27 Jun 2018 Farewell

Learning

In look­ing back over my time here, I am full of grat­it­ude to the many won­der­ful people in this com­pany who helped me learn so much.

I learned how hu­mans have or­gan­ized them­selves to dis­cov­er new medi­cines (which is awe­some, when you think about it). I re­mem­ber that first “ok, you need to learn this stuff” meet­ing in early 2007… I think I asked a hope­less ques­tion about “screen­ing”, after which sev­er­al of the re­cently-ap­poin­ted IS leads looked at each oth­er, rolled their eyes, and dragged me off in­to a con­fer­ence room to spend a few hours at a white board to ex­plain what we do here. It took me many more years, but I even­tu­ally un­der­stood it well enough that I could ex­plain it to my kids.

The job taught me so many things that I had been curi­ous about. A few that come to mind: the rhythm and com­plex­it­ies of large-scale tech­no­logy ad­op­tion; what it’s like to lead a glob­al or­gan­iz­a­tion; why en­ter­prise IT is dif­fi­cult and mis­un­der­stood; how today’s huge com­pan­ies, the most power­ful forces on the globe today, make de­cisions and man­age them­selves; the up­sides and down­sides of com­mu­nic­at­ing trans­par­ently, and just how im­port­ant that is.

And then there’s the myri­ad of un­ex­pec­ted prac­tic­al things that you seem to learn every day… some of you will re­mem­ber a few of these, such as how to reply to those who Reply All, that one should avoid stay­ing in ho­tels in Basel in the week after Ash Wed­nes­day, which fonts not to use if you want to be taken ser­i­ously, nev­er to say “yeah, I feel pretty good about this audit”, … that list goes on and on.

One of the many things I love about NIBR is that if you don’t un­der­stand some­thing, you just have to ask someone who does, and they will al­most al­ways gladly share their know­ledge. I think I have taken that for gran­ted, but I sus­pect it’s one of the many up­sides of work­ing in a sci­en­tific­ally-fo­cused or­gan­iz­a­tion where people un­der­stand that we are all in this to­geth­er.

I will nev­er know how much I really learned here, but I can say without a doubt: it has been a tre­mend­ous and pos­it­ive learn­ing ex­per­i­ence.

Impact on Patients

Like­wise, I am full of re­spect and awe for those of you who, through a com­bin­a­tion of sci­ence, in­teg­rity, wis­dom, and sheer will, some­how man­age to bend the forces of nature to im­prove all of our lives. The fact that hu­mans can ap­ply what we dis­cov­er, through ex­per­i­ment­a­tion, to change our very bio­logy is im­press­ive. That we are able to form or­gan­iz­a­tions that are able to re­peat this mir­acle over and over - amaz­ing.

One of my many re­grets is that I have nev­er been able to quanti­fy or defin­it­ively state how much of an im­pact in­form­at­ics has had for our pa­tients or where we have made a dif­fer­ence for NIBR. That’s been on my to-do and/or wish list from year two. We have not found a prac­tic­al way to draw a line from an ac­tion taken in IT to dir­ect im­pact on a thera­peut­ic sold by No­vartis. We roll out and sup­port tools that al­low sci­ent­ists to make bet­ter and faster de­cisions. It’s dif­fi­cult to meas­ure the im­pact of tools on de­cisions. Also, frankly, I think that is simply the nature of be­ing in any en­abling or sup­port­ing or­gan­iz­a­tion: your con­tri­bu­tions are im­port­ant, but in­dir­ect. (I would love to be proven wrong.)

But, I also know - from an­ec­dotes told me by many sci­ent­ists, and from ba­sic ob­ser­va­tion - that my teams and I have played an im­port­ant part in the pro­gress and im­pact of NIBR’s sci­entif­ic groups. That simple real­ity has driv­en years of en­gage­ment and en­abled those of us for­tu­nate enough to work here to know that we are en­abling a bold and noble pur­pose. I am lucky to have had that op­por­tun­ity and grate­ful to the many people who made that pos­sible and have made a dif­fer­ence along the way.

Relationships

Upon re­flec­tion, I real­ize I have re­ceived a third ma­jor gift, in ad­di­tion to learn­ing and con­trib­ut­ing to an im­port­ant goal: I have had the chance to build many mean­ing­ful re­la­tion­ships with oth­ers. It’s happened in ways that go far bey­ond what I would have ima­gined.

One of the most im­port­ant things I learned here is that the in­di­vidu­als who con­trib­ute to our col­lect­ive suc­cesses mat­ter. Every­one cares, every­one has goals, every­one has a com­pel­ling story, every­one has a reas­on that they are here, every­one has a rich life bey­ond what you see in meet­ings. It’s easy to lose sight of in­di­vidu­als in the cor­por­ate world of mar­gins and met­rics… but it’s people who make the com­pany work, and at the end of the day, it’s the people who you’ve built friend­ships with that ac­tu­ally mat­ter to you… not the num­bers.

I wish that, through­out my time here, I’d gone out to NIBR’s ice cream so­cials with the team more times (and skipped more meet­ings). I wish I’d taken a few more pic­tures. I wish I’d heard just a few more stor­ies about why people are here, what mo­tiv­ates them, how they’ve over­come chal­lenges. As I look back over my time here, I’m par­tic­u­larly grate­ful for all those per­son­al mo­ments, and for all those ex­per­i­ences people shared with me. I look for­ward to re­main­ing in touch with people over time, hear­ing how your stor­ies play out, and con­tinu­ing to learn from you.

A Few Questions and Answers

I am blown away by all the people who have reached out to me in the last few weeks to wish me well, to thank me, or to re­mind me of a memory we share. So many stor­ies! I still haven’t been able to reply to then all. With some, where loc­a­tion and time al­low, I’ve been able to get to­geth­er in per­son to con­nect. That’s been great.

With most, though, that hasn’t been prac­tic­al. In some of these dis­cus­sions, some of the same ques­tions have come up. In the in­terest of an­swer­ing ques­tions that are likely shared by oth­ers I haven’t been able to talk to, I’ll provide some of those an­swers here.

Q: I heard you resigned partly for health reas­ons. How are you do­ing?

A: I ap­pre­ci­ate the con­cern I’ve heard from many of you. Yes, I had symp­toms of severe burn-out. NIBR lead­er­ship was ex­tremely sup­port­ive of my need to slow down and take a break. Since the an­nounce­ment, I’ve been able to breathe deeply and to start catch­ing up on ba­sic things like sleep. I’m do­ing a lot bet­ter now but have a long way to go for full re­cov­ery.

Q: What are you go­ing to do next?

A: At this point, I’m just fo­cus­ing on re­cov­er­ing. I’m look­ing for­ward to rid­ing my bike over the Alps again and back­pack­ing this Fall. As for work - I’ll tackle that ques­tion when I get to it but have no time­frame in mind right now.

Q: If you could go back in time to when you star­ted at NIBR and give your­self ad­vice, what would that ad­vice be?

A: Sev­er­al points:

• To re­peat my com­ment above: take more time to en­joy time with people, to take pic­tures, to build re­la­tion­ships; spend less time wor­ry­ing about the next ma­jor thing to get done.
• Spend more time in the labs, less time in the board rooms.
• Feed­back, feed­back, feed­back. My biggest re­gret as a man­ager is that I didn’t provide enough feed­back to people. One reas­on that I didn’t is that I of­ten think, “I might not be right about this; my feed­back needs to be 100% cor­rect be­fore I give it, be­cause I have to be able to de­fend it”. In real­ity, you don’t have to be cer­tain. You can say, “I may not be right about this, but here’s my per­cep­tion.” … and then provide that feed­back. That alone would get enough of the mes­sage through that someone would have a chance to act on it, if they chose. People need that feed­back to learn and to grow. I saw many places where early feed­back might have pre­ven­ted a head­ache later.
• Ask “wait a second, can you ex­plain that one more time?” a LOT. More than you think you need to. Amaz­ing what will come up.

Q: Any gen­er­al ad­vice for man­agers?

A: First, if you’re a new man­ager: buy in­to it, learn it, take it ser­i­ously. Don’t pre­tend you can con­tin­ue to be 90% tech­nic­al and just spend Thursday af­ter­noons do­ing that man­ager thing. In big or­gan­iz­a­tions, man­age­ment is the most im­port­ant skill in the com­pany, be­cause it’s the primary mech­an­ism that com­pan­ies use to com­mu­nic­ate, to de­cide, and to ex­ecute.

Second, we talked about it in the last NX Man­agers meet­ing I was at, in March. There’s a lot to be learned from a few good books and from each oth­er. I think the best prac­tic­al man­age­ment book out there is “The Ef­fect­ive Man­ager” by Mark Hor­st­man. It’s not 100% per­fect, but it’s close enough. Start from there, hit his pod­cast and re­com­men­ded books, and you’ll be in good shape.

Q: Any gen­er­al ad­vice, over­all?

A: Get enough sleep. I’m not kid­ding.

Bey­ond that - these kinds of ques­tions are of­ten about ca­reer pro­gres­sion. My ad­vice on that is: do a great job at what you’re do­ing now, treat oth­ers with re­spect, speak up, and keep learn­ing. If you do, then ad­vance­ment will come when the op­por­tun­it­ies arise. Or you’ll be pre­pared to make your own op­por­tun­it­ies, which hap­pens more in­side big com­pan­ies than you might guess.

Q: Any re­grets?

A: Of course. There are dozens of things I’d do dif­fer­ently. But those are ec­lipsed by all the things we’ve got­ten done. In the big pic­ture, I wouldn’t say I’m leav­ing with re­grets, just a lot of things learned.

Q: How can we stay in touch?

A: These days, the best way is prob­ably via Linked­In as an ini­tial con­nec­tion point.

… and thanks

It’s been a great ride. Thanks for all your sup­port through the years, and for all the pas­sion and care you bring to work every day. I wish you all the very best in your fur­ther ad­ven­tures, and NX and NIBR all pos­sible fu­ture suc­cess.

On­wards,

-r’m