View from the CEO's chair

Hi Gang,

On Friday, we hosted a private CEO:CEO forum to address today’s pressing issues. The conversation hovered around two core topics:

• The financial environment: Predictions & how to plan ahead

• Talent: Culture, recruiting/retention & RTO norms

Below is a summary of the talking points and key take-aways. We’d love to hear what resonates with you and any great ideas you’ve heard around these core challenges!

Financial Environment

• “We are dealing with major overhang from the economy at large, FDA/reimbursement issues, geopolitical concerns, and disappointing biotech data readouts. In better times, we could probably weather some of this, but it’s a perfect storm.”

• “We will need a series of positive data updates to turn the sector around against the backdrop of a likely recession. I would stretch every dollar you can. We don’t know how long this will go. We’ll see more companies struggle to get financing. Pharma won’t ride to the rescue because there are too many companies. The sooner you make difficult decisions, the better.”

• “Cash is king. Can you get to your key milestones with the cash you have? Will it be out of this calendar year? It’s unlikely there’s a turnaround this year. We are doing things differently with office space, leases, and pausing on BD activities to manage cash.”

• “Our message internally is, ‘Don’t worry about your jobs, but treat company resources as you do your own. We want to emerge stronger than others because we have the funds to pick up great talent and technology’.”

Talent

Scaling the Organization

• “Entropy goes up by a square of the number of employees we add. The challenge becomes, how do we align all these internal vectors with the same sense of urgency?”

• “The more people, the more pet projects. Prioritizing people’s time and energy becomes more difficult.”

• “Every person who joins brings their own experience, prior culture and way of working. It is increasingly challenging to keep people focused.”

• “We’ve changed our perspective on recruiting. Now we say, ‘Let’s go where the talent is, because we have to run at warp speed.’ Managing a hybrid workforce by Zoom will be a challenge, but it’s a much better challenge than not having the best people.”

RTO Policies

• “Our message is, ‘Go into the office with intent.’ Use internal meetings for people development, team problem-solving, strategic planning. Everything else you can do remotely. We will never been fully in the office and never be fully remote.”

• “Interestingly and somewhat surprisingly, it has been the VP- and ED-level that has taken ownership because they own their team culture and deliverables. We weren’t explicit about a certain number of days or anything. People just need to get stuff done and found a solution that works for them. It happened organically.”

• “I struggle with both ends of the career spectrum; if you are early in your career, you need mentorship and will miss the ability to develop if remote. And if you are on the management team, you need to be there to mentor. The mentor has to be there as well… not just the mentee!”

• “For us, no one on the executive team is actually local. But there’s always a key member of the exec team in an office at any given time.”

Culture

• “We spend a lot of time talking about culture and are trying to be overly expressive. Values are first slide in every presentation in every meeting. We talk about the way we are trying to operate in every interaction, and we need to do it more because we are 100% remote. That said, social events on Zoom are awful. That doesn’t work!”

• “We overemphasize communication, trust, and accountability. Trust the teams to get work done, and hold those teams accountable.”

• “Technology is the thing I’m most curious about. There’s a reliance on email, but that’s an asynchronous way of working. We have people all over the US and in EU. What technology solutions could help us support the ways we need to work?”

What are some of your best ideas (or ideas you’ve heard from others)?

• “We established cross-functional teams led by VPs and EDs. Those leads attend every board meeting except the exec section. They report out on the progress of their teams, which has given them and the board great exposure and created significant cohesion internally.”

• “We assign people a mentor who is not in their functional area. They can spend time talking about career aspirations, culture, how they are doing, etc.”

• “We do something called, ‘Conversations with the Board.’ Before every board meeting, we ask for volunteers and invite them to interview a board member in front of the entire company. Everyone loves those and comes into the office to sit in the room. It also really humanizes the board.”

• “When I meet with various members of the team, I do walks around the office. This is at all levels just to have quality time together and a more disarming type of meeting.”

• “We offer a curated tour when someone visits the office. Employees lead these tours and are in a great position to show off and talk about their important work. While it’s tempting to jump in, it’s important for the exec team to let others lead those tours.”

• “We do Wine Wednesdays every week… and it’s funny…everyone always shows up for those!”

Be well,

Jackie