The Productivity Playbook for Biotech Leaders | Katalin Szegner

Stuck in gridlock? Learn how a Fractional CMO can transform misalignment into momentum. https://meshagency.com/fcmo-fractional-cmo-fractional-marketing/

Connect with Bill: https://www.linkedin.com/in/founderandcdo/

Connect with Kata: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katalinszegner/ 

Biotech product leader Katalin “Kata” Szegner shares how to replace meeting chaos with structure: silent ideation, equal airtime, clear decision ownership, and customer-centric differentiation. We cover ending gridlock, aligning R&D with commercial, and making workshops produce real decisions—not more meetings.

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:57 Meet Kata, Teacher to Project Manager in Biotech
00:02:56 Teaching skills that supercharge product teams
00:08:12 Where misalignment starts (R&D vs. commercial)
00:10:58 Founders vs Customers, Ambition vs Traction, Growth vs. Compliance
00:16:32 Equal voices: silent ideation, dot voting, decision roles
00:26:12 Case: 18-month stall solved in hours by surfacing hidden insight
00:36:32 Workshop setup: boundaries, objectives, timeboxing, decision maker present
00:40:00 How to Set Boundaries
00:42:22 Visual frameworks that unlock clarity (Hot Air Balloon, etc.)
00:46:42 Foundation sprint & customer-centric differentiation
00:50:00 Marketing early: jobs-to-be-done and VOC as strategy, not afterthought
00:52:12 Wrap: courage, cadence, and the value of a neutral facilitator

Today’s guest, Katalin “Kata” Szegner, moved from the biology classroom to leading complex biotech products—and brought the secret with her: it’s not “clarity first,” it’s connection first. Kata shows how misalignment takes hold (founders’ vision vs. feasibility, R&D rigor vs. commercial urgency) and how to replace it with lightweight structure.

We unpack silent ideation to hear the quiet 80%, dot voting to separate ideas from egos, and clear decision ownership so meetings end in movement. Kata shares a vivid example where a team spun for 18 months—until a structured session surfaced the missing technical truth and unlocked a fix in hours.

You’ll get a simple toolkit for workshops that work: set boundaries (phones down, time blocked), publish the objective, assign the decider, and use visual frameworks (e.g., Hot Air Balloon) to make complex tradeoffs tangible. We close on customer-centric differentiation and why marketing must be present from phase zero—not as an afterthought once the science is “done.”

From Gridlock to Go: 3 Alignment Fixes Pros Miss

Equalize the room with silent ideation.
 Kick off key discussions heads-down: 60–120 seconds of quiet writing on cards or stickies before anyone speaks. Then de-dupe, group, and dot-vote. This prevents “first-voice contamination,” surfaces the 80% who rarely talk, and gives you a ranked input set to work from.

Put a decider in the room—explicitly.
 Name the decision-maker up front and confirm their attendance for the full session. Timebox each segment, finish with a single documented decision, owner, and next step. Set simple guardrails (no laptops/phones, full-day focus) so the group can actually decide, not just discuss.

Do the prework to remove surprises.
 Before the workshop, interview stakeholders, map who must be present (and influential absences), list known assumptions, and define success criteria. Bring 1–2 visual frameworks (e.g., Hot-Air Balloon) and a strawman/prototype to test the highest-risk assumption first. This turns the session into validation, not discovery.

Continue your founder’s journey with another episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLibD2fYYaAIISuFLmIXfzrh9_QgB9E2u8

#Biotech #ProductManagement #MedTech

Transcript

0:00

I don't need to understand the whole pipeline, but I need to be able to connect with all the people who are in the development cycle. It's not about clarity. No, it's about connection. Welcome to life site continuum. I'm Bill Schick, your fractional chief marketing officer. Today we're digging into three big ideas that start life science companies. How misalignment between R&D and commercial derails progress. Why no decider means no momentum. And how structured facilitation can turn your endless meetings into real decisions. See, too many founders assume more meetings will fix misalignment. The truth is, without structure and clear ownership, meetings just multiply your chaos. So don't be afraid of silence because this is where magic can happen. When you give people some time to think things over. Write down their ideas. And then we revisit all the ideas together. And then you can make sure that everyone's voice can be heard. How do you move from gridlock to forward motion? To unpack this invited Kara Zegna, a biotech product leader who started in the biology classroom and now guides complex life science programs from vision to launch. How the secret isn't just clarity, it's connection. Creating environments where the quiet voices are heard. Egos take a backseat and customer centric differentiation guides the team. The solution is so simple that let's just bring the people together into one room and then structure that communication, and then it's going to be going to lead to magic. By the end of this conversation, you'll walk away with a toolkit from running workshops that produce actual decisions, giving quiet voices weight while keeping clarity in the room and making sure your marketing and customer insights show up at phase zero. Not bolted on. After the science is done. All right, let's get to it. Kara. Thanks for hopping on with me. Thank you so much for having me. How did you get to where you are today? Yeah. So right now, a break breaking the product manager. And I've been doing this for, let's say, five years now in biotech. Prior to that, I've been using I've been doing project management, program management, business analyzes. So all of these, similar positions in, in tech. But I transitioned to these positions from being a biology teacher where I spent the first 13 years of my career. Yeah. So your background is in biology, in an education setting? Exactly. This is this is what my basic background was. And then I strategically made moves that at that point was not really easy to figure out, that in retrospect, it's easy to to put them together. But on the way, I just wanted where I wanted to go. And I had a path in my mind. But then also I grabbed the opportunities that that came into my way. Yeah. How did you get into teaching biology? Teaching what? What got you there? Yeah, that kind of was my passion. So I started teaching biology when I was ten to my classmates. And and it was just like I thought always that this is what I wanted to do. So I never thought about anything else. Yeah. And then. And then you did that for quite a while, and then you made you made the switch over to tech. What? Talk a little bit about that. How did that happen? So I was doing project management in the school for huge European project called. And I was my supplies that is grants for teachers and students to learn. And, this gave me an opportunity to have end to end project management of huge funds. And then I could transition to being a project manager first at Xerox for localization project, and then I transitioned to Citibank. And then from there, I've been part of, agile teams. And this is how I could transition to product owner role in biotech at a startup. So looking back at your experience teaching, what do you think, working in that environment gave you what skills that it gave you to set you up for success, where you are today? What did you learn from it? Oh, yeah, there were tons. So active. Listening to start with is super important. Also in teaching, you are there to make the idea feel, heard, respected. So this is not, different in this position that I'm doing right now. Also good questioning, keen teaching team product management and facilitation. Also managing the energy of the room. So if you can't manage an energy of 30 teenagers then you are that it's the same in product teams. You have to manage the energy. Also dealing with challenging people or difficult people. This is also not different as a teacher. So this also already set me up for success. I had 13 years of experience in this or ten books in everything, or I'm giving good instructions. That's also very, very simple skill that you learn as a teacher. And it's easy to transfer to a project manager facilitation role. And I'm just right now doing a lot of it falls under the umbrella of just really strong communication skills, which you use. I, I didn't realize that you taught high school. You have to have some pretty incredible communication and management skills to, wrangle that crowd, I imagine. Yes. Because basically communication also, just like in the high school, as in product teams, it's about it's not about clarity. They think about it's about clarity. But now it's about connection. So all in all, the whole thing boils down to the human connection and the people connected. So all in all, yes, it as simple as it is sound or as I don't know, we would like to have that the code is somehow correct. No, it is just simple communication between humans. So this is, I think, what is part of the success. Yeah, I it's funny that you mention that it's not about clarity. You know, I've been in plenty of meetings with more tech, technically minded people. And I see them sometimes struggle because they feel like people aren't getting it or they're not understanding. But what you're saying is it's not really about clarity. It's about connection. Yes. Because, so in in deep tech, you have to get comfortable that you don't get things because the complexity is so huge. It's so difficult. Some people put ten, 15 years in some deep tech, you you won't understand it for the first time, but you have to get comfortable with the, uncomfortable being uncomfortable in this situation, right? Otherwise, if you can't do this, then you get lost. So but if you have a human connection, then you can also get over this burden, which might be. Yeah, I don't really understand because we don't really need to understand the deep tech to be able to help. Also to be the very good product manager. I don't need to understand the whole pipeline, but I need to be and we need to be able to connect with all the people who are in the development cycle. Right. And so, you know, before getting into, tech in, you know, the biotech space, you had a lot of experience developing these skills kind of as a natural, almost a sixth sense. And so now you bring that to the table in biotech. So, when you and I spoke, we talked about, you know, some of the big challenges that these companies face. And a lot of it is, around communication. But also really about misalignment and with misalignment that can, you know, that can come from communication issues, maybe, but talk a little bit about your experience there and some of the challenges that you've seen companies struggle with with misalignment. Yes. So that can be tons of misalignment, like people really going to meetings. They open up a conversation. It's getting more and more complex. But then they have got issues with having it. I don't know, pushed into this one direction. It happens between R&D teams and commercial teams. So R&D teams focusing really on, scientific rigor. They think that we are not there yet, but commercial teams already saw the feature because they have heard the R&D team talking about it last. They at the table, during lunch. And that only meant for R&D. That one of the developers have seen something that was interesting yesterday. But for commercial team, it already meant that, okay, that might be feasible. And then they offered it and the next score. So there can be a huge misalignment of what is technically feasible, what we think is technically feasible. That might be technically feasible in six months after we tried it. And for the commercial team, these dimensions can mean different things. So this is something that we need to be bring closer always. There is a huge difference bit between these teams because there is a huge push from science in biotech. Right now the bike is pool. So to understand the whole thing, how is it going to get together leads to many, many misalignment. Yeah, that that's great. And it's true. We do see a lot of, disconnect between, R&D or tech and commercial teams. I mean, this is this is true for a lot of industries. And it it really is a tug of war, you know, it's it's a it's kind of a battle between what we want to and what we need to build, you know, or create and what the market is, what's happening in the market and always being present, you know, on the commercial side to bring new things and introduce new things in innovation and push that. And I think having clarity there and having good communication certainly helps. What about, you know, we talk we talk a little bit about R&D, but look at like technical leads there. And founders, any examples or stories of maybe some misalignment, challenges there. Yeah. So funders love to push towards visionary huge leaps forward by, tech leads. Really would like to understand feasibility and risk. So for example, one of the teams that I've been working on just finished an aligner for the most complicated part of the genome. They were so happy to put this together. But then, our co-founder was already like, oh, okay, it could be a machine learning thing added to here. And then we could figure out the alignment based on the first few, segments that we are putting together in a human. We just could crack the code now. So, I mean, there could be also huge difference between, between what they vision and what is technically feasible at the moment. And how far we can get together. So let's say if you if you check the DNA of a team, in a biotech company, it is just like in the DNA right there and then in pairs, the team in ambition have to pair with traction. Or how guanine pairs with cytosine grows have to pair with compliance. So you can't spin in, in, R&D loops that many, many tech leads like. But you also have to ship. So if ambition and traction are not not aligned, then you have an issue. Or when growth and and compliance are not allowed. Aligned. Then you also have an issue. So to figure this out and balance both super important things. That's kind of a difficulty in this. You know, everybody's trying to row in the same direction. But those are typically the teams that are frequently at odds. And that's where things get held up and challenges arise. And, you know, people like that, and things get stalled, which nobody wants. But we tend to get in the way. In, in my role, I see myself often as a bridge. You know, I can, I, you know, working directly with, you know, a CEO or a founder and their sort of big grand vision helping them focus. Some of that, that more innovative and creative thinking, but also working on the other side with the teams that have to run the business that are in operations there. They have to get the things done while we're also doing the new things, and helping them, solve some of the problems, but also rise up to a certain level of that, inspiration and demand from a leader. So I think it's, it's helpful, to have someone like you, in the room that could, that can build bridges between those groups and get that. We talked about misalignment, but get alignment done. Exactly. And bridge is such an amazing metaphor that you are using. Right. So it it really makes you also somehow visualize, the position and also the that the traction could be or where, where, where the problem could be if there is no one having the bridge to build. You know, I started using that metaphor a few years ago when, when I was struggling, personally, with a role where I was brought in mostly on, you know, to do some tactical marketing management. And there was, you know, just sitting in these meetings and seeing the huge disconnect between leadership and the teams that were just trying to get things done, and realizing that they needed they needed something more than just a good marketing campaign. They needed they needed a bridge, and sort of fell into it backwards. But I, you know, certainly don't have, you know, years and years of experience like you do. So I like this and I like where you're going with it. Quick interruption. I've got an offer for med device and life science companies doing at least 3 million a year. But dealing with growth challenges. The first step is really easy. Just connect with me on LinkedIn. The details are below. The rest is to follow. That's it. Let's get back to the podcast. I'd want to talk a little bit about the human dynamic, which is which is about where we're at. There's often misalignment, you know, people maybe, you know, there's different motivations or different things. We're trying to achieve. But, you know, talk a little bit about where there's an inequality in the voices, maybe, maybe there is or are a few dominant voices in a project. Maybe. I mean, misalignment stems from that imbalance. But talk a little bit about what you've seen there. Yeah, that's so true. What you are saying that there tend to be a huge misalignment on how many of the people are talking during a meeting, for example. So if you take an unstructured meeting, what happens that only 20% of the people talk? These are mostly the highest paid person or the people with the most expertise in the topic, and they very quickly share their opinion. And then the others do not share anything, either from respect or also from laziness that yeah, okay, the guy already said something, then we can rest here. So 80% of the room is completely silent and the problem comes when they are also not sharing their concerns, not because they want to do something bad, but just they maybe out of respect or any others thinking that they might have in between, they just tend not to share their, the actual these could be blockers, that they don't share. So how you can bridge this, that you don't contaminate the ideas of the people because once you heard something, you can't unhear it. Right. So how would we do it that you ask for silent ideation? People work together alone. So you ask people to to give answers to questions on a sticky note. In writing. Everyone has then the idea to think it over because also not everyone is a quick thinker and not everyone likes to think loud. Come visit, they don't like to think while having conversation. Many people like to think they are sitting in silence. And many times we, we feel that it's awkward. It's feel that, yeah, we are sitting together, but we are, writing down things here in silence. Also, you can bridge this by putting on some nice music. But also, don't be afraid of silence, because this is where magic can happen. And you give people some time to think things over, write down their ideas, and then we revisit all the ideas together, and then you can make sure that everyone's voice can be heard at the same time. Everyone has the equal opportunity to contribute and those ideas are not contaminated. So there are studies showing that 44% of ideas emerge from situations like this, and they tend to be also better. I love that example. That's exactly something that we do, in, in early, brand alignment and strategy meeting where we're bringing, you know, senior leadership at a company and basically anybody involved in growing the company to the table. And we're looking to get a sense from the internal team what they believe in with the company. And I remember one of the things that led me down this path, and this was years and years ago was working with a business that was an international business. And they were they were really well known and well regarded, but they were actually really small. And at the end of the day, they were a family run business. And so the head of the company was the father. And when we would come into a meeting, he would dominate the conversation. And then, you know, he would talk for 20, 25 minutes. And then, you know, I would go around the room and see if anybody had any thoughts. And typically it was some version of, well, I agree with what he just said. And, you know, then some small like nuance, little detail, but there wasn't different thinking. And where where I see a lot of the magic of, of all of this happening is the different perspectives. And not everybody just saying yes to whatever the loudest or the most powerful person in the room is what I what I did, and having seen that and struggling to get information out of that, is in the next meeting, we did go to note cards. And we did go to a 92nd heads down, you know, write your answer on a note card, and we won't start with dad. We're going to start, you know, to to the next seed over, and you're going to read to us what you put on your note card, and you could start to see people light up because there were all of these different perspectives, you know, and these views of what was happening within the company and where the opportunities were. And you could even see, the founder, he's like, I haven't ever heard any of this before. And it was just it was the whole culture of just whatever he said, let's just do that and make it happen. So it has bigger or, I think, farther reaching implications than the meeting. Right. It's it's everything that's happening at that company. Absolutely. And and you also, after the first meeting, you figure it out yourself. Right. So then how to how to manage the situation, whatever. But also what would be different if you would have gone to the situation already knowing that this is normally what happens? This is totally natural. It happens with everyone, but especially if it's a family run business where there is a voice dominating, this inevitably will happen. So there are frameworks that you can use. There is no no science in there. Of course, if you are reading right the room like you did, you can learn it on the way. Some learn it quicker, some learn it. I don't know, slower. But yes, I'm also educating people on how to do this because, believe it or not, for some people this does not come that that natural like it came to you. Right? This is I would say this is somewhere, you know, 8 or 9 years ago. And it completely changed the way we ran those meetings. We went entirely to, you know, part of prep is bring a stack of notecards because everybody's going to write their answers down first. And I think, I think that's one thing to, to consider is, is just being flexible and adaptable. But recognizing when something is wrong and, and doing something about it. Talk to me a little bit. So you have a lot of experience and it's varied experience, but I think it's it's really deep experience. What do you think in, in, in developing as you have, what do you think is your particular superpower? Yeah. So I think my superpower really comes from my unique background, coming from, teaching, that I can grab really complex ideas very quick. And I can also transfer me to, to a design that works for humans, because I used to learn with people who are different thinkers. Semi analytic, semi visual. Some learn by doing. There are different people with different constraints. So I learned how to manage this. Also learn how to manage difficult people, how to stick to to time, which is really very important because if you let, people have conversations, they can have conversations forever. But this doesn't necessarily mean that they will reach an alignment and I can push for decisions. That's also some somehow one of my superpowers, I think. I think that would be a big one. I think you just mentioned something, a talking for talking sake. Like some people will talk for. They'll even tell you when they come in the meeting. I'm a talker like, you know, and deal with it, in a much nicer way, of course. But, now, you know, you have you have a challenge on your hands. So, you know, you mentioned something when we spoke the other day that I thought was really interesting. You really talked about drawing out the 80%, and, you know, you had mentioned, the people who are a little bit more quieter. I you had a couple of examples, but I think there are, there are certain personalities that, I mean, just being in the room and in the meeting like, it's it it gets to them, and forget being on the spot and, and speaking in front of those people. Before we get into that, why why again, is it so important to get their, their ideas or their perspectives or their information out in, in the room? Why is that important? Because they are on the team for for a good reason. Right? So what I do is that I don't advise people, but I have them work together easier and these people are on the team for a reason. They are most probably extremely good experts, extremely good what they are doing. But if we don't give them the opportunity that they can tell what they the idea is, then we are losing the huge opportunity by we have these, people on the team. So that's why we ask for anonymous ideation in the beginning. This will give everyone an opportunity to give their ideas to the common. They also do prioritization by voting, which is a kind of democratic, situation where everyone can see that. And, and this way you separated the idea from the person. It's also very important that you it's semi anonymous a bit, but you also don't take it personal. If your idea is not selected, but also not the best picture beans because most probably that person can be that the best idea comes not from the best picture. So this way by you wrote it down, you gave the idea to vote for it. Let's save it, stick it out. Then you gave them the opportunity to, to show where they think the jam is without criticizing, without taking it personally. Just like separating the idea completely for an from the person. And then also you want to still manage to have a decision in the end, this will mean that at the beginning you choose the decision maker, and then at the end of the whole process, you realize the decision maker to make a decision how to move forward. And this might or might not be the idea from the loudest person, but it might come from those 80% who are normally not talking during the unstructured meeting. Right. Do you have an example or a story where maybe somebody who was holding a critical piece of the puzzle or information, but wasn't the one that would speak up? Yeah. And it was creating it was creating issues, for a project or for the company. I have, an example that I can think about. So these people many times I developers, I think also there is no, no, I don't know a secret here. These people love to create, but most probably do not like to pitch their ideas or like, talk in front of a huge cross-functional team. And we were working on a software product designed for transplantation laboratories who would like to find the match between donor and recipient. And for this, you have to do DNA analysis and matching. And, they do HLA genotyping for for field. And clinically the first three is important. The force is very important. But clinically they don't. It adds a very much complexity that they don't check in the laboratories. So the dominant voice in the company, was that we don't need the force field. Clinicians don't need don't just don't spend time on it. Let's move quickly with the first free field. And this is really counterintuitive then to start to develop the force field. And developers were saying for a while that we cannot give precise three field data without doing the force field until we went to a situation where it's just surface that all of our problems that we've been in the past 18 months could be solved just by a very quick solution that they actually could prototype in less than a few hours, solved all of our issues that we couldn't crack for the past 18 months just because we were on the wrong assumption and dominated by voices that were not heard before. So ultimately, things, things were held up for 18 months, and they could have been solved in a few hours. Yeah, we were trying to work around things, so we tried to tweak, the algorithm. We also try to do many things, workarounds for, for edge cases. So we tried, but normally, software teams do when they try to avoid doing something that they assumed that it's too complicated. And in the end, that was the key. But we couldn't, figure this out until until we said way down into one room, checked all our assumptions and worked around all our current issues, and figured, that what is the biggest issue that we need to focus on right now? And with the quick prototyping, we could then prove that we can do the force field. Yeah. I was just thinking of a, story from about two years ago or a situation where, it was a similar situation, but not in a software development environment. And it to, to sort of extend the problem further. Typically there's, a person or a team at the tail end of all of this that is suffering, like when, when we're struggling, to solve a problem, you know, or launch a product. And, there are all these communication issues, there are backchannel communications. People know what's going on, but they're not all connecting, and they're not all in the same room. And it, it becomes a game of telephone and, you know, like one person has a bit of the information, next person has a bit of information, but they don't talk. They talk to that person, this person, you know, and so, so, you know, having, you know, the person who's at the tail end of that has to deal with solving all of those issues and variables and pulling those things together on top of actually doing the job. And it it creates a lot of friction and challenges that just don't they simply don't need to be there. So having that group come together, simply, I mean, you talked about, in that case, examining the assumptions and challenging them. But but just, regular cadence of open communication also creates familiarity, and it gets people more comfortable, speaking in that environment. And they just work together better. Yeah. That's so true. I think many people wish that the solution wouldn't be like that. Okay, just workshop it in one room, bring all of the people together in one room and let them think about it together. They would wish that the solution would be something completely as. But no, as as as painful. It is many times, as you said, it is really just it can become a game of telephone. Right? And then the solution is so simple. Then let's just bring the people together into one room and then structure that communication, and then it's going to be going to lead to magic. So there is really not not bigger science here. Something I see to in this situation is, people are meeting to death where in so many meetings we can't work. And if you tell me, I've got to come in one more meeting and it's. Everybody is going to be in the meeting. I don't want to be in the meeting, and I'm probably not. I'm not engaged in the meeting and I'm not plugged in. And this kind of goes back to something that you said earlier about, making the meeting count. So making sure that there's a decision making process, there's a clear objective. And then at the end of the meeting, we have that because if you don't have some of those things that you mentioned, well, then you're going to have another meeting and another meeting and another meeting, and soon you're doing exactly what you don't want to do, which is, you know, meeting your team to death and then you can't get anything done. So I think that's why a lot of companies just avoid this sort of, you know, all hands on deck workshop because it's just a one of a number, you know, of things that are just keeping them in their minds from getting things done. But you can accomplish a lot in a meeting if you have a structure and you've got guidelines and and goals and a decision maker. Yeah. It it it is so true what you mentioned. And also we have to realize that a meeting culture changed a ton. So a few years ago when you just started on time, you had an agenda finished on time or even earlier, then on time everything was okay. So this was good. Meeting cut meant that you set up an agenda. You followed this agenda. You sent it early. You started on time. You finished on time. That's that's what good meetings meant. And also make them as short as possible and as few as possible. But then somehow we started to grow this. And as you mentioned, really, I love this. And it's a meeting the killing peoples with this meeting health. But now the new way is not like this. So the new meeting means that we go for for value and not for time. So of course, if you start people that we are going to workshop this, this is the last thing that they want or so the last thing that yeah, we see together we start working on it. But if you then add that yeah, the outcome could save you money says maybe even years, then that one day of workshopping versus trying. Right, right. You know, I think one of the things that, where we fall down because as a, as a business owner, I often get in my own head and I, I have an idea and I for sometimes I, I forget that the other people don't know what's going on in my head. And so I just it's so it's super obvious to me and people, everybody else to just get it and plug in their things to what I'm thinking. But there's I mean, there's plenty of data about like perception and how we all see and experience things incredibly differently. And so having somebody who can clearly, communicate but also, you know, create connections with people. So it's easier, to get those ideas across and build that alignment, with teams gets you I think I think that like, like you were talking about it's a superpower for you. Because it's really hard for us to get out of our own heads as, business leaders. That's sort of. You want to say something, and. Yeah. So go ahead. If it is not just on a business level, but leader level or personal level, but also company level, so that you mentioned earlier that you went to this family run business, whatever. And then one voice was dominating. They they are doing this for years and they didn't realize it, most probably because they are in it. So much. So if you have someone from the outside just to have to understand the structure by the system that they are working successfully or less successfully for years, that could have beaten a little self-serving. But I am a big advocate in bringing external expertise in, the benefit of having a fresh set of eyes on a problem and certainly experienced, is not just any, but having that in place. I think the underlying theme, for, for what we've been focused on here is, you know, projects, products, companies, they get stuck in gridlock. What seem like simple problems balloon up to bigger issues. Everything feels connected. Nothing can seem to get finished or done. Things are moving so slow. We get into gridlock, right? Companies and products and people, they get. They just get stuck. So let's let's talk a little bit practically about how to avoid or get out of, effects gridlock. So, give me give me sort of the quick, your perspective or how do you approach stakeholder facilitation. So getting people just communicating and working together. Yeah. So then I would start to work with the team. I started with doing my homework. And this is also partly doing research on the, already available, publicly available data, but also asking expert interviews from the stakeholders who are going to be in the room when we are doing the workshop. It is important because then you want to understand who is in the room, what it takes for them, what is important to understand and who is not going to be in the room. But it's still influential because you can't leave out the decision maker, for example. So you need to see that a decision maker has to be present, for example, on a workshop or show. Then you one, when you start working together with the group, then you have to start setting boundaries. You have to ask them to trust the method. The method might take one day to day, four days. So you have to give this the time and then you also want to clean it. But when you want to have a clear purpose before you start, otherwise, it can get really, really messy. Also, time boxing everything on the run also and then provide the equal participation that we have talked about. And there are tons of frameworks that a facilitator can use. And then just like use one of them, it will really make the complexity that it would be otherwise mentally unworkable process simple. And that's already a huge leap forward because many of the teams have got almost unworkable complexity already. So you said, something about choosing a decision maker. So as a founder, of a small team of, you know, 20 or 30, you know, it might am I just like, I'm the decider, you know, I'm the one who will ultimately make the decision. Is that always the best approach? Yes it is. We try to work around this, but you can't really, because then this might happen. So if you are not aligned with the decision maker, then you might really waste 1 or 2 days, a few people workshopping on the idea. And in the end, the one who is going to they make the decision was not present, then they might be incompetent, completely wrong direction. So this is for a smaller team. As you mentioned, this is most probably the founder, the CTO or the CSO who has to be there for bigger companies or bigger teams. It might be head of product. It can be even, if it's if it's even a bigger team, then you might even want just the project manager to be there as a decision maker. But you still need the person who's decision can guide us to the good direction. Be there, because otherwise we can be a completely lost. At a point like that, you actually bring something wrong in the end. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I it was it was kind of funny because I kind of expected you to say no, it shouldn't be the founder and here's why. But you're you're like, yeah, that's the fastest way to to, you know, keep things moving. Exactly. And we would like to, protect the founders time and energy. And I all get it. And that's why it's very, very difficult to do. But but in the end, you can't work around it. You tried, you can't. So it's it's just does not really make sense. And if that right frameworks that work then I would just like to stick to that if possible. Got it. That makes sense. You also mentioned setting boundaries. How like what's an example of a boundary to set and how do I how do I do this in a way that maybe it's enforceable, but also the team feels like it creates safety, like it creates a, a space for us to work and be comfortable and build those connections that you talked about. If you have time, you can set those boundaries together. So then you have got a buy in. So like you can ask that, is it okay not to use outside technology? Because if people switch on their phones or they start to check emails, then you lose them. So you want them focused, you want them dig very deep, and also you want them to get into the flow where they understand someone else's thinking. But you can't if you are checking your phone, if you are checking your mail. So this is something a very typical boundary setting in the beginning. Can you clear up one day completely? So this means that I wouldn't like that people going to meetings on the half day and then the end to at noon for a workshop. And then they say, I have the things to do in the in the afternoon, because then it's really, really, really difficult to get them focus on the problem that we are trying to solve together, because they don't not only have to focus on the problem, but the seven other people in the room. So this is mentally super difficult. So you we have to give them the space and the time to do it. So normally the boundaries around time is about, outside technology that you can use, and things like that. Perfect. I like that a lot. You mentioned a lot of frameworks. We didn't really talk about different frameworks and approaches, and maybe I can have you come back and walk through some of them, but, I'm going to put you on the spot and say, what is of the frameworks that you use? What is one of your. So it doesn't have to be your absolute favorite, but what is one of your favorites and why? I really love to use visual tools. Just because they have complex problems. Visualize in, in a tangible way. Let me give an example. So for example, disable is a very well-known, visual metaphor for retrospectives or the Mountain High or the hot air balloon. So for example, in a hot air balloon, you can envision that we, the team is, in a hot air balloon. We'd like to get from A to B, then what is driving us up? Right. That's going to be the hot air. But they are things that are grounding us. It could be also the rope that is grounding us, literally. But we also have some sandboxes. These are good. At some point we have to get rid of some of the sandboxes, but we also need them because otherwise we would lost all our, I don't know, connection to the ground. But if you would like to understand what what is our hot air? What lifts us up? What is the thing that holds us back completely? Without that, we can't even get up from the ground. And what is our weight then? We are carrying? Can we get rid of that weight? Or is it something that we are necessary to carry? Because as part of our success, if you give the people very visual framework that they can think about, they can come up with super complex ideas. And it's it's so simple that I sometimes really feel like, yeah, okay, what I am doing is, is so, so, so simple. But it even so, so it leads to magic. So why not do it? Yeah, I like that too. And I think the idea of having somebody like you come in independently and run the frameworks, it removes any baggage that the team has with the person running or facilitating the discussion. So if you're an internal person, you know, and you know, you know, this person has these thoughts or feelings about you and that person does that. Really you can color, and affect those types of, those types of meetings and that facilitation. So I think, I think leaning on a resource, you know, just to come in and run these workshops, there's a lot of benefit to that. That's, that's so important what you say, because the person who is trying to lead the room, is energy. Keep the energy on a general high. Design the peak points whenever they can't focus on the content. So then you lost one person who is leading it. And then if you are doing it internal, then you are doing one person who actually could contribute to the content. You lose them. On facilitation, this is one point. And the second is that in in companies internally, there is really some politics going around and it is really difficult to manage. Right. I think I think one thing I hadn't really thought of until you pretty much said it just now is, you know, thinking about how the team feels about the facilitator. But also when you have the facilitator having skin in the game, they may as much as they might try not to. And it takes some effort to try not to, but they may without even thinking about it. Try to encourage the discussion or encourage the thinking, or encourage the people that they have a personal, preference for. And again, an external facilitator. You don't have any of that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Looking at all of the work that you do, what is something that you've heard from your clients or the teams that you've worked with? That they, they maybe expressed, maybe it wasn't as popular or it was surprising, or maybe counterintuitive, where they just maybe there was just some resistance and they, they didn't believe in it or they pushed back or something. It just wasn't popular. And then you did it, and they just that you converted them. You turn them around. So there is this, there is this framework called foundation sprint that you would normally run at the beginning of a project or a product development, but sometimes you run it with teams that are already knee deep in developing things. And at that time they already attached to many, many ideas. And we normally put that differentiation. So this is this two by two matrix that you know from consultancy. Normally people put it up based on technology or market. You can say that it can be an effort impact matrix, but you can also put it from the customer perspective, like what is familiar and doesn't require change. And then you would put on your product and all the competition. And then when you put this up, started with it, and then you start to show that there is no differentiation between their product and the competitor. They are not alone in a segment, and they have to think about, a differentiation. Then it can get messy that, yeah, our product is rather in the right hand corner and everyone else is here. Yeah. No. Actually no. And then when they realize that they didn't crack the differentiation code, they've got a very hard deep tech. But they did couldn't figure out that what problems it's solving. How does it fit to a clinical workflow. Or they don't really know how to differentiate from the competitors. That can be, very hard to swallow pill and also to come up. But it's really easy to win once they can come up with the differentiation from the customer's perspective and then say that, yeah, okay. This is the way how we look at the world. And if you agree with the way how we are looking at the world, then our solution is your next best bet. Because this is this is the best solution that we can offer. Then it will make everything so much smoother. But to get here can be messy. Yeah, I love that example, because most of the work that I do is around, helping companies in the space become more customer centric. Working with them on voice of customer, Clayton Christensen's Jobs to be done methodology, understanding the jobs that your customer is hiring, your product, you know, to do, and it it kind of ties back to one of the points you made at the beginning, which is, you know, in biotech, it's science and innovation and discovery driven. There isn't and there is an often a pull or demand on the market side. And so, running those types of exercises at the outset, maybe in phase zero of a company when you're still working on the science, it can be it can be harder, to get that voice of the customer. But at a certain early point, to drive the full business strategy, then it becomes key to dig into some of those things pretty deeply. Yeah, yeah. It is. It is the most important thing that you are mentioning. So marketing is not an afterthought. It is not like something we build something. And now you can figure out how you are going to sell it, but it has to be present from the very beginning because this is in the end what will make the product lovable like. Also, you can think about it as a cherry saw. The deep tech is the pith in the middle, but if you don't grow the cherry around it, you don't have the differentiation. You don't have what makes it consumable, sweet, and and people don't want it. They don't reject the great science. They just reject that what they can't see. They don't see how it fits into their workflow, what kind of problem it is solving, whose problem is it solving. So they and tech teams tend to arrive to these decisions quite late. And that's normal because this is how it is. First, they had the great idea, the deep tag, the the scientific breakthrough. But very early. They have to figure out who is it for, what kind of problem does it solve, how to differentiate, between competition and competition. Might that be doing? Might be not doing anything. It can be a way. I think around. It's not just the commercially available options, but to put this together shouldn't come after we have built the product. Yeah, we call those that that last bit you were talking about Band-Aids. You know, anything that the customer does to meet the need that isn't you. So true. Yeah, I love that. That's great. Quarter, thank you so much for joining me today. We covered a lot of ground, and I think that understanding, the importance of getting teams aligned and working together and communicating the benefits of, facilitated meeting over sometimes months or maybe years of struggling in silos, can have tremendous acceleration impacts for clients for for companies out there. So to summarize it, so amazingly, I tried really great. It was great talking to you. Thank you so much. If you made it here. Thank you. If you haven't already, like share and subscribe to the channel. 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