chemist.
I was hired, as you know, aproject manager.
(13:30):
But what are you actuallyresponsible for performing?
What are you actuallyresponsible for turning in?
And it doesn't just start atthe project level.
Leadership and that layer needsto also impose what their
(13:50):
expectations are, because youmay be doing great science, you
may be making great progress,but if it's not in line or in
tune with what the organizationis looking for, you're just
going to have more rework,you're just going to have to put
more hours to conduct the rightexperiments or to develop the
right strategy that yourleadership is looking for.
(14:11):
So you know there's so manychallenges and I think we can
talk about sort of theseproblems and what they do at an
organization, especially fromthe side of progress and how it
slows things down when everyoneon the team and those that are
working, those second levelstakeholders that are working
(14:32):
with those on the team, thecriticality for everybody to be
in line with at this point forthis project, at this phase of
development, what is everybody'srole?
What are we doing?
What are we responsible for?
Providing the team that cancontinue to progress?
(14:52):
The assets.
So what does that look like?
How can you tell when it's alittle bit easier?
It's a little bit easier in aboat because, let me tell you,
if you're not paying attentionand you're just sort of looking
around and you're not reallyfocused in the boat, when
somebody slides up in their seatand the edge of that oar that's
(15:12):
a 15-foot oar in the water hasthe pressure from the boat
moving and you happen to slideback at the wrong time, the edge
of that oar is actually goingto stab you right in the back
and that is the most painfulthing.
And you're in the is actuallygoing to stab you right in the
back and that is the mostpainful thing.
And you're in the middle of thewater and you're in the middle
of a race and you're notsupposed to stop.
(15:33):
So how do we identify these?
These things may not be asobvious in projects or in
facilities, but what do thosethings look like?
What are those?
What are some of those redflags that we could say you know
what?
Like, we need to sit down andmake sure for this next month.
Everybody knows exactly whatthey need to be doing.
(15:55):
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Using the analogy of rowing, there's there's a very
high level of coordination thatyou have to have with.
You know, not only the personin front of you or in the back
of you, but also the personthat's directing where the boat
is supposed to be going.
And so I look at this and thinkabout it in a couple ways.
One is you know, like, beforeyou even get on the boat, we all
(16:19):
have to know what are we doingthis for?
And and the person that's evenon the team, like who are you
and what are you doing?
So there's really understandingthe game what game are you
playing and why are you playingit?
And then, who are the playersin this game?
Right?
So the people that are on yourteam and why they're in it.
So when we talk about red flags, it's the opposite of that,
(16:39):
right, like people don't knowwhat anybody's doing.
And so there's communication.
People are kind of doing thingsthemselves, and if you can
imagine somebody getting ontothe boat not knowing the person
in front of them or behind them,you're not going anywhere,
you're going to be rowing, butthe person in back of you and in
front of you, they're going toimmediately turn around and go.
What the hell are you doing?
(17:00):
And that creates a lot offriction, right?
So there's, there's going to befrustration around the, the
whole experience of being a partof something that is is working
towards a goal, but noteverybody maybe understands what
the goal is.
Um, and if you extrapolate thisout to you know, on the facility
side, a common thing thathappens is having to redo the
(17:22):
work because you didn't knowthat so-and-so was supposed to
show up and maybe replace agasket here, or they were
supposed to calibrate a certaininstrument, and then you're
having to come back to the samepiece of equipment over and over
again to say did we doeverything that we're supposed
to do?
But there was no planning andscheduling ahead of time to
understand what you know whatthe goal was, and so I think
(17:43):
there's a lot of things that canpresent themselves as red flags
and they will look differentlyamongst R&D versus facilities,
but I think the number one thingthat I've seen across many
different projects iscommunication is definitely the
key.
And then, second, is really notusing digital tools to enhance
that communication, right, ifyou're solely relying on
(18:07):
somebody walking up to you andtelling you oh, this is what I
do and this is what I'mresponsible for.
People are just going to forgetand they're not going to be
able to see how they fit intothis whole puzzle.
Right, right, and so those arethe two things that I see is
communication and being able touse technology to really enhance
that communication.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I think those are great areas to look into.
I think what is challenging Imean when you think about sort
of what these symptoms look likeand what their impact is I
think a lot of what we deal withand what we experience in
building efficiencies andprocess improvement is that a
lot of these symptoms they'resort of silent killers.
(18:46):
Improvement is that a lot ofthese symptoms they're sort of
silent killers.
You're not going to notice abreakdown in communication day
to day.
It's sort of this accumulation.
You know, when we talk aboutlike missed deadlines and well
like, in some places they may besuper strict with deadlines on
projects.
In other organizations they maybe a little bit more like okay,
let's just make sure it doesn'tgo too far over.
(19:09):
You know, because what I findin earlier organizations is that
there's a level of the unknownthat you're going to find in R&D
and some of that depends on thescience, some of that depends
on the technology, some of thatdepends on your ability to take
new technology to work on yourproject and actually fully
(19:29):
understand it and be able tosort of vet that and move
forward from there.
I think when you talk about,just even at its core,
communication, there's a lot tothat.
There's a lot to how wecommunicate, when we communicate
who we communicate to, when wecommunicate who we communicate
(19:50):
to, and thinking about how wecan each become leaders within
our own projects.
I mean, we're going to talkabout some of those fixes and
root causes in just a bit, but Ithink when we think, when we
look into the communicationaspect of it, it's like it
doesn't happen.
You know we push everything tooccurring at a scheduled team
project call but, as we know,when we go in there, it's all
(20:13):
about updates who's got what?
What happened?
We have another meeting comingup.
Give me something that I needto go to this next meeting for.
And rarely do we stop to go.
Okay, are we on track?
Who is doing what?
When are you doing it?
And sometimes it takes a strongproject or program manager that
can really influence that,because it can be intimidating
(20:36):
when you come into a new teamand everybody's moving around
and you're just sort of likewell, I got introduced and I
know this person works in thatdepartment or that department in
that department and I know thisperson works with acquiring
chemicals to run our experiments.
These people work on runningresearch experiments.
Sure, in general, we understandwhat people do, but do we
(20:59):
actually know how they do orwhat their input is?
What is the data, what is goinginto their space and what are
we going to get from them thathelp us out along this journey?
I would venture to say thatthere's a lot of folks out there
that don't really know whattheir colleagues do, like
actually do, at the organization, and I would challenge those
(21:21):
folks to be curious about whatthe people are doing around you
and you may find that some ofthe stuff that they're doing is
going to enhance thatcommunication, because you now
have another way to communicatewith the people on your team and
you now recognize where acolleague's output may turn into
your input, because at somepoint we're not all doing work
(21:43):
at the same time toward the samegoal.
It's sort of a combination ofhandoffs throughout the duration
of a product, a life cycle.
So, the more that we canunderstand of the people around
us, these symptoms that we seewhere we're missing deadlines,
we're not talking to each other,the decisions are unclear.
We go into a meeting to make adecision and we come out and you
(22:05):
hear people in the hallway whatdid we decide on?
Was that?
Is that what you heard?
I heard this let's go talk tothe project manager and then the
project manager is doing thesame thing.
We kind of.
(22:30):
I guess we'll follow up nextweek or in the next meeting two
weeks later.
You know, these are sort ofthose slow killers of progress
that we see, because in themoment we don't find them to be
so critical that we don't wantto address it.
We find the critical things tobe the things that we would
eventually present to leadership, and that is not.
That is incorrect.
That is not the way things aregoing.
You need to make sure that youhave your ducks in a row.
(22:52):
Your team knows what's going on, like.
Those things are important tofocus on too, to spend time in
those team meetings, not justpresenting data.
Presenting data.
Presenting data.
Present a plan.
Talk to the team.
Who's doing what, who'sresponsible for what.
You email it to this person.
I want you to write the firstdraft.
You go over here.
We're going to sit down andhave a powwow set, whatever it
(23:15):
is, but that communication needsto be sound, and in a lot of
cases it's not.
So why does this happen?
Who's at fault?
Is it the teams?
Is it leadership?
Is it a mix?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, you've touched upon the point about leadership
having a really large role inthis, because they're really
establishing the different, Iwould say, parts of the team and
there's a lot of hiringdecisions that stem from
leadership.
And then you also talked aboutsome of the fixes, right.
So if you are in a place wherepeople are being introduced,
(23:55):
they should know who's who, whatpeople do and why is it that I
even got hired for the team,right?
And so I think that, like a lotof business problems, it stems
from leadership and, like theysay, the fish rots from the head
down, and so it's really theirresponsibility to kind of
establish what it is that rolesand responsibilities and
(24:18):
accountability looks like, right.
So I think having thecommunication aspect is going to
be key.
But, like you said, there'sincorrect ways and there are
correct ways of going through.
About communication, right,because communication quality
can really lack if you're notreally strategic about it.
And so when we talk about waysto improve that, I think visual
(24:43):
representations always help,right.
I think visual representationsalways help right.
And then having a process forintroducing new members or
people that are evenoff-boarding, bringing up that
discussion of okay, what doesthis look like to the team as a
whole, when somebody new comesin, when somebody leaves, and
then keeping that in mind andhaving it transparent and
(25:03):
available for people that maybethey forgot or maybe they need a
refresher, or just havingsomething there so that, even if
you weren't a part of the team,you know what they do and so
you could ask them about certainaspects of your role or some
other project that you need anupdate on.
And, I think, to kind of bringthis to reality, do you have any
(25:26):
real-world stories of somethingthat happened related to roles
and responsibilities that reallywas terrible in the beginning
and then somehow they figured away out and they established
what that should look like goingforward to really make progress
on a particular project.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I think what I've seen in sort of more recent and
I would almost say trending, isthat when we talk about roles
and responsibilities within ourorganizations, we're sort of
(26:09):
creating, trying to create likea blanket, like canvas of this
is what is expected in almost astrategic sense.
Now the problem that I seewhere this becomes an issue but
translating that strategy intoan action or into a task, so
where we may say that your roleis strategy in here, or your
role is developing the science,or your role is management of
the team, or your role isworking in the chemistry, et
(26:30):
cetera, et cetera.
When you then go look at yourresponsibilities, you want to
see a clear distinction and Idon't see that very often what
we see traditionally.
When you say, okay, let's startto create roles and
responsibilities, you'll findsometimes you'll find a matrix
which can be very useful.
It's very challenging when youhave teams that the composition
(26:51):
changes.
And the other part that'sdifficult there is that when you
have sort of a lot of theseroles and responsibilities that
don't exist where they belong,because you don't have that
employee, you don't have thatsubject matter expert, so they
sort of kind of get bulked intosomebody else's work that they
may not be as familiar with, butit has become their
(27:13):
responsibility.
So you know, we talked about itbefore where the
responsibilities are a measureof like those tasks, like what
do you actually need to do.
And I think in order for thiswe'll go back to sort of that
root cause there has to bereally super clear guidance from
leadership of what is expectedof that team as they reach these
(27:34):
different decisions.
Who are the decision makerswithin the team?
Within the team, the function,the department, who are the ones
that can make the decisions?
It's not just who can spend themoney, it's who can actually
make decisions on a project orprogram level or make decisions
on behalf of the program as thesubject matter expert.
(27:56):
Who has that capability?
And then, what are theexpectations that leadership has
, that the governance has, inorder to make the decisions?
What are the expectations thatyou're going to be delivering,
what are the activities thatneed to occur in order to come
with that deliverable, and whoare the people responsible?
(28:20):
The accountable people willalmost always end up being like
a program manager, project orportfolio level manager, because
they're sort of that hub in thespokes of the wheels.
They're right there at thecenter, sort of keeping an eye
on everything, but it's socritical for folks to have that
knowledge and understanding.
(28:40):
So what I'm seeing happen mostoften is this sort of
misunderstanding of what a roleand a responsibility is and a
lack of recognition that whenyou join a new organization,
that organization is going tohave its way of working.
There is this sort of I guess,blanketed thought that as people
(29:04):
come into the organization, ifthey are, of you know, a
director, senior director, youknow, maybe even a VP level,
that they already know how thesystem works, but they don't,
because you can see how complextechnology is making projects
now.
They are very, very differentfrom company to company, which
(29:26):
means the expectations, thegoals, the activities, the roles
and the responsibilities arealso different regardless of
what organization or what domainof science you're working in.
So I think that there is aspace here where leadership can
take a step back and ensure thatthere is alignment across the
(29:50):
organization as the portfolioprogresses.
These are the expectations,these are the things that we
need in order for us to make theright decisions, and these are
the people that should beinvolved in those decisions.
And these things don't happenovernight.
They don't.
They're going to take timebecause a strategy needs to be
(30:11):
developed to build that map forroles and responsibilities.
What ends up happening arethose extra few days, just an
extra few days, just an extrafew days.
You add up all those days andlosses and you're talking weeks
over the course of a program.
Why, well, we didn't make adecision last time, so we waited
for the next meeting becauseeverybody was busy.
(30:32):
It doesn't mean that you'rebusy with the right work.
It doesn't mean you're busy inthe right way.
It doesn't mean you guys knowwhat you're actually working
toward or what you have toaccomplish.
What I have seen to your pointis earlier teams developing like
a document like here's a littlebit of the history of this
program and they sort of keep itrefreshed so that as new people
(30:56):
come into the team, they nowhave something that they can use
to ingest oh, we did this andthen we changed, and then we
went here and then we jumpedinto the next phase, et cetera,
et cetera.
So they can sort of see theprogression of things that were
happening or were planned andhow they changed, and then they
might be able to have a betterunderstanding of where they fit
(31:17):
into this part of the project.
So I've seen that be prettysuccessful with onboarding folks
.
But again we got to haveclarity from the top so that the
teams understand the thingsthey need to do to hit the marks
, hit the targets that they'resupposed to.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
It sounds like you're more emphasizing when somebody
gets onboarded, that they should, that there should be some sort
of process where they getintroduced to the community or
whatever the team right.
And so I think I'm going topush back and say why did you
hire the role if you didn't knowwhat they were going to do when
they showed up?
Speaker 1 (31:54):
there's a lot of folks that don't.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
There's a lot Like to say this is the thing, right,
like people will hire bodies,right, and this is a whole thing
that we saw on LinkedIn.
And if you're not clear aboutwhy you need the role and what
they're accountable for and whattheir responsibility is, you
shouldn't hire the person.
Why would you do that?
That blows my mind that peoplewill skip the step just because,
oh, we got additional funding,so let's build the team.
(32:17):
You hire a bunch of people andthen nobody knows what they're
doing and it's like well, maybeyou shouldn't have hired the
people.
You should have figured outwhat they were supposed to do
first and then fill the roles,right, I don't know.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 1 (32:28):
You know.
I think that what, what is youknow?
You sort of fall into thechicken and the egg.
We don't know if this earlyproject work is going to
progress, but if it doesprogress, we need to hire.
(32:48):
We need to hire fast, Notnecessarily that we know what
exactly people are going to do.
We want to hire somebody thatis experienced in this area,
that will know what we need todo as well.
So therein lies a little bit.
This is why sometimes inearlier companies, all of a
sudden you look and you're likewhy is it so top-heavy, why are
there so many leaders?
Well, one method of onboardingteams and functions is to get
(33:11):
somebody that has moreexperience, that might be a
little bit more higher level,maybe a VP, maybe a senior
director, if you don't want tospend the capital, but then that
that person has inherentknowledge of the process you
know from, for drug developmentdevice, et cetera.
And I think where the challengecomes in is that look at all
these companies now, all of thepeople that have started these.
(33:35):
You know, in a majority ofthese companies these are very,
very intelligent people.
But they're coming.
They're also coming in fromorganizations that are very
large, that have already hadfunctions, already had
departments, ingrained in howthey've developed over the last
30 years, and they go into a newstartup and guess what?
(33:55):
They have never been in astartup phase.
They have never been in astartup phase.
They have never been in astartup mentality.
They have never beenexperienced in building a
company, because that'sultimately what you're doing in
a small scale.
You are building a company.
Even if you're just a programmanager, you're hiring number 25
.
That is a baby of a company.
(34:17):
You are involved in thebuilding of this to be able to
expand and scale, and you can'tscale without having any of
these things clarified ormanaged.
You should know, you need toknow.
You need to develop theseunderstandings and if you don't
know, ask.
You have to get the rightexpertise to come in to say,
well, if this is what you'retrying to do, you actually don't
need somebody that does this.
You need to get the rightexpertise to come in to say,
(34:37):
well, if this is what you'retrying to do, you actually don't
need somebody that does this.
You need people that do thesethings because of what's going
to come later on.
But I think instead we go okay,we need, you know, we need five
of these, we need four of these, we need six of these.
And you sort of plop them intogether and say start the
project, this is what we need atthe end of it.
(34:58):
But there's no real guidance ofwho's doing what.
Who's in charge, who's makingdecisions Not just the decisions
in the governance, decisions inthe program team.
Who can make a decision here tosay we're not going to do that
experiment, we're going to dothat experiment, and that's
going to be a different timeline, that's going to be a different
costing, that's going to be adifferent timeline, that's going
to be a different costing.
That's going to be a differentset of team members working on
(35:20):
it.
Who gets the ability to do that?
I think these are reallycritical things that start to
stagnate the discussions in ameeting and if you don't have a
strong program manager, that'slike okay, guys, cut the crap.
Who's doing what?
This is a lot of great words,this is a great strategy.
Are you doing that?
And then, all of a sudden, yousee people in the room get quiet
(35:47):
because no one actually knowswho is going to take on
something.
Who is going to start doing theresearch?
Who is going to develop theplan?
Who's going to review the plan?
Do they need to get it approved?
Is that even in the approvalprocess?
So there's all these thingsthat we need to consider, and we
see that very much early on,that we're all coming from
different backgrounds, differentcultures, different
methodologies.
(36:07):
Our experience is notindicative of our ability to
function where there is nostructure, where there is no
guidance, and that comes fromleadership.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I get the balance right Of there's certain things
that or resources that you needin order to be able to scale the
team or progress the project,because you need that expertise
and experience.
But at the same time you knowthere's there's the balance of
you're running a business, andso when you inflate the amount
of people on your team, youdestroy the runway that you have
(36:44):
.
And then now we see all theseheadlines of people getting laid
off because there probably wasno strategy when they were small
for that hiring right, and itcreates a cycle of we don't know
what we need, but let's justhire a bunch of people to figure
it out.
Turns out we don't need thatmany people.
Now we're going to lay them alloff and it's just a dangerous
game to play because you end upseeing companies that close
(37:05):
their doors or assets thatbecome unsuccessful.
And so again to your pointleadership being clear about
what it is that we need and whydo we need it.
And if there are questions tobe asked that require resources
to come in, then maybe don'tjump into hiring the entire team
at first, but hire really thepeople that are going to be
leading those work streams rightand then having that
(37:28):
conversation further to slowlydevelop that strategy.
If you're just hiring a bunch ofpeople because you think that
you need all these bodies to doall this work, then you end up
in a situation where people areget confused.
They don't know who's doingwhat.
Who's making decisions, whereis this being logged?
The governance structure is allscrewed up.
(37:49):
It looks like a crazy spiderweb, um, and you know that's.
It's just, uh, not somethingthat people want to be a part of
, because they don't know whenthey come in.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
That's not fun.
That's not fun to work in anenvironment that you look around
and you go everyone's doingwork, but secretly in the back
of your mind you're like I don'tknow that.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
If anybody really knows what the other person's
doing, yeah, and this shows upon.
You know, we always see theLinkedIn thing with the
celebration, with the littlecupcake saying, oh, I'm so
excited that I joined thisorganization, but there's, you
never see the.
What the hell did I just walkinto.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Right, right, we put on a very good show and, and you
know, there's a great storewindow and all the free coffee
and the cappuccino machine andthe cold brew keg that they have
in the like that stuff isamazing.
It's so cool, I got all thisstuff.
And then you go in there andyou're like wait, we don't.
We don't have this stuff likewritten out, we don't.
I don't have anybody that canhelp explain it to me.
(38:48):
That's why we hired you.
It builds, it builds it.
Just it continues to build.
So you know, I think thatthere's a very important role
here, not just from theleadership perspective, you know
, I think it's.
I can see the challenge whereyou're running and we hear it
all the time.
We're flying, you know, we'rebuilding the plane while we're
(39:11):
flying, we're building thetracks while we're running the
train.
The problem that I see is thatin 2025, the train.
The problem that I see is thatin 2025, folks are working with
a compass.
They have an idea of a generaldirection that they want to go,
but it's not to the level of aGPS that will tell you that have
integrated systems that willtell you when you're off course,
(39:34):
because you can go North in aplane.
You can end up in Canada, youcan end up in Greenland, you
could probably end up somewherein Europe if you're taking a
different you know a little bitof a different path going
towards North.
You know, if you think about it, I always wonder when you're,
when you're, when you're lookingup at a star and you say, wow,
(39:56):
that one looks like it's rightabove me, how far off are you
really at pinpointing that?
That's sort of what it lookslike.
We see a star way out there,but we have no other measure to
help us recognize.
Are we really going in theright direction?
And these are things that youhave to establish, that GPS in
(40:16):
your organization in order forthe folks below to be confident
in the things that they're doing, in the directions that they're
going in, in the decisions thatthey're making that don't go
all the way up.
You know one of the things thatthey asked Obama what's one of
the hardest things about beingthe president?
You are making the harddecisions.
All the other decisions arebeing made before they get to
(40:37):
you.
The same with governances.
Most of these other decisionsthat are not important enough to
go to governance are being madeat the team level.
So if that path, if that roadwayfor, like, where they need to
go by, when, how, who's involvedif those things are not
outlined, you're going to find alot of folks that are sort of
well, I just kept trying toimprove this one thing when,
(41:00):
eventually, you have to progressyour work, you could do science
all day, every day, trying toimprove something, and that's
probably more of like academicresearch, like you're trying to
really dig and find something.
When you're trying to build anasset, you have a timeline.
You're going to have to hit itwithin this amount of time.
If not, we got to scrap thatand go for this other direction.
(41:22):
So I think it's reallyimportant, as there's a
responsibility for the peoplewhen they go into an
organization or people that arealready in the organization.
You got to speak up.
You got to ask yourself whatare the things in general that I
should be doing here?
And then let me think aboutthis project versus that project
(41:44):
, versus that project.
What are people expecting me todeliver?
And the thing is, no one'sreally going to tell you
anything To your point.
When things are being done, whenthings are moving well, no one
says anything about anything.
When things are moving.
Well, no one says anythingabout anything.
Maybe you'll get like a hashtagkudos on LinkedIn, but you're
not really going to have anyBecause the reality of it is
(42:05):
most folks around you do notknow.
I've been in a really great.
I've had really greatexperiences that I've been able
to get closer to the people thatI've been working with, because
I've just been a little bitcurious.
Show me what you're doing, oh,and then this takes care of that
.
And then how do you know thatthis is ready for X, y, z?
(42:28):
Oh, you're connected with them.
Oh, that's oh, I didn't knowthey had that information.
Now you have another contact.
Now you have another branch ofyour team to go to for
information.
We want to talk abouttransparency.
Like I hear transparency allthe time.
We want to increasetransparency, increase
transparency, increasetransparency.
(42:48):
You have to communicate.
To do that, you have tocommunicate with your team, you
have to communicate with yourleadership.
You have to communicate withyour leadership.
You have to communicate withyour managers and your middle
management.
Communication, communication,communication.
So, lawrence, when everyone'srowing and the boat is not
(43:08):
moving, what do we do?
How do we go into this thinking?
I want to make sure that I amproviding value to this
organization.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yeah, I think, to kind of ground the plane on this
conversation, I think what Itake away from what you just
talked about is there's, from aleadership perspective, what
you're trying to do is make surethat you're adjusting the speed
and accuracy of the entire teamso that you can hit a timeline,
and so these roles andresponsibilities is a mechanism
(43:46):
you can use to operate fasterand to hit that goal that you're
after.
And so how do you structure thesetup of those roles and
responsibilities right?
So I think there's a lot oftools that we can talk about as
far as making it transparent,such as Smartsheet or any sort
(44:09):
of work management tool whereyou can actually view like a
project roster, and having youknow different columns to really
display how teams areinterconnected.
So that's, you know, one way ofreally using a digital tool to
show that.
And then the other part, whichis, I think, probably the real
difference maker here, isleadership needs to be connected
to what is actually happeningin reality, because if you're
(44:31):
not, then you're essentiallyhiring for the wrong things and
you're not understanding thethings that are really making
your team slow in the decisionsthey have to make, and so really
just talk to the people thatare on your team and to
understand.
You know we hired people forthis sort of effort, and so I
want to get a betterunderstanding of where our gaps
(44:51):
are and what's working well withyou, what's not working well
with you, and reallyestablishing that communication
so that you can adjust yourdecision-making, which, in turn,
you can hire better for thatspeed and accuracy against
hitting your timeline.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
What you just said really drives home the messaging
of also creating a safe spaceto allow for trust to flow.
You may find folks that arelike you, just got to listen to
leadership.
But if leadership is notcreating a safe space, guess
what they're going to get fromthe rest of the team.
They're going to get filteredBS that will not show up until
(45:30):
it's too late.
You're going to have datathat's sort of construed a
certain way.
I'll give you an example weused to present way back when we
would present sort of how closewe were to hitting our
enrollment target and the green,being in the green, was like
95%.
But if you know anything likefrom month to month, but if you
(45:50):
know anything about statistics0.95, you're looking at 0.95
times 0.95 times 0.95.
It's not additive, you have tomultiply them.
And then what happens?
You were actually way off bymonth, six or seven than you
would have been.
So this perception that we'rein the green because we're above
(46:12):
95%, above 92%, whatever youdetermine at your organization,
is a perception of just like, oh, we're doing great, it is great
.
But the fact of the matter isyou didn't hit your enrollment
goal for that for that month.
And when you continue to that.
When you compound that, you endup six months later.
You end up being a total of,although you've hit 95%.
(46:35):
I mean, what is?
I don't even have my calculatorwith me with me, but you're
essentially going to look at itand go, oh, we're actually only
85% toward our enrollment goalby this time, which is not
something anybody wants to see.
So you need to make sure thatwe're creating, as leaders, that
we are creating this safe spacethat I want to know.
It's not for me to react to.
(46:56):
If anything, I might take it inand go, okay, what do you think
we should do about it?
How would you progress this?
That is how we empower ourteams and our leaders and our
managers that are in the teamsto make the right decisions.
They can come to us to have thecandid conversation and then
say, okay, what do you?
People don't come to us.
(47:16):
They're not coming to us to getan answer.
There's so many tools out therenow that can just spit out a
generic answer.
So, again, I just wanted toreally, really, really impress
upon the importance ofleadership and creating this
space that people actually wantto show you when there's
something that is might beyellow on the status indicator
(47:39):
or might even be red, but I wantto preface this with a certain
thing.
I don't want you to see red andthink that there's a fire alarm
.
If there's a fire alarm, you'regoing to get a phone call,
you're going to get an email,you're going to get a text
message, you're probably goingto get a random meeting request
that shows up tomorrow, in thenext two hours, whatever.
Recognize that if there reallyis a big, big problem, that's
(48:01):
going to become priority when itdoes happen.
But you need to create this.
You need to establish the spacewhere you can continue to
empower your teams by deliveringguidance, direction as part of
your strategy.
Not just we're going to be thebest company, we're going to
(48:23):
approach this disease and we'regoing to be the pioneers here
and the pioneers there.
But what does that mean?
What does that mean for peoplethat are doing the work?
How can you help them, withthat big, flowery strategy,
develop the things to execute onand have those aligned roles,
responsibilities and those lineof communications?
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Yeah, that was.
That was beautifully said and Ithink the message is let's stop
having pizza parties and havethese tough conversations.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah, or forget it.
Man, have the toughconversation with some pizza.
I could do some pizza right now.
So no one likes rowing when theboat isn't moving and take it
from me.
It's very exhausting and Ithink we still see that in this
industry and other industries.
(49:12):
So there's a role for everyonehere a role for leaders, a role
for middle managers and there'sa role for folks that are part
of the project team or part ofthat department or function.
A lot of things that can bedone, and I think that the
healthy ones recognize that andwork towards that.
They're not perfect, but theywork towards it, and I think
that's what we can ask for.
(49:33):
All right, lawrence, we'llcatch you on the next episode.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Yeah, bye, guys.
we're back with another episode of lean by
design podcast.
I'm your host, oscar, and myco-host here, lawrence, and we
want to talk to everyone heretoday about something that we
think resonates with a lot of usand, uh, in our experiences
through not just in biopharma,but in many organizations in
many different industries.
(00:24):
Now, the reason why we want totouch on this topic is because
there's such a real challengethat is often overlooked when
you think about how to becomemore efficient in an
organization or how you reallyget people to rally around a
central cause to improve the waythat you're working within your
(00:46):
organizations and your abilityto execute those projects, and
that, as plain and unsexy as itmay be, are the clarity of the
roles and responsibilities at anorganization.
These are often overlooked, butwhat can't be overlooked is
(01:06):
their critical positioning as aroot of many organizational
issues, many operational issues.
Whether you're in strategy orin execution, the clarity in
these areas is essential foralignment, progress and purpose,
and that sense of purpose thatyou want your employees to have.
(01:28):
So, lawrence, this is somethingI think that a lot of folks can
resonate with.
Why don't we take these thingsand let's break them down into
each component?
We talk about the roles, theaccountabilities and the
responsibilities.
So let's start off with theroles what do you see as being
(01:51):
that?
What do you see as roles at anorganization?
And let's go from there.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, and I think this is one of those things
where, if it's not clear whatthe roles, accountability and
responsibilities are, peoplereally complain about.
But when it's going well, likenobody says a word, everybody
knows what people are doing.
Um, so I think when we talkabout roles, it's it's in my,
you know definition of it is ismore looking at the the person's
(02:21):
job or title within theorganization and what that role
is within an org chart, and thenif you look at accountability,
that's more of what is theoutcome that person is
ultimately responsible for.
It should be a very shortphrase or sentence, and then
(02:42):
responsibilities are more.
These are the things that Ihave to do and I'm expected to
carry out, and so those you know.
When you look at roles,accountability and
responsibilities, that should bevery clear, especially when you
have a large group of peopletrying to move forward on any
project initiative.
And if it's not clear, you endup in a situation where there's
a lot of friction in what you'retrying to do and that really
(03:06):
hinders your collaboration andany sort of progress you're
trying to make.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
It does.
It absolutely does, you know.
I would want to expand yourdefinition a little bit further,
especially in the space whereyou have smaller organizations,
where I think that there is alot of assumptions as to what
the roles, responsibilities andaccountability layers are in an
organization that is startingout.
(03:32):
And well, why is that?
Well, you have a lot of.
You got to wear a lot of hats,so you know what you find
yourself is that in smallerorganizations you may find that
that job title or position arefar removed from the role a
particular person is playing ina specific project.
(03:52):
You know they may have a roleof, like, a senior director of
strategy and development andtheir role in a given project is
as a research lead, because oftheir background, because of
their ability to navigate sortof the science and its progress
towards those goals for thatportfolio.
(04:12):
So you know, just expandinginto that a little bit, there
are, I think, multiple instancesin our experiences within an
organization that the roles aregoing to change and the
accountability is going tochange and the responsibilities
are going to change.
I think where we fail and we cantalk we're going to talk a
(04:34):
little bit more about this isthe confusion.
You know, we don't put thingsdown, we don't really convey the
messaging and in many cases weare mixing the definitions of
what a role and responsibilityare and the accountabilities are
.
We will find more higher levelstrategic sort of.
(04:59):
You know, this person isresponsible for the study plan,
this person is responsible fordeveloping the strategy toward X
.
But when you look at theworkflow for that particular
project, where does it say thestrategy needs to come in?
Where does it say you have todeliver on a strategy proposal?
Where does it say it doesn't,it doesn't.
(05:21):
So what you're left with isjust sort of these functional
experts, these SME experts thathave a responsibility for
strategy but they never actuallyare responsible for presenting
a well-thought-out strategy.
It's more of like this personis to help your strategy during
the project, the program.
(05:43):
So I think in a lot of ways youend up finding just sort of this
mixed bag of understandings,and that mixed bag really lends
into that confusion, whichconfusion is going to just
amplify the friction, and thatfriction is going to be really
(06:06):
what slows down the organization.
It's really going to slow downyour portfolio.
We said it before, as everyoneis rowing, everyone is doing
something, but the boat is notmoving, you're not making any
progress, and that's a themethat we're going to talk about
throughout this episode, so I'mexcited to dig in.
(06:27):
So what do you think about?
Like?
Well, what is the problem?
Like, what really is theproblem?
Is it that we don't have thingswritten down?
Is it that we don't have theright people in the right spaces
?
How would you describe thisissue, primarily in biopharma,
of a lack of clarity in roles,accountability, responsibilities
?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, I think so.
The problem I think it's goodto frame it in two different
areas.
So what you described beforeabout at teams as they grow, you
have people that wear multiplehats, because when you're small
you have to do a lot of things.
But if you're joining anestablished team with a
framework that's set up, it canbe confusing on that end as well
(07:11):
, right?
So let's start with when you'regrowing a team.
So you may have a few peopledoing a number of things, and as
you're growing the team, peopleget welcomed into the team and
they're expected to do certainthings that contribute to the
whatever project, and so if youdon't have any of that stuff
written down, you can veryeasily be stepping on each
other's toes and you don't knowwho's responsible for what and
(07:32):
who's accountable for what.
So there's a lot of overlapwith some of the work that's
being done and essentiallywasting a lot of time doing the
same things or maybe not doingthe things that you're supposed
to do.
Now, if you go on the other endof it, when you do have a large
team that's already established,I think people tend to assume
(07:53):
that everybody knows whatthey're supposed to be doing,
and so the problem then becomeswell, I don't know what I'm
doing because I'm new, and soyou kind of have to figure out
how you fit into thisorganization.
And so, again, if you don'thave anything written down or
some sort of visualrepresentation of where people
sit amongst these projects, itcan result in a lot of.
(08:15):
Let's just say, some of the redflags are poor communication or
silo and having to missdeadlines, and people get
frustrated, right, right, theylike very low morale, people
burn out.
Those are the things that Ithink come up when you have such
a problem.
But you know, in yourexperience I think you're you've
(08:35):
been more exposed to teams thatare smaller and they're trying
to grow.
I think on my end of it, I seelarger groups where there's, you
know, 30 or so people andyou're joining into this.
It's essentially a village andeverybody's working and
everybody's doing it.
You know their own thing, andit just gets confusing from that
end as well.
So you know, what do you thinkon the I would say, the growth
(08:58):
side of things, what that lookslike.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I mean, I think when you're looking, when you're
looking at growing teams and youknow there is a part of it that
is related to how anorganization has decided to push
an asset, in some cases you mayhave a central team that is
going to carry that project allthe way through the entire
process.
In other ways, what you'restarting to see is sort of like
(09:24):
these little factories, wherethere's a given purpose or
function in a phase ofdevelopment that the team needs
to accomplish and thatparticular phase requires
(09:47):
certain team members is you mayhave people, like a project or
program, lead that sort of carrythe project into each area of
development, each phase ofdevelopment, where the team sort
of cycles in.
There's more earlier scientistsin the front end that are, you
know, really trying to get theseassets and these questions
answered early to see if it haslegs to moving.
You know moving down the lineand then as it progresses, you
(10:13):
start to get others that are inthe discovery and then as you
get down to, you know, finding adevelopment candidate, then you
start to do these IND enablingstudies.
You're really focused ontoxicities.
You're really focused on yourability to scale CMC.
You know you are looking towardwhat's going to happen in the
clinic.
So the composition of your teamchanges as well.
And I think you pose a reallyinteresting point where, in a
(10:34):
smaller team, where justeverybody's sort of kind of
looking at each other in alarger team, you're coming in
and you see people just gettingat it working.
Now it's funny because thatview, what you see, might
actually create this idea thateveryone knows what is going on.
(10:55):
In reality, people understandthe role that they need to be
doing the activities that theyneed to be doing, to be doing
the activities that they need tobe doing.
But in those scenarios there isa layer that you need to
understand what your team isdoing.
You cannot just be payingattention to what your own work
is.
You're all working toward ashared goal and if you have no
(11:18):
idea what anybody else is doing,no matter how perfect your work
is, it's going to falter.
You know if we take, no matterhow perfect your work is, it's
going to falter.
You know if we take.
You know this.
In my history I used to row, Irowed at Virginia Commonwealth
University for a couple ofsemesters while I was there and
I learned a lot.
And it really is, when you takeinto consideration a cruise
(11:40):
show.
It's very thin, it's very longand you have a set of eight
grown men in there.
This is a heavy boat and youare roughly four inches from the
edge of the water.
You're very low in the waterand you have somebody either in
the front or the back of theboat, depending how it's built
that's steering and calling outwhere people are in relation to
(12:05):
you, because when you're rowing,your back is toward the finish
line, so you do not see, becauseof the way that the boat moves
and the way that you actuallyrow a boat, you are using your
tools and you are working witheight people.
Now, the amount ofsynchronicity that you need to
(12:25):
successfully row a crew show andto be good at it with eight
grown men that are, you know,pushing 200 plus pounds, like
and you want this to float onwater and move like it's on
glass you have to be so in tunedwith the rest of your team.
You have your uh, the, theperson that sits all the way in
(12:49):
the front.
Uh, is is referred to as thestroke and you are following
their pace and if you'rethrowing your body weight too
much, they can't maintain thepace that they need to get you
to move down and to last, if youhave short races, your pace may
be faster.
If you have longer races, youneed to have a little bit more
(13:10):
stamina.
So it just it goes to show thatthis idea of everybody rowing
and the boat not moving issomething I think that we see in
a lot of places where you know,we sort of understand our role.
I was hired as a scientist, or Iwas hired as a chemist.
I was hired, as you know, aproject manager.
(13:30):
But what are you actuallyresponsible for performing?
What are you actuallyresponsible for turning in?
And it doesn't just start atthe project level.
Leadership and that layer needsto also impose what their
(13:50):
expectations are, because youmay be doing great science, you
may be making great progress,but if it's not in line or in
tune with what the organizationis looking for, you're just
going to have more rework,you're just going to have to put
more hours to conduct the rightexperiments or to develop the
right strategy that yourleadership is looking for.
(14:11):
So you know there's so manychallenges and I think we can
talk about sort of theseproblems and what they do at an
organization, especially fromthe side of progress and how it
slows things down when everyoneon the team and those that are
working, those second levelstakeholders that are working
(14:32):
with those on the team, thecriticality for everybody to be
in line with at this point forthis project, at this phase of
development, what is everybody'srole?
What are we doing?
What are we responsible for?
Providing the team that cancontinue to progress?
(14:52):
The assets.
So what does that look like?
How can you tell when it's alittle bit easier?
It's a little bit easier in aboat because, let me tell you,
if you're not paying attentionand you're just sort of looking
around and you're not reallyfocused in the boat, when
somebody slides up in their seatand the edge of that oar that's
(15:12):
a 15-foot oar in the water hasthe pressure from the boat
moving and you happen to slideback at the wrong time, the edge
of that oar is actually goingto stab you right in the back
and that is the most painfulthing.
And you're in the is actuallygoing to stab you right in the
back and that is the mostpainful thing.
And you're in the middle of thewater and you're in the middle
of a race and you're notsupposed to stop.
(15:33):
So how do we identify these?
These things may not be asobvious in projects or in
facilities, but what do thosethings look like?
What are those?
What are some of those redflags that we could say you know
what?
Like, we need to sit down andmake sure for this next month.
Everybody knows exactly whatthey need to be doing.
(15:55):
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Using the analogy of rowing, there's there's a very
high level of coordination thatyou have to have with.
You know, not only the personin front of you or in the back
of you, but also the personthat's directing where the boat
is supposed to be going.
And so I look at this and thinkabout it in a couple ways.
One is you know, like, beforeyou even get on the boat, we all
(16:19):
have to know what are we doingthis for?
And and the person that's evenon the team, like who are you
and what are you doing?
So there's really understandingthe game what game are you
playing and why are you playingit?
And then, who are the playersin this game?
Right?
So the people that are on yourteam and why they're in it.
So when we talk about red flags, it's the opposite of that,
(16:39):
right, like people don't knowwhat anybody's doing.
And so there's communication.
People are kind of doing thingsthemselves, and if you can
imagine somebody getting ontothe boat not knowing the person
in front of them or behind them,you're not going anywhere,
you're going to be rowing, butthe person in back of you and in
front of you, they're going toimmediately turn around and go.
What the hell are you doing?
(17:00):
And that creates a lot offriction, right?
So there's, there's going to befrustration around the, the
whole experience of being a partof something that is is working
towards a goal, but noteverybody maybe understands what
the goal is.
Um, and if you extrapolate thisout to you know, on the facility
side, a common thing thathappens is having to redo the
(17:22):
work because you didn't knowthat so-and-so was supposed to
show up and maybe replace agasket here, or they were
supposed to calibrate a certaininstrument, and then you're
having to come back to the samepiece of equipment over and over
again to say did we doeverything that we're supposed
to do?
But there was no planning andscheduling ahead of time to
understand what you know whatthe goal was, and so I think
(17:43):
there's a lot of things that canpresent themselves as red flags
and they will look differentlyamongst R&D versus facilities,
but I think the number one thingthat I've seen across many
different projects iscommunication is definitely the
key.
And then, second, is really notusing digital tools to enhance
that communication, right, ifyou're solely relying on
(18:07):
somebody walking up to you andtelling you oh, this is what I
do and this is what I'mresponsible for.
People are just going to forgetand they're not going to be
able to see how they fit intothis whole puzzle.
Right, right, and so those arethe two things that I see is
communication and being able touse technology to really enhance
that communication.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I think those are great areas to look into.
I think what is challenging Imean when you think about sort
of what these symptoms look likeand what their impact is I
think a lot of what we deal withand what we experience in
building efficiencies andprocess improvement is that a
lot of these symptoms they'resort of silent killers.
(18:46):
Improvement is that a lot ofthese symptoms they're sort of
silent killers.
You're not going to notice abreakdown in communication day
to day.
It's sort of this accumulation.
You know, when we talk aboutlike missed deadlines and well
like, in some places they may besuper strict with deadlines on
projects.
In other organizations they maybe a little bit more like okay,
let's just make sure it doesn'tgo too far over.
(19:09):
You know, because what I findin earlier organizations is that
there's a level of the unknownthat you're going to find in R&D
and some of that depends on thescience, some of that depends
on the technology, some of thatdepends on your ability to take
new technology to work on yourproject and actually fully
(19:29):
understand it and be able tosort of vet that and move
forward from there.
I think when you talk about,just even at its core,
communication, there's a lot tothat.
There's a lot to how wecommunicate, when we communicate
who we communicate to, when wecommunicate who we communicate
(19:50):
to, and thinking about how wecan each become leaders within
our own projects.
I mean, we're going to talkabout some of those fixes and
root causes in just a bit, but Ithink when we think, when we
look into the communicationaspect of it, it's like it
doesn't happen.
You know we push everything tooccurring at a scheduled team
project call but, as we know,when we go in there, it's all
(20:13):
about updates who's got what?
What happened?
We have another meeting comingup.
Give me something that I needto go to this next meeting for.
And rarely do we stop to go.
Okay, are we on track?
Who is doing what?
When are you doing it?
And sometimes it takes a strongproject or program manager that
can really influence that,because it can be intimidating
(20:36):
when you come into a new teamand everybody's moving around
and you're just sort of likewell, I got introduced and I
know this person works in thatdepartment or that department in
that department and I know thisperson works with acquiring
chemicals to run our experiments.
These people work on runningresearch experiments.
Sure, in general, we understandwhat people do, but do we
(20:59):
actually know how they do orwhat their input is?
What is the data, what is goinginto their space and what are
we going to get from them thathelp us out along this journey?
I would venture to say thatthere's a lot of folks out there
that don't really know whattheir colleagues do, like
actually do, at the organization, and I would challenge those
(21:21):
folks to be curious about whatthe people are doing around you
and you may find that some ofthe stuff that they're doing is
going to enhance thatcommunication, because you now
have another way to communicatewith the people on your team and
you now recognize where acolleague's output may turn into
your input, because at somepoint we're not all doing work
(21:43):
at the same time toward the samegoal.
It's sort of a combination ofhandoffs throughout the duration
of a product, a life cycle.
So, the more that we canunderstand of the people around
us, these symptoms that we seewhere we're missing deadlines,
we're not talking to each other,the decisions are unclear.
We go into a meeting to make adecision and we come out and you
(22:05):
hear people in the hallway whatdid we decide on?
Was that?
Is that what you heard?
I heard this let's go talk tothe project manager and then the
project manager is doing thesame thing.
We kind of.
(22:30):
I guess we'll follow up nextweek or in the next meeting two
weeks later.
You know, these are sort ofthose slow killers of progress
that we see, because in themoment we don't find them to be
so critical that we don't wantto address it.
We find the critical things tobe the things that we would
eventually present to leadership, and that is not.
That is incorrect.
That is not the way things aregoing.
You need to make sure that youhave your ducks in a row.
(22:52):
Your team knows what's going on, like.
Those things are important tofocus on too, to spend time in
those team meetings, not justpresenting data.
Presenting data.
Presenting data.
Present a plan.
Talk to the team.
Who's doing what, who'sresponsible for what.
You email it to this person.
I want you to write the firstdraft.
You go over here.
We're going to sit down andhave a powwow set, whatever it
(23:15):
is, but that communication needsto be sound, and in a lot of
cases it's not.
So why does this happen?
Who's at fault?
Is it the teams?
Is it leadership?
Is it a mix?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, you've touched upon the point about leadership
having a really large role inthis, because they're really
establishing the different, Iwould say, parts of the team and
there's a lot of hiringdecisions that stem from
leadership.
And then you also talked aboutsome of the fixes, right.
So if you are in a place wherepeople are being introduced,
(23:55):
they should know who's who, whatpeople do and why is it that I
even got hired for the team,right?
And so I think that, like a lotof business problems, it stems
from leadership and, like theysay, the fish rots from the head
down, and so it's really theirresponsibility to kind of
establish what it is that rolesand responsibilities and
(24:18):
accountability looks like, right.
So I think having thecommunication aspect is going to
be key.
But, like you said, there'sincorrect ways and there are
correct ways of going through.
About communication, right,because communication quality
can really lack if you're notreally strategic about it.
And so when we talk about waysto improve that, I think visual
(24:43):
representations always help,right.
I think visual representationsalways help right.
And then having a process forintroducing new members or
people that are evenoff-boarding, bringing up that
discussion of okay, what doesthis look like to the team as a
whole, when somebody new comesin, when somebody leaves, and
then keeping that in mind andhaving it transparent and
(25:03):
available for people that maybethey forgot or maybe they need a
refresher, or just havingsomething there so that, even if
you weren't a part of the team,you know what they do and so
you could ask them about certainaspects of your role or some
other project that you need anupdate on.
And, I think, to kind of bringthis to reality, do you have any
(25:26):
real-world stories of somethingthat happened related to roles
and responsibilities that reallywas terrible in the beginning
and then somehow they figured away out and they established
what that should look like goingforward to really make progress
on a particular project.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I think what I've seen in sort of more recent and
I would almost say trending, isthat when we talk about roles
and responsibilities within ourorganizations, we're sort of
(26:09):
creating, trying to create likea blanket, like canvas of this
is what is expected in almost astrategic sense.
Now the problem that I seewhere this becomes an issue but
translating that strategy intoan action or into a task, so
where we may say that your roleis strategy in here, or your
role is developing the science,or your role is management of
the team, or your role isworking in the chemistry, et
(26:30):
cetera, et cetera.
When you then go look at yourresponsibilities, you want to
see a clear distinction and Idon't see that very often what
we see traditionally.
When you say, okay, let's startto create roles and
responsibilities, you'll findsometimes you'll find a matrix
which can be very useful.
It's very challenging when youhave teams that the composition
(26:51):
changes.
And the other part that'sdifficult there is that when you
have sort of a lot of theseroles and responsibilities that
don't exist where they belong,because you don't have that
employee, you don't have thatsubject matter expert, so they
sort of kind of get bulked intosomebody else's work that they
may not be as familiar with, butit has become their
(27:13):
responsibility.
So you know, we talked about itbefore where the
responsibilities are a measureof like those tasks, like what
do you actually need to do.
And I think in order for thiswe'll go back to sort of that
root cause there has to bereally super clear guidance from
leadership of what is expectedof that team as they reach these
(27:34):
different decisions.
Who are the decision makerswithin the team?
Within the team, the function,the department, who are the ones
that can make the decisions?
It's not just who can spend themoney, it's who can actually
make decisions on a project orprogram level or make decisions
on behalf of the program as thesubject matter expert.
(27:56):
Who has that capability?
And then, what are theexpectations that leadership has
, that the governance has, inorder to make the decisions?
What are the expectations thatyou're going to be delivering,
what are the activities thatneed to occur in order to come
with that deliverable, and whoare the people responsible?
(28:20):
The accountable people willalmost always end up being like
a program manager, project orportfolio level manager, because
they're sort of that hub in thespokes of the wheels.
They're right there at thecenter, sort of keeping an eye
on everything, but it's socritical for folks to have that
knowledge and understanding.
(28:40):
So what I'm seeing happen mostoften is this sort of
misunderstanding of what a roleand a responsibility is and a
lack of recognition that whenyou join a new organization,
that organization is going tohave its way of working.
There is this sort of I guess,blanketed thought that as people
(29:04):
come into the organization, ifthey are, of you know, a
director, senior director, youknow, maybe even a VP level,
that they already know how thesystem works, but they don't,
because you can see how complextechnology is making projects
now.
They are very, very differentfrom company to company, which
(29:26):
means the expectations, thegoals, the activities, the roles
and the responsibilities arealso different regardless of
what organization or what domainof science you're working in.
So I think that there is aspace here where leadership can
take a step back and ensure thatthere is alignment across the
(29:50):
organization as the portfolioprogresses.
These are the expectations,these are the things that we
need in order for us to make theright decisions, and these are
the people that should beinvolved in those decisions.
And these things don't happenovernight.
They don't.
They're going to take timebecause a strategy needs to be
(30:11):
developed to build that map forroles and responsibilities.
What ends up happening arethose extra few days, just an
extra few days, just an extrafew days.
You add up all those days andlosses and you're talking weeks
over the course of a program.
Why, well, we didn't make adecision last time, so we waited
for the next meeting becauseeverybody was busy.
(30:32):
It doesn't mean that you'rebusy with the right work.
It doesn't mean you're busy inthe right way.
It doesn't mean you guys knowwhat you're actually working
toward or what you have toaccomplish.
What I have seen to your pointis earlier teams developing like
a document like here's a littlebit of the history of this
program and they sort of keep itrefreshed so that as new people
(30:56):
come into the team, they nowhave something that they can use
to ingest oh, we did this andthen we changed, and then we
went here and then we jumpedinto the next phase, et cetera,
et cetera.
So they can sort of see theprogression of things that were
happening or were planned andhow they changed, and then they
might be able to have a betterunderstanding of where they fit
(31:17):
into this part of the project.
So I've seen that be prettysuccessful with onboarding folks
.
But again we got to haveclarity from the top so that the
teams understand the thingsthey need to do to hit the marks
, hit the targets that they'resupposed to.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
It sounds like you're more emphasizing when somebody
gets onboarded, that they should, that there should be some sort
of process where they getintroduced to the community or
whatever the team right.
And so I think I'm going topush back and say why did you
hire the role if you didn't knowwhat they were going to do when
they showed up?
Speaker 1 (31:54):
there's a lot of folks that don't.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
There's a lot Like to say this is the thing, right,
like people will hire bodies,right, and this is a whole thing
that we saw on LinkedIn.
And if you're not clear aboutwhy you need the role and what
they're accountable for and whattheir responsibility is, you
shouldn't hire the person.
Why would you do that?
That blows my mind that peoplewill skip the step just because,
oh, we got additional funding,so let's build the team.
(32:17):
You hire a bunch of people andthen nobody knows what they're
doing and it's like well, maybeyou shouldn't have hired the
people.
You should have figured outwhat they were supposed to do
first and then fill the roles,right, I don't know.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 1 (32:28):
You know.
I think that what, what is youknow?
You sort of fall into thechicken and the egg.
We don't know if this earlyproject work is going to
progress, but if it doesprogress, we need to hire.
(32:48):
We need to hire fast, Notnecessarily that we know what
exactly people are going to do.
We want to hire somebody thatis experienced in this area,
that will know what we need todo as well.
So therein lies a little bit.
This is why sometimes inearlier companies, all of a
sudden you look and you're likewhy is it so top-heavy, why are
there so many leaders?
Well, one method of onboardingteams and functions is to get
(33:11):
somebody that has moreexperience, that might be a
little bit more higher level,maybe a VP, maybe a senior
director, if you don't want tospend the capital, but then that
that person has inherentknowledge of the process you
know from, for drug developmentdevice, et cetera.
And I think where the challengecomes in is that look at all
these companies now, all of thepeople that have started these.
(33:35):
You know, in a majority ofthese companies these are very,
very intelligent people.
But they're coming.
They're also coming in fromorganizations that are very
large, that have already hadfunctions, already had
departments, ingrained in howthey've developed over the last
30 years, and they go into a newstartup and guess what?
(33:55):
They have never been in astartup phase.
They have never been in astartup phase.
They have never been in astartup mentality.
They have never beenexperienced in building a
company, because that'sultimately what you're doing in
a small scale.
You are building a company.
Even if you're just a programmanager, you're hiring number 25
.
That is a baby of a company.
(34:17):
You are involved in thebuilding of this to be able to
expand and scale, and you can'tscale without having any of
these things clarified ormanaged.
You should know, you need toknow.
You need to develop theseunderstandings and if you don't
know, ask.
You have to get the rightexpertise to come in to say,
well, if this is what you'retrying to do, you actually don't
need somebody that does this.
You need to get the rightexpertise to come in to say,
(34:37):
well, if this is what you'retrying to do, you actually don't
need somebody that does this.
You need people that do thesethings because of what's going
to come later on.
But I think instead we go okay,we need, you know, we need five
of these, we need four of these, we need six of these.
And you sort of plop them intogether and say start the
project, this is what we need atthe end of it.
(34:58):
But there's no real guidance ofwho's doing what.
Who's in charge, who's makingdecisions Not just the decisions
in the governance, decisions inthe program team.
Who can make a decision here tosay we're not going to do that
experiment, we're going to dothat experiment, and that's
going to be a different timeline, that's going to be a different
costing, that's going to be adifferent timeline, that's going
to be a different costing.
That's going to be a differentset of team members working on
(35:20):
it.
Who gets the ability to do that?
I think these are reallycritical things that start to
stagnate the discussions in ameeting and if you don't have a
strong program manager, that'slike okay, guys, cut the crap.
Who's doing what?
This is a lot of great words,this is a great strategy.
Are you doing that?
And then, all of a sudden, yousee people in the room get quiet
(35:47):
because no one actually knowswho is going to take on
something.
Who is going to start doing theresearch?
Who is going to develop theplan?
Who's going to review the plan?
Do they need to get it approved?
Is that even in the approvalprocess?
So there's all these thingsthat we need to consider, and we
see that very much early on,that we're all coming from
different backgrounds, differentcultures, different
methodologies.
(36:07):
Our experience is notindicative of our ability to
function where there is nostructure, where there is no
guidance, and that comes fromleadership.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I get the balance right Of there's certain things
that or resources that you needin order to be able to scale the
team or progress the project,because you need that expertise
and experience.
But at the same time you knowthere's there's the balance of
you're running a business, andso when you inflate the amount
of people on your team, youdestroy the runway that you have
(36:44):
.
And then now we see all theseheadlines of people getting laid
off because there probably wasno strategy when they were small
for that hiring right, and itcreates a cycle of we don't know
what we need, but let's justhire a bunch of people to figure
it out.
Turns out we don't need thatmany people.
Now we're going to lay them alloff and it's just a dangerous
game to play because you end upseeing companies that close
(37:05):
their doors or assets thatbecome unsuccessful.
And so again to your pointleadership being clear about
what it is that we need and whydo we need it.
And if there are questions tobe asked that require resources
to come in, then maybe don'tjump into hiring the entire team
at first, but hire really thepeople that are going to be
leading those work streams rightand then having that
(37:28):
conversation further to slowlydevelop that strategy.
If you're just hiring a bunch ofpeople because you think that
you need all these bodies to doall this work, then you end up
in a situation where people areget confused.
They don't know who's doingwhat.
Who's making decisions, whereis this being logged?
The governance structure is allscrewed up.
(37:49):
It looks like a crazy spiderweb, um, and you know that's.
It's just, uh, not somethingthat people want to be a part of
, because they don't know whenthey come in.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
That's not fun.
That's not fun to work in anenvironment that you look around
and you go everyone's doingwork, but secretly in the back
of your mind you're like I don'tknow that.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
If anybody really knows what the other person's
doing, yeah, and this shows upon.
You know, we always see theLinkedIn thing with the
celebration, with the littlecupcake saying, oh, I'm so
excited that I joined thisorganization, but there's, you
never see the.
What the hell did I just walkinto.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Right, right, we put on a very good show and, and you
know, there's a great storewindow and all the free coffee
and the cappuccino machine andthe cold brew keg that they have
in the like that stuff isamazing.
It's so cool, I got all thisstuff.
And then you go in there andyou're like wait, we don't.
We don't have this stuff likewritten out, we don't.
I don't have anybody that canhelp explain it to me.
(38:48):
That's why we hired you.
It builds, it builds it.
Just it continues to build.
So you know, I think thatthere's a very important role
here, not just from theleadership perspective, you know
, I think it's.
I can see the challenge whereyou're running and we hear it
all the time.
We're flying, you know, we'rebuilding the plane while we're
(39:11):
flying, we're building thetracks while we're running the
train.
The problem that I see is thatin 2025, the train.
The problem that I see is thatin 2025, folks are working with
a compass.
They have an idea of a generaldirection that they want to go,
but it's not to the level of aGPS that will tell you that have
integrated systems that willtell you when you're off course,
(39:34):
because you can go North in aplane.
You can end up in Canada, youcan end up in Greenland, you
could probably end up somewherein Europe if you're taking a
different you know a little bitof a different path going
towards North.
You know, if you think about it, I always wonder when you're,
when you're, when you're lookingup at a star and you say, wow,
(39:56):
that one looks like it's rightabove me, how far off are you
really at pinpointing that?
That's sort of what it lookslike.
We see a star way out there,but we have no other measure to
help us recognize.
Are we really going in theright direction?
And these are things that youhave to establish, that GPS in
(40:16):
your organization in order forthe folks below to be confident
in the things that they're doing, in the directions that they're
going in, in the decisions thatthey're making that don't go
all the way up.
You know one of the things thatthey asked Obama what's one of
the hardest things about beingthe president?
You are making the harddecisions.
All the other decisions arebeing made before they get to
(40:37):
you.
The same with governances.
Most of these other decisionsthat are not important enough to
go to governance are being madeat the team level.
So if that path, if that roadwayfor, like, where they need to
go by, when, how, who's involvedif those things are not
outlined, you're going to find alot of folks that are sort of
well, I just kept trying toimprove this one thing when,
(41:00):
eventually, you have to progressyour work, you could do science
all day, every day, trying toimprove something, and that's
probably more of like academicresearch, like you're trying to
really dig and find something.
When you're trying to build anasset, you have a timeline.
You're going to have to hit itwithin this amount of time.
If not, we got to scrap thatand go for this other direction.
(41:22):
So I think it's reallyimportant, as there's a
responsibility for the peoplewhen they go into an
organization or people that arealready in the organization.
You got to speak up.
You got to ask yourself whatare the things in general that I
should be doing here?
And then let me think aboutthis project versus that project
(41:44):
, versus that project.
What are people expecting me todeliver?
And the thing is, no one'sreally going to tell you
anything To your point.
When things are being done, whenthings are moving well, no one
says anything about anything.
When things are moving.
Well, no one says anythingabout anything.
Maybe you'll get like a hashtagkudos on LinkedIn, but you're
not really going to have anyBecause the reality of it is
(42:05):
most folks around you do notknow.
I've been in a really great.
I've had really greatexperiences that I've been able
to get closer to the people thatI've been working with, because
I've just been a little bitcurious.
Show me what you're doing, oh,and then this takes care of that
.
And then how do you know thatthis is ready for X, y, z?
(42:28):
Oh, you're connected with them.
Oh, that's oh, I didn't knowthey had that information.
Now you have another contact.
Now you have another branch ofyour team to go to for
information.
We want to talk abouttransparency.
Like I hear transparency allthe time.
We want to increasetransparency, increase
transparency, increasetransparency.
(42:48):
You have to communicate.
To do that, you have tocommunicate with your team, you
have to communicate with yourleadership.
You have to communicate withyour leadership.
You have to communicate withyour managers and your middle
management.
Communication, communication,communication.
So, lawrence, when everyone'srowing and the boat is not
(43:08):
moving, what do we do?
How do we go into this thinking?
I want to make sure that I amproviding value to this
organization.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yeah, I think, to kind of ground the plane on this
conversation, I think what Itake away from what you just
talked about is there's, from aleadership perspective, what
you're trying to do is make surethat you're adjusting the speed
and accuracy of the entire teamso that you can hit a timeline,
and so these roles andresponsibilities is a mechanism
(43:46):
you can use to operate fasterand to hit that goal that you're
after.
And so how do you structure thesetup of those roles and
responsibilities right?
So I think there's a lot oftools that we can talk about as
far as making it transparent,such as Smartsheet or any sort
(44:09):
of work management tool whereyou can actually view like a
project roster, and having youknow different columns to really
display how teams areinterconnected.
So that's, you know, one way ofreally using a digital tool to
show that.
And then the other part, whichis, I think, probably the real
difference maker here, isleadership needs to be connected
to what is actually happeningin reality, because if you're
(44:31):
not, then you're essentiallyhiring for the wrong things and
you're not understanding thethings that are really making
your team slow in the decisionsthey have to make, and so really
just talk to the people thatare on your team and to
understand.
You know we hired people forthis sort of effort, and so I
want to get a betterunderstanding of where our gaps
(44:51):
are and what's working well withyou, what's not working well
with you, and reallyestablishing that communication
so that you can adjust yourdecision-making, which, in turn,
you can hire better for thatspeed and accuracy against
hitting your timeline.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
What you just said really drives home the messaging
of also creating a safe spaceto allow for trust to flow.
You may find folks that arelike you, just got to listen to
leadership.
But if leadership is notcreating a safe space, guess
what they're going to get fromthe rest of the team.
They're going to get filteredBS that will not show up until
(45:30):
it's too late.
You're going to have datathat's sort of construed a
certain way.
I'll give you an example weused to present way back when we
would present sort of how closewe were to hitting our
enrollment target and the green,being in the green, was like
95%.
But if you know anything likefrom month to month, but if you
(45:50):
know anything about statistics0.95, you're looking at 0.95
times 0.95 times 0.95.
It's not additive, you have tomultiply them.
And then what happens?
You were actually way off bymonth, six or seven than you
would have been.
So this perception that we'rein the green because we're above
(46:12):
95%, above 92%, whatever youdetermine at your organization,
is a perception of just like, oh, we're doing great, it is great
.
But the fact of the matter isyou didn't hit your enrollment
goal for that for that month.
And when you continue to that.
When you compound that, you endup six months later.
You end up being a total of,although you've hit 95%.
(46:35):
I mean, what is?
I don't even have my calculatorwith me with me, but you're
essentially going to look at itand go, oh, we're actually only
85% toward our enrollment goalby this time, which is not
something anybody wants to see.
So you need to make sure thatwe're creating, as leaders, that
we are creating this safe spacethat I want to know.
It's not for me to react to.
(46:56):
If anything, I might take it inand go, okay, what do you think
we should do about it?
How would you progress this?
That is how we empower ourteams and our leaders and our
managers that are in the teamsto make the right decisions.
They can come to us to have thecandid conversation and then
say, okay, what do you?
People don't come to us.
(47:16):
They're not coming to us to getan answer.
There's so many tools out therenow that can just spit out a
generic answer.
So, again, I just wanted toreally, really, really impress
upon the importance ofleadership and creating this
space that people actually wantto show you when there's
something that is might beyellow on the status indicator
(47:39):
or might even be red, but I wantto preface this with a certain
thing.
I don't want you to see red andthink that there's a fire alarm
.
If there's a fire alarm, you'regoing to get a phone call,
you're going to get an email,you're going to get a text
message, you're probably goingto get a random meeting request
that shows up tomorrow, in thenext two hours, whatever.
Recognize that if there reallyis a big, big problem, that's
(48:01):
going to become priority when itdoes happen.
But you need to create this.
You need to establish the spacewhere you can continue to
empower your teams by deliveringguidance, direction as part of
your strategy.
Not just we're going to be thebest company, we're going to
(48:23):
approach this disease and we'regoing to be the pioneers here
and the pioneers there.
But what does that mean?
What does that mean for peoplethat are doing the work?
How can you help them, withthat big, flowery strategy,
develop the things to execute onand have those aligned roles,
responsibilities and those lineof communications?
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Yeah, that was.
That was beautifully said and Ithink the message is let's stop
having pizza parties and havethese tough conversations.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah, or forget it.
Man, have the toughconversation with some pizza.
I could do some pizza right now.
So no one likes rowing when theboat isn't moving and take it
from me.
It's very exhausting and Ithink we still see that in this
industry and other industries.
(49:12):
So there's a role for everyonehere a role for leaders, a role
for middle managers and there'sa role for folks that are part
of the project team or part ofthat department or function.
A lot of things that can bedone, and I think that the
healthy ones recognize that andwork towards that.
They're not perfect, but theywork towards it, and I think
that's what we can ask for.
(49:33):
All right, lawrence, we'llcatch you on the next episode.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Yeah, bye, guys.
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