Power Skills Fuel Leadership Success

Leadership in the changing life sciences landscape requires a combination of adaptability, innovation, ethical decision-making, global awareness, and a focus on talent and diversity. These skills demonstrated by executives in life sciences companies have led to great progress amongst others in gene editing, rapid development of mRNA vaccines, rare disease research, and AI. Today, leaders who can navigate these complexities will be well-positioned to drive their organizations toward success in the dynamic and rapidly evolving life sciences sector.

No sector exemplifies this more clearly than the CDMO sector.

CDMOs are now shifting towards service provision, catering to a diverse customer base increasingly comprising smaller biotech companies. This shift, like many other life sciences sectors, necessitates a strategic re-evaluation of leadership and operational models. CDMOs are undergoing a rapid transition from manufacturing to service-oriented models. This shift is driven by the need for advanced manufacturing capabilities to support innovative vaccines and therapies.

The change in customer base from large pharmaceutical companies to smaller biotech firms has further reshaped the industry, with an estimated 73% of life sciences companies now preferring CDMOs over in-house production requiring CDMOs to integrate operations earlier in the drug development process, altering partnership models, and adopt new service paradigms. This necessitates a change in the mindset regarding the skills sought in leaders, as the service model significantly differs from the conventional in-house approach.

The evolving nature of talent acquisition requires that life sciences companies adopt innovative hiring strategies. These should effectively measure 'power skills' (previously known as soft skills), in addition to specific functional competencies, especially for service roles. To thrive in the new CDMO era, leadership teams must be versatile, capable of navigating challenges, and foster innovation and teamwork.?And, the combination?of power skills, aligned with the organization's strategic goals is essential to these leadership roles.

To support life sciences talent acquisition teams in identifying the best talent with "power skills" for their situation, we have integrated two existing assessment tools, creating a new and powerful recruitment tool that blends foresight, strategy, and diversity to address the unique challenges and opportunities in the life sciences industry. Firstly, the Wardley Map is used to map out a value chain which represents the sequence of activities or components that contribute to delivering value to customers.

For instance, in the CDMO sector, we have arbitrarily divided these into three groups:

1. Frontier Medicine CDMOs, the emphasis is on visionary leaders proficient in unstructured innovation and continuous improvement.
2. Established Biologics CDMOs, the requirement is for leaders adept at balancing structured and unstructured problem-solving, with a focus on technology leadership, client relationships, and collaboration.
3. In small-molecule manufacturing CDMOs, the emphasis shifts to leaders with a structured innovation approach, prioritizing operational efficiency, cost-saving strategies, and strong negotiation skills.

?Given the complexity of global CDMO operations, some organizations may adopt a hybrid strategy encompassing elements from all three scenarios. This approach increases the demand for diverse leadership skills and innovation styles, emphasizing the convergence of diverse perspectives around common goals.

The Wardley Map overlaps with the KAI assessment tool, which provides robust insights via a pure numerical value into a leader’s innovation style: how they prefer to navigate and contribute to problem-solving and change in their work environment. Different leadership positions require a different style for optimal performance.

Leveraging cognitive diversity isn't new; our approach's potency lies in its nuanced appreciation of cognitive diversity and its impact on organizational success being aligned with corporate strategy. Want to identify how our recruitment process can help your company find the leaders necessary to get you to where you want to go??Contact us for more or to read the Chase Partners LLC Whitepaper click here: CDMO Leaders, Making the Right Move