From Burnout to Buildouts: Managing the Miscellaneous in Biotech Start-ups with Lynn Walder

We did it. We found the person who has the answer to our communication question and why communication is so hard.

Absolutely. And she has a framework that you can download after the episode as well. So check out our show notes for that. So this person is Lynn Walder. She has been in the biotech startup world for over 20 years. She has worked for large companies, small companies, she worked at Vertex, she worked at Pharma Therapeutics and she really truly is the person who is hands on doing the business strategy for these companies.

Lynn is currently at Lab Central and she has her own firm as well where she consults with founders, CEOs and just handles all the many things. So this is a great episode. I hope you enjoy.

Welcome to building biotechs by Recredomics Consulting. We've helped over 90 biotech, life sciences and venture capital firms strategize and hire thousands of employees to scale companies that impact human health. We speak with those at the forefront of growing biotechs to learn their tactics on building these companies from the ground. Karina Klingman, founder and principal at Reconomics Consulting. Enjoy the show.

All right, so Lynn, what did you want to be when you were 7 and what are you now and how did you get there?

That's a really complicated question. And so I'm going to try to make this as short as possible because I am definitely have been a career meanderer through much of my life starting at age 13. So we're not going to go back that far. I know you asked age 7 and it did force me to think a little bit because I think I wanted to be an astronaut when I was nine. But then I said oh seven. I remember now I actually wanted to be an astronomer. And the reason is, is I actually had a telescope that was given to me for Christmas that year and being exposed to kind of just being able to look at all the planets, particularly like the details of the moon, I really was overcome with awe even at that young of an age. And of course you start getting older and you kind of like fall into the practicality of day to day responsibilities and you forget some of that awe when you're a child. But there's a beautiful kind of circle I feel that's come back from this question when I was thinking about it is that my life has kind of opened up and gone from that practical nature into the conjunction of both practical and I would say looking into the awe inspiring, ethereal and trying to cross section that, as I like to say, cross sectioning spirituality and science. And so that basically is kind of what I wanted to be when I was 7. How did that lead into all of the rest of what I've done over the past God, 25 years is coming down to. Let's go towards me in my 20s. I think that's probably the next good place because I did work from age 13 all the way up until I was in college. I was a career lost soul and so lost that I just didn't really want to work. And I became a volunteer addict. That's really what it came down to. And I was married at the time and my husband had started a lifestyle business when he was in college and it was called undergroundhiphop.com and I was helping him operationally start, launch and grow his business. And so I wrote his business plan, I was helping with operations, management, I was working on hr, helping him through all those kinds of things while he just wanted to focus on the fun stuff, which was the music, right. So I helped him through that. But I realized I was actually really good at a lot of things and not really exceptional at one thing. And when you're married to somebody that is literally living their dream of a hobby that turned into a business, you start getting pretty upset with yourself. So. Q Quarter Life Crisis, where I was like dedicating all of my time to, you know, volunteering and trying to change the world, and I said, oof, I really need to start helping pay the bills. And my husband says, well, why don't you just go work a nonprofit? And I said, oh, I never even thought about that. So I would say my first real foray into committed, happy, joyful work was I took on a nonprofit role as an operations manager at a very small nonprofit called Tenacity, which they worked in the cross section of tennis, training, literacy and life skills for inner city students in middle schools. And then they did extend into, into high school. And it was such a wonderful eye opening experience. And I literally was with my people. I was so happy and so joyful doing the work I was doing every day. I said, I never want to leave nonprofit. And then I had a child and I realized, oh, I can't pay my bills working in nonprofit when I'm raising a family. So I needed to find something that was more stable, more sustainable and longer term. And so I started exploring what are the industries in Boston that would, would support me and our growing family. And it came down to three industries for me. Higher ed, academia, venture capital, because that's where the money is, and biotech. And I knew nothing about any of those industries. And so one by one, I started exploring, I went and looked at academia and I realized, ooh, okay, this is probably still not as higher pay as I need to fill the gap of what I need right now. And it was actually quite slow moving and I'm a really fast paced individual. And I realized that through some of my other previous roles in other industries that I had worked in. So I kind of put academia to the side. Then I looked at venture capital, and while I really enjoyed the interactions of meeting the people that run venture capital firms, and I knew it would be a challenging environment from a learning perspective, I realized fairly quickly that the actual environment of VCs, they actually don't grow their own organization, they grow portfolio companies outside of their organization. And one thing for me is that I need to be seeing that I'm having immediate impact on the growth of any anything that I'm putting my time, energy and efforts to. So I even had a job offer over in Waltham and I had to rescind it because I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna like falter like a, you know, wilting flower here. It's not gonna work. So I knew who I was and what I needed. And then came the introduction to biotech. I had an interview over at Vertex Pharmaceuticals to be an administrative assistant in the HR department. And again, no real previous intro to biotech. I know nothing about science, I'm horrible at math, so I never went down that. I'm like an English writer, creative, that kind of stuff. I can be strategic, but again, I think more in conceptual ways. And so after an intense round of interviews, I got hired at Vertex. And I like to say I was there during their golden years. It was when they were actually launching their first two drugs and we were building out in a very hypergrowth environment. It was, I feel, like a little entrepreneurial venture within a larger organization that was much more stable. And oh my goodness, the mission that we were working on through the cystic fibrosis and the HCV work, which were really game changers and novel medicines that were as near to cures as you could get, There was nothing in the market for that. And at first when I took the job, I was like, I feel like I'm kind of selling out and I'm walking away from nonprofit and I'm doing this for the responsibility. What was beautiful is that biotech at Vertex taught me you can find that cross section of things that still inspire you and make you feel like you're having an Impact that is truly transformational and important and still be able to pay your bills, which was. And grow and develop in the process. And so I worked there for four years and I worked my way up through the HR department. Loved it. Worked with Lisa Kelly Croswell, who's now over at bmc and she just was so incredible with building an incredible culture over there. And started really, I would say, coalescing the business administration team because there was about 75 of us at that point. And then I ended up supporting Jeff lyden. Now there's three CEOs there when I was there over four years. So I started Josh Boger, the founder, he retired the year I got there. Matt Emmons was there for a couple years to help transition us to his major cultural change. And then Jeff came in who was on the board, and I ended up supporting him for a number of months before they moved down. And this is when they were still in Cambridge. This is a long time ago. Then they went down to the seaport and they were like, come on down with us. And I was like, I'm not going to the city. It's too much. I have two toddlers, I can't. Right. And they tried to get me to go down there and I just couldn't. So I end departing not because I actually wanted to, but because I kind of had to with where I was in my life. And I said I need to stay close to home. And I got introduced to working with a true startup founder at a private organization called Forma Therapeutics over in Watertown. And this is for anybody even knew where Watertown was. And I was like, wow, there's biotech and Watertown. What is going on? It's very different today. Obviously was there for six years and that's where I learned a lot of how to interact and partner very closely from both a strategic and an operational capacity with not only a founder CEO, but with the broader leadership team and how everything needs to come together in milestone cultural and shifts within growth that are happening when you're moving from a discovery research into a development commercialization organization. And wow, I mean, can't lie, I burned out twice while I was there, but learned so much in the process and just worked with such incredible people. And then I was trying to actually leave Biotech after the CEO, he departed because they were bringing in a more seasoned CEO to bring the commercial side to market. And so I decided to depart because I didn't want to go ipo. I knew I don't work, I don't thrive in those particular growth environments. I like private startup, fast survival, you know, scaling mode. And so I took a sabbatical for four months and I said I need to figure out who I am and what I'm going to do next. And I said I think I need to step away from biotech. It's such a, an industry of urgency and intensity and heart. Really a lot of care goes into it and that can get exhausting if you, if you're committed as hard as I was for so many years. And so I just looked at other opportunities and, and tried to reconnect with family and friends. I'm not gonna lie, it was one of the most beautiful times of my life. I believe in sabbaticals and I think everybody should take them and we should make it a societal norm. And then once you realize you're in biotech, you never get out of biotech. You think you can get out of biotech but they just follow you right back in because of your network and the people you know and you start falling in love with all of that and being around brilliant people and innov and just incredible stuff that's happening. So I got recruited by Lab central, Johannes Freudhoff in particular. So Johannes, he founded Lab Central Bio Labs and is also a partner over at Mission Bio Capital. So he had quite the, the cross section of life responsibilities and they needed somebody to come in and wrangle him because it was just too much growing too quickly. And they said, oh, if you can handle Steve. Because Steve was very busy all over the place too. They're like, then we think that you can bas wrangle Johannes. And so I came in and I worked with Johannes and I said, look, I'm going to be here for maybe like one to two years. I'll get you in place. But I know that I need to go off and do something on my own and and so that's what I did. I got him together from a business administration standpoint, functioned kind of as a chief of staff level with, you know, cross functional efforts, projects and administration. And then I was going to go and do consulting full time again. This kind of plug and play, bridge to scale, operational model, manager of the miscell with startups, helping them with their gna build outs very early on in a fractional capacity and had the full support of Johannes. He was quite excited about it. And one week before I was supposed to fully 100% leave Lab Central, I was going to come back and still consult with them. But just as my own consulting company My son got diagnosed with T1 diabetes. And so this is where the universe places obstacles. And I want to say an obstacle because I think that every challenge has a gift and a learning in it. But I will say two years of planning, I had an existential crisis and I said, oh my goodness, when you have a chronically ill child, you need to think about other priorities such as health care and, you know, actual stable work environment for an extended period of time. And so I made the decision to stay with Lab Central and do consulting, but still within Lab Central in a different role than what I was in. And so that's where I am now. I'm the director of partnerships and programming, where I create learning and development executive level programming specific for startup entrepreneurs. I say I love first time founders in particular to help them build their biotech business. Not just the science, the business sometimes gets a little lost in the mix. So that's. Sorry that was such a long story, but it kind of does all come together and, and here I am. So I'm working consulting part time still and I'm working at Lab Central for the majority of my time during the week in that capacity.

Amazing story, really interesting. Also, Alison, are you and Lynn the same person? Because.

Well, I was going to say, I mean, I don't find that to be a long story. I was fascinated because so many things you said really resonated with me. And I think one thing, some of the people who listen to this podcast, we hope, we think, are people who are maybe, you know, feeling out biotech, but maybe they're a little bit lost as well. That whole section about your 20s, really, I feel that really deeply, I think when you have a lot of interest. I also wanted to be an astronaut at one point, wanted to be a lawyer, wanted to be this lot of interest, no specialization. And I think that can be really hard in your twenties when your friends are becoming like the nurse they had always dreamed they would be, or, you know, the teacher that was always like what they wanted or, you know, the scientist. And you're kind of sitting there going, okay, well like all of that sounds great and where do I go? And I love that you were able to, you know, take some time. The volunteer part I think is really interesting because all of that definitely leads into being really good at operations and strategy. I'm sure you were exposed to so many moving pieces and in a volunteer organization for the most part you're doing whatever has to get done. There is no, like, this is mine and this is that.

It's Also in a resource restricted environment, which is very helpful when you're working in survival startup mode. So you actually, you actually pick up, like you said, so many transferable skills and mindsets of resourcefulness and hyper growth and lots of moving parts. And also dealing with, I would say, very smart people, especially if you're dealing with a nonprofit board that all have very different views of how the business is, could and should be run. So, yes, so many, so many items there that, that were wonderful. I'm not gonna lie. I had a couple of really terrible business experiences too. But I call them polarity comparators. It's the gathering of all the experiences throughout your life, both good and bad, so that you can get really clear on your criteria of where you belong and where your happy space is. And I usually say, when, you know, people ask me, well, what advice would you give to, you know, people who are graduating college? And I say straight up, don't learn what you love to do. Learn what you hate to do, because that'll steer you in a much clearer direction.

All right, so anyone listening to this who feels like they just like don't know what they're doing and they're super lost, don't worry, it'll all come together. Just keep, just keep going.

Yeah, keep trying a bunch of stuff. All you have is time. And when you're young, you have time and you have less responsibility. It's the time to try as much as you can out. So don't be afraid.

Love that.

So kind of going back to your transition from big company Vertex to small company. How so? You were doing an operational role in both, but how was that different? You said you burned out a couple of times and you know, can you just go into that a little bit?

Yeah. And it's interesting because that was really a transition that taught me again where my happy place was. I realized fairly quickly that being in a much larger, particularly publicly traded organization, while the structure was really nice when I was there, and there was actually lots of opportunity and still a lot of growth and development that I had been able to pull from Vertex, I just realized there was still a lot of restrictions that you don't even recognize are there until you're in a smaller private entity that's in hyper growth mode in the scope of impact and ownership. And the feedback loops are so much faster with when you're getting things done. And also you start realizing you can't know everybody when you're in a 600 or 1000 person organization organization. And I was even working in HR. So technically I probably knew more than most people did at Vertex. But when you get to a smaller organization and I came over to Forma when It was about 50 people and we, we were, we grew it up until about 125, I was able to know everybody's name and I love that. I think relationship building is really important and again, I think it does come down to a scope of ownership around that impact feedback loop of where can I use my talents and my experiences and my influence and my input to actually build an incredible sustainable organization that you really believe will change the world for the better. And that's what a lot of biotech innovation is about. Right? So when I got there, in typical startup fashion, they recognized that I was a manager of the miscellaneous where I could jump in a lot of different places and own and deliver in an executable way. And it was wonderful. But I'm also my own worst enemy where I just kept taking on more stuff, more stuff, more stuff, more stuff. And so I was not only supporting the CEO, I was also jumping in and helping with HR endeavors because I had a lot of experience that I pulled over from Vertex. I happen to have kind of a background in marketing and communications. My mom ran a graphics design firm for 35 years, so it's just kind of in my blood. And so I ended up becoming the default internal communications person. And that was awesome. But also a lot of work and, and then before you know it, you're running other projects. Like I was helping with like the trademarking efforts and with legal and then I was helping to do training when we were switching over to software and then I was redoing the onboarding process. And so I was owning all of these kinds of things all while trying to do the day to day basics of just general administration of like calendar management and board meetings and these kinds of things. I think when you care as deeply as many of us do working in this industry, it's very hard to detach yourself from when you're getting too close to that edge. And this is again one of those pain is growth and understanding, seeing my progress through that and seeing the patterns attached not just for me, but for people that I've worked with, with leaders that I work with. We all have the same human condition and those patterns play out over and over and over again. Because in the end we all just want to make a difference. And however we want to approach that may be different for each of us. But many times the outcomes are the same. If we don't know how to say no or put a boundaries or what I would consider a detachment mode which is another whole other philosophy I have around, particularly founder CEOs and what I try to coach them through when I'm partnering, partnering with them. So I, I burned out. Yeah. Not once, but twice. There again, I don't blame anybody at the business except myself. And it was a lesson learned. But I came out on the other side a lot wiser and I helped try to bring some of that wisdom to people that I work with every day. And you can achieve without putting your own health or mental wellness at risk. It takes commitment and time and a self reflectiveness that I think many of us don't take the time to do, but it's there. And so this is another thing that I try to roll into when I'm, when I'm working with founding teams and particularly first time founder CEOs.

Well, Lynn, I have to ask, going off of that, I think you've hit on a lot of really important things in there and I guess my question now is you're still really busy and you're consulting and helping people grow their companies. It's still really stressful. You still have a lot going on. It's a really tight fund. So I'm sure that's really impacting, you know, the stress that you're exposed to from these founders and everything. What are your work life balance tips? Do you have any, are there any things you hold sacred where you're like, this is just the thing that has to be done for me to be able to bring my best self to work? Because that is an awful lot of stress that you're taking on.

There's no such thing as work life balance to me. It's like work life leverage and integration. Right. Where you're pulling levers here and there and you need to understand where do I have energy to put either this day, this minute, this week? And, and that's the other thing, understanding what activities bring you joy versus drain you. Again, we all have to adult and there's just stuff that we have to get done. But the more you can hyper focus on and bring into your life things that truly actually energize you, that work is different when you're engaging in it. So even if somebody has a lot of work on their plate, they're energized and engaged by it. Time goes fast, right? It's, it's different. You actually come out on the other side not drained and kind of like pumped up around it. And so choosing and narrowing and understanding and getting closer to those sectors that really, you know, are your. What you would consider flow points, I think is the first step. And again, sometimes that just comes with years and years and years of experience and mistakes and again, experiencing burnout. I think for my own approach to, to have self care. I actually had a boss recently tell me goes. I don't think I've met anybody who is as exceptional at self care as you, Lynn. And I, again, this is one. I have a supportive spouse who is totally okay. I actually go up to Maine to a nowhere cabin for twice a year for four days by myself with no agenda, nothing to do, some reading material. And I just, just nap and write and roam around and go and get food if I feel like it or I don't. And I just be by myself in nature and that's all I just, I do that. I was only doing it once a year, but now I love it so much I do it twice a year. So that's what's part of my spouse. I also do. I'm a big believer in energy work and, and so I actually studied Reiki and I try to integrate that into my life where again, energy out is energy in. And with, you know, the study of science around, you know, quantum realms and quantum field and subtle energies and all these other kinds of things. I'm very interested in that kind of field of study. And so I do do a lot of energy work and work with practitioners and work on myself. And I try, I'm trying to get better at meditation. And again, meditation doesn't have to be like 20 minutes a day. I mean, that's really great if you can. It can literally be a minute of like, like minor breathing in your car before you're going into a meeting. And that's literally what I do. When I'm sitting in my car before I get into work, I park and I just literally sit there for about five minutes. And I just try to do some breathing exercises and I do a lot of reading. I love learning and, and education and just keeping my brain active. And that's actually might sound exhausting, but for me it's energizing. And so I, I try to mix all of these in and you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm not gonna lie. I'm in a very busy period right now in Q3, Q4 with a lot of my work. And I know it's, you know, it's here and so I'll take some time for myself during the holidays. And there's a cadence you need to figure out your cadence of self. And a lot of us are not very good at that.

I absolutely love the no work life balance thing and the levers. And I that really resonates because it's so true. Sometimes you gotta know which one to p which one you can move. And I've never heard it described that way, but I'm going to adopt it if you don't mind, because I think.

That is the best way to frame that.

So you talked about coaching some of the CEOs and the founders that you work with through some of these things. What does that process look like?

Yeah, I want to clarify also that I think coaching doesn't have to be an explicit interaction as being named as coaching. Again, my background is executive administration, executive operations, business business administration operations. And to me, that is actually an inherent part of the partnership that comes together when you have somebody like that that is working with a founder or a startup CEO. When you care deeply about the success of another, you want the best for them and the best for what their dreams are. And so that naturally is going to bring out conversations that both champion and challenge when they need it the most. And so while I think now I'm a little bit more formalized in the coaching realm, I would say that it's been a natural part of just how I've partnered from, again, an operational partnership with the people that I've worked with and consulted with over the years. So in regards to the coaching side of things, if you go to, like an actual hire an executive coach, they'll come in. They have these like, frameworks and these like, ways that they approach and have conversations and they send you off with projects and things. And that's not how I approach it. I look at it as a very natural in. In the moment discussion that is very practical. And when things are going awry or going well within a business, I will sit and I will make sure that I'm very explicit with the founder and say, you know what? You are doing an amazing job. And this is what you rocked this week, and you are crushing it here, and you are crushing it. How can we amplify this and do this? Because let's be honest, when you're a leader, everybody's crapping all over you all the time. Everybody wants to be doing something better. Nobody's always like, man, you're rocking it. You're doing awesome. So this is another role where I think it's really important to revalidate the good work that Leaders are doing when they're in the moment. And then there comes times where there's some really difficult conversations that have to happen. And the reality is working with leadership teams over the years, there's, you know, when people are in decision making and resource holding positions, there's, what do they call it? People don't feel like they always can come and be, I would say fully challenging to maybe their boss because there's risk involved. Right. When you're in a role that is not a resource holding or official decision making position, such as an executive administrator or a chief of staff or what I would consider the conductor of the business, you have that ability to observe and communicate in a much more honest way without fear. And again, I'm not saying this happens, but this is the natural, the natural psychological holdup of most humans. If you need to have a very difficult conversation with somebody and if you root these conversations, particularly the really difficult ones that you have to have with a CEO in particular, if you root it in deep care and you link it back to how this is going to affect their dream and their business, it actually can be quite a powerful discussion that yields positive results. And so that's the way I look at it. It's more of a discussion on literally a minute to minute basis in both championing and challenging leaders to be their best and, and not make it so formalized. That being said, I do make it my business to have a quarterly three hour dinner off site with the leaders that I partner with and I use the Stop Start Continue model. And the first time I use this with my boss, he didn't know what to make of it. He was like, who are you and what are you doing with me here? But I literally had a full on agenda and I gave him feedback on what he should start doing, what he should stop doing and what we needed to continue and amplify for him or develop. And I linked it all back to how it was affecting the business both in positive or negative ways. And again, he was a bit confused the first time, but once we got into the cadence, he really appreciated it. And leaders I've used it with since have really appreciated it because they don't get that very explicit feedback from other team members on a consistent basis. So yeah, so I feel like that's a framework that I would use. That's my only official framework that I use, but everything else is just, I would say conversations.

Yeah, that's a great framework. I do that on a weekly basis in a small way. It's sort of A mini one and then a quarterly big one. Because it is so good to reflect on the, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Right?

It's what, what do you need to really bring to the table for your company?

Yeah, exactly. And we're all human. We're all making learn, you know, making mistakes, learning, growing. And especially for first time founders, they've never been through it before. They're. They're learning on the job job, they're green. So everybody can benefit from feedback and knowing better, doing better, being better. That's what I say. Know better, do better, be better.

Hey there. Just a quick break. I wanted to let you know that if you're listening to this podcast because you are exploring careers in biotech, which it turns out quite a few of our listeners actually are, you might be interested in the Biotech Career Coach podcast. It is brought to you by our sister company, the Collaboratory Career Hub, which is our career development community. If you would like actionable tips on job seeking and career development, that is the place for you. It is a companion podcast to our Career Coach column that we write monthly in Biospace, but we go a little more in depth and sometimes we have special workshops and all of that good stuff. So if that sounds interesting, click the link in the show notes or search for the Biotech Career Coach on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Back to the show.

Lynn, one of the reasons I just adore chatting with you is you have such a great way with words. First of all, Manager of the Miscellaneous is an excellent title. You should trademark that. That is going to get stolen by so many companies now who need a person who can do everything. But you also use strategical and I love that. It really speaks to my operation soul. So can you tell everyone a little bit about strategical and the strategical framework and just all the good stuff about it?

Yes, this is literally my favorite word and when I use it with leaders, they all bust out in a smile because they actually understand what I'm talking about, even though I don't have to describe what it actually is. But for those who maybe are not in the thick of it and would need a little bit more explanation, there's only really two what I would see as two very unique roles in a company that need to bridge understanding, strategy and vision of leadership and being able to translate that and execute into operational frameworks of accountability to drive and support that strategy. And the first one is, I would say HR business partners. They sit at the cross section of the leadership team and Helping with people, strategy and finding the right people with the right resources, with the right talents at the right time. And you need to understand strategy both short term and long term in order to do that. And they're generalists. They work across all pillars of hr, because HR is not just talent acquisition, it is a whole bunch of other things. And I try to educate leaders around that as well when we start getting into scaling and what functions need to start focusing in on. So, and then the other one, I would say, is this executive administration position. And again, there's different levels that the traditional stigmatized version has been, I would say, titled Executive Assistant. And it has been traditionally looked at as very directive. So I tell you what to do and you do calendaring and travel and expense management. That's literally the scope of what I would say. Most leaders, when I ask them, what do you think this role should or could be doing, that's literally what they tell me. And I then I open up their eyes and say, oh boy, you are leaving so much on the table here. And so we need to look at this more as a business function and a strategic partner within the leadership team rather than just, you know, a directive doer. And so the term strategical is. This role is the second role in the company that gets deeply ingrained in both the CEO's vision for the company and the leadership team's need to deliver on that and then taking that and executing again on all of the stuff that needs to get built in order to make that happen. So I love the term subtractile. It's literally my favorite word all the time.

I see so many similarities. Like I said, I think you and Allison are probably the same person. So, you know, I brought Alison on. I didn't know it, but I should have titled it the Manager of the Miscellaneous, because it really was. We were a very small company and it was so wonderful to have a partner that could execute, push back, coach, manage, like all of the things. And I think that a visionary CEO or a visionary founder, who they are so committed to the science, their passion, what they're doing, they really need that counterpart. They really need somebody in that role.

Yeah, yeah. I would love to take that one step further, particularly working in biotech and life sciences. I really like the niche of plugging and playing this particular. We call it the Manager of the Miscellaneous. I'm super passionate about business administration as an actual function and labeling the titles as other functions. So when I say Manager of the Miscellaneous, I would actually translate that into Director of Business Administration as an actual functional title and not because chief of staff to me, executive assistant. These are nebulous Cliff Cliff titles that are very difficult to translate into other realms and understanding and scope, you know, of responsibilities. So I think what ends up happening is that in life science in particular, we have a lot of academic spin outs and we have people and visionary founders who are so obsessed and excited about their science. Science, science, science, science. Right. What they don't realize is that you're not building science, you're building a business. And so you need somebody that can function in this type of role again to understand your dream and your science, but build the frameworks to help make it sustainable and scalable so that we can actually translate that vision and that idea and that awesome innovative science from a concept and a story. And that's a huge gap in between that I think gets addressed way too late. And interestingly enough, there was an article that came out recently, I can't remember, it was on HBR or Forbes and they interviewed a ton of entrepreneurs who had failed at a number of businesses. And when they said, what was it that you believe was the theme that made you fail on those specific companies? And every single one of them says, it wasn't that we didn't find product market fit, it wasn't that we didn't have a good product, it wasn't that we didn't have a good team. We didn't know how to operationally scale at the right time with the right people and the right resourcing. And so that's what this kind of role would do for you when you plug and play it. So yeah, I think it's really, really critical to understand that when you get into industry, there's more than just the science and there's more than just going out, pitching your science and fundraising. You need to deliver when you get that money and how are you going to do that? So it actually makes it through all those kind of milestone stages that are super critical.

Yeah, I'm interested. What else do you see as the other critical roles and responsibilities that get overlooked by some of these founders and first time CEOs?

I have such a strong philosophy around this. And again, this is rooted in the fact that science, many times, while it is the product of the company, it's not the whole company yet. All ideas, resourcing, decision making, accountability gets routed into that realm. I'm not saying that that's not. But it's so hyper focused that there's blind sides to everything else. So there's Three positions that I think one are either completely ignored or hired way too late and not resourced for early enough in a startup environment. The first one being, we've talked about this HR and people strategy. And again when I talk to leaders and I say, they come to me and they say I need to hire an HR person. And I was like, okay, do you need somebody to help with recruiting? Is that what you're asking me? And they'd be like yeah, yeah, I need hr. And I'm like, that's not hr, it's talent acquisition. That is a sub pillar of hr. HR is, you know, benefits management, payroll, compensation philosophy, employee engagement, employee relations, performance management, career ladders and matrices, learning and development. Like there's a whole bunch of other stuff here that like we're not talking about. So no, no, you need a recruiter and that's not people strategy when you get to a certain size. So I talk very early and in explicitly about that particular function of managing people in your organization and how to step stage that appropriately. And I'm very clear of how I think that works in its best format which first of all usually I suggest from the 0 to 12, you know, person range, hire a fractional HR person that's from a firm outside and again has to be a generalist. They can help with recruiting, but they're going to also help with your policies and benefits and all these other kinds of things from 12 to maybe like 25 or no, maybe like 12 to 40. That range I see you bring in HR in house, senior manager level so that they can again be the doer and start managing any of the higher level external fractional HR that you're going to need for stuff that's very expensive that you can't bring in. But you need the doers on the ground to help nurture and start nurturing culture and doing these other kinds of expansion again, accountability structures and things along those lines. And then I would say between like 50 to 100 people you should be bringing in a director or a senior director. This is the generalist that will start bridging the strategy and the actual people strategy and bringing those together and managing a full function team 100 plus is when you start looking at a chro or a VP of hr. You do not need that until that very. Because then you're dealing with board and equity and I mean you were dealing with that earlier but just not in the complicated natures of when you're growing. Right? So that HR is number one, I say always misunderstood misallocated for and brought in way too late. Second one would be executive administration or business administration. Again, you can hire a fractional person to start off, but I really believe in having a right hand person that understands the rhythm of business or the cadence of business to support the strategic decision making throughout the year and keeping the leadership team accountable to what they need to be delivering on both for themselves and for the rest of the organization. So, and there's an art to that. There's a lot of frameworks learning how to appropriately set corporate okrs, how to cascade those, building out all the strategy off sites and ensuring that they're focusing on the right things, really running tight weekly ELT meetings so they don't turn into inform meetings or work stream meetings. They really should be decision making meetings. That's what they're supposed to be. But that's not what you usually see when you first get into startup environments. The third role, and there's still, there's still some pushback on this one. But what it, what, what do you think is actually the number one complaint when you send out an employee survey for an employee engagement survey that people always say, this is what's wrong with this company? Communication Boom. Okay, communication, okay. Communication is one of the most critical pieces of growing a thriving, resilient and successful company. And yet it is of the latest functions that you never even think about. Because again, internal communications is very different from external. When people think about communications, they think, oh, press releases and you know, interviewing and working with me on my pitch deck and these very externally focused. Your company will implode from the inside out, not from the outside in. And most of the time that comes down to absolutely poor communications. And if you don't have framework works with the leadership consistently and very clearly communicating the expectations both behaviorally and strategically and tactically to the broader organization. You are really putting your company at risk for that scaling and sustainability aspect that we talked about a few minutes earlier. Like I said, there are absolute frameworks that need to be implemented and no leadership team member is going to own them that. So who really owns that? Sometimes you'll see it sometimes in a coo, but not usually. And because it's, it's again, it's a little bit too tactical and they want to play more up here. So you need this bridge in between. And so those are the three roles. HR people, strategy, how it gets appropriately integrated and step staged. Executive administration or business administration as a function, not as a role and internal communications. And you can bridge that across an administrator if you Find somebody that has that skill set, at least for the short term. But you, you really want to try to find somebody that excels at internal communications. It will make every 80% of problems. And companies would go away if we focused in on internal communication. I know that. Not scientifically, anecdotally, obviously.

We ask so many people on this podcast, you know, how do you guys handle communications? And you know, is that a pain point for you? And everyone's just like, head in their hands, like, yes. And no one has an answer. But Lynn, you have an answer.

I have a framework too. I can offer a framework that I came up with at a company that was really struggling. And I share this out with everybody because I think it's a really easy thing to remember and it can be easily pulled into every aspect of deliverables within the business. And I did post it on LinkedIn a while so people can download if they want to. I call it the P5 Flex framework work. That's what I titled it. It's not trademarked, but that's what I'm calling it right now. And I created this triangle and again, I was talking about how most leaders come in and they hyperfocus only on the science and they forget about all the other parts of the actual business building that needs to be resourced or focused on, strategically planned for. And so I created this triangle and on the base of it is purpose. That's really your vision and your long term life. Like we will walk through the fire for this. And these are the values that we hold highest that we are going to hold ourselves accountable to. So when times get hard, we make the decisions on these things. So purpose is actually the foundation framework. In the middle I have product which is, you know, really whether it's a diagnostic, a medicine, you know, other platforms of therapeutics or however you want, whatever you're focusing in on. In life science. On the other side, we have process. So again, infrastructure, accountability frameworks, systems, platforms, software, these kinds of things that you just need to adult as a business, right? But in the middle you need people to pull those two together. If you have one without the other, and you don't have the people actually working across both of those, everything else falls apart. Then up at the top I have what's called progress. And progress to me is how are we going to fund or again, plan for making all of this stuff on the bottom actually come to reality and sustain it so that we can achieve our vision and purpose that's at the foundation right there. And so interestingly, Enough. When you use this model, you can take this and plug it into your OKR process and you actually break out okrs into these five different sections. Because most okrs that I see when I come in and partner with organizations, they only have research and development and funding. Those are literally the three bullet points they have on their, their corporate goals that they're, they're, you know, having everybody follow. And I'm like, well what about the people and what about the actual operational infrastructure? We need to have, you know, focus on some of this as well. You can skew some of the weighting over to R and D and the assets and those kinds of things totally fine. But you cannot ignore. And so this will force you to say, well have we hit all of these, these five Ps? The second one is when you're doing internal communications through say an all team meeting. You can actually use this as a framework of what you should be, you know, focusing in on every single time you need to report back out, say after a board meeting to the rest of the organization. You can start off with your purpose and again re reinvigorate everybody of like this is why we do what we do. Then you go into, here's all the new people that just got hired and here's the roles that we need to be filling. And then you can go into, here's an update on our pipeline, the product. We need to figure that out. And this is where we're struggling, this is where we're focusing. These are the strategic pivots. And then you have process. These are all the new things that we're rolling out cross functionally across the company. Oh, we're updating our recruitment platform. Oh, we're starting with G Suite instead of Microsoft or here's a new benchling thing we're doing. And then again you can also move into the progress of this is our longer term vision of where we are with the resourcing we have and, and our plans in order to make this, you know, again sustainable and long term. And so it's very easy because then nobody's scrambling. You're like what are we going to talk about for this all team meeting? You know, and it gives you that. And then any decisions you make in the organization, you can actually put it up against any of those and say there's specific questions you can ask at each of those P sections to say is this decision that we are about to make that's very critical or very important? Does it touch upon what we believe in each of these Philosophies of these different five triangles here. And so I find it to be a very helpful framework to keep people on point and accountable to all parts of the business that need to be looked at, not just the science.

That sounds like such a good framework. I could talk about all of this stuff for hours. So I think we're gonna do a round two at some point.

Oh, I'll mince around two because I have lots of other stuff to talk about too.

Lynn, where do you see yourself in the next phase of your career?

Again, as I described earlier, I've been on this weird lattice journey and so when people ask me, oh, where do you see yourself in five years or you know, again, what is your next phase? It's very hard for me to say, oh yeah, this is like where I think I'm going. One, the older I get, the more I trust in the universe and just it's going to take me where I am supposed to go. Even if I'm kicking and screaming. It's. I know it's conspiring for me and I've had too many experiences over again a 25 year period that have shown me this to be true. So I trust that when the time is right, opportunities will, will present themselves in a flow of come this way, Lynn, this is your next step. I also say I pay very close attention to what kind of impact I'm having and am I happy. Those are the only two things I actually ask myself with whatever I'm doing in any part of my life. And if any of those wanes significantly, I know I have to do some reassessment and figure out how do I get that either back or where do I pivot in order to recalibrate those two things. So for me, it's not really about again, step stage, like, oh, I'm planning, which is so ironic because I plan for everybody else. But I, I'm just kind of trusting in the flow for myself. I really just kind of pay attention to my emotional feelings and sense of impact. And as long as I'm getting that from where I am, I'm good. That's pretty much how I see it.

I think those are like perfect calibration questions that everyone should be asking themselves. I'm just thinking here thinking, like, when's the last time I actually sat down and like ran through those questions? And I think that is, you are just a wealth of good frameworks. This is a great episode.

I love frameworks. It makes life so much simpler, right? But they have to be simple frameworks and most of my frameworks are all rooted honestly in the human condition. The human, human condition doesn't change. We all just want to make a difference. We all want to belong. We all want to know that we can share our unique. We're having an impact somewhere. I mean that's really what it comes down to. And anything that stems from, from that results in again either positive or negative behavioral reactions within our life. And so yeah, it's, it's if you keep it simple. Again, there's another framework that I, when I am helping to build out kind of onboarding frameworks or people strategy frameworks. If you can focus in on the concepts of belong, behave and believe and you can fill in each of those within, within the context of your business, it's actually quite simple to help bring people along with you if you can commit and really see everything in those three buckets. But you need to care, you just, you need to care as well. And I think there's a lot of care out there in the biotech industry, which is again, it's very hard. You can try to run, but you just can't hide. You always get pulled back in. You always do. Once you're in, you're in biotech, you don't leave.

I am so interested and excited to hear your answer to my favorite question, which is what is your favorite book? Or what is a book that you think everybody should read? Maybe it's not your favorite, but what is your book recommendation?

I appreciate this. First of all, what do you call a bibliophile? I read literally like six books at a time and I actually keep a list. And I've read hundreds of books and most of them are almost all exclusively nonfiction. But they range from philosophy to spirituality to business to history to again self help or business frameworks and structures, these kinds of things. And, and I would say the most influential book that I've read in my life that actually I went and got a degree in after I read it was Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. And I think again, this comes back to the human condition and that a lot of the crisis or problems or tensions or conflicts within our world and within any relationship with the have comes down to our own sense of inner meaning and purpose. And I, I suggest this as a book to read for, you know, like leaders because many leaders, they have to go through survival mode and identity, understanding and self reflection. In the worst of times there will be absolute suffering, I can guarantee it. When you are trying to keep something alive from with a dream and very little money to do so in the beginning stages. Right, right. And that's when you find out who you really are. It's not in the happy times. It's not in the easy times. It's not in the good times. It's in the really, really struggling hard times. And when you know who you are and your sense of purpose and meaning, that is what will pull you through the fire and get you to the other side and not only pull you through the fire, but help pull others with you and it builds a resiliency. Also, understanding that, that there truly is always growth, always gifts in even the most tragic of circumstances is something that I have garnered not only from personal experience, but, but the philosophy of Viktor Frankl. He has a framework that's for clinicians in the psychology and psychotherapy realm called logotherapy. I went and got a degree in it for more of a philosophical integration within the business world. And so you can see that on my LinkedIn, it's. I call it psychological and existential analysis is really what it is. So, so, man. Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Quick, easy read, very powerful. Translates to every part of your life and I think that it's a real game changer for those that are willing to commit the time to it.

Sounds fascinating. Thank you so much, Lynn. This was so fun. We are linking your LinkedIn into the show notes as I mentioned. Is there any other way people should get in touch with you?

Yeah, I think LinkedIn is definitely probably number one one for me. I'm on there all the time. I really enjoy again seeing all the activity that's going on, not only within the life science industry, but, you know, broader beyond that. And then also I have a website called Executive Management partners. The shortened URL version is exec mpc, which stands for executive management partners consulting. So exec mpc.com.

Okay, great. We'll put that in the show notes too, too. Yeah. This was so fun. Thank you so much for having, for, for having us. Thank you so much for being on our show.

I really enjoyed it. Super humbled too, because again, after listening to all the previous, you know, participants of your biotech podcast, I mean, I feel I'm really. There's big shoes to fill there. So again, grateful for the opportunity and I do hope we get to, you know, continue the conversation maybe in a session too, because I think there's still so much more to talk about in regards to explicitly culture building, which is the other realm of my consulting that I focus in on. With new models and frameworks, which you guys love frameworks. So we can look into that too.

Let's do it. Let's do a round two. I love this.

I love it.

Thank you so much. This was just great.

Thanks again for the opportunity.

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