Lean By Design
Lean by Design delves into the dynamic world of biotech, pharma, and life sciences, focusing on operational excellence through effective workflow and process optimization. Join hosts Oscar Gonzalez and Lawrence Wong as they engage with industry leaders who share their insights, innovative strategies, and real-world experiences in transforming complex challenges into streamlined, efficient solutions. Through thought-provoking conversations, you’ll gain practical tips and inspiration to drive continuous improvement and success in your organization. Produced by Sigma Lab Consulting, Lean by Design empowers you to enhance productivity and innovation, one process at a time. Listen on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Lean By Design
0201. From Small Wins to Organizational Transformation: Building Momentum in Biopharma
In this episode, we explore how small, intentional improvements—not sweeping changes—drive real progress in biopharma operations. The discussion highlights a common challenge: the disconnect between strategy and execution, often due to underutilized middle management.
You'll learn a simple framework for creating meaningful change: start within your sphere of influence, map key inputs and outputs, and implement solutions that reduce effort while increasing visibility. Small wins in project management can build momentum, leading to better accountability, decision-making, and resource allocation.
The conversation also covers the importance of tools and training—many organizations have powerful software but lack the support to maximize its potential. The takeaway? Improve your own workflows first to build credibility before driving broader change.
Ready to assess your organization’s efficiency? Connect with us at leanbydesign@sigmalabconsulting.com to uncover high-impact improvement opportunities. 🚀
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Welcome back to another episode of Lean by Design podcast. I'm your host, oscar Gonzalez, alongside my co-host and partner, lawrence Wong, and we are approaching I guess we're going to call this season two. It's been a little bit since we've been. We're now recording here this is March 6th and it's been a little bit of time since we've been able to get on the microphones, primarily due to a lot of the work that's been going on working with clients, finding new avenues to continue reaching our client base and making sure that we're delivering optimal solutions for folks. To stop working so hard. Lawrence, you want to add anything there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've been doing a lot of, I would say, business development, but we're also just rebranding some stuff through LinkedIn, also our website, and then just making sure that content and what you see when you try to reach out to us, everything aligns. And I think, because we've evolved so much since I don't know when did we start this Two years ago that, like, everything has slowly, slowly changed and if you don't update those things, it becomes a loss in translation sometimes if you're reaching out to us in different formats. So, yeah, it's just been, I think, doing a lot of work internally but also just trying to make sure that we're reaching the people that are in need of the value that we're trying to provide to the industry.
Speaker 1:I think that's such a great point In the. For those that have not listened to us before, thank you for joining us. We've seen that our previous episodes have continued to drive value, continue to drive listeners and received a lot of messages coming back to us to participate and be part of our podcast. So we're excited to begin reaching out to those folks as we're starting to schedule this next year of podcasting and really bringing you guys guests and topics that are things that you care about and just seeing how are people conducting operational efficiency? How are people fixing things in their workplace? Where do they start? We're going to talk a little bit about that today, but I think what Lawrence really Lawrence, I think what you alluded to, which is really important is that as organizations are growing, there's an evolution. There's an evolution in how you perceive yourself, how others perceive your organization, and there's an evolution to really how we recognize where the value is and how we convey that messaging. So it's really important and I think you can say you know you can add this perspective as well, lawrence is that I want to make sure that we're connecting everything together, from the assessments that we've created to content on our LinkedIn, of developing a book to help support those that are looking for ways to start with operational efficiency or organizational efficiency and productivity, really in the biopharma space. So there's all these little pieces and tools that we've been developing and, as we work with organizations, that niche, that direction continues to become more and more focused so that we can make sure that we're now you know, now we're in March already.
Speaker 1:I just stepped outside. It's about 50 degrees outside, which I don't think we've seen that since October probably. And for those that don't know, we're just out of the Boston area, so right in the New England area, no stranger to inches and feet worth of snow. So a lot of that has started to melt away, so I'm happy for that. I'm ready to get outside of the house. I've been in here for quite a bit of the last couple of months Seasonally depressed.
Speaker 1:Man, that sun stayed away for a while and that cold stuck around. So I'm really excited to get out there and not only that, but have engagements and networking where we can have coffee and meet with folks you know outside and just enjoy some vitamin D. There's been a steady evolution to the work we've done and as we continue to work, we also continue to learn. That is something that I think that we hold very true to the values of working with Sigma Lab Consulting as being co-founders and bringing new knowledge to people that you know. Hey, we're going through, you know, books and podcasts and articles and white papers to bring you the newest information, to bring you the newest line of thinking, because, guess what? Things are going to change. Things are going to change in the future. Things are going to change now, and that's okay, and that's okay, and so we're going to be here to sort of support that change, support things that are critical in order for you to be successful in your role as an emerging leader, as a middle manager or even a C-level executive. So I'm excited to jump on this journey and you know we have a couple of things, as Lawrence mentioned, that are coming out. The website is going to be updated in the next few days, I think. Actually, today we're going to be launching a new meeting, so there'll be a new website, so there'll be a message that'll be coming out from that, and then we also, you know, we're working on connecting with folks like you, folks that want to be a part and participate in this podcast, um, and also folks that may want to see what the other side is going to look like other side of efficient processes. People know what they're doing. You don't feel so sluggish because things just take too long at your organization. So I'm excited to see where things move in Q2. Let's go All right.
Speaker 1:So for today, we're going to start off with a very simple topic that has very complex implications. How do you fix inefficiencies in biopharma? Processes, departments, functions, ordinances they all differ from one organization to the other, whether you're 50 or 100 or 5,000. There are different procedures, different policies, different ways of doing things, and oftentimes we are expected to just sort of walk into an organization because we have a skill set, because we've been brought in after the interviews and now we have to hit the ground running, but we don't know how things are conducted. The road may not be set. There may not be plans or guidances, and you start to notice all of these little things the amount of time it takes to onboard a vendor critical to your science work, the confusion when onboarding assets from a vendor that brought them in, set up and provided no information. Those are just to name a few.
Speaker 2:As you can imagine, there's going to be many, many more across up and down the organization and horizontally, cross-functionally Bad processes, things that we believe are clear when in reality they lack that clarity and that transparency leading to bottlenecks decreased morale you name it, and I think for anybody new joining a team or an organization it may be the norm sometimes when you get into a new group that, oh, this is the way that people do things around here. And then you end up, you know, working for a few weeks, a couple months, and then you realize wait a minute, things are taking way too long here to get anything done and it can get overwhelming to kind of figure out where you start to focus your efforts. Because you start to focus your efforts? Because you're not sure if you're maybe fixing a small part of the problem or you're actually fixing the problem itself.
Speaker 2:right, because there's a lot of, I would say symptoms that come from certain problems that even if you solve those, it doesn't resolve the actual root of the problem. And so, oscar, you wrote a piece on Substack titled A Simple Way to Fix Inefficiencies in Our Industry. So what's kind of the from your perspective at a very ground level, for those of us who are perhaps really involved in the day-to-day operations, like what is the approach from that end? And then kind of, if we look at from a management perspective, you know, from a top-down view, like what is that approach versus the one that's from the bottom up?
Speaker 1:That's a great question and, you know, I think that these are things that we are all asking ourselves. You know, as someone who is on the ground level doing work, executing on goals as were set forth by the leadership in the organization, how do we look at solving problems that we just see and in a way it sort of comes at you like an aggregate. It's just sort of this feeling you know you'll find this this gut feeling that things are just kind of weird, that people you get kind of responses that are, you know, lazy, kind of sounding responses. Well, you know, they did the last one, Go check on what they're doing. That right there, I think, is a flag to say we don't actually have a process. That person was the most recent one to do something. Go chat with them, you know what. And that may work when you have 10, 15 people, because the visibility to things being conducted in the organization are so plentiful.
Speaker 1:But when you're in a larger organization 100, 150 people, 200, 2,000, where do you start? It really starts with talking to people. With talking to people, it really starts with grounding yourself of the folks that work with you, the stakeholders that work around you and the people that are making decisions. You know, in some cases you're going to hear a lot on how fast the organization runs. If you're ready for a fast-paced environment, lawrence, to me that is like an excuse of like hey, we're pretty sloppy. So as long as you are comfortable not really knowing how to do something because things are going so fast, come join us. That's what that tells me, that's what I've recognized. I see a fast-paced fast-paced and you go in there and there's no structure. It's a group of really smart, really intelligent people, originally good at management, scheduling, creating plans, creating projections.
Speaker 1:But again, you know, these are sort of things that have continued to evolve at early organizations that don't get addressed Later on in the future. They just become bigger issues or simply a black hole where no one knows. So you try to do work and circumvent that process. Well, how can I deal with without that, since we don't have a way going? So you're down there and you're in the trenches. What do you need to do? Ideally, you would go and talk to your manager. I don't know. You know, in some cases that's not the that's not the best path forward, because they don't know either right, and then that there's and here comes the like the two concepts of like.
Speaker 2:If so, if you are an individual contributor versus somebody who's like driving the um I I would say the strategic objectives of the organization at the management level you're really concerned about. Do we have the right strategy for what we're trying to drive the company towards? Are we making the right decisions today to get to where we need to go tomorrow? And so I think leadership management should have a very strong sense of what the strategy is. I think the problem comes when you try to execute the strategy and the people on the ground level aren't necessarily, they're not recognizing. Okay, well, what exactly? Why are we doing this strategy? Right, you have to really explain that to them and get people to buy in so that they understand OK, we're executing this because of this strategy.
Speaker 2:But I find that normally that that messaging somehow gets really diluted by the time that you get to the people on the front line and then they end up just executing all these things and they're like what is the point of all this? And I think there needs to be better communication, I think overall, with how that translates back and forth. You know from the ground level. If you're not giving the opportunity to execute that strategy, you need to speak up and say we're not set up for success because of A, b and C Right, rather than like, okay, we'll try to do Mission Impossible again and kind of fall on your face Like what do you think about that?
Speaker 1:You know it's tricky when you're at an organization that you don't really have a history of and then what you end up finding in a lot of cases is oh, the new person has something else to say. The new person has another, because everybody else at that organization they've learned to deal with it. Everybody on your team, they've just learned to deal with it. Why? Because they're working so hard hard, not efficient. They're working so hard that they haven't had the time to pull back and say what would I do here, what would I do to make this more efficient? And if they have, they may not have told anybody.
Speaker 1:It's been my experience that even folks that are directly in their team do not recognize the value when they create something that expedites a process that uses the tools that they already have. You know you don't see any more on job descriptions that it's time to. You know you have Microsoft Excel, you have this, you have this. It goes straight into like here's your education, here's. You know what experience you've had? Nothing related to the tools.
Speaker 1:But in any of these organizations I mean, look how many SaaS providers are available, look how many AI organizations have spawned in the last three years you cannot expect people to come in and just be able to know how to use the tools that you're using and the tools that you do have. Are you even leveraging those things? I think you put it perfectly when you're looking at okay well, I'm an individual contributor, but how am I making that connection from the strategy to the execution? I find a lot of times there is really no bridge, that you have the middle management layer that should be this connecting piece between the strategy and how you execute, and it sort of becomes more of like a manager that is still executing tasks from their manager, whether it's a VP or a C-level executive, and it shouldn't be that way. That middle group that people are trying to lay off in many organizations they are the conduit to translate the strategy that is filled with jargon, filled with language.
Speaker 1:That is not something you can grasp onto to say, okay, well, now that we have that strategy or those corporate goals, what are we supposed to be doing toward that end? And when you find out what you're supposed to be doing, what are we supposed to be doing toward that end? And when you find out what you're supposed to be doing, what you're going to be doing, what your goals are now. You need to figure out how do you optimize how quickly you can get those done. Just because you say that a goal is going to be, you know Q4, you know of this year, et cetera, you don't have to wait to do those things. If you find an efficient way to do them, knock them off your list. Knock them off of that list of things to do. But again, you need to make sure that you're developing that connection of what are we actually trying to do and how are we set up to accomplish this up to accomplish this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think to your point. Let's start at the middle. I think it sounds like the problem has a lot to do with the person in the middle, and so if you're getting a strategy from somebody above you, that person above you should be asking you, do you understand the strategy and what is your execution plan to drive that strategy right? Understand the strategy and what is your execution plan to drive that strategy right? And I think if you're one level below the person in the middle, you're asking okay, what is the execution plan for the strategy that you want me to drive? And you need, like, in the middle, you need to be able to answer both the top and the bottom right. And so I think this kind of transitions us to you know, how do you create that, that momentum of these, these wins that you can have? You know when you're in that position right, because it may be very overwhelming to just tell your team to hey, we have a big initiative to drive and I want you to do all these things.
Speaker 2:But that's not a um, I think a digestible message not digestible and it's, it's, it's changed right, like I think people are just not used to uh, being very flexible in those like environments where you have to change the way that you're doing, especially because you just adapted to the most recent, you know change that came through and then all of a sudden you're shifting again right.
Speaker 2:So there's a balance between, um, creating like this, a small, you know, these small steps until you you reach to a point where, like, okay, look guys, I think now we we have enough momentum to kind of really focus on the, the big change that we want to make. I'm interested to hear, like, do you have an example of something that started out small but then eventually snowballed into this big thing and it gained momentum? Because it's usually not the other way around, where you tell everybody, hey, we have this massive thing to do, and then people go, oh, look at all these little things that we have to fix. It usually goes the other way, where you're working on something small and it becomes something bigger.
Speaker 1:When you think about it. When you're trying to build a snowman, you don't start with a giant ball for the bottom. You have to create that. You've seen that picture. There's probably a Charlie Brown episode a Peanuts episode where they have a snowball at the top of the hill and it slowly gains momentum and becomes this massive force with more mass, with more content, with more you know, in this case, ability to generate insights, and that's really what we're trying to do. You know, if you look at how an organization is structured I don't care about there being flat, et cetera In some way, every person at the organization this is 2025, every person at the organization has a digital footprint somewhere.
Speaker 1:The work that you're doing translates into something. You are developing output of some kind. It could be a Word document, powerpoints, it could be timelines, it could be goals, budgets. Everybody is developing something. Everybody is developing something. The ultimate goal to figure out if you are actually going where you're supposed to be going. 1% each day. You have improved yourself 365% in a year and more than likely, the value would probably be more than that.
Speaker 1:A simple example of starting with small things but maintaining consistency. I think what people fail to realize is that when we talk about process improvement, when we talk about operational efficiency, it's not just right now, because times are going to change. I mean, look at where the industry is now. People are drawing back on all of these innovative things and trying to double down on the things that have given them profit. You know, I think there's an opportunity here that you need to start looking at. You know, take that, take that big piece. You need to have someone to have the vision of that big piece, that big change, and starting small. I have the vision of that big piece, that big change, and starting small. I work very often with Smartsheet, with the software. I've been using that for probably going on about nine years now and I've done over 10,000 somewhere around there dashboards, reports, sheets, things like that. So I'm very aware of the different things that are used and how to use them within the space.
Speaker 1:Well, I had a client that I was working with and I noticed that they had a license, they had a couple spaces and I said, oh, what are you guys using this for? And they said, well, we're just using it for the timelines, just marking out the executive milestones. This was important. This was a piece of their reporting mechanism to show leaders and potential partners. This is our pipeline, here's where they are and here's where we expect them to be. So, not really a lot. Maybe five or six line items across 20 projects. And then when you start to look at, well, how are we managing the project? To deliver that it had a different look. Using, perhaps, project using Microsoft Word to capture information. You know, dates were in one space but not in another.
Speaker 1:Very difficult to navigate where things existed in SharePoint because there was no unified structure for how to maintain your data, so you're just constantly digging. So when I started working with them, the main piece that we had to consider was well, how do we get to that desired future state? That's really what it was about. How do we get to the space where you guys are not fighting fires to collect information, to provide an update? Over and over and over again, you are providing and this was with a program management office, program management team, and the messaging that I delivered was one that was to give them pride in the work that they're doing and the desire to want to share that, because they were the harbors of the information.
Speaker 1:No one knew their programs better than they did from an operational standpoint, and that is important. The strategy is important, the results, the scientific results, are important, but if you don't have your operations intact, those things are going to lack context, they're going to lack clarity and they're probably not going to be very accurate, right? So we had to take what was not really a structure and how they ran their projects or their programs into a structured format, preparing for growth and for scale. So in that sense, we didn't just go up to them and say, hey, I'm aware of this feature, of this add-on that Smartsheet has creates this big system where you can make modifications across the whole project, xyz, whatever. That's too much. You know. You hear, like, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time? You know, eat the frog. You know, tackle that thing that you really don't want to do in that day. But there is a strategy to making things stick, to making things lead to adoption. That strategy is not launching a big project. You need to have incremental changes.
Speaker 1:So we had to change the behavior, not just the platforms that they were using, but the behavior of the program managers, in order to allow their work to become more efficient, in order to allow for those reporting and those portfolio roll-up dashboards. So this was an opportunity that spanned many months. We did multiple projects as a part of this bigger initiative and we are starting to see not just the adoption from the teams. We're seeing adoption from leadership, from middle manager, from cross-functional leads. They're excited because they know where things are. They recognize that everybody is aware of those processes, of what to do, of where to go, of how to find it, of what the context is, because you start to bring those pieces together and, as that happens, you start to get more curiosity. And I think that curiosity is really what opens the door to collaborations in your organization to expand that footprint and expand that transfer of knowledge. That's not just word of mouth, there's actually something to ground and connect and create the context for where your portfolio is.
Speaker 2:Right, and you end up speaking the same language.
Speaker 2:The point here is that, you know, having visibility to the things that are being done towards some sort of goal, I think just increases the credibility and even the validity of the work that is being committed to certain initiatives.
Speaker 2:Right, because oftentimes I think there's so many different ways to communicate how a status is for a certain project or a task and people spend so much time just providing updates and not actually doing actual work. And so establishing the visibility and that dashboard, whatever you want to call it, I think allows for not only better discussions around what we should do next, but overall, I think decision-making starts to change. Right, you start to have these conversations that are much more geared towards, okay, what's really going to change? The way that the company is growing or the way that the group is going, right? So I'm curious in that example that you provided, is there a very, let's say, simple framework that you used in developing that? Right, because I think, at face value, you can say, okay, yeah, we talked to like 30 people and we created all these things and it can get.
Speaker 2:These things can take a lot of time, but I think the point you're making is like the snowball example right, you start with just a piece of it, just talk to whoever it is that is receiving the information that you're providing. Where's the value creation? Right, and then start to build blocks out of that and then it becomes something else. But how do you even begin with creating that first initial piece of this snowball that you're going to create?
Speaker 1:Right, you got to find out like where's the snow, where's the snow, where's the snow? That can help me build this out. So I think, really, the framework that we utilized that we did was you know, we talked to our client sponsor, asked what their concerns were, what they struggled with, and then we had those conversations with the team at the ground level. Okay, now we know where this is going. So, in this sense, we focused more on the roles and responsibilities of a given function, so we recognize that we were able to have a little bit more influence in our direct teams. Now here's the thing A lot of folks don't want to really have these conversations until they're ready to show something big Part of our delivery, part of how I deliver. This is really understanding. Okay, let's find out where your problem is. What's the biggest problem that's troubling you right now? Well, we don't have an ability to create updates the way we need to. When we do them manually, it takes us about two hours to collate all the information. Okay, so let's start first. What information do you have access to, what information comes from other people? Because then you have to recognize now what is the input into your system and what is the output of your system, and your system can be your function or your department or your particular role on a project. Once you start to understand that, you can then start to make changes in your space.
Speaker 1:I personally choose to experiment in my own work and then, once I find something that's valid, I start talking with folks, I start presenting a little bit more and I don't mean formal presentations I start informing them. These are the things that I have figured out how to do. Hey, you know that one problem we had yesterday where they didn't really have visibility into what the status was or the upcoming dates for et cetera. Let me show you something that I did and that starts the conversation. Whether or not they decide to adopt something similar, it's irrelevant. You need to have exposure to these changes in order for them to take off. You talking to somebody one time about something you did it's going to disappear. They're busy. You need to have this consistent messaging of I want things to be better and really, the way that we carry this out is to make sure that we're not adding additional layers of work. We are going to decrease the amount of effort that you're doing right now on the same work that you're doing. Once we can manage that, then we can start looking at other initiatives.
Speaker 1:Well, now we have more time than we can plan for this. We can have more time to experiment. We can have more time to think, time to think. Imagine that Going to work to think we're not being paid for the tasks, we're being paid for our experience, our knowledge, our strategy. But we rarely have time to do those things. So, you know, we go in there, we understand.
Speaker 1:What are these low-hanging fruit that will start to change how we work, start to improve the transparency, improve the visibility and what this also does, lawrence. It starts to create a system of accountability. Gone are the days where people can send you a message as a project manager myself in those days. Oscar, can you give me the list of nope? Here's the link to it. It is time to be accountable for your own work. I'm going to provide all the information. I'm going to show you where it is. Here's how it rolls up.
Speaker 1:This is now taking charge of your role and putting accountability on the project teams. You need to be able to pull these out and make the conclusions as well. Find the next step. So, really working within your function, within the work that you're doing, I would say is probably the easiest and probably the quickest way to get small change to happen, and it could be small change from. Well, I have to send every month. I have to send out a new report about something.
Speaker 1:Look at what you're doing, find the systems that you're using and see if there's a way to automate a delivery of a report monthly. If it's tracking the work that you're doing, then it's just you working every day and then every month you get a report. We just had one that got sent out and I got a reply back email that asked to add three more people. This isn't even the final version, but they're already finding value. They're like, hey, can we add these people? I think they could use this to understand what is about to come into my space, what is on the way. When you create these systems, you're no longer surprised what we got another project, what we got another initiative. You see all of it Right.
Speaker 2:You're essentially reestablishing what the norm should be right and I think, to kind of recap you know a couple of things that we just discussed is, I think this really centers around really getting to know what people are doing that they shouldn't be doing anymore or maybe they find annoying or inefficient, right.
Speaker 1:Really getting a sense of what's going on right.
Speaker 2:And then, once you do that right, you can start to craft a plan to really tackle the small things. It's just to start out and then you create momentum, and I think the important thing here is to really make sure that, if others are planning to do the same thing, that you guys use a very similar framework in how you establish these initiatives to change throughout your company. Away from this episode, what should it be? But I think I'm going to say what's the one thing people should not be doing if they are looking to change some of these inefficient ways of working at their companies.
Speaker 1:One thing to not do is everybody else's work. I think at times when you are developing efficiencies, when you're finding new ways around things, you become sort of this jack of all trades, master of none, and you start to get pulled into these like side quests, which they can be beneficial, but it should not impede on the work that you are required to do as your role, are required to do as your role. You know the other part that I would probably say too. I tend to keep leaders in the dark because the higher you go up, the quicker it'll be to get a no, because the level of conversation has to be different when you go higher up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you go higher up.
Speaker 1:You sort of need to present something and say we did this and this is the change that had happened. If you go up to a leader, to a co-founder I actually saw this recent with somebody close to me they said I have a big plan and I asked them like well, do you know what that leader is concerned about? Do you know what they really care about? They went to have the conversation and it got squashed right away because they didn't see the value. I had five conversations with this person. I see the value now, but having just one conversation with nothing to notice nothing, to show nothing to, I do not do that.
Speaker 1:I think the thing that has made me successful in doing organizational, doing any change, is that I'm going to do the change as a part of my work I'm going to find, because if the organization does not want you to improve a process, you should not be working at that organization. So you have every right to look at the work that you're doing and say how can not be working at that organization. So you have every right to look at the work that you're doing and say how can I be better, make that part of your work, make that a goal, even so, that it is there in writing and find something. Find something, build prototypes of it, whether or not. I mean it can be as simple as hey.
Speaker 1:I built a new template for that PowerPoint slide that we're constantly doing, and I created headers and links inside of it so that you can go back and forth like a document. There's so many things in PowerPoint that people just inherently do not do, because their quote unquote experience is just dragging and dropping and formatting font. Unquote experience is just dragging and dropping and formatting font. That's not expertise in PowerPoint, sorry. So you know, get something together. Talk to your manager about it. Tell them that you're really keen on fixing something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's definitely starting with the mindset first is kind of the foundation, and I was gonna.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say the exact same thing, but I will not steal your answer and I will say, um, that the next important thing is to not assume that the tools that you've been using will get you to where you need to be right.
Speaker 2:So I think this is like really true in the last couple years, when we've seen the emergence of all of the large language models and like ChatGPT, claude Gemini, you know, there's Copilot, all of these different tools that you can apply to your work, but you need to know how to do that right, and so there's a bit of experimenting that you have to do, obviously, to figure out you know what the right fit is for your workflow, but there are just so many other tools, like Smartsheet, mondaycom, all these different tools that are really going to accelerate not only the efficiency but also the effectiveness of what you're doing right. And so if you're just using Outlook, excel, powerpoint, sharepoint and just the very surface level features of those tools, it will not allow you to not only perform to what the upper management, c-level executives, are capable of, but it's really going to constrain you in what you can do creatively right.
Speaker 1:You're not going to grow. You won't grow. You're not going to grow. Yeah, creatively right, You're not going to grow. You won't grow. You're not going to grow. Yeah, If I could say anything, if your organization is going to provide training I don't care if it's for PowerPoint or SharePoint you should go at least once. If you think you know, go, Find out what they're doing this. And if you're an organization that doesn't provide training, shame on you. You should not go in there. This is why you get multiple skill levels with the same piece of equipment, with the same software that you're using across the company. If this is so vital to your organization, it is your responsibility to provide some layer of training to ensure a consistent baseline of your employee. And I'll stop there so I don't make anybody too mad.
Speaker 2:No, I think this was a great discussion and just for a preview for our next episode. So we're going to kind of continue down this road of discussing the approach very hard on for the last I don't know how many weeks, but the Biopharma Nexus model, and you'll see a lot of content that he's put out on LinkedIn, but also on his sub stack as well. So we'll be diving into that in more detail on the next episode and, yeah, it's going to be a very uh, I think, in-depth conversation of how you see pieces of the puzzle coming together, especially for organizations that have so many different levers, and what they have to do to accomplish what their strategy is yeah, and sometimes that's the hardest thing is looking beyond those and and breaking down an organization to say how is this organization the same as any other organization?
Speaker 1:What are they missing, what are they lacking, what do they do? Well, I'm excited for that conversation, Lawrence, and thanks everybody for sticking with us and being part of this journey. We're going to continue to crank out episodes through the rest of this year and if you are interested in sponsoring, if you're sponsoring an episode, if you're interested on being a guest on the show we have a number of folks that have reached out to us so we are in the process of scheduling those Send us an email at leanbydesign at sigmalabconsultingcom. We'll also put some things in the show notes so that you have access to those. It can really start to look at how can we, how can you start to make a change in your organization and if, Lawrence I'm going to add this other piece here we have updated our assessments to help you assess your organization. It's a simple quiz with powerful results and something that you can take to your leader to say hey, I think we can start doing a couple of these things. So we'll put those in the show notes. Lawrence, thanks for your time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see you guys next time.
