Leadership

In many of the lead­er­ship courses I’ve at­ten­ded, the in­struct­ors have de­clared: “Every­one is a lead­er.”

I’ve al­ways quietly rolled my eyes. It sounds like a quaint phrase with no mean­ing, de­signed to in­spire middle man­agers to keep try­ing to climb the lad­der.

But.

I’ve re­cently real­ized that if there is a single driv­ing philo­sophy in the or­gan­iz­a­tion­al mod­el that we are at­tempt­ing to cre­ate in NITAS, that is it. We are try­ing to em­power, en­able, and in­spire every­one to be a lead­er.

Maybe this sounds like chaos, in­san­ity, or man­age­ment-speak…. so here are some ex­amples of what I mean.

If you are a pro­ject man­ager:

  • You are driv­ing a sched­ule, run­ning meet­ings, co­ordin­at­ing is­sue track­ing, com­mu­nic­at­ing to stake­hold­ers, dig­ging in­to and resolv­ing prob­lems, and mon­it­or­ing and al­loc­at­ing re­sources. This is hard stuff, and it is im­port­ant. This is pro­ject man­age­ment.
  • How­ever - ima­gine you see a huge prob­lem com­ing your way and when you step in to un­der­stand it, you real­ize that it is hap­pen­ing due to fail­ing policies or to op­er­a­tion­al chal­lenges in some oth­er team upon which you are de­pend­ent.
  • If you raise vis­ib­il­ity of those prob­lems to the people re­spons­ible, if you make sug­ges­tions for im­prove­ments in their space based on your ob­ser­va­tions, if you help them un­der­stand how and why to change, if you ad­apt and learn and change your pro­ject based on what you have seen - that is lead­er­ship.

If you are a help desk tech­ni­cian:

  • You are re­spond­ing to calls from users, you are guid­ing them through the res­ol­u­tion of their prob­lem, you are cheer­ful and help­ful, you are listen­ing care­fully to what the user is ask­ing and solv­ing more than the prob­lem they de­scribe, you are doc­u­ment­ing the prob­lem so that it can be tracked. This is hard stuff, and it’s im­port­ant. This is ser­vice.
  • If, how­ever, you also re­cog­nize a pat­tern in the calls, if you make sug­ges­tions to those who man­age the serv­ers or the doc­u­ment­a­tion, if you cre­ate in­struc­tions for all users and make those widely avail­able, if you ad­voc­ate for the changes that make a dif­fer­ence, such that the core prob­lems are even­tu­ally ad­dressed and the prob­lem is re­solved for all users - that is lead­er­ship.

If you are a soft­ware de­veloper:

  • You solve an in­ter­est­ing and chal­len­ging prob­lem in your code - that is en­gin­eer­ing. If you do it in a way that oth­ers can use - lib­rar­ies, doc­u­ment­a­tion, power­ful APIs - that is great en­gin­eer­ing. It is hard stuff, and it’s im­port­ant.
  • If, how­ever, you also look at the code chal­lenges that oth­ers are try­ing to solve, if you ad­apt your solu­tion to fit their needs, if you cham­pi­on the ad­op­tion of that solu­tion in vari­ous for­ums, if you strive for in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity, if you teach oth­ers how to use it for the bet­ter of all - that is lead­er­ship.

When I set ob­ject­ives for NITAS:

  • I or­gan­ize our teams to de­liv­er on those ob­ject­ives, al­loc­ate re­sources, re­view pro­gress, com­mu­nic­ate, de­liv­er on prom­ises - that is man­age­ment. Man­age­ment is hard and im­port­ant.
  • How­ever, if I ad­apt our plans and stra­tegic dir­ec­tions based on chan­ging pri­or­it­ies from our cli­ents, if I work with my peers and our or­gan­iz­a­tion to re­solve prob­lems and to change sys­tem dy­nam­ics and dir­ec­tions in the com­pany or the in­dustry that are out­side of my con­trol, if I step bey­ond the safety of top-down driv­en man­age­ment, if I hear from our as­so­ci­ates that we are fa­cing chal­len­ging bar­ri­ers to ex­e­cu­tion with­in NITAS and help them un­der­stand the dir­ec­tion we all need to go while also mak­ing changes based on what we all learn - that is lead­er­ship that I as­pire to achieve.

If you are an in­form­at­ics ex­pert, de­ploy­ing and sup­port­ing sci­entif­ic soft­ware:

  • You work with sci­ent­ists every day, you listen to their chal­lenges and strive to un­der­stand their per­spect­ive, you design solu­tions that solve their prob­lems, you re­solve prob­lems that come up con­tinu­ally.
  • This is al­most al­ways hard, and is at the very core of what we do. If, how­ever, you also dig in­to the lit­er­at­ure to ex­tend your un­der­stand­ing of the con­text, if you look at chal­lenges and prob­lems across NIBR out­side your ini­tial fo­cus, if you work across the in­form­at­ics teams in NITAS and in the sci­ence orgs to de­vel­op an ap­proach with oth­ers that they can lever­age, if you have the cour­age to make us­age re­com­mend­a­tions that help the sci­ent­ists fun­da­ment­ally change how they work with the new tools, if you see places where we as an or­gan­iz­a­tion are chal­lenged and ad­voc­ate for those sci­ence-fo­cused im­prove­ments - that is lead­er­ship.

What is it about each of these that ex­em­pli­fies lead­er­ship?

  • It is re­cog­niz­ing a prob­lem that is out­side of your dir­ect sphere of re­spons­ib­il­ity, step­ping in, tak­ing own­er­ship, as­sert­ing a dir­ec­tion, and get­ting that prob­lem re­solved while bring­ing along the oth­ers in­volved.
  • It is do­ing it with them, not des­pite them.
  • It is not ig­nor­ing the sys­tem, but it is work­ing with­in and around the sys­tem to im­prove the sys­tem for all.
  • It is stretch­ing your un­der­stand­ing to em­path­ize with someone else’s per­spect­ive, then de­vel­op­ing a new ap­proach that is the syn­thes­is of both.
  • It is us­ing your ex­pert­ise, some­times bey­ond your com­fort zone, to ex­pand your sphere of in­flu­ence to solve big­ger prob­lems for the im­prove­ment of the over­all or­gan­iz­a­tion or the achieve­ment of lar­ger goals.

Not every­one in NITAS feels en­abled to work like this - yet. We have cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers and tra­di­tion­al, top-down ways of work­ing that are dif­fi­cult to over­come. We’re all learn­ing.

We are here to sup­port NIBR’s mis­sion to bring crit­ic­al new ther­apies to pa­tients in need. In­form­a­tion and in­form­at­ics are es­sen­tial and stra­tegic en­a­blers at the core of drug dis­cov­ery with the ca­pa­city for com­pet­it­ive ad­vant­age. The people of NITAS are mak­ing a big dif­fer­ence. We can do more and we can do bet­ter. The most power­ful and pro­duct­ive change that we can make, as an or­gan­iz­a­tion, is for each and every in­di­vidu­al to take on this lead­er­ship chal­lenge.

Let’s step up to that next level.

Lead.