- Hi, I'm Jessica Tashker,
and I did my graduate work at Duke and my postdoc at UCSF,
and I'm here to talk to you about:
On being influential and collaborative
in the business world.
So our collaboration learning objectives are,
we hope that by the end of this class you will be able to:
Identify effective business communication etiquette,
to define structures for working together,
to explain ways you can be effectively influential,
and to understand the purpose
of feedback in a business context.
So maybe you're asking at this point,
why is this important?
I was a bench scientist,
and I was very used to working independently.
We become very used to working independently.
And if there is any attention paid to collaborations,
because you have one, you're working with someone else,
you typically follow the lab culture
or figure out the rules as you go.
It's not something that needs to be defined very explicitly.
Our goal today is to introduce frameworks
for working collaboratively in business environments.
And the reason I think it needs to be
a little bit more defined and specific
is because business environments and academic environments
require very different soft skills to succeed.
I can tell you that I personally,
when I was approached about doing this course,
I thought about if I could go back in time
and tell my 15-years-younger self what I would want to know,
these are the skills that I would want to know.
Being smart and analytical is table stakes
in the business world.
Most people are smart enough and analytical enough,
and just adding a little bit more smarts
or a little bit more analytical
is not really what's gonna put you over the top.
What will put you over the top is your ability
to work well with others and influence decisions.
So again, this is what I wish that I had known,
and I'm hoping that it will be useful to you, as well.
So to compare and contrast the collaborative needs
of the business environment versus the biotech environment,
in order to do anything in a biotech environment,
launch a drug, launch a diagnostic,
launch any kind of product,
you're going to need to have a deep collaboration
between deep functional experts:
Scientific, regulatory, clinical, and commercial
in order to meet business goals.
You can't do it all yourself,
and it's necessary to work well with other people
in order to achieve this very complicated goal
in a very highly regulated industry.
Conversely, in academia,
collaborations between labs are important.
They help individuals meet career goals
in terms of publishing, tenure, and grants,
and it helps further overall scientific knowledge.
But there is very little where you are crucially dependent
on that other person in order to execute or meet your goal.
Okay, so first, how do you communicate effectively?
How do you get your message out there?
Business etiquette for verbal
and written communication is different.
First of all, brevity is prized.
It's important to be able to get it
out there sort of succinctly.
Secondly, it's always good to lead
with your recommendations, your conclusions, your asks.
Don't bury it underneath a whole lot of detail,
because it might get lost.
Thirdly, in terms of detail,
it's necessary to build out detail for the right audience.
Alright, in business formal presentations,
you are going to want to lead and end with a conclusion.
I'm gonna give an example here,
which is going to be based on an in-licensing project.
Let's say you're working for a company
and you've been assigned to be a member of a deal team,
which is charged with advising the business
about whether or not they should in-license this drug,
spend millions of dollars.
So for your final presentation
which you're giving to the vice president,
who's gonna recommend to the board
to pursue this deal or not,
you are gonna start with your recommendation.
In-license Drug X because it will rapidly become profitable.
Then you're gonna have the elements,
the data that back up your recommendation.
NASH affects two to 3% of the population.
Well, it's pretty common, okay.
Current treatments are largely ineffective.
Oh, so there's an unmet need.
This drug meets that unmet need,
and we did some physician research,
and it's estimated to reach 50% share by 2023.
Oh, this product profile is attractive to physicians.
And lastly, we've done revenue and cost projection,
and they show a positive net present value,
so it'll be profitable.
Then again, you end with in-license Drug X
because it will rapidly become profitable.
You should compare and contrast this
with a scientific paper.
In a scientific paper, you start with
the context, the introduction.
Then you move on to the data,
and then you move on to your methods.
And it's only at the very end
you get to what you actually think the data means.
You need to flip that on it's head
to be effective in this context.
Alright, the tricky part can be
giving the right amount of detail for the stakeholder.
You know, we scientists love data.
Data is very comforting and beautiful,
and we like to give it all.
But the truth is is that not every person needs to know
the data all the way down to the bottom.
The level of detail is gonna be
less for a senior decision maker
and more for your working team partners.
The decision makers really need
to understand the conclusions.
You're recommending that you buy the drug,
50% of patients will get it, and the risk around that.
Well, we said two to 3% of the population.
What are the chances that we're wrong
and it's really 0.2% of the population?
Or what are the chances that physicians said 50%,
but really it's gonna be five?
Because that would really massively impact
the profitability of your in-licensing deal.
Conversely, the working team really probably needs
to understand on a more deep level your methodology
so they can pressure test it.
You've read all these epidemiology studies,
why did you settle the two to 3%?
There's actually some variability.
An example, a scientist on the team, for the working team,
they might need to say, in the working team context,
we've put Drug X through these
five different kinds of assays,
and in this type of assay, this type of assay,
and this type of assay,
it showed between 30 and 40% reduction of this enzyme.
In these other two assays, it didn't work as well,
but there's some reason to think that those assays
might not be the most effective,
and here are the reasons why.
The VP does not need to hear all that.
Instead, if the VP says,
Do you think this is gonna work, scientist?
You could say something like,
we've put the drug through a lot of different assays,
and although there is some variability,
we do believe with some confidence
that it has a real chance of being effective in humans.
I like to use a term,
if you are faced with a senior stakeholder
and you don't know how much detail to use,
with peeling the onion.
Start with the top layer and see if it's enough.
If they don't ask any questions, you're probably good.
That's probably enough detail.
If they ask a question, peel away one layer
and add a little bit more and a little bit more.
You probably want to have three or four levels prepared,
and for the first few layers you might want to have
some backup slides or some backup data
that you've committed to memory
so you can answer that question fluidly.
But don't give it all at once because the message
is gonna be lost and you're gonna get a reputation
as someone who kinda can't see the forest for the trees.
It's something that, when working with people
who've made the transition from
the scientific world to the business world,
it's something that we all say,
oh, she communicates like a scientist,
a lot of data, a lot of information right away.
And it's something that we, and I include myself in this,
have tried to get away from,
to be more effective communicators in this environment.
Okay, so I'm gonna give some examples here.
So let's say we're still talking about NASH,
how much detail do you want to give?
Okay, you're decision maker here in this case,
let's say it is the vice president who's in charge
of recommending to the CEO to buy this company or not.
So for your decision maker you say
NASH affects an estimated two to 3% of the population.
By contrast, in your working team,
you've probably read a lot of epidemiology studies,
and the estimates vary pretty widely from one to 10%,
but you've decided to go for this two to 3%
because those are the higher quality studies.
And you'd also want to know with your working team,
what are your criteria for a high quality study?
Because your working team is probably
gonna pressure test that with you.
And again, you should know this level of detail,
because the decision maker might ask,
how risky is that two to 3% population?
I see the word estimated.
There might be some uncertainty here.
Another example for market sizing,
you've done some market research
and you've learned that Drug X meets an unmet need
and it's estimated to reach 50% share by 2023.
So you've done some market research.
How many physicians?
What was your methodology?
Was it quantitative, was it qualitative?
Did you call them up and talk to them?
Did they fill out an online survey?
Did you show them a target product profile?
All of these sort of details are things
that the working team is gonna need.
But that senior decision maker
probably doesn't need to know.
Looking at an example in the therapeutic aspect,
decision makers might need to know
current treatments are limited to weight loss.
Your working team might need to know,
okay, well does weight loss work?
They need to lose three to 5%
of body weight to improve liver enzymes,
but 10% to improve inflammation.
Probably a little too much detail for your decision makers,
but this level of detail might help the working team
understand what the level of unmet need is.
How hard is it to lose three to 5% versus 10%?
It'll help you to understand how well current
prescriptions are working in this disease area.
Lastly, financial.
Decision makers probably want to know
revenues and cost projections, showing a positive NPV.
Whereas, your working team probably
has a more detailed financial model that involves
discounted cash flow, what all the interplay is.
Again, the decision maker doesn't need to know that,
but your working team probably does.
And you should know the answer when the decision maker says,
what kind of discounted cash flow are we using these days?
Okay, moving on to email etiquette.
I did want to put something in here
about email etiquette because we send a lot of email.
It does depend on the company.
This is really context dependent.
Because we did talk about brevity,
I think a good rule is to try to get
the message on a single screen,
and if it starts going beyond that,
maybe you need a phone call or a meeting
to discuss it in more depth.
You're gonna want to match your company style
for salutations and sign offs.
Some companies are more formal
and have dear and thank you at the end.
Some completely dispense with that.
So really depends on what environment you find yourself in.
I do think it's usually good,
similar to all types of communication,
to lead with your conclusion, your ask.
Be careful about bolding or underlining.
It's the same thing as communicating on the internet.
You can't read the intent, so you should
be careful about how it comes through because
bolding, underlining, caps can come across as rude.
If you do get one of those bolded,
underlined, all-caps emails,
it's best to assume positive intent.
It's tricky to read intent through email,
so try to always presume that the other person
is trying to communicate effectively and politely.
I did want to give you a sample email.
This is an email requesting an informational interview
to learn more about industry research.
So you can see, as we discussed,
the ask is about 2/3 of the way through the interview,
and it's bolded and underlined.
This email is relatively clear, but it's not ideal.
If someone's scanning through their email,
they might go to, my name is Rita ...
It might not land the way you intend, which is that,
okay, well what does this person want from me?
They have to read through the whole paragraph
to get to the second paragraph to get to what the ask is.
Instead, consider putting the ask up front.
That way, you don't need to bold or underline,
and it sort of leaps out at first.
And hopefully if the person is available,
then they can read the rest of the email
and get a little bit more context.
Okay, next I'd like to talk about
structures for working together.
Remember that we talked about it's necessary to have
a lot of collaboration between very deep functional experts
in order to achieve business goals.
So sometimes it can be helpful
to formalize those structures.
If you do formalize these frameworks, it helps to increase
communication, clarification of boundaries,
agreement on tasks, who's gonna do what,
the cross-functional view of the team,
and inclusion and transparency.
Everybody knows what they're supposed
to be doing and how to work together.
And it decreases misunderstanding, duplication of efforts
which can be very costly in terms
of time and effort and just energy,
and poorly consulted decisions.
You want to make sure that all the pieces
are moving correctly together.
One framework that we use a lot
and I've seen used elsewhere, is the RACI framework.
And RACI stands for Responsible,
Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.
So responsible means, who will be doing the task?
Who is assigned to work on that task?
So for our NASH example, this might be the market researcher
who is assigned for designing and executing
the market research study among physicians to find out
how much use is this drug going to get.
Or it might be the clinician who's assigned to calculate
the clinical trial enrollment rates in order to determine
how long the thing will take to get to the launch phase.
And again, it's really important
to define who's responsible for what,
because it's absolutely crucial
that you don't duplicate efforts.
There's enough work to be going around,
so it's very important to say, okay, who is doing what?
Accountable, this is sort of violently phrased,
but who's head will roll if this goes wrong?
Who has the authority to make a decision?
In our NASH example, there might be,
for the in-licensing work, there might be a deal team head
who's gonna work with the market research expert,
the clinical or therapeutic expert,
the regulatory expert, the scientific expert
and pull together all of those view points
to create the overall recommendation to the VP.
Conversely, the accountable person could be the VP
who's making the recommendation to the board,
or the board who's releasing
the funds to do the in-licensing.
So again, there's many different ways
to be accountable, but it's good to define
accountability at all of those levels.
Again, because that person is in charge.
Consulted is someone who can tell you more about the task
or any other stakeholders who've already been identified.
So again, in our NASH example,
if you're building an epidemiology model,
there might be an internal expert in epidemiology
who can help pressure test your methodology.
Similarly, there might be a deep therapeutic expert
who has information about NASH that would be good to consult
to help inform your market research study.
Lastly, informed is anyone whose work depends on this task
or who has to be kept updated about the progress.
So generally for in-licensing deals,
they tend to be a bit secretive,
so you're not gonna have a big informed list
while the project is going on.
But if the project is given the greenlight
and the pipeline drug is gonna be brought into the company,
obviously there's gonna be a bunch of people
who need to know about it:
The scientists who are gonna continue the research on it,
clinicians who are going to be running the clinical trials,
the pipeline marketing team who might start
doing some conference work to sort of look at
how we're gonna talk about this drug in the future.
Okay, next we're gonna be talking about influence.
I have been told that being influential
might be a little bit controversial
because is it being manipulative?
And I wanna tell you that being influential
is not the same thing as being manipulative.
I'd like to define it in a business context.
It's, yes, the power to influence
other people's thinking or decisions.
But a positive way to think about it
is using tools to surface good thinking.
So you're gonna make a really important decision
that could cost the company ...
In-licensing this drug is gonna cost the company
a lot of money, there's a lot of risk.
It could be great for patients,
it could turn out not good for patients.
This is a really important decision
that you're helping the company to make.
And you need to surface the best thinking
in all forms to make sure that the company
is well advised to make a good decision.
So two things to think about:
Presentation matters.
You can know your stuff more than anybody else in the room,
but if you can't communicate in a succinct
and influential way, then you're not gonna be
as successful as someone who can.
Another thing is that, inevitably when your trying
to influence a room to think through an idea,
you're gonna disagree with someone.
It is never a good idea to tell somebody
that they're stupid or wrong.
I do find that in an academic setting,
this sort of conflict around interpretation of data
can get really robust.
And I can get very robust when I'm arguing with someone.
But I've found that softening that
and asking questions rather than contradicting
has been much more effective since
I've moved into the business world.
Okay, so key commonalities of good influencing behavior.
Always assume positive intent,
even if the other person is being combative.
Let's say you're arguing with me over something,
always assume that I have positive intent, right?
Attempt to find a common goal.
The common goal could be, in our NASH example,
we really want to make sure this presentation
to the VP goes well so the company can make a good decision
about whether or not to in-license Drug X.
If we are having an argument, it's good to ask questions.
Approach with curiosity rather than judgment.
Sometimes people have good reasons
for thinking the way they think.
And if you ask questions, they're gonna both feel
engaged to resolve the conflict with you
and also potentially surface something
that might change what you think, which is always useful.
The last thing is to appropriately signal ambiguity.
Someone who walks in there and says,
this is the way it is, my way or the highway,
it's not necessarily ...
it's not gonna give you very much credibility.
So an example of a conflict:
When the RACI isn't enough, when you have
all of your roles and responsibilities defined,
but you have a little conflict because you have six weeks
until the big NASH presentation to the VP.
Your clinical colleagues need four weeks to estimate
launch timelines and develop a clinical profile for Drug X.
You need four weeks to run market research
for the clinical profile and develop a revenue forecast.
What do you do?
Well obviously you have to influence your colleagues,
because you don't have eight weeks, you only have six weeks.
And you're gonna have to figure this out together
and come to that presentation on week six
with a great presentation that helps inform the decision.
So again, you gotta influence.
Always assume positive intent,
your clinical colleague is not out to get you,
and your clinical colleague does not want you
working all nights and weekends while they take it easy.
You have to attempt to find a common goal.
An easy one is we both want this presentation to go well.
Most people want to look good at work.
And then there's always the higher business purpose
of helping the company make a good decision,
helping patients.
Ask questions.
Again, approach with curiosity rather than judgment.
What part is most time consuming for you?
And appropriately signal ambiguity.
This takes four weeks, but perhaps we can
front-load work and get it down to three.
It's tough, but doable.
And if you both signal that your willing to give,
then you can hopefully come to a compromise
that works for everybody.
One thing I wanted to put in here is talking
a little bit about style and ways to be influential.
I think sometimes we scientists believe
that the business world is full of extroverts
and the science world is full of introverts.
In my time in business, I found that people
can be influential and effective
regardless of introversion and extroversion.
I would find that the skill that you really need
is not necessarily being able to talk,
to persuade, to be a fast talker,
although persuasion is helpful,
but the real crux of it is listening.
You need to figure out where the other person is coming for.
And that is gonna be the foundation
and the key for being influential.
It helps you to tailor your message to the concerns
or the style of the person your trying to influence.
So again, this is not about introversion or extroversion.
It's about being able to listen and be attuned
to whoever else is in the room.
Okay, we're moving on now to feedback.
What's the purpose of feedback in a business context?
It can improve working relationships
and drive teams to perform better.
And again, because you're working
with these people day in and day out,
your relationships with them are really crucial.
Okay, here's one tool that I found really helpful
for giving and receiving feedback.
We just call it SBR.
Let's say that you met with the VP,
and the presentation didn't go very well.
He asked some questions and you actually didn't know
why you had chosen the two to 3% for the epidemiology
for the prevalence of the disease.
Your manager or colleague might give feedback like,
there's this meeting where we needed to influence the CEO,
I noticed you weren't prepared
to answer that question about the epidemiology,
and the CEO didn't feel informed.
That is so much better than,
you were terrible at that meeting.
There's nothing that a person can do with this feedback.
It's not actionable.
So again, really linking the behavior to the results
and saying, okay well next time
I'm gonna prepare differently.
I'm gonna make sure that I know
several more layers of that onion so I'm really ready
to advise the business to make a good decision.
I will say that not everybody is great
at using this type of framework and kind of
taking a little bit of the passion out of it.
If you don't receive feedback this way,
if you're working with someone who's just not good
at giving you good feedback, reframe it yourself.
Try to make it SBR.
And that way you're gonna be able
to coach yourself to get better over time.
Some resources you might want to consider
are the "Strategy4Scientists" podcast,
and then there are a couple of books
on communication and influencing that I found helpful,
including "Crucial Conversations"
and one called "Non-Violent Communication."
And just a reminder,
the skills you need to collaborate well
are active listening and good intent negotiation.
So okay, by now you should be able to
identify effective business communication etiquette,
define structures for working together,
explain ways you can be effectively influential,
and understand the purpose of feedback
in a business context.
Thank you so much, and I hope that this will be useful
for you as you go forward in your career journey.