Happy Friday! It’s actually chilly here in Barcelona (spoiled already) so made me think about a warm cup of soup and hence the teaser chapter of “(Not so) Spicy Soup?” from Sept 4th.
I decided to resurrect Paul Simms’s (see why Paul Simms in case you are just tuning in) response to this teaser and all his wisdom:
Sometimes only a little spice is needed to flavour a large pot… and surely the timing and type of spice are big factors. Likewise, a startup being taken seriously enough to transform the go-to-market in a major therapy area is seldom heard, but surely could happen, and then we’d be talking about the incredible potency of that spice.
There are other ways of making a dish spicy… maybe it’s not about adding spicy ingredients during the cooking, but starting with a spicy ‘base’ in the first place. It doesn’t happen often but it does occasionally… I’m talking about permanent, senior-level hires with non-pharma backgrounds.
A friend of mine stated a reason on why we don’t attract more cutting edge talent (permanent spice) into our industry is perhaps because we aren’t prepared to give these thinkers a real mandate. Young digital geniuses are far more likely to be given real freedom and responsibility at other companies, so they’ll go there instead.
Let’s see…… but now onto some dis-functional thoughts.
I remember my very first day, walking into a very first big meeting with about 20 people around the table. One of my team members introduced me and everyone went around introducing themselves with their name (naturally) but then some funky naming conventions of location, sub-entity, function, sub-function. When the introductions were done, I simply asked “Aren’t we all part of the same company and instead of “functions” would have loved to hear what YOUR expertise or passion is?”. There was even a team called “Functional Leadership” (doesn’t leadership by default have to be functional?).
I personally came to despise the term “function”, as I felt that it allowed people to throw things over the wall to a particular “function”, lay blame on aforementioned “function” and in my strong opinion disincentivize working together. Any mission, requires a team of different expertise and complementary skills (both soft and hard).
“As Katzenbach and Smith discussed in their seminal work, The Discipline of Teams, “teams have four elements—common commitment and purpose, performance goals, complementary skills, and mutual accountability.” (From Forbes article: “Build a High-Performing Team in 30 minutes - I wish!!!!)
Now a question for you:
(A) Chill man! Function is just a word and we just need great leaders to pull people together
(B) You are right, this “function” thing is driving me crazy too and hindering progress
(C) Neither, and here are my thoughts ______________
PS. In case you are wondering why is there an image of an insect… well, when I searched google images for “dysfunction” all I got are images of erectile dysfunction… so figured I might as well pick a random term.
Till Next Time,