Welcome to The Emerging Biotech Leader,
where we help biotech leaders
maximize the value of their therapeutics
from clinical development to product launch.
We’re your hosts,
I'm Kim Kushner.
And I'm Ramin Farhood.
We are here to help
you navigate the pitfalls of the biotech industry
and illuminate the path forward.
On this episode of The Emerging Biotech Leader,
we're going to be talking about
strong leaders,
self-awareness and filling
blind spots in their own
skill sets among their team.
We recently spoke to Dr. Suku Nagendran
and we learned a lot from that conversation.
So we'll be referencing
a little bit of that today.
But we're Ramin and I are joined
by our colleague, Dr. Benit Maru
to really talk about some of the things
that we're seeing in the industry.
Before we jump
in, one of the things that Suku mentioned
that was really interesting to me
was a quote that he loves
and I personally love,
but I am probably going to butcher it.
Is around the fact that nobody
that he's a nobody,
that somebody because of the team around him
or some version of that,
which I thought was just pretty fantastic
because it says a lot about his own ego
and how he sees his team
and how he sees their ability to kind of prop up
the programs that he's worked on
and drive the overall success.
That's one piece that really stood out to me,
and that I think is really interesting for us to be thinking
about kind of across the industry
and one to posit
that as a starting point
for today's conversation.
Thanks, Kim.
I think what Suku mentioned with regards
to, you know, he is who he is
because of everyone around him.
I think that's vitally important.
And it's actually quite crucial.
I think this is one of the trends that we do see
across the biotech industry as a whole.
One of the challenges is,
is that the biotech industry is evolving so quickly.
Think about, you know, who we are in terms
of all the developments mankind has made.
But physically, you know, we're still meant to be
throwing a rock at a bigger rock in Africa,
for example, that that's kind of that piece.
And with the biotech industry
exploding as much as it has,
not everybody's going to have all the talent
that is going to be needed
for every single aspect of,
you know, a biotech development.
So understanding what it is that you need.
So, for example, Suku
mentioned on the last program
that he's not a neurologist,
he's not an expert in X, Y, Z,
but he had no problem
with surrounding himself
with people like that.
And I think that's one of the biggest things
we do see in the biotech industry at the moment,
is that people do unfortunately,
they're not able to admit
where they may need support.
And to your point,
Benit and the point Suku was making
earlier on the other episode as well.
It's it is the demand on the CMO role
and these roles in the biotech.
It's so much you almost have to be a master.
You have to be the master of the science.
You have to understand the business very well.
You have to understand the investors.
You have to understand
how to deal with the regulatory agencies,
with the opinion leaders and the thought leaders
and the patients.
So it’s almost required from you
that you are this super human being
that is able to immediately kind of pivot
from one area to the other
and you have to be excellent
and outstanding at every single one of it.
And that's almost an impossible task too.
It's a little bit unfair
what is almost demanded from these roles.
But on the other hand, well,
that’s what the job requires
and that's what you need to do to go forward.
That's why it's so important to bring the
right people on your team and get the
right folks behind you.
Yeah, it's definitely an underappreciated role in a lot of ways,
and I think one of the other things in terms
of filling out his team,
there's a really important dynamic there
in terms of the culture that they were able
to build out of AveXis as an example.
But one of the other things that
really stood out to me and is very important,
in many of the organizations
that we're working with,
as well as the dynamics
across the leadership team,
there has to be an understanding
and a patience of
what the CMO can offer at a given point in time
and the different hat
that they have to wear from moment to moment,
whether they're with their team
or whether they're with the board or an investor,
and how quickly
they have to be able to shift
in each of those changing scenarios.
So I think the leadership team dynamics is also a
really critical piece.
It's probably not as
not as well
oiled of a machine in other biotechs.
I agree, Kim.
I think that is one piece
that is vitally important
and we're all making the assumption
that all of the other senior leaders
that are part of, you know,
whichever biotech
it may be, understand this process.
At AveXis they were lucky in a way.
Suku had worked with Sean
they'd all worked with each other at varying points.
They all kind of had a sense of who they are.
That's not always the case.
At the rest of
these are the biotechs that are emerging.
People don't actually know each other.
People don't know what their strengths are,
the weakness are.
People are quite tentative
and I think that is a challenge.
And I think, you know, the value
of a chief medical officer
and a strong clinical medical department
is often under thought,
depending on
what the background of some of the other people
within that biotech are as well.
So I think that's something
that is often underplayed and the other comment
Suku made again on the last episode,
it requires courage.
It genuinely does require courage.
If you are with a group of unknowns,
you do have to be able to stand up,
you know, shoulders out to take charge.
And actually be willing to take the hits
that come back at you as well.
And I think that's something that's
that's a very rare trait, I think.
What do you think other organizations
haven't been able to crack this code?
Now, I was reflecting on this a little bit.
And, you know, is it all just ego that everyone's
a little bit too afraid
to show their own weaknesses and individuals
don't have that self-awareness
to be as open with their peers on,
I’m not strong in this area
and help me fill this gap or, you know, I'm too
afraid to show who I really am
or the questions I have
and I don't want to put that on the table.
Is it really an ego driven reason
or do you think there's something else behind it?
So Kim, I'm not so sure if it's about it's only the ego.
And ego may obviously play a part of this,
but I think it's also depending on where you are
in your career,
if you're up and coming
and a rising star in your career,
it sometimes is more challenging and difficult
to admit your weaknesses
because you're trying to establish yourself
and show the organization
that you know all of the answers
and you're in charge and
and you're leading everything true,
which obviously it's counterintuitive
because it does work against you
when things are not going so well.
I think that that's another piece of it.
But I see more and more
dealing with some of the clients
that have been in the industry for a while
that they have gotten to a point in their career
that they can easily
admit to the fact that, listen,
I’m not really good in these two or three things.
I need help in these areas.
And who are the experts
where there's outsourcing or somebody internal
that can help us out to make this happen.
And that takes another level of leadership
to be able to do that as well.
So you're suggesting it's
a little bit of like
a leadership maturity index relative
to where they are
and the time that they've had to establish
some of that self-awareness?
I do agree that it is that maturity index.
I do think that that is quite important.
I do unfortunately do think counter that.
I do think some of it is ego
based on some of the interactions
that I have had with people as well.
Some people are so scared of failure,
which is understandable.
You know, they're driven to do a certain.
You know, you go a certain way.
Some of the recent
companies that we've worked with, you know,
have spun out from well-known
academic institutes.
Now, those that are more mature
do have a better EQ.
Let's say, from a leadership
maturity perspective.
But then you've actually got others,
you know, where some people
are potentially post-docs. They're quite young.
They're quite young,
just in their career in general, regardless of it
being a biotech or not,
sometimes they face challenges in that regard.
I also think something that cannot be
and should not be overlooked
is the funding pressure.
There is such a significant funding pressure,
especially in the market today.
Everybody unfortunately is looking for
a return on investment.
Suku mentioned his philanthropic adventures,
post AveXis,
what he's been able to do because of that,
you know, he wants to do the right thing.
He wants to help make the world a better place.
Early stage companies are funded by
whomever they may be funded by,
who are looking for a return on investment
within a short period of time.
That lack of understanding of what development
is, especially in a biotech space,
causes people, in my mind to
make decisions that they probably wouldn't
do if they actually had a bit more time to think about it.
An accelerated development pipeline causes
lots and lots of challenges,
and this is where then ego and fear
all come into play.
I think so. It's so multifactorial.
And I think that last point is an important one
for us about a minute on which is the balance of
the fact that you can make the right decisions
despite needing to achieve incredibly rapid
development timelines and key milestones
for boards and investors
or whoever else you need to meet.
And I think we've all probably seen
different permutations of this, but
it's really challenging
when you have
all of these pressures
coming in with an expectation of X, Y, and Z milestone.
But as a leader, you know what your North Star is,
you know what you need to do.
And to your point, Benit,
you haven't had the opportunity to even take,
you know, 2 hours with your team
to really think through the implications
of whatever a decision might be.
So finding the balance between
maybe not taking an extended period
for development planning,
but taking a brief pause
to think about some of the implications,
and working through some of the bigger questions
that could have a longer term impact
on what you're building toward.
Agreed, and I think having
just having that time to think,
even if, again, it's not for months and months and months,
just an hour, 2 hours, just something right?
Half-day workshop max, yeah.
Exactly, I think that's helpful.
So, you know, one example of, you know, where,
you know, in not too distant past,
you know, I made a decision,
you know, as being part of a senior leader for,
you know, a company we’re supporting,
wanting to make sure
that we're doing the right thing,
we're doing the right thing
not only for the company, but for the patient.
It was a challenging development program.
Everything needed to be set up
in a stepwise manner.
The primary funders who, you know, had heavily,
heavily on the board, let's say,
push back on that.
But we stuck to our guns.
We explained to them this is what we need to do.
This is how we should do it.
We got feedback from the advocacy community.
We got feedback from regulators.
So to Suku's point, you do need courage.
You do need to be able to stick to your guns
just to show that this is the right thing to do.
What the investors
decide to do with that information
is their decision.
But I do think, you know,
as long as you can feel
that you can sleep at night.
I think another thing that you
I don't think Benit that
that you mentioned earlier
that you definitely need besides courage
beside being able to admit to your strengths
and your weaknesses is also resources.
You got to have resources
if you're in a one or two,
there's only so much you can do
and it becomes really stressful.
You've got to go really fast
and you're going to make mistakes, right?
So you really also have to be good at
pulling the narrative
and rationale together for your CEO,
for your executive team,
for the board of directors. Right?
Because, especially in a smaller
startup biotech companies,
board of directors are very much involved
with the financial decisions as well.
Resources agents and they have to buy into
why you need
a head of clinical or medical
or why you need four more people on MSL
or in operations or things like that.
And if you're also not so good
at putting those narrative
and rationale together
and being able to tie that to a business,
corporate, you know, objectives and goals,
then you're not going to get resources.
Your job becomes more frustrating.
You won't be able to meet the timeline,
and that's a challenge on its own too.
It’s not like the resources is unlimited
and is available to you
and you really have to make that case for it.
To get it.
You need to be savvy with the resources
that you can get access to and leverage
them in the most optimal way.
And Ramin,
you brought up a really good point on,
especially with limited resources,
but a smaller lean team,
you're probably going to make some mistakes.
I think we could all probably agree that
any organization
would be comfortable with a couple small mistakes
as long as you've prevented a really big mistake
or a big negative outcome. Right?
But unfortunately, the direction,
especially when we're talking about gene therapy,
specifically the direction
the industry has taken,
is that there has been
a lot of mishaps at a grander scale.
So there's absolutely some
some amount of fear at play
in terms of early decision making
because everyone's trying to avoid the
the big, big mistake, but not recognizing that
it’s okay to make tiny ones in the path
to preventing the big one. Right?
Right. Absolutely.
That is very true.
I agree. I think yeah.
I think that's it's
very important, I think of this sometimes
and this may sound daft, and I apologize,
but if you think about yourself
as a conductor of an orchestra
and you think about all the different sections,
you know, within the orchestra
with the strings, you know, percussion
and so on, when does each
section need to come into play,
you know, to create whatever,
you know, that sound that you're creating?
And that's kind of what
a CMO in this role kind of needs to be,
because you've got to especially in the gene therapy setting,
you think about the clinical piece,
the medical affairs piece, the advocacy piece,
but then you've got CMC,
you've got your product itself,
you’ve got the whole regulatory component.
Which products are you using
at which stage of development?
If you're using a normal route of administration,
there’s all device compatibility to think about.
You're going to need, you know, seasoned experts
within a certain space,
whether it may be CMC regulatory
and so on and so on.
You don't need to know
everything about gene therapy,
but you need to know about certain aspects of it.
And pulling it all together
and basically being that conductor
is challenging,
but it’s then conveying that message to the board
or an investor,
even advocacy groups as well.
Because, you know,
again, AveXis in my mind is a unique one in a sense,
because it's a devastating disease.
You know, there was no
you know, if the child can survive
beyond the age of two and a half years of age,
that's a win.
And, you know, they did that
significantly, but not all diseases are like that.
There's lots of nuance as well.
And
being able to help
explain what you're doing in simple terms
to whichever
audience it may be is another aspect
to think about as well.
That's a really great point.
I mean, having resources is one thing, right?
But also being resourceful is very important
because there are folks out there
that have exactly the resource
and the experience and the expertise
and knowledge that you're looking for.
Right?
And you can tap into those organizations
and with those outsourcing or consultants
or thought partners
that they've been there, done that,
they have that experience
and they're able to kind of fast track
and accelerate because you're kind of
getting into the collective wisdom and experience
as opposed to when you hire somebody,
you bring somebody on board.
It takes time to hire
it takes time for them fully on board
and get through the program
And that whole process
may take anywhere from six months to a year,
especially the higher the positions and the levels are.
And meanwhile, you're losing all that time, right?
Which is the investors are looking at it
the board of directors is looking at it.
So there are ways that you can kind of stop gap
and fill those needs. Right?
And it may not be just
hiring more and more people,
but that's another thing that I think
we should definitely consider.
There’s one point you made Ramin,
sorry that just triggered a memory.
Ultimately, you know, this
gene therapy, genetic medicines,
it's a novel modality.
The timelines are truncated.
You can't go into a healthy human initially.
you have to go into the disease population.
But there's also more complexity
and more pressure that's being added
because obviously there's an investor component.
There's a, you know, advocacy component.
So your traditional development
timeline is being truncated.
So not only are you truncating,
you're adding in much more complexity.
You're adding in complexity, truncation of timelines,
and, you know,
there's a desire for expediency as well.
So all of this additional challenge
that is being put forward,
that's a cross-functional problem.
That's not just with regard
to the chief medical officer, but, you know,
the companies that we've worked with,
some of them understand that,
and it's easier to work with them.
Some of them don't necessarily understand that.
And it takes us time to get them to that stage.
But every single group
that we've ended up working with and Kim,
you and I have worked on a few of them as well.
When that penny has dropped for them,
they actually understand
what we're trying to do with them and bringing
that cross-functional, cross stakeholder,
collaborative working group together,
you know, with the eyes on the prize ultimately,
which is the development of a therapy,
so then that’s beneficial for investors, advocacy,
so on and so on.
I think that's the piece that
is sometimes often
under spoken or under thought about as well.
And maybe that's a good place
to wrap today's episode,
which is really around the fact
that team dynamics would really make or break
some of the success of these programs.
It's the team dynamics and the culture that
as a leader you've built for your team,
it's how you're filling the
skill gaps across your team
to make sure that everyone can trust
that you have the right resources
and skills at the table
to really deliver against the promises
that you're making above
and below in the organization,
and that you're really driving
towards a cohesive outcome
among cross-functional leaders
that you're collaborating with
in the organization.
So with that,
thanks for the conversation today
and looking forward to our next episode.
Yeah, thanks, Kim. Thanks, Benit.
Thank you.
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The Emerging Biotech Leader
an SSI Strategy Podcast.
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