Business Encounters: Life Scientist

Building a Successful Working Environment

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Creating a working environment seems simple. As in It’s a Jungle in There, you can distill that down to:

  • Care about your staff or co-workers.  (ch. 21)
  • Recognize and praise their accomplishments. (ch 22)
  • Help others out (ch 23).

But creating a successful organization takes much more effort and a mini-degree in psychology.

The challenge starts with how you hire people. 

What are your current criteria? Are you seeking intelligence, flexibility, compassion, perseverance, energy, enthusiasm, mental toughness, physical fitness, leadership, or adherence?

Then decide what makes a person a good fit for your organization by describing:

1) Characteristics that help someone succeed in your enterprise

  • If your Friday dress code means that staff can ditch the suit, but should still be “professional,” that tells you a lot about what you value.
  • If your industry is rapidly changing and challenged with new technology, then flexibility and innovativeness may be your top priority.

2) Criteria that helped others in the past, assuming the environment hasn’t changed.

3) Personal values that predict success in the position

  • Options include money, autonomy, work-life balance, travel, quiet, minimal interaction, constant action, desire for a big success, fear that effort will be discarded, etc.

Once the staff member is on board, it’s time to get them up to speed. Don’t just dump them onto the organization and assume they will “figure it out.” Have a plan for training and inspiration that conveys the organization’s core vision, mission, philosophy, and values. If someone doesn’t seem to buy the core organizational direction, you have a problem you need to fix promptly.

Then use qualitative and quantitative to assess the accuracy of the fit. Perhaps you thought that the person having “energy” was paramount. Then you realized that the person you hired based on that criterion was always pushing for a change in a direction that conflicted with your obligations or timeline. Perhaps the proper criterion you are looking for is “passion” for your mission and goals. That passion will translate to “energy” for staying the course to achieve success.

The fit might be great, but the organization isn’t consistent or is providing conflicting messages. The solution is organizational, not personal.

Or, despite your best efforts, the fit for this position isn’t right. Before you give up, maybe another area would demonstrate an improved fit. For example, you assumed that the person was more extroverted, but it seems that they like quiet and working one to one with people. Migrating to a position that involves coaching vs. one with the leadership of a large team may be the right solution.

Finally, there are the red flags. Occasionally some folks have a toxic side. They breed resentment, crave control, manipulate and intimidate. You need a system to identify such people. It is unlikely they are going to tell you that harming your organization is their goal. And other staff are likely to be intimidated and unwilling to come forward. Folks who are bullied look to supervisors to take action – that’s your (unpleasant) job. You need a system in place to ensure you collect information from other staff so you can identify the problem and take action.

To summarize, It’s a Jungle in There recommends to be kind and helpful to folks and give out praise liberally for work well done. That is a tiny piece of ensuring that you are creating a working environment where everyone is working together, doing their best, and helping the organization meet its mission.

References:

Photo Credit: Competency-circle.jpg. Components of competency-based management. 1 October 2010 (UTC).  Paduch. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

About Health Impact Studio

We are a dedicated team of developers and researchers with the mission to improve the health of individuals through novel technology including games, virtual reality, and role-playing simulations. We welcome input from the full range of stakeholders to create a customer experience with the broadest applicability to improving health outcomes.

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Funding Advice from a Recent Conference in Raleigh

Recently, we attended the CED Tech Venture Conference in Raleigh. There were an excellent set of presentations, many relevant to the future life science entrepreneur. The most notable comment came from Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins. He was intimately involved in support of Amazon, Google, and Apple. He is an icon in the VC field.

The co-presenter asked him what he felt was the most potentially lucrative area for investment going forward. His answer was to ask the presenter how much money is spent on Google and Facebook versus how much of the money is spent on healthcare. With healthcare spending at over 17% of GDP in 2015, the winner is far away healthcare; more than 50 times as much. So his enthusiasm regarding entrepreneurship was in the life sciences. One of the most influential financiers believes that now is the time for an entrepreneur with life science background to pursue a business in order to address a health-related issue.

The conference had some unique Investor Reverse Pitches. It was clear that venture capitalists have particular interests they will fund. For example, the Stanley Tools folks are interested in material science and batteries (no surprise). But others started out saying they are interested in life sciences and then clarified that only a tiny portion of life science interested them.Assume that someone seeking funding would only be able to identify perhaps 2 out of 20 VC firms that would fund a startup with overlapping interests. Also, VCs are primarily interested in later stage companies and large amounts of capital. So, for the early stage entrepreneur, VC holds little potential. Apparently, the days when John Doerr gave money to Google’s founders (even though they didn’t seem to like business) and money to Jeff Bezos (even though he didn’t have a business plan) are very much over.

The presentations by many companies at the conference were excellent. They did a nice job of conveying a simple pitch, outlining their unique value proposition, and providing some financial data to back it up. All of the CEO presenters at this conference were well-funded. The companies that presented were looking for funds to expand globally and already had substantial success. They echoed the above finding. VC is for companies in later stages and a proven business model.

Finally, we were inspired by the Entrepreneur Workshop + Lunch with Scot Wingo by Robbie Allen, Founder & Executive Chairman, Automated Insights. He spoke on “Building a Startup Culture that Scales.” Mr. Allen explained the secret of success for his small business; the low-key atmosphere of the company was the driving force. He knew his employees would work hard and they needed to have a comfortable environment which supported energy and enthusiasm. And to that end he included a ping pong table, which was apparently well-used.

He worried at first that this would make his company look childish, but he found the employees were quite enthusiastic, and in fact it didn’t harm productivity at all. More importantly, he found that when his investors visited the office, they viewed the ping pong table in a positive light. They felt the ping pong table showed that his company was a dynamic and fun place to work. They noted that his space would be attractive to current and future employees. In fact, his employee retention was phenomenal.

Even as the company proliferated and at times was overly crowded, given limited office space, the team morale remained high. His message: Be yourself. If you are someone who enjoys a playful atmosphere, then create a corporate culture that works for you. And you’ll be surrounded by people who share you vision of a comfortable work environment.

Photo Credits: WikiBasti – Own work, Public Domain, Link

Let Good Times Destruct the Status Quo (Part 2 of 3)

Last week we described a theory that creative destruction happens because of downturns that spur new solutions, and the lack of a downturn in the health economy is why medical education is stagnant.

An alternative model found that in fact creative destruction happens during periods of growth not recession. Think of the dot com bubble that spawned Google. Facebook also launched in a time of plenty. Uber arrived after the crisis of 2008 was over and has been on a tear ever since; they’re now the leader in driver-less cars and trucks. So, an abundant IPO and M&A environment that is full of resources spawns even more opportunities for creative destruction.

Certainly health care has done nothing but grow and in several markets (e.g. Pittsburgh and UPMC) consolidation and integration and rapid growth are pretty obvious. With all that money sloshing around it should have led to enormous opportunities for creative destruction. Sure medical schools have replaced dark, depressing lecture halls with windowed learning environments full of round tables and projectors, and others have built huge simulation centers with mannequins and rooms for standardized patients. But if one contrasts that with the growth of Apple and the impact of the iPhone or Google and search, it’s clear that the enormous riches of healthcare (17% of GNP and growing) haven’t translated to enormous change.

Why not?

Perhaps paranoia and fear of a recession is really the key. A history of a growth period following a recession would include a sense of anxiety (i.e. “we’ve got to be ready!”) about the potential for another recession. Without a past recession (such as we had in 2008 for real estate especially and other markets but not health care) there is no anxiety going forward. So, easy or constrained flow of money is not the key to creative destruction. Money just enables such destruction when combined with anxiety about being ready to weather the next storm. And thus with medical schools and their hospitals as the top revenue generation for universities, and hospital CEOs and VPs among the highest paid executives in universities, there is little need for the health care industry to worry that the days of growth are coming to an end.

Picture Credit: Medical Office Careers

Building a Successful Working Environment

Creating a working environment seems simple. As in It’s a Jungle in There, you can distill that down to:

  • Care about your staff or co-workers.  (ch. 21)
  • Recognize and praise their accomplishments. (ch 22)
  • Help others out (ch 23).

But creating a successful organization takes much more effort and a mini-degree in psychology.

The challenge starts with how you hire people. 

What are your current criteria? Are you seeking intelligence, flexibility, compassion, perseverance, energy, enthusiasm, mental toughness, physical fitness, leadership, or adherence?

Then decide what makes a person a good fit for your organization by describing:

1) Characteristics that help someone succeed in your enterprise

  • If your Friday dress code means that staff can ditch the suit, but should still be “professional,” that tells you a lot about what you value.
  • If your industry is rapidly changing and challenged with new technology, then flexibility and innovativeness may be your top priority.

2) Criteria that helped others in the past, assuming the environment hasn’t changed.

3) Personal values that predict success in the position

  • Options include money, autonomy, work-life balance, travel, quiet, minimal interaction, constant action, desire for a big success, fear that effort will be discarded, etc.

Once the staff member is on board, it’s time to get them up to speed. Don’t just dump them onto the organization and assume they will “figure it out.” Have a plan for training and inspiration that conveys the organization’s core vision, mission, philosophy, and values. If someone doesn’t seem to buy the core organizational direction, you have a problem you need to fix promptly.

Then use qualitative and quantitative to assess the accuracy of the fit. Perhaps you thought that the person having “energy” was paramount. Then you realized that the person you hired based on that criterion was always pushing for a change in a direction that conflicted with your obligations or timeline. Perhaps the proper criterion you are looking for is “passion” for your mission and goals. That passion will translate to “energy” for staying the course to achieve success.

The fit might be great, but the organization isn’t consistent or is providing conflicting messages. The solution is organizational, not personal.

Or, despite your best efforts, the fit for this position isn’t right. Before you give up, maybe another area would demonstrate an improved fit. For example, you assumed that the person was more extroverted, but it seems that they like quiet and working one to one with people. Migrating to a position that involves coaching vs. one with the leadership of a large team may be the right solution.

Finally, there are the red flags. Occasionally some folks have a toxic side. They breed resentment, crave control, manipulate and intimidate. You need a system to identify such people. It is unlikely they are going to tell you that harming your organization is their goal. And other staff are likely to be intimidated and unwilling to come forward. Folks who are bullied look to supervisors to take action – that’s your (unpleasant) job. You need a system in place to ensure you collect information from other staff so you can identify the problem and take action.

To summarize, It’s a Jungle in There recommends to be kind and helpful to folks and give out praise liberally for work well done. That is a tiny piece of ensuring that you are creating a working environment where everyone is working together, doing their best, and helping the organization meet its mission.

References:

Photo Credit: Competency-circle.jpg. Components of competency-based management. 1 October 2010 (UTC).  Paduch. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

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