Decisions on the road and on the project team: the mixed value of “notions”
Originally posted on November 8, 2012 by Emily Walsh, Halloran Consulting (Republished with permission)After 9 months on the road during a recent sabbatical, I can attest that you learn a lot from your fellow travelers. You learn what food stalls to avoid in the Jamaa El Fnaa square in Marrakesh. You discover the best surf spot for beginners in Nicaragua. You also learn coping skills required for long-term travel: how to diffuse tense situations with a travel partner, how not to get into a street brawl with an aggressive “unofficial” guide, and how to keep a budget without sweating every single financial decision you make. It turns out that these skills are just as apt for the life sciences industry (however the travel partner may be a business partner, the aggressive guide might be a vendor, and the monthly financial close may still be tense). However, one lesson I learned from a fellow traveler named Brie revolutionized the way I think about decisions on project teams.
We met Brie and her fiancé, Jacob, on the way to the ferry to Spain in Tangiers. Brie and Jacob were a bit more adventurous than we were and had many stories for us. Like us, Brie and Jacob often sought suggestions from the people they met on the road for where to go and how to get there. And what Brie realized early on was the importance of concluding quickly whether or not the information they received was biased in some way; or, in her words, was it a “notion”.
Now certainly asking a hotel proprietor for directions to another hotel increases the likelihood that you may receive inaccurate information (“that hotel is closed”, “they are fully booked”, etc.). But those are biases that you can predict and then account for as you make decisions on the information received.
The more insidious version of misinformation is when your advisor is having “notions”. In these cases, absolutely friendly well-meaning people, with no investment in the final outcome, give you horribly misguided information. They have no desire for you to make a poor decision, it is just that with the limited information you have provided or their particular anecdotal experience, they are actually unable to properly give you the perspective you need. Importantly in every “notions” case, the advisor involved did not realize on a conscious level that their recommendations were not based in incontrovertible fact.
A case in point is my favorite of Brie and Jacob’s adventures in Morocco. As avid rock climbers they had headed out to some amazing gorges in the middle of the country. There they met a very nice Berber family who took them in and offered them food and conversation over the three days they spent in the gorges. As they prepared to head 400 km east to the city of Merzouga, gateway to a camel-based Sahara adventure, their hosts made a gracious offer. The hosts knew the desert. They knew how to camp. They knew how to ride a camel. Why shouldn’t they guide them? They could offer their services for much cheaper than the tours organized from Marrakech. It was an incredibly gracious offer and so Brie and Jacob accepted. Hours later, they found themselves at dusk in the middle of a desert-guide turf war with the local guides threatening their personal safety. As a result, they were left wondering not if their host/guide’s “notions” about his ability to guide them were mistaken, but rather would they survive the night!
Of course, individual decisions in biotech and pharma seldom have such immediate and dire personal consequences. But in spite of the scientific basis of our industry, I have found that often these decisions are directly influenced by “notions” of team members and advisors.
To be clear, like Brie’s Berber guide, the advisors and team members have no intention at all of misguiding the team. They are bright, experienced professionals passionately trying to do their job, however for whatever reason their advice was not applicable in the case at hand.
On the road, we had a strategy that seemed to work well for distinguishing “notions” from fact. We found a way to provide a “safe” opportunity for self-evaluation of the idea by the expert, allowing them to share more about their rationale without impeaching their assertions. By asking a few questions (Have others you know done this before? Have others found different paths? Would other people have different opinions? How often is this scenario encountered? etc.), the expert would reveal caveats, and also how much of their “notion” was built on a few anecdotes or personal preferences which may or not have been important for our particular case. A great example of this was when the manager of our sailboat chartering company suggested we skip sailing to the island of Mykonos altogether, even though he had never been there before. With amazing views like this one, I’m glad we challenged that advice!
Of course every entrepreneur seeking to commercialize their bio-innovation (be it a drug, device or IT) will need expert advice along the way. And since often, one doesn’t seek that advice until it is mission critical, one can easily end up in a scenario where you are not sure if the advisor you are working with has ever successfully led someone through your particular biotech “desert”.
That is why events like the TCN Life Science Venture Fast Track are critical to attend, particularly before you need advice. Through hearing expert panelists and mentors who have either been to your desert or at least the desert next door, you can make contacts and build your own framework for judging which advisors have experiences in deserts like your own. You’ll find that the panelists and mentors you meet are more than happy to share their experiences and also the limits of their experience; many times connecting you through to a better guide for your desert. Then, later, when you find yourself in the dunes of the life science desert, you’ll be comforted to know that your guide knows their way around.
