Empower Your Life Sciences Business with Leads to Convert for Life Sciences

How to create outlook signature

the reality is in many respects today life sciences companies on selling products everything they're doing is selling service hello and welcome to episode 9 of the Regent podcast today's show is brought to you by one-point solutions the leader in u.s. lab design and construction my guests this week is Matt Wilkinson now has a PhD in chemistry as well as his MBA he led a company-wide ecommerce transformation at LGC and is now primarily a business consultant for life science and pharmaceutical firms we talk about leadership communication and organizational change in the sciences here's my interview with Matt so thanks for taking the time and thanks for hopping on the podcast thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be here for sure how's your week going so far it's been busy which is just the way I like it same here same here so figured I'd jump right into it I'm really curious to hear about your background so after you completed your PhD at the University of Bristol you headed right into research and Amsterdam can you walk me through what that decision was like I'm really curious to hear about what your options were at the time like someone who had just gotten a PhD and what was like the landscape for you what was the landscape for someone like that so I don't know what the landscape in general was my my decision to go to Amsterdam was was really based on the fact that I'd met several conferences a gentleman called professor Paul karma really really good Dutch guy and we joked about the dirty chemistry that I was doing most of my PhD was working with arsenic compounds interesting so he really likes that that kind of dirty chemistry and so that was that that got me invited over to an interview tube for a postdoc while I was there I I interviewed with Paul and I also interviewed with the gentleman that was going to be my boss for two years who was a gentleman professor Yosh Drake we got on really well but both of them kind of had a choice of two different projects that I could have worked on but it was all part of the same group under quite a renowned catalysis chemists called people even I really like the setup I really like the group it was just so phenomenally diverse in terms of country of origin you know the people there were just great and so it just was a no-brainer to go there so I I really only went for went for one one postdoc position and got it interesting and and so how did you actually get that that dirty chemistry as you call it interest in the first place did you like stumble into that or was that it was your focus in your PhD I think it was it was very much always the focus of my PhD but I think it's probably something that I inherited from my father who was also a chemist and spent a lot of his his PhD doing playing with some pretty nasty chemistry chemicals so when I then ended up playing with some pretty nasty chemicals it didn't it didn't really feel too too unusual to kind of the family line as it were Oh God so you're you're uh you come from a long line of chemists well a second-generation chemist yet nice cool so eventually you moved out of the research and into communications were you can you kind of talk a little bit about what shift happened where you you know stopped working at the bench and moved into the communication side of things sure so it's probably worth mentioning that my that my father had with my mom he was a PhD in biology had been running a publishing business for most of my upbringing so moving into communications wasn't necessarily a huge leap mentally Formula sort of course the work was very different but what what shall we say precipitated it was that while I was it moved back to the UK was working at University of Sussex and while I was there there was the University decided to try to close down the chemistry department and so there was a big fight by the chemistry department to to say you know it's to save the department something I was heavily involved in I ended up being quoted in Sunday Times along with my boss I did a little bit of political lobbying so I actually spoke to Boris Johnson that now prime minister who at the time was the the shadows the shadow secretary for higher education all other spoke to a number of different politicians as well God have invited along to a science select committee meeting and so it was quite heavily involved in in the campaign to to save the department and that really helped shape my vision that there was something more than me trying to do the really heavy lifting of being you know working behind a lab you know what behind the bench day-in day-out I love science still do but it takes it takes a special person to be able to really divide their entire life to discovery I realized that wasn't me and there was a different calling for me and so I have a lot of respect for people that can you know that can spend their whole lives trying to discover new things yeah that's great um and I think like just from what you've told me so far about your your work at LGC which i want to get into you know i want to talk about how you led that ecommerce transformation but what what kind of well what was your you almost had a second career building experience over a period of years to kind of you know build your cred and and build a good resume and and credentials in communications of marketing so what was that experience like you know going through your MBA and what was that this decision-making process like for you sure so one side left must've left the university Sussex I worked through a number of science and business journalism roles where I would be talking to you know PR companies I was talking to internal comms people and interviewing very often the CEOs of organizations so you know I was talking to the CEO of Adalind the number of times of the yeah I interviewed before he was the CEO of thermo interviewed Mark Casper who's now that the CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific and so I had spoken with quite a few of the real heavyweights across the industry been to big companies across the silks a life science tools providers pharmaceuticals and sort of say chemical industries and year after the 2008 recession as we started seeing those green shoots of recovery is everybody like to say at the time yeah I got I started getting really jealous of the companies that were you know being the real cogs of of that recovery and I wanted to be something a bit different that led me to to go off and do an MBA and retool myself and I'm skilled myself freer and when I came out I you know I kind of fell into the sorts of roles I didn't expect but I had a different different appreciation for them and how they fitted into the strategic landscape which was to be to move into more comms facing roles for a while side I worked as a number with a number of different organizations company and in the u.s. called artell making quality control and quality assurance instrumentation for testing the amount of the accuracy and precision of volumes dispensed I've worked with you know worked in a PR agency where I worked with a whole host of tech and life science organizations and and then from there that was when I then moved into to LGC interesting so you kind of you were almost building along with the current you know generation of leadership and the life sciences you know the people who are now the CEOs and and all that all that stuff that's really fascinating so - your time at LGC I know you you went over on a call we had last week a lot of principles that you were going over for like marketing automation and all that stuff and how that fit in so can you tell tell me a little bit about you know the overarching goal you had when you joined LGC and and what you ended up doing sure so what I'm doing the organization that I joined the genomics division and it was a little bit smaller than it is now it's been the company has been quite acquisitive over the the last few years and its really made it really started to make some real dense in the shall we say in the in the PCR and you know genomics world the the biggest the biggest challenge I was given really was to understand the the digital landscape thought that the organization played in so what actual digital real estate do we own at the moment that's partly because the there haven't been anybody owning the digital side of the business there also haven't been you know they've been lots of different acquisitions so website ownership was kind of spread out between different pockets of sheer estate legacy businesses and so it was my role to try to bring that together understand what was there and define a route to the future that's great I think what I think what attracted the organization to me was my ability to not only understand the tech at least in a high level I had grown up in publishing having to code my own you know mark up my own pages in HTML we've had to do a lot of lot on the web and when I've been on Windows a day like that's called SEO and everything old-school SEO before you had WYSIWYG editors and things like that so showing my age even more than my hair would do suit and or lack of it I should say but but also you know I've been doing a lot of installation of marketing automation systems inbound marketing and so really it was pretty familiar with the whole marketing tech space and so there was that side of it I understood the science has been playing in the genomics there for quite a while as a journalist and so there wasn't while I wasn't was never an expert there at least in the terms of being able to do the science that certainly was had it had a really broad overview of what was happening what the trends were what was important and then you had those two sides then of course I had the communication side which again was vitally important understanding what does a website need to do and then with the MBA of course the the ability to understand what does the business need how do you build a strategy how do you look you know how do you really define a future and then get the buy-in for that so that was kind of what that kind of pulled on the different strings that I was I was then pulling on as I went through that wrong great yeah I think I think you have a really interesting story because you know not only did you move from bench work to leadership but I'm sure there's a lot of people right now who maybe have just completed their PhD and are looking at the job market and a lot of them I bet have creative sides and have sides of them that they want to socialise and develop their communications angles so I almost I almost feel like that's gonna be a lot more common now that we have so many opportunities for sharing all this content and stuff like that absolutely I do feel that I was very lucky in that I mean I was like you know as I grew up the Internet was coming of age really you know it doesn't really till about the 2000s where you started having Wi-Fi starting to appear in various places now when I joined when I when I started the university we will give them email addresses but nobody really used them for anything that's of course completely change now to the Quizlet people don't use email addresses because they're more interested in using something like slack or messenger or whatsapp process and so you see that transition where it's something that was quite alien 20 years ago now is so commonplace people on using it anymore okay they have using email and if you look at kind of the myth surety of some of the the distributed teams that someone like Matt Mullenweg from automatic yeah at the company behind WordPress you know they put a amazing shout out yeah austin-based but they don't have any offices they've got about 1,700 employees based all around the world I think it's seven countries I think they're based across they don't own a single office space and they try not to use email in fact everything's you know trying to use what they call asynchronous communication on something like slack or other you know other other messaging tools that allow teams to communicate and you see that sort of shift away from or through different technologies to communicate between people and it's just been so fascinating to watch and be involved with and and it's still changing day-in day-out them yeah you know I I just have to look at the toolbar online on my Mac here and see the number of different communications apps that I have to close down when I'm joining a call like this Sam I was like when I when I had took a little time to hop on the call I accidentally shut off teams cuz like I don't need this and then idles you know quickly realized oh crap that's what we're doing this on and and I mean that that's very it's so true because I don't think we exchanged a single email besides sending you a calendar invite to get this entire thing set up and that's just testament it's it's open on LinkedIn and fire you know five incident cools to Chris : there you go networking 2020 absolutely cut you know and that was that was great curated cocktails what a fantastic idea getting to me you know getting to meet yourself Matt yeah on at all you know across the world and you know have a have a drink of whatever time of day it was and yeah it was like no p.m. my turn yeah yeah I and yeah for anyone listening who's in the life sciences or even not in the life sciences if you follow Chris Connor on LinkedIn big shout out you can hop on his some of his networking zooms that are fun so how much time do you have left because I got couple more questions for you Jeff what is money awesome so kind of circling back to the LGC and and just your leadership role there as well as you know the knowledge you've gained what would you say separates marketing and growth in the life sciences compared to other industries or marketing in general like what makes it unique so I think what makes it you know this a couple of things that make it unique but it's the the biggest one is the need to communicate directly with scientists you have decision-makers that have very specific needs and and you know the only equivalent marketplace out there or similar marketplace would be the engineering marketplace but they're quite different and really that's because of the use value that people get from the tools that they buy so if you look at you know if let's just take engineering typically if you go to any engineering magazine you will see articles about the latest semiconductor chips you know the latest technology is being used in connected cars things like that but that those are tools that engineers are specifying to go into a product that's being developed that's not something they really own so while they while that while they definitely take pride in what's delivered at the end of the day these are small components that go into a bigger hole whereas in a life sciences very often what the organizations are selling you know those magazines that are the product pages in those magazines are very much about the products that you use day-in day-out the services that you use day-out the things that are Nabal you to generate results and so there's a lot higher personal use value for those products I have never witnessed I just did some research during my MBA for one of the largest life science organizations in the world and you know I was in a pharmaceutical company doing some research and we were looking at the usage of particular analytical and I have never seen such brand loyalty as an argument between two of these jazz you know onerous a die-hard waters a tprc fan the other was a die-hard agilent hplc fan and ants - you know they they respected each other such as scientists but you know if you've ever seen the old Apple Android fanboy arguments that was nothing ed with this and I think that that just goes to show how much emotion gets tied up in some of those decision-making - how much branding really does play a role in the life sciences because people learn to trust the brand's the treatment world that give them the results that get them where they are in their career yeah and do you think the foundation of that is because these instruments they have such specific proprietary uses and you know ways of being used is it is it that you know Waters HPLC might differ in the actual day-to-day functioning and in terms of the knowledge you need to run it effectively or do you think it's more of like 80% of the branding and the loyalty and the overall experience so sometimes it's the functionality but you can look at I mean if you look at about that specific example yes waters had at one point jumped ahead with the launch of a PLC and then Agilent came back with you know higher and higher pressure ultra high performance liquid chromatography as they were calling it and so at that point really there was the two of the capabilities of the instrumentation was neck-and-neck it was I think that more it was down to the experiences that both of them had had in the years that they had had of implementing those different systems and once they brought in to a certain certain brand and developed the methodologies on this brands they knew them they trusted them and they knew how to you know they knew how to get out of them exactly what they needed and they also knew what was going to go wrong because that's facing any instrument is going to have a problem you know they need servicing they need looking for yeah but they were just so familiar with them that they knew how to look after them they knew how to get the most out of them and that was really it and and those brands had also taken them to the positions that they had got to and so that's where I think the brand loyalty really sits in and you know they were they knew that the salesman from unity of different organizations there was no issue there it was really just down to the history they had of them progressing their careers without an organization interesting this is something I see in our company it's like from a marketing perspective the quote-unquote bottom of funnel content is so so important compared to other industries like maybe software things like that where you know you get someone into a buying cycle you get them to subscribe start your product and then you have a library resources and a support agent they can reach out to from time to time but for the most part you're just getting them over that finish line whereas here the use cases can be so different and so intricate and technical that having a really robust support documentation you know technical documentation availability it's like so key absolutely and also I think it's the there's not just the technical support documentation but also the ability to speak to somebody that's going to help you that wants to help you there's willing to just willing to go the extra mile and it's not just selling product it's it's really helping transition a transition a process from being a concept through to a result yeah so the reality is in many respects today life sciences companies aren't selling products everything they're doing is selling service because all of it is in aid of something else it's not like you're buying you know if you buy a pencil you buy it you know you buy an item right but actually what you're what you're really doing is you're selling somebody the ability to - right and it's it's that transition that that I think a lot of life sciences companies have started to make in their marketing that really helped set them apart yeah it's it's you know people's whole livelihood and in many cases their entire personal mission is hinging on this one point solutions provides a free quote and design service will be elaborate or furnishing needs we specialize in custom manufacturing and have the shortest turnaround times in the industry connect with us at one point Solutions comm forward slash contact and speak with a design experts today so this is a good little segue so at LG see you did lead like quite an organizational change and you've talked to me you know separately about the legacy systems you mentioned they were acquisitive and you had combined data silos and and so like you have really strong experience there and you've seen that firsthand let it successfully and I think we're in a time right now where you know trade shows have been decimated like the way people purchase even in very technical b2b markets is changing entirely and and the way brands are rethinking content is data is changing entirely so what would you what would you say are your strategies for leading an organizational change Wow I mean that's a that's such a deep conversation that we could be here hours for some but but I think that the first thing is to look at what is the entire value chain of that of that of that change if we just take a simple CRM implementation you know less space to take and we'll call it simple but it because no implementation is ever easy you know a lot of people will think let's just this piece of software and we'll get the results of course to get the results from the software people have to be using it so that means that case when then we need to add some training when you do the training you then realize that you need to get the processes involved but you've still got to make sure you've got behavioral trainer to make sure that everybody's putting the right information into the system you know rubbish in rubbish out as they as they always say so what you really need to do is to look at what is the entire business objective get everybody to buy into the end goal paint that picture of what you're looking to achieve and why that's so important for the organization and then move that through that value chain and be able to help tell the narrative of how each of those individual actions really play a part in making the reality happen and that's that that's the crucial thing it's about spending an awful lot of time with the key the key people that are going to help champion your cause across the across the piece do you think what and so internally when you're trying to get buy-in if you if you maybe have a concept for how things can all come together how you can shift did you or were you up against any challenges in terms of the internal workings of the companies you've been at I think everybody always is yeah any change is difficult I think that the key learning I took from that experience was to you know to enable people to to be part of the solution and so that's not coming to them with hey guys let's just you know going up doing a load of you know as I read content listening and then giving them a solution it's getting them involved in the listening and then go away and work with individuals and get them to feel that they've put their mark into that into that plan yeah so you get them to feel that they're you know that each individual has a stake in that being a success and then as you're going through the process yeah there's still race challenges as intelligent people should and you want a robust planning to you know to be successful you want those challenges but you also want people to not just be shooting you down you want them to be coming up with okay here's a challenge how do we overcome it and you and if they then if you didn't include them in solving any of those that's how you absolutely move things forward yeah I think that's great you know it's easy to kind of either alienate people or say this departments the problem we that kind of being more proactive about it absolutely and if there is a problem in the department you know we feel there's a problem in department it's not necessarily the department that's the problem it's the fact that that department is probably very busy that you've not yet found or seat of an alignment between what's important to you and what's important to them and if you can find if you can find a lot a way to align your priorities and show that your you know show them what you'll do you know that the you know the project that you want to deliver actually is going to help them all of a sudden that gives them the impetus to help yeah that's great and you can really do that by listening and get a view left I think listening is like the biggest skill one can have nowadays in more scenarios than one yeah I'm outside of business as well first absolutely so one last like core area I want to talk about and this is something that you've like enlightened me to a little bit previously is the idea of ethnographic research and like really leveraging customer insights how people use products how people use brands and how businesses can do that in a systematic way so can you talk a little bit about your experiences with that sure so so ethnographic research is really sort of using the tools developed by anthropology and it's really about studying human beings in their own environments so rather than just creating a you know SurveyMonkey survey sending out and and asking questions that you get a very yes/no or being a binary style answer to what you're looking to get there is to go out and study people in their own environments and and probably the best the best example is going out and looking at what's important to an organization so if you walk into an organization you know an office building somewhere you know you might as you walk in you might see the car you know in a car park that you've got designated spots for the CEO right by the entrance as you walk in if you have you got the picture of the CEO meeting you know important politicians alternatively you might have a car park where there's nobody near nomarks boats you know might walk in and on the walls that just the pictures of the patterns or in a framed patterns that they've been awarded this the first one you can tell is a very hierarchical organization straightaway very much believing in the cult of the CEO as it were the second one very much is whereby knowledge is king and we're pattern set a value higher than anything else and as you then walk through those organizations there are key signs that you can see as to what's important to them what is you know what makes them tick and therefore what are some of the key things about those organizations and then as you walk into the environment in which they're using your product all of a sudden you can start seeing how they're using things you can start seeing how they how they're using them in ways that you never envisaged or that they're having problems and they're creating workarounds for and you can start seeing really the truth about how people operate and then if you even more telling if you can ask them questions about what they're doing as they're doing it any any differences between what they say and what they actually do shows a key point of cognitive dissonance which is a key area for innovation in the future yeah cuz the last time you could see you all of a sudden you can start seeing what are those gaps and you can start you know and if those gaps turn up time and time and time again you can you know you can really see that that that's enough you know an area for innovation there's a really interesting example of that from a company called me Ally that the went out did this type of research and saw that there was a specific group of people that when they were you know vacuuming their flaws they were clean and clean and clean maybe ten times they'd be going over the same spots um when they dug into that and really started to understand it it was because the people generally were allergy sufferers and they didn't know whether something was cleaning up so they kept going back over that same spot just to show that it was clean just to make sure it was and so what they did was a very simple innovation was actually to to get a little detector that they could put into the into the devote you know into the vacuum cleaner itself that will allow people to see when the dust had stopped you know when there was no more dust coming off the carpet or off the floor all the sudden that meant that they could they had an indication that the area that they just cleaned was clean and they could move on and that was quite life-changing for it you know a group of people that were very very you know scared of getting you know dust allergies sure something you never would have known if you hadn't shadowed them absolutely and so you can do you take that same approach into into the laboratory that's why you're starting to see people having the ability to look at instrumentation remotely from a phone make sure that things are still running and if they're if only if there are any problems can I reset it can I operate that remotely because now you might be the automation you might set up a process to run for 24 hours yeah oh you really want to know is that the process is working yeah and kind of on this topic it's not something I had sent you over a plan but what do you see like a strong up taking automation and virtual and kind of remote lab work in the next you know a couple decades is that I mean it definitely seems like almost a buzzword and and something that is slated to blow up but what do you think is really gonna happen there so about 10 15 years ago the the automated lab was a huge buzz topic it was it was everywhere people were creating you know massive combinatorial chemistry labs for Jeff discovering you know high throughput screening was everywhere and I think because people were just throwing almost any compound at any target and just trying to see what happened you know what what came out it kind of hit a bit of a snag and so people stopped wanting to to automate everything I think now where we're getting to is a smarter level of automation yeah where we automate the processes that are consistently the same where we automate those where we automate things that make sense to automate but also that we that we don't lose the the subtle art of science I think that's that there's a real quandary that people have here is that people may have spent years learning how to to manually handles materials you know they were very very you know science is a very tactile subject you know and very often it's an art form you know crystallization of a pure compound you know you sit there and you've you know you've got your solution and you really carefully just layer on top of it another layer of solvent that it's not quite as soluble in when you try not to disturb things you know it's you know if you imagine that they're making cocktails and if you've ever seen someone make enough to write where you've got three layers of you know different of different cocktails on it yes so much more this is so much more delicate and I think people enjoy that list that people you know scientists are often drawn to the app of those processes and I so I think that there's a reluctance to lose that but at the same time nobody wants to be sat putting sample after sample through an analytical much instrument yeah I think there is definitely like that muscular skeletal component of lab work you know it's a physical activity as much as it is mental one this is the postures you do the muscle memory you know and so I think that they there's there absolutely is that that that that balance but I think for you let's just let's look at something like covet 19 and that the sample testing who wants to test every single sample by hand we're looking at trying to get a hundred thousand two hundred thousand tests a week or a day yeah people want to run those on automating issues yeah for sure it's no longer like a blanketed idea but kind of using it in a more deliberate way interesting thank you for for sharing that that problem I mean I thought this that's there's a whole host of stuff that you could dig into and sort of the future of automation yeah I think one of the most interesting ones just just just a cover it is can you make it easier for people to for the instrumentation that you're using to keep a track of what you're using in the lab and then help you reorder so you know does it is it counting the number of plates you're running from it is it counting the number you know the amount of consumable the number of pipette tips its you know the instruments used yes if you start looking at those sorts of things it can make your life easier because you're not having to maybe keep as much stock it may be our allows you to you know have essentially an Amazon - button on the instrument itself that says hey yeah you're running out of this do you want to reorder yeah yeah yeah for sure cool so kind of wrapping up here a little bit I thank you for sharing all that I mean I've definitely I'm gonna come out of this with a lot of new ideas and and so the last couple questions I want to ask one is what's a book you've read recently that has had an impact on you whoo so probably the book I mean if we say recently it's gonna be a couple of years ago but the biggest joke that it it was it was a book by a gentleman called Ryan Holliday who the obstacle is the way and many to read him at some point he absolutely must especially now he's he's fairly local to you I believe in in Texas so he absolutely brilliant author I've read I think everything that he's written and he's a yeah great guy but that book was absolutely transformative in helping me see you know the challenges ahead in a different way yeah I know he's a big like and the stoic aspect and he's a big you know collaborator of Tim Ferriss I see you got some Tim Ferriss back there on your bookshelf I do in Ferriss holiday this is the book stuff so there you go the obstacle is the way the ancient art of turning adversity into advantage and it's been read by a number of you know sports teams as well of helping them with their mental you know the mental game I believe including the the Patriots and a few others probably well worth that well has anybody that that wants to look at challenges in the new way and finding those opportunities but interesting cool awesome and then what's a tool you've picked up recently that has improved your life could be like a peloton bike something in your house or maybe an app for work oh it's who trying to think of those and the most recent ones probably these these these airports actually that just give me a little bit more freedom when I'm speaking on this other cool thing I was looking I'm kind of like I'm dumb jealous I think I might need to invest in a pair I could I've got a mic set up separately that's connected but having that freedom to move about a little bit and not feel that I've tended to something it's a nice feeling what what kind of mic you using I have a blue Yeti night awesome yeah you sound pretty pretty nice quality it's gonna come out better than this this little guy awesome so so just to wrap it up if is there anything that you want to share or promote there's anything I want to share or promote Wow yeah so I I've got an idea number of things so if people want to come along and see what I do I work you know my business is called striven STR IV e double N and get to stripping calm I'm a member of a life sciences science is part of a marketing agency called up they're everywhere great website and a really great group of people for that no no really enjoy working with so feel free to check those two websites out and you know if anybody's thinking about studying and doing you know any sort of training in management or leadership then check out Cranfield School of Management I'm a visiting fellow there attached to the center for strategic marketing sales and yeah really really good school and you know you never know I might get to to give a lecture or be a supervisor for some of your work so whether that's it was it simply negative I don't know always good awesome well hey thank you so much for coming on the podcast we should you giving your time thank you so much Andy I really appreciate