Leadership in R&D

The need to embrace the leadership paradigm shift

By Declan Noone

Innovate or Die! This is the management mantra prevalent in modern organisations. To survive, let alone to succeed, organisations need to be continuously innovating. The rapidly changing dynamics of external markets and consumer relationships necessitate that all organisations are in a continuous cycle of evolution and change. Organisations are evolving into flatter, distributed and networked structures. Services and products, to remain competitive, are constantly improving and evolving to meet the changing demands of the consumer, and introducing new features to enhance competitive advantage. Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning and Machine Learning are having, and will continue to have, profound effects on how we do business and how we live our lives.

Consequently, organisations are and need to become innovation-centred. They need to recognise the value generation of the R&D function. Going as far back as 1933, IBM’s founder, Thomas Watson, said, ‘We have realised from experience that the future of our business largely depends on the efforts, brains and ability of our engineering department’.^[1]So what are the challenges faced by R&D Leaders? What are the requirements of R&D Leadership? And what skills do they need to possess?

Challenges faced by R&D Leaders

As with all leaders in an organisation, R&D leaders operate in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment and they are expected to deliver. They are at the forefront of value generation and as a result have a significant degree of pressure placed on their shoulders to deliver the ‘next big thing’. Successful R&D leaders manage the balance between stressors and creative tension effectively. They recognise the importance of building the right working environment or climate to the organisation’s overall success, and their direct impact on that climate. They are aware of their role as ‘Context Creators’.

Some of the challenges faced by R&D Leaders in their role as ‘Context Creators’ are:

– Technology

Not just understanding the role of technology in driving innovation, but also the challenges it poses. The management and effective use of data analytics in both product and service design and in organisational design and your talent strategy.

– Increasing complexity

Multidimensional matrixed organisations are the norm in large global organisations. Managing the challenges this poses to projects and its potential to hinder and suffocate innovation is important. Not only will it negatively affect project deliverables, but it can also decrease active engagement from project team members. Bain & Co highlight that ‘when an organisation has grown too complex, decisions take too long to make, hindering progress on innovation’^[1]and identify the following indicators of this kind of problem:^[2]

Too many R&D sites, with teams fragmented across them;
An inflated middle-management layer, with too many supervisors and not enough ‘doers’;
Incentives that are poorly aligned and so do not drive results; and
Top talent getting frustrated and leaving.

– People

People are your greatest asset and a great challenge. Identifying the skills and competencies you require from your people in a demanding market space is critical for ensuring that you have the right ones in the right positions to deliver the required outcomes. Developing an employee experience that enables people to have a sense of belonging, a sense of adding and creating value, and a capacity to work autonomously is also high on your list of priorities.

– Speed

The speed at which trends are assessed, opportunities identified, solutions generated and goods delivered to the marketplace has increased dramatically. Managing those requirements, developing the capacity to make prudent decisions, while developing strategies and building teams to execute the plan are clear and present challenges for all R&D leaders.

What are the requirements for R&D Leadership?

Technical expertise is an absolute necessity for R&D leaders, as is the capacity for continuous learning. Technical expertise is specific to your sector or industry. However, examining the challenges identified previously, the greater weight of leadership requirements resides on the ‘soft skills’ side of the equation.

The Centre for Creative Leadership identifies the following derailment factors for leaders in the pharmaceutical sector:^[3]

Problems with interpersonal relationships;
Difficulty building and leading a team;
Difficulty changing or adapting;
Failure to meet business objectives; and
Too narrow a functional orientation.

Consequently, R&D leadership requires an outstanding positive leader and change manager.

An outstanding positive leader is one who:

Builds resilient, agile and diverse teams;
Creates a collaborative and inclusive work culture to support innovation;
Engages others to create a shared vision and goals;
Diffuses leadership responsibility through the team;
Enables people to work autonomously;
Embraces cognitive diversity and alternative perspectives;
Communicates with clarity and transparency;
Creates a psychological safe environment;
Enhances situational awareness, internal within the organisation and external to the marketplace; and
Delivers results.

A change manager is one who:

Understands that failure is a part of innovation and brings a learning mindset into the culture;
Is comfortable leading and managing in an ambiguous and uncertain space;
Can engage and positively influence others in the change process;
Can identify the actions required while initiating and leading the change process;
Understands the challenges faced by leaders of change processes; and
Is cognitively agile and resilient.

Dr Martin Huber, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Tesaro, describes the change process for leaders perfectly when he states that ‘as a leader, sometimes we have to change the direction of a very large ship quickly and convince every- body on board why the change was necessary.’^[4]Therefore, a leader’s capacity to be agile, to engage with others, to communicate with clarity, and to be comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty are critical.

What skills do R&D Leaders need to succeed?

R&D leaders today require a greater range of skills to meet the challenges and requirements of leadership in their individual sectors. Aside from the technical and business skills necessary as you grow within an organisation, it is clearly evident that leaders now require knowledge and skills that enable them to build teams and cultures and empower others to actively participate in identifying and driving innovative solutions to the complex problems faced both internally and externally to the organisation.

Consequently, leadership development must focus on providing leaders with knowledge in positive psychology, neurosciences, behavioural sciences and mindfulness, because leading and not just living change requires a number of components:

Metacognition (thinking about thinking). Achieving a level of metacognition, the capacity to stand back and observe beyond your immediate horizon, is a critical skill. Mindfulness meditation is a personal practice that can enable you to achieve a level of metacognition.
Creating a collective vision. Develop an inclusive and collaborative approach within your leadership team and organisation to help develop a collective vision. Doing so captures the collective mindset, infuses a clarity of purpose into all, and encourages individual ownership across the organisation.
Sustainability. Change is not a short journey. While initiation of an organisational or indeed personal change may be immediate, the journey itself can take years. You need to focus on your own capacity to sustain your own wellbeing and performance levels. Establish a lifestyle and mindset that enable you to continue to perform over extended periods of dynamic change and stress.

Innovation requires developing collaborative and co-creation process built on:

Purpose, clearly defined and communicated between leaders and co-producers. Clarity as to what is being asked of them, what resources are available, and indeed the timeline. Most important is providing the ‘Why’; Why are we doing this? Why have they been asked to participate? etc.

Framework. Uniquely designed to the specific context but with some important stages. This should map the project journey, outlining the extent of face-to-face engagements and workshops, objectives for each stage, and a clear distinction between designing, testing and delivery.

Trust. In order to ensure that co-producers feel they are actively part of the team and the process, building trust early is essential. The leader’s role is to create a positive environment where co-producers feel valued, recognised and safe. Demonstrate trust by affording them the autonomy to deliver on what they say they will deliver on. Publicly acknowledge, beyond the team, the achievements of the individual and the collective, including the added value they bring to the process.

Positive Communication. Encourage an internal communications approach that embodies open-mindedness, respect, empathy, humour, active listening and acknowledgement of the attributes that each individual brings to the team. Doing so strengthens team bonds, creates a sense of connection and helps to reframe the inevitable hurdles you will face as challenges that can be overcome.

Changing Mindset. There are two sides to this coin: (1) the leader must be willing to let go and empower their co-producers, trusting in them, their abilities and their knowledge; and (2) co-producers must be willing to let go of any fixed mindset that the leader will provide the answers and specific directions. They must embrace the autonomy given them to demonstrate skills, and as a consequence take ownership of the responsibility and accountability that comes with doing so.

Furthermore, leadership development is an evolutionary process, it must encompass both experiential and peer-to-peer learning components. This approach enables leaders to cement what they have learned through its direct and practical application in the workplace, as well as drawing on the knowledge and experiences of peers who are applying the same tools and techniques in other functions within the organisation. This is a continuous process; through regular application and use, the leader’s journey never stagnates, it continues to evolve.

Building leaders who know themselves, understand their role as context creators, embrace and flourish during change, and build positive and generative work cultures enables them and the organisation to deliver the results required in today’s demanding R&D function.

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^[1]Is R&D complexity crippling innovation at your company?By Kayvan Ardalan, Asit Goel and Chris Brahm, https://www.bain.com/insights/is-rd-complexity-crippling-innovation-at-your-company/.

^[2]Ibid.

^[3]White Paper: The Leadership Challenge in the Pharmaceutical Sector – What Critical Capabilities are Missing in Leadership Talent and How Can They be Developed? by: Jean Brittain Leslie and Kim Palmisano, https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/leadership-challenge-pharmaceutical-center-for-creative-leadership.pdf

^[4]R&D leaders on Leadership by Denise Myshko, PharmaVoice,June 2018, p.58 – 62. https://www.pharmavoice.com/wpcontent/uploads/PV0618_RDLeadersOnLeadership_WM.pdf?tracker_id=1543326397