The Power of People and Culture in Biotech

In this episode, Tom and Pat discuss the importance of fostering positive cultures to guide companies through tough times and to success. Tom shares his unexpected journey from studying English literature at King's College to becoming a leader in the life science sales industry. The conversation delves into the significance of culture in biotech companies and how positive cultures, driven by inspiring leadership, play a crucial role in achieving business success. They explore the frameworks and building blocks essential to creating and nurturing effective teams, emphasizing that while technical skills are important, aligning team members with the company’s culture and values is key to overcoming challenges and driving success.

00:00 Introduction and Excitement
00:29 Tom's Unconventional Journey
00:59 Building a Successful Recruitment Career
03:05 Founding Singular and Its Mission
04:04 Importance of Culture in Biotech
06:19 Challenges in Balancing Skills and Culture
08:42 Leadership's Role in Shaping Culture
22:20 Framework for Building Brilliant Cultures
26:03 Conclusion and Contact Information

Transcript

[00:00:00] Needless to say, I, I'm really excited to talk to you. I wholeheartedly believe in your message about fostering amazing cultures, positive cultures, to take companies through hard times. Mm-hmm. And come out on top. As a recent founder and leader of my own life science sales agency, obviously your message speaks right here to the heart, so I got a lot of questions for you.

[00:00:28] Cool. We'll get through those. The reason why I started this podcast is to understand the different pathways people take to end up. Within the biotech life science industry, I had a chance to take a look at your profile on LinkedIn and you know, you did a bachelor's degree at King's College. Mm-hmm. In English language and literature.

[00:00:45] So on paper, that's probably the farthest thing from what you're doing now. So you've gotta have a really interesting story. Yeah, it's a good observation. It is a long way away from. Where we are today. And actually I ended up in this sector completely by accident, but have been doing it now for 20 years.

[00:01:05] And I couldn't, I, I did spend a couple of years in a different sector. I spent a couple of years in oil and gas and, and didn't like it as much. So, so I'm on my way back. But, uh, yeah, English language and literature degree. I gotta be honest, I was a pretty lazy student. I chose English language and literature because, uh.

[00:01:22] Yeah, because it would, it, I liked reading books and it seemed pretty easy and makes sense. I got to the end of university and I, you know, right now we have a big mission and purpose and I really believe in it, and I'm really invested in it. Back then, it was a little bit more self-serving. I was sick of having no money and wanted to find the job that would pay me the most money.

[00:01:45] And some of my friends that I, I played rugby at university, some of my friends who were a year older than me. Had gone into the recruitment industry and they seemed to be really enjoying it, but more importantly, they always seem to have loads of cash. And so I decided I was gonna explore that, that, and I ended up completely by chance going to work for a company that, that was starting a life sciences division, a recruitment company.

[00:02:09] So they'd been an IT recruiter. They, they'd started to recruit SaaS programmers in banks and in retail and that kind of thing. And they'd started to have a few pharmaceutical clients had realized it was different. Had started a small team and was starting to build that division, and I was the third person to join that team.

[00:02:28] We then over the next 10 years, built that to 500 people in 16 countries, all in pharma, biotech, medical devices, diagnostics, those sorts of things. So completely by accident, but I couldn't imagine doing anything else now. I was really lucky with that first company. I was there for 10 years. I got the opportunity to go and start a business in New York for them.

[00:02:52] I started an executive search business that covered the whole of Europe, so we were recruiting sort of CEOs and people like that for small and mid-sized biotechs around Europe. And then worked for another company that was more boutique. And then I, I decided to start my business singular six years ago really, because I felt.

[00:03:12] While the work I was doing was valuable, we were only solving part of the problem, and I didn't really know what that sort of answer was at the time on those, it's become clear over time, but where we've evolved to over the last six years is that our focus is entirely on how do you build really outstanding teams?

[00:03:29] How do you build brilliant cultures that really drive success because. When we look at the, the most successful biotech companies, which is only a handful, right? It's it's not many that make it. They didn't necessarily have better science. They had good science, but they didn't necessarily have better science than the ones that failed.

[00:03:46] They didn't necessarily have more money at the start or face less challenges. They just found ways to navigate. Those challenges. And so the way that we try to sort of contribute to the success rate of the industry is by helping those companies to build teams that can navigate those challenges that can drive their success.

[00:04:04] I think that what you're doing is so crucial because, you know, having been, I work for myself now mm-hmm. But having worked for big life science companies. I was always fascinated and having been in sales leadership roles, fascinated about this, around how to build an amazing team. Mm-hmm. How to foster that culture.

[00:04:23] And it always amazed me how there was so much focus and working for a public company. There was so much focus on the numbers. Yeah. And targets and how do we get there. But there was never any talk about, Hey, how's our culture doing? Like, how is your team doing? Who needs help in team spirit? Or there's never any discussions around that.

[00:04:43] And I always tell myself like, even if we focus like 25% of the time talking about that, we'd be way, way ahead than just focusing on the numbers and the metrics. You know, it's, it's the biggest lever you can pull. Because even if your strategy's perfect and your product's great, and, and your marketing's fantastic.

[00:05:01] If you've not got the people to, to actually go to market, deliver the product, you know, whatever it is that those people do, and they're not working in the right way, working effectively together, everything's gonna be more difficult. The metrics are trickier, so it gets ignored more. Mm-hmm. Intangibles.

[00:05:17] Yeah. Yeah. But there's this interesting concept that. It was kind of a realization that I had as a leader maybe, maybe a couple of years ago. I dunno where I picked it up from. It's probably like a combination of a few things I'd read or heard or whatever. But most teams, most people, most companies spend their time focusing on the results.

[00:05:36] They, they put in heroic efforts and individual efforts to drive the results. But the very best organizations, it's not always businesses. They create an environment that creates the result. Without necessarily having to have that individual effort, although individual effort is always part of it. The environment, the system creates the result.

[00:05:56] And yeah, that's a diff, that's a much more difficult thing to do, but if you can do it, it's way more sustainable. It's way more scalable, it's way more, it's way less intensive and dependent on individuals. And I think that's, that's always been kind of my thought on it is, is how do you create that system and that environment that delivers the result rather than just.

[00:06:17] How do we get that result tactically? Now, I always found this a challenge, and I don't know about you, but do you think there's always a balance between finding the right people with, you know, the technical savvy to get the job done well, but also understand what it is to have a positive culture, team spirit collaboration?

[00:06:40] Or do you think you can hit that a hundred percent of the time? You, you could find the people that understands both. Or is it always a balance? It's, it's, you'll never find, you'll never have the perfect team that has both those qualities. Yeah. But you just have to learn how to live with it. Yeah. It's really hard to find perfect people.

[00:06:57] I think there's very few of them, right? For even in one of those aspects, finding the perfect fit to your culture or finding the perfect technical fit is difficult enough in itself. Put the two together and it becomes even harder. But I think. Life sciences companies, and there are exceptions, I'm generalizing here.

[00:07:16] They typically overweight the technical side of it, so they place more importance on the technical side of it, partly because the work they're doing is incredibly technical and so it's easy to understand. But also the people, the leaders, the the people who are doing the recruiting or the, the team building or the leading.

[00:07:36] Are often technical themselves, and so they value those skills and they value that background. My personal view is that, you know, you should definitely hire people who have the skills that you need, but it's much more important to hire people who align with your culture and align with the kind of organization you're trying to build, because if you do, they can learn skills, but it's very, very hard to change people's beliefs, principles.

[00:08:01] Values and, and there's an argument to say that you shouldn't really try. It's not really your, your duty as a company to do that. Mm-hmm. Great teams will figure out ways to do things they dunno how to do, whereas mediocre teams, even if they know how to do things, will often drop the ball. Yeah, I like that.

[00:08:20] I like that. So as a leader though, having those two type of individuals on your team. How do you navigate through that? Do you just lean in hard with the people you know, the culture s savvy people, and kind of let the, I was gonna say nerds, but you know what I mean. I think they'd often self describe as nerds or self-identify as nerds.

[00:08:40] No, I, I don't think so. Yeah. But it's important to, to recognize that people can be really on board with your culture and really on board with your values and really align with it, but express it in different ways. And so, yeah, there's the old stereotype isn't there, that like, software engineers don't really care about the people that they work with and they'd rather work on their own.

[00:09:03] I, I think that's a generalization. I think, I don't think it's a hundred percent true, but, but even then there'll be, you can account for all different kinds of characters. I think what it's about is understanding what are the real underlying values, principles, however you wanna define them, that are important to you as an organization.

[00:09:23] And then assembling a group of people that all share those values or all share those principles. That's the key thing, because if everybody feels that it's really important to, for example, look for creative ways to do things well that's gonna manifest in lots of different ways. But if everybody believes that, then they're gonna respect the different ways that other people operate in, even if it has to be explained to them.

[00:09:48] And there's still some common ground there, even though you've built a really diverse workforce because. The other mistake that I see companies making a lot is they try and focus on culture fit. What tends to happen is they hire people who are like the people that they already have. Mm. But there's never much interrogation or analysis of what does that actually mean, and so it ends up being less diverse and therefore less effective, less innovative.

[00:10:12] There's a ton of research that just shows diverse teams are better at problem solving, they're better at creativity and innovation, and they perform better. But hiring for culture fit kind of squashes that quite a bit. So you don't wanna go too much to that extreme, but you wanna define the values, define what's important, and really, really select for that.

[00:10:29] I think. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and that's why it's so hard. Mm-hmm. Right. And like you said earlier, there's only a handful of really successful biotechs. Yeah. 'cause it's hard to find that mix. And I think that the more you grow in people size, the harder it is, obviously. Oh yeah. Yeah. Culture would be easier if it wasn't for all the people.

[00:10:47] Uh, but it is, I mean, it, you know. Yeah. The challenging thing about it is it's organic and it's dynamic. Right. And it, it never sits still. It's not like I. Creating a a software program. It's not like creating an app where you create it and then yes, there's gonna be bugs, but you can work out the bugs and then you can get it working perfectly over time.

[00:11:12] Just by saying that, you can probably tell I'm not a software engineer, but you get the concept. I can relate. Yeah. But culture's not like that. You can consistently improve culture, but you never end up at a perfect place where everything just works without any effort because. You bring new people in, even if you don't bring new people in, the people that you have change and they move through different stages in their life and they react differently to different things.

[00:11:39] The goals of the company change the, you know, biotech and life sciences companies go through these key transitions, right? Where they go from very r and d driven to clinical, typically to commercially driven. And so the, the, the nature of the organizational change. So there's always, even when you're really good on culture, even when you get it right, it's always swinging to, it's like a pendulum.

[00:12:02] It's always swinging to one side or another. And every person, every situation that that, that comes into it affects it. And so this is why, this is why I'm fascinated by it, is like it changes all the time. And so, yeah, you, you've gotta constantly be deliberate about. How is it changing? How is it evolving?

[00:12:21] You can allow culture to change and evolve, and you may end up somewhere you don't wanna be, or you can accept. It's gonna change and evolve and be then deliberate about, okay, where are we gonna take it? I never thought of that. You could set a goal of having, this is the culture we want. And what you're saying is that during the years, you may not always get there.

[00:12:40] It's, it'll always swing based on the people you hire. Yeah. And, and, and let go. But you're always striving for that culture. That ideal culture that you're looking for. Yeah. And you may get there temporarily. Yeah. And then it changes or, or what have you. Yeah. Or it may remain just outta reach and that doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing, but it gives you that direction.

[00:12:58] Right. And it's, it's, yeah. I think the important thing though is that it's always gotta serve what you're trying to achieve as an organization. This is another mistake that people make is they sort of, you'll get your, your sort of passionate HR people who they focus on culture for the sake of culture.

[00:13:13] Yeah. Whereas actually it should be really in service of what you're trying to achieve and then acknowledging that whatever you're trying to achieve, there are lots of different ways to do it. And so it's about, well, which way do we want to go about it? What kind of organization do we wanna create in pursuit of that goal?

[00:13:29] So from your experience now, how long have you been doing singular? Six years. We started the company six years. Six years? Yeah. Awesome. Congrats. What are the percentage of companies that you interact with the biotech companies that actually get this? It's a good question. You know, by the time we work with a company, they usually kind of get it.

[00:13:49] They normally come to us because they've realized that this is important. Sometimes there's companies that are just starting out that the, the founders want to build a really great culture. They understand the importance of it. Maybe they've been part of a great culture or a bad culture, and they wanna do it right.

[00:14:04] And so they'll come to us at the beginning and they say, look, help us to establish the, the, the framework around this. Those are my favorite because there's nothing to get rid of at that point. Mm-hmm. The other one's aware there's been leadership changes and someone's come in and gone, wow, I'm not sure about this culture.

[00:14:18] I think we need to adjust it. Uh, or something's gone wrong. Or something's not working in the way people like, or there's, there's an issue to solve. So sometimes companies will come to us and they don't know quite what the issue is or what the cause of it is or what to do about it, and that's cool. We can help them diagnose that and we can help them really get under the skin of it and understand where the cultural roots of problems are because.

[00:14:46] A lot of problems are cultural problems at the core of them, EV even if they don't present as that on the surface of them, even technical problems can actually trace back to cultural problems. Although not all the time, sometimes they're just technical problems. Mm-hmm. So by the time they come to us, there's, there's an understanding of it and we do a lot of content and things to sort of help people understand.

[00:15:07] But if you're asking what percentage of biotech and life sciences companies really do value culture. I, I couldn't give you a percentage, but it's not enough. I think there's an overweighted emphasis on the science, which I get that's, that's their background, but the money's so demanding as well, right?

[00:15:27] Raising the money, then managing the investors and thinking about the next round, thinking about the burn rate, all that kind of thing. Um, and particularly at the moment, that's, that's even more challenging than it ever has been. So I think those are the things that take people's attention. I. Yeah, and culture's never urgent until it really, really is, and by then it's too late.

[00:15:48] So tho the, the problems you've got in the lab and the challenges you've got, raising money or the, the sort of the, the cash burning quicker than you expect, or the revenue not coming in, they're always gonna be more pressing issues. But sitting there, you know, the culture can actually help you to solve those things if you take the time to do it.

[00:16:07] But it's hard to sometimes have the discipline to focus on it. When those other fires are burning. You mentioned earlier, I think you alluded to the fact that you know, some people it's harder to change. Hmm. So when a company realizes, okay, something needs to change, we need to change our culture, we need to establish a culture, doesn't always come down to hard decisions of letting some people go, because you know that.

[00:16:31] It'll be hard to bring them on board to the new culture, or not always. Is that always inevitable? No. No, it's not inevitable. I think it, it often happens, but I think it can be a knee-jerk reaction to a problem without defining why, where you want to go. What I mean by that is there's a, okay, so there's a, there's an experiment.

[00:16:51] There's a really famous experiment called the Five Monkeys Experiment. I wrote a blog about this recently, which, so it comes to mind, so this is supposedly, it's a bit. No one really knows if it actually happened, but it's a really good story. There are similar experiments that happened. So researchers, the story goes like this, so researchers put five monkeys in a cage, and in that cage there was, it was a big cage, but there was a ladder that led to a hatch in the ceiling that the monkeys could climb up and open.

[00:17:20] I dunno why they needed a ladder. They're monkeys, but apparently there was a ladder and there was nothing to do in the cage. They didn't have a tree. Yeah, exactly. There was nothing to do in the cage. There was no food. It was, it was boring. Okay. So after a while, obviously the monkeys got restless and they, they realized that there was this ladder.

[00:17:35] They started to climb the ladder to try and get out. So whenever a monkey approached the ladder and started climbing it. Something bad would happen to the other monkeys. They'd get sprayed with water or they'd get loud noises played, or like there'd be electric sharks or whatever, you know, in those, all those inhumane experiments they ran in the sixties, it's kind of one of those scenarios.

[00:17:54] And so, so the story goes that what happened is that gradually over time, every time a monkey approached the ladder, the other monkeys started attacking it to stop it from climbing the ladder so they didn't get the punishment. So when that was happening consistently, the researchers would start taking monkeys out of the cage and replacing them with new monkeys, and they would, they removed the punishment, but the monkeys that had already been there carried on attacking any monkey that approached the ladder.

[00:18:25] And this experiment continued until there were none of the original monkeys left in the cage, but the behavior persisted. So none of the monkeys that were in there had any experience of the punishment happening, but they still persisted with the behavior. Oh, wow. So that story is a bit apocryphal, as I say, but there's a lot of other studies that show similar behavior.

[00:18:46] But so the point of that is that changing the people won't necessarily change the culture unless you change all of the people and change the systems and change the framework and, and that's such a heavy lift to do. That, that it typically doesn't get done. So actually what you tend to find is that teams get replaced and the culture doesn't really change and the problems still persist because the environment shapes how people behave.

[00:19:10] A another example is I used to work for a company. The overall company was really good. There was one office that I worked in where the environment was shocking and there's lots of reasons for it, but it was a really negative environment, a really political environment and all that kind of thing. We used to hire a lot of young people who were like straight out of university or straight out of, uh, high school.

[00:19:29] Um, and we looked for people with real drive and ambition and energy and determination and things like that. And so we hired all these brilliant young kids and then six months later, all of that was gone because the environment had kind of beat it out of them. So just changing the people doesn't change the culture.

[00:19:49] It's about being, and cultural change is difficult. And going back to your original question, recognizing that you need to change is key. Understanding what the change that you need to make is and what the state that you wanna move towards is, is also crucial, obviously. But being really honest about where you are against that is the really hard part.

[00:20:11] 'cause that can be really painful. And when you start to make cultural change, people will resist it and people will fight against it because. People don't like to change even when they can see that what they're doing isn't serving them. Yeah. Again, there's a ton of research on this and some of, typically when you make a big cultural shift, some of those people will opt out and they'll leave.

[00:20:33] They'll go and get another job, they'll, whatever. Or they'll start to underperform and then you've gotta manage them out, or they'll, they'll misbehave in some way, and that happens. But no, it doesn't necessarily follow that. You have to change the team, but you have to be really, really deliberate about how you want to change the environment.

[00:20:48] And I think you have to be willing to move on the people who don't want to go on that journey with you. Does it come down to leadership leadership's? Yeah. Because you know, in the monkey example, there's got, there must have been an alpha male that was. Controlling the, the group. And if, if that alpha monkey was scared for the monkey to go up there, then everyone else would fall in line a hundred percent.

[00:21:12] So we have a framework that we use for culture, and there's seven building blocks. And the top building block, which forms like the, the primary element of culture once you've put everything else in place, is inspiring leadership. Um, because ultimately what culture is, is how people behave to each other.

[00:21:29] The inter it's culture kind of, it's kind of like, you know how, I think it was Beethoven said, the music is not the notes, it's the space between the notes. In some ways, the culture isn't the people. Mm-hmm. The space between the people. Um, but some people have more influence on that than others. And so you'll have elected leaders.

[00:21:47] So the, the leaders of the organization, you'll also have people who are not in leadership positions, but are very influential. And those people will definitely have an outsized impact on, on the culture. Certainly cultural change comes down to effective leadership because it's gonna be hard and painful and you've gotta see it through, and you've gotta keep connecting people to why you're doing it, and you've gotta bring it into their terms and you've gotta support them through it and all that kind of stuff that a great leader does.

[00:22:13] So yeah, leadership's a critical element. That's probably the quickest way to turn around your culture or to get the culture you're looking for. Tom, why don't you tell me within, I dunno, two minutes what companies need to do to, um, foster successful cultures in two minutes? Okay. The elevator pitch. Listen, what they need to do, the short version is there's only four things.

[00:22:38] You've gotta recruit the right people, engage them, develop them, and retain them. And the reality is there's only three things. 'cause if you do the first three. The fourth one will look after itself. Now that's the very simple high level answer. Yeah. Obviously it's not quite as straightforward as that, but there you go.

[00:22:57] You nailed it. Yeah. Underneath those things, there are seven building blocks to brilliant culture. So essentially what we did at Singular is we went and studied all of the most successful biotech companies, all of the, and a lot of the most successful companies out the sector. And we looked at what are the things that they do, not what is their culture, but what are the things that they focus on to develop a really healthy culture.

[00:23:17] And there's seven. Seven building blocks. So foundationally you have mission, purpose, and vision. You've gotta be really clear on where you're going, what you're trying to achieve, why you're doing it, what the future looks like. The second foundation is values and non-negotiables. So this is all about what kind of environment, what kind of organization are we building, and being really clear and specific about that.

[00:23:37] Drilling it down into behaviors and competencies and making it real, embedding it in the company. On top of those two foundations, there's four pillars. If you think of like a Parthenon, this is how we tend to, to sort of display it. First is talent acquisition, so you've gotta bring in the right people, right?

[00:23:52] That's, that's maybe along with leadership the most important bit because it makes everything else so much easier. The second pillar is alignment and performance management. So a lot of companies, especially smaller companies, really struggle with this. You've gotta manage performance, you've gotta align people, you've gotta make sure that that people are performing at a high level.

[00:24:13] Alongside that is people development. People wanna learn, they want to grow. If you wanna grow as an organization, you need people to become more capable over time, and also you're more likely to retain them if they're developing and growing. So that's the third pillar. And the fourth is the environment.

[00:24:28] We call it employee experience and continuous cultural improvements. So that's everything from feedback to removing friction to communication, diversity, how people do hybrid working and remote working, like the environment that they live in, the, the behaviors that they see, the way they communicate, the way they interact.

[00:24:46] And then sitting over the top of all of it is inspiring leadership. So if you can focus on those seven things. And continually try to improve them, your culture will continually improve. That is amazing, Tom. That is amazing. I'm thinking definitely take that one home and implement that with my team.

[00:25:01] Mm-hmm. But hopefully what you just described there will help a lot of team leaders out there in the life science biotech space. It's even just like being conscious about it. Mm-hmm. Is the first step. Yeah. And is super helpful. Yeah. I feel like a lot of people are just not even thinking about it. Right.

[00:25:18] They're just so focused on what their boss is telling 'em over their shoulder and their boss's boss's shoulder. You know how it is these days. You're just so busy bombarded with all kinds of mm-hmm. Things, all kinds of media that it's hard to really just step back and say, Hey, are we actually jiving or gelling together?

[00:25:34] Big, big lesson. Yeah. Even when they do start to think about it, it's difficult for people to know where to start or what specifically to do, and this is actually why we created this framework because it's culture touches everything, and it can be subtle, it can be subconscious. So without having a sort of lens to view it through, it's really hard to see where to focus.

[00:25:55] So hopefully that's what that framework does, is it helps people to determine actually we've got an issue here, and then it'll start to help them focus in on actions they can take. For sure. Before I let you go. Mm-hmm. Where can people get ahold of you? Yeah, so I do a lot on LinkedIn so they can find me there.

[00:26:10] We have monthly events that we run, monthly workshops that we run, which will be, will be advertised on there so they're free. People can come along to that. We dive into that framework more. Uh, there's a content hub that's about to go live. It's not live yet, but it should be next week. And I'll, I'll share the details with you, but on there there's gonna be sort of training videos, eBooks, podcasts, all that kind of stuff.

[00:26:31] So people wanna learn more about culture and how to implement culture challenges, frameworks, that kind of stuff. That'll all be there. Free content, free resources that they can. So, yeah, I'll get all the information over to you when it's all live and, and you can share it with us. Absolutely. Let me know and I'll share with everybody for sure.

[00:26:46] Thank you so much, Tom. I really appreciate it. Wishing you the best of luck with your endeavor. It's definitely super important and uh, let's definitely keep in touch. I clicked on follow Okay. This morning on your LinkedIn, so I'm encouraged to follow your journey going forward. Fantastic. Well thank you for having me Pat.