BioTen video series: Top team performance

Interviewer: Jonathan Wildman, Senior Client Partner, Biopharma/Med Device Advisory Lead, Korn Ferry

Speaker: Mitali Bose, Senior Client Partner, Organization Strategy, Korn Ferry

Jonathan Wildman: Hi, folks. Welcome back to BioTEN. We're continuing the series here with Mitali, one of our leaders in top team development and executive team alignment. Mitali, thanks so much for joining us today.

Mitali Bose: Glad to be here, Jon.

Jonathan Wildman: Cheers. So, we're going to talk about a related story in the top team space for our biopharma med device mid-cap sector. I know you had one locked and loaded. You want to talk us through what happened there?

Mitali Bose: Yeah. Thanks Jon. So, this in the context of what's happening with biotech firms is really important. Biotech leaders are being asked to solve the most complex problems. Problems that have impact on society, on patients’ lives. At the same time, they're being asked to do it faster, quicker with the same amount of governance and risk management.

There's a lot of pressure on these firms. However, you know as you know Jon these firms have seen tremendous growth in the last few years. So, you have leaders who have literally grown teams to three times to four times their size in a short span of time. And there you know our work with top teams helps leaders unleash the power of the team as an entity. Over and above individual leadership capabilities. And sometimes in the pace of growth leaders can overlook this powerful arsenal they have with them. This powerful tool that they have.

They're so busy driving thought leadership, managing their teams, bringing in talent that sometimes you forget you have these individuals in your team who working together can create great outcomes. It requires people to take pause and say okay I have these people in my team and I know I'm going to grow this. How do I bring them together? How do I give them common purpose? How do I ensure that they are working together? Especially because you know in these teams you have a diverse set of people. People who are driving science-based outcomes. People who are driving commercial outcomes. How do you bring them together?

So, we worked with an organization growing tremendously. But under a lot of pressure to create patient outcomes at the right timelines. And all the leaders in this team are extremely talented but running at this pace which doesn't allow them to stop and take stock. They found themselves in meetings all the time. In meetings sometimes that they worried why were they in these meetings? They had issues where they were firefighting because risks were not identified at the right time. And as we kind of work with them and the leader of the organization we realized that what was not happening is the leadership team never came together. They did not have common goals and priorities. The person was kind of weaving it all together was the leader and that is just an inefficient way of running it. So that's the kind of situation and that we're seeing more and more.

Jonathan Wildman: Yeah, and if I remember in our solution one of the things that we did was to help the team identify common accountability that the team could equally own together versus one head of a business unit or one head of a function or the head of R and D or the head of medical affairs owning one thing and not really sharing that ownership with the team members.

Mitali Bose: Absolutely, so, these teams are smart. You have some of the smartest people sitting in these groups. So, it's not a question of whether they get it but you're right. How do we give this team a common purpose? And some a goal that is interdependent, that they all have to work together. Not that I did my piece and I handed it over to commercial. Or how does medical and research work together? How do you shorten these collaboration time cycles?

But also the work is required by the leader of the team to create space for the team to operate in that fashion. Most leaders have Never had to play a role at this scale before.

Jonathan Wildman: That's perfect. That's perfect. If you have questions about top team alignment or development, please reach out to Mitali, her email address is to the side. Mitali, thank you so much for sharing your story.

Mitali Bose: Thanks Jon.

Watch all of the BioTEN Video Series