Transcript of Interview with Neil Radford, Head of Operations Medical Developments International

Neil Radford Simon Hinds

(1) Mastering Transformation Programs in Diverse Industries: Lessons from a Versatile Leader | LinkedIn

Simon:

So welcome to our first interview with somebody for #SidehustleSunday on our first article about transformation - What makes them effective?

I'd love to introduce my first guest, Neil Radford. Neil tells us a little bit about yourself.

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Neil Radford

I've been in the Pharmaceutical industry about 27/28 years now, starting off with GSK, worked at sites around the globe working in mostly quality type roles, contributor roles, and senior leadership. I moved into a role in Singapore where it was interesting to read through your article and thinking about transformation. You had the Biff Tannen comment “there's something familiar about all this”

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And I think back to when I was at the site in Singapore with a small company that GSK had acquired to try to bring them up to GSK standards. I then moved into a similar type role in Argentina where again it was an acquisition company to help bring them up to a better standard and bring them into the fold. I then moved to Australia, where I took up a more senior leadership role at one of the sites here.

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I in the past year and a half, I've moved into a local company here in Australia, Medical Developments International. They're pretty well known for the iconic Penthrox green whistle.

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It's been a great journey for me. The company I'm at now is in a growth phase. Very exciting to be part of that kind of journey linking into some of the key aspects of transformation that you've identified.

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I've really been able to put these concepts into practice as I've tried to help them grow and build a team around me. I've stepped into a role as Head of operations, so I have quality, production, engineering, supply chain functions underneath me.

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It’s about bringing those teams together and helping drive towards future success.

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Simon Hinds

Awesome. Thanks for that, Neil. So I am really privileged to have somebody with your depth and breadth of experience. It would be great to hear from you in that experience.

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Can you talk about some of the common things that you've seen in transformations?

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What types of transformations and what comes through working in all of those different countries and settings?

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Neil Radford

You know, there's always a cultural element that's different, and you have to take that into consideration. But I think in every situation that I've been in, there's always an element of really understanding the foundations.

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What's on the ground? What's your understanding of your data? Understanding the processes that are there, understanding the people and the capabilities that exist and, 9 times out of 10, recognizing that you have good people that want to do the right thing. It's about trying to build capability, build those teams, build strength and help give people the tools to grow, change and move forward.

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Simon Hinds

And I see you talk about building capabilities and building strengths is in the article that was published at the start of the month. It talked about 3 core capabilities and those 3 capabilities being visionary planning, data driven decision making and facilitative leadership. And we did a poll as well.

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What people thought was most important and what came out the most was facilitative leadership.

So in those capabilities, could you talk about what facilitative leadership means to you and your experience?

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Neil Radford

Well, if I'm to be honest with you, I'm not surprised that facilitative leadership scored the highest.

It tends to be what’s most visible with people that are involved in transformations.

It’s what you see, and I think the other aspects, the planning side, the understanding of your data and making good data driven decisions, are key foundational bits.

I think a strong leader understands how to bring people along on that journey, be able to translate what that data set says, and help people understand what good looks like. I think in a lot of cases that's sometimes the gap.

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People have not necessarily had the same kind of shared experiences you bring, when you bring new people to the table. It's just like with MDI where I work now. The Board and senior leadership team has, over the last couple of years, done a great job to really reinvigorate the senior leadership team.

And you bring a lot of people with a lot of good ideas from lots of different companies and industries. And with facilitative leadership, I think it comes down to helping people see what the vision means. What does the goal look like, and then giving them the tools to get there.

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Simon Hinds

It is really interesting to see that experience you've got at MDI, because, for me, that looks like facilitative leadership It's getting those strengths and skills in, facilitating that unlock from people, in a transformation.

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Because what makes successful transformations is everybody working at top of scope, being able to bring all of their skills through facilitative leadership.

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For me, it is a knowing what those skills are and creating that right recipe. And it's interesting. Then you talked about the things that have to happen before. Having a vision or visionary planning and then making the right decisions with data.

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Could you speak a little bit around visionary planning? Where have you seen that done really well and what were the elements that made it really good?

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Neil Radford

Where I've seen it work really well is when you have a goal in mind that is digestible. What I mean by that is something that is not overly complicated.

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So, it could be a financial goal. It could be a cost of goods goal. It's something that everybody from the top of the organization, to the bottom of the organization, can understand and get behind and something that everyone can see : “How does my job, my role, how does what I do every day contribute to that goal”

I think it’s about keeping it simple, right? KISS principles.

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Simon Hinds

I always wonder about the financial goals, because who benefits from that? And have you seen great examples of where that link to how I personally benefit as an operator - somebody's a bit lower from the leadership.

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Leadership get a benefit out of a corporate financial target. Have you seen some examples where that to really worked well?

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Neil Radford

Yeah, I think so. You probably heard the term balanced scorecard, right?

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Simon Hinds

Yes.

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Neil Radford

It is about translating things around cost to a broader benefit. If I do things smarter, more efficient, more effective, can I make improvements in safety and quality and performance?

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You can drive improvement in costs and not necessarily have to put it right in in your face that that's your overarching goal. It's about doing things better, making the business better, being more effective as a whole.

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It may mean taking waste out of a process or making someone's job easier for them and making them able to free up time for personal development. Other types of things are going benefit them as well. I think it's something that from a messaging perspective, is really important.

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And at the end of it, its about reward and recognition. Rewarding people for being engaged, getting involved, no matter how small the gain. Every little improvement is important and recognizing people for it is key.

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Simon Hinds

Thanks for that. So we talked about Balanced Scorecard and I wonder whether that starts speaking about data driven decision making. We hear a lot about data and how much it's changing or influencing what we do every day.

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And it'd be great to hear about your experience with data driven decision making over that quarter century of a career. From what it was to where it is now and how data driven decision making in transformations has played a part through that quarter century.

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Neil Radford

It's a really good question.

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If you think about where things have come from - very, very paper driven systems to spreadsheets and now really sophisticated ERP systems.

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And now you are on the cusp of things – this is starting to show my age - like AI which younger people probably understand better than me.

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But, it's about the sophistication that has allowed us to move transformation at a certain pace, being able to access data quicker. It's about establishing your baselines, really.

And I think where, in the old days especially, or working in different countries, if and when things aren't as sophisticated, you have to make sure you really have digged deep into your data.

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Sometimes it's language barriers. Sometimes it's if things are very paper based, that may mean the assessment phase of your transformation might be a little bit more intensive. Maybe it also maybe helps frame how much you want to try accomplishing with a certain level of pace?

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Simon Hinds

OK. Thank you.

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I’m going to try to bring this to a conclusion. How do you react to that heavy weighting of facilitative leadership ahead of the other two? Did that give an insight of any sort? How did you feel about that result? You said it wasn't too surprising and, final thoughts on what that means to you as a leader of transformations.

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Neil Radford

People look at transformation and what makes it successful is how you bring people along on a journey. I think with the leadership piece to me it’s not surprising that it came out in front. It is because what really makes a big business and organizational transformation successful, it's not just about the one person, but the team you have around you.

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I think for me, if I think about every single time I've been involved in these types of things, its been the leadership piece. It's real easy to think about. There's an element of it, of leading workshops and leading from a contributor space.

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But it's also about you. You need to be able to lead and build. You need to build your change army around you. You need the right, likeminded people that can be used to move that transformation at an even quicker drumbeat.

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That's a big aspect of it. I think where people are successful, it's about pulling people in around you that see things like you do. They can see that vision and that can help you get there and get to whatever that vision is that you're going for.

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Simon Hinds

Great. And so final final question, final thought. What would you want in transformations of the future? In your next quarter century, what would you like to see in those transformation teams to make them even more successful?

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Neil Radford

I think it's about, as far as the team aspect and people involved, it's things like the technology: How can we use the technology we have now to help build a core knowledge of certain things.

Everybody talks about the tools and those processes that you use to gather your data and assess it and come up with potential solutions.

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I think we could leverage technology to accelerate that within those core group of people.

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And as you move around from industry to industry or company to company, you don't always have to start from scratch. There's more out there, there's a lot of resources available for people to understand how to get some of the basics going with what we're talking about here.

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How can you make tools more available to people, so those change agents are even stronger and ready to jump in when you need them and pull from them? It's building a network – having a network of change agents.

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Simon Hinds

It sounds like a democratization of knowledge in change management, which is, again, the goal of this series as well, Neil.

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Thank you for your time and thank you for being the premier guest on this effort that we're doing.

Thank you and speak soon.

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Neil Radford

Likewise Simon, really enjoyed it.