People Deserve Great Leaders: Tom Wilson on Servant Leadership in Life Sciences

In this episode of the Activating Greatness podcast, host Alec McChesney of Velocity Advisory Group sits down with Tom Wilson, Chief Commercial Officer at AmbioPharm, one of the world's leading peptide CDMOs. With 35 years in life sciences — from ten years in the U.S. Air Force to running multi-plant networks at Wyeth and Pfizer — Tom shares how he traded a top-down "Mad Men" leadership era for a servant leadership model built on trust, grace, and giving people a voice. He breaks down how he hires for culture instead of "mini-mes," builds commercial teams like a sports GM drafting puzzle pieces, and uses KPIs as a classroom rather than a scorecard. Tom also walks through his 90-day playbook for leading a pivot to growth, why he shifted marketing from 100% awareness to 80% sales enablement, and the leadership habits — assuming noble intent, humility, protecting people's time, and the "power of 3" — that have shaped his career. A must-listen for sales leaders, commercial executives, and anyone building high-trust teams.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Activating Greatness, the show where we dig into what it really takes to lead with purpose, inspire performance, and create lasting impact. As always, I'm your host, Alec Luchesny, and every episode we sit down with leaders, thinkers, and change makers who are unlocking potential in themselves, their teams, and their organizations. Here we talk about the real stuff: leadership that drives culture, strategy that creates momentum, and the mindset that turns good intentions into game-changing results. Because greatness, it isn't a title, it's a choice. It's something you activate every single day. So thank you. Thank you for listening, for showing up, and for being part of a community of leaders who refuse to settle for good enough. Now let's dive in and meet today's incredible guest. Today's guest is Tom Wilson, the chief commercial officer at Ambio Farm, one of the world's leading peptide CDMOs. He came up in the life sciences industry in an era of top-down hierarchical leadership and spent the better part of his career figuring out a different way, a servant leadership model that starts with hiring people who can trust each other, building a comp structure that rewards the team over the individual, using KPIs not just as a scorecard, but as a classroom and shifting his commercial marketing from 100% awareness to 80% sales enablement. And none of this happens overnight. And he's going to tell you that himself, but the results do speak for themselves. That's really what we're going to talk about today, Tom. We're going to talk about commercial teams. We're going to talk about building the team in general, servant leadership, intentional hiring. And I'm really excited to dive into some of those KPIs and metrics on how we can stay the course when transformation takes a little bit longer than we want to. And everybody that listens to the Activating Greatness podcast knows that I'm already excited. I want to start grilling you with one bad pod bad podcast question to the next. But before we do that, Tom, welcome and thank you for joining us here on the Activating Greatness Show. And maybe for those who aren't familiar with Tom Wilson yet, if you want to introduce yourself a bit further.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

That's great. Thanks, Alec. I really appreciate being here. Um, any opportunity to talk about leadership just lights my fire. You know, it's it's a passion, right? And and people deserve good leaders. Um, and I think that's really critical, right? So hi, I'm Tom Wilson. Um, I've been in the life sciences space for goodness, about 35 years now. I came here after I left uh the United States Air Force, uh, where I served for 10 years. Um, but then when I got here, I started out in manufacturing. So I am a true knuckle-dragging production guy. Um, started out as a frontline supervisor in a plant. It was um what in the United States at that time they used to call the Ten Sisters. So there were 10 mega plants in the United States, and I was lucky enough to start in one of them. And what was really great about that was you would rotate through different job, uh different job areas, right? Different leadership opportunities. And that really gave me a chance not just to learn the different parts of of uh of small molecule manufacturing, uh, but different business sectors, different business objectives, uh, and working with a lot of different teams that had different cultures, right? And really trying to understand how they do that. So from there I moved up the leadership ladder, um, eventually running departments, running uh shift floors, running plants, running multi-plant networks. Um, and it's been a great journey, right? And it was, I think what was really cool was I had a chance to stay with the same company for 32 years. The the name out front kept changing, right? When I started, it was called Ayres Laboratories. It became Wyath Airst, which became Wyatt, which became Pfizer. Um, so it's been just a tremendous journey, but a lot of a lot of different people, a lot of different cultures, and a real chance to really not just get to know the people that I worked with, but really get to know myself as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Whew, Tom, I I can tell you started it off by saying that this conversation in general lights you up. And um, I'm I'm already, we're we're three minutes in, I'm ready to run through a brick wall because your answer, even in your introduction, is why I love the Activating Greatness podcast and why I've loved the 30 plus interviews that we've already done. Leadership looks different for so many individuals. And you come up through the Air Force and then you're on the floor and you have these different roles, but you tied it back to people need good leaders. And you use the word people a handful of times, you use the word culture a handful of times. And no matter what era of work you've lived within, leadership has always been first and foremost what makes an individual successful, what makes a team successful, and ultimately what can make an organization successful. But leadership has changed over the course of these 35 years that you've been within the life sciences. And this concept of servant leadership that we talked about in the prep call is one that you hear in pockets, and sometimes you hear it when somebody says, oh yeah, servant leadership. And then you hear it from another person where it's like, no, I believe this. It's not just a philosophy, it's how I live on a day-to-day basis, it's how I serve my team, it's how I manage down, manage up, manage across. Uh, I'm curious, just in the seat that you have been in and the different roles that you've played, was there a moment or an experience or something in your upbringing where you were like, hey, uh, this servant leadership, this is real. This is something that is going to allow me to build teams more effectively. And it's something that when I get the next role or when I get this team that I need to implement, or has it just always been a way of life? I know that's a kind of a vague question as we get started, but I'm curious through that background, what's really led to the philosophies that you stick to so strongly today?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

So it's a great question, right? Because it's, you know, was it a conscious decision one day that I woke up and went that direction, or did it evolve? I'd love to say it was a conscious decision because I've always been fascinated by leadership, but it wasn't. Right. So it was it was an evolution. Um, when I started at the plant in New York, um, very hierarchical, right? It was the early 90s, but it it still had that, you know, what we would call today that madman mentality, yeah, right? The boss is the boss, the boss is always right. We have to make sure that we don't disappoint the boss, we got to make the boss happy. You know, his word is, you know, it's like tablets coming down from on high. Yeah, no, no. I mean, they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. Yeah. Um, and that was something that the military had instilled in us, right? So in the military, there was always what they called commander's intent, right? And with commander's intent, it was they they didn't your your superior officers didn't tell you exactly how to tackle a mission, they would tell you the objective of the mission and general parameters, general rules that you had to to to work according to. But then you were expected to find a way to deliver the mission, right? And and I think that's the way I saw manufacturing, right? Uh I had a mission to deliver, and it was you know, really trying to work that. Now, I was really lucky because when I got started, I was in the coding department, and you know, in solid oral dose, coding tablets uh is even to this day, there's probably more art than science to it, and a lot of things go wrong all the time. So people avoided it like the plague because they didn't want to face the problems that were down there. Um that I think is where the evolution really got started with me. The operators knew what they were doing, the operators had seen all these things happen over time. The operators kind of knew something was going wrong intuitively before it actually went wrong. So it was listening to them, learning from them, giving them a voice in solving things, trying to do um shift huddles, right? Before that became a popular thing, trying to do uh walkabouts, right? Management by walking around. Yeah, before Gamble walks became common in the US, right? But it was really a lot of that. It was it was trying to get people to interact. Now it was a union plant, and there were, you know, I was a threat not just to not just to the the exempt leadership team, but also to to the union leadership, right? Like you're giving my people a voice. Don't make a mistake, you hold them accountable, you'll file a grievance, da da da da da. It's like, okay, I'm management, I don't file grievances, dude.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

But but really I think that's where it got started. And then the more I moved up, the more I realized that I I definitely didn't know it all. Right. I I I was counting on people that had expertise, right? And and trying to give them a chance to have a voice and give them an opportunity to share what they know. And, you know, I had a another boss leader in my career that said something insightful that I didn't realize I was doing. Um, but it was that I I used variable leadership. And it was a case of there's a time when I'm the boss and I'm giving direction, but there's other cases where you know the most junior person on the team actually knows what to do. And I would I would basically give them charge of it and I'd be working for them, right? And and it was just understanding how the situation dictated that, but that that's kind of how it grew. Um, I I've made a study of leadership my entire career. You know, I focused my my uh master's degree on leadership. Um the work that I I put towards working on my doctorate was on leadership, you know. It was all just trying to really understand what makes it work and how how do you get people rowing the boat together in the same direction, right? And not just by cracking the whip, but making them want to do it, right? So more of a of a Viking longboat than uh you know a Roman galley. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Oh, I I there's seven things that we could just I know we only have 45 minutes, but I might just say we'll go for three or four hours and we can just work our way through this topic alone. And I I promise to get us back on track, but the walkabouts, the shift huddles, this concept of variable leadership, it is a recurring theme on the podcast and a recurring theme in what I would refer to as just real agile leadership and being able to identify that Tom might need something different from me as a leader than Jennifer might, and that person might need something more than what Ryan might, and so on down the line, and being able to adapt every step of the way. I'm curious, how does this background and where you've been then lead to a commercial team? Because when we talk about sales and marketing, and I'm excited selfishly because that's my world, but a lot of time the leadership, the leadership thought process gets thrown out the door. Hit the revenue goal, do the revenue goal, get the quota, make the phone calls, do the thing, and it becomes a spreadsheet level concept of leadership. So everything that you just described feels like the the anti-sales leadership, especially in an industry that has historically, uh, you know, just from personal experience and then this podcast, struggled in terms of commercial leaders having staying power at organizations and all of the above. So, how did that transfer? How did all of this learning transfer to being a commercial leader and having the personalities, which we're gonna talk about in a little bit, on sales and marketing teams and still being able to drive this forward in the same capacity that you're talking about?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

So it's a great question. And it's it was a journey, right? It wasn't like I woke up one morning, boom, I'm ready to be a commercial leader. So I was when trying to think about how this transpired. So I was in strategy for Wyath, right? I was in manufacturing strategy for the longest time, and and I got really well versed in the um the commercial uh or the consumer health care arena as well as the infant nutritional arena, right? Direct to consumer sales, yeah, HTA departments of you know, Target, Walmart, et cetera, right? So, so really getting involved in that, really starting to understand that. Um, so much so that I I grasped the business well enough that the leaders in that group were like, we don't want him working general strategy anymore. We want him to come over and do very focused manufacturing strategies for us, right? He really understands how cost of goods is done. He really understands deployment to the marketplace, timing of supply, et cetera. So I went over there, and one of the things that we discovered was that you know, over one-third of our material of our of our offerings were actually supplied by third parties, right? They were supplied by contract manufacturers. And we were still living in a world of procurement-based uh third-party management, right? So you place a purchase order and you kind of hope it shows up on the day that you put on the purchase order, like Christmas morning, right? I mean, dude, hope's not a strategy, right? So, so one of the things that we we did was we looked at and said, how do we move to an engagement model? I was really lucky at the time that I was asked to really look into the engagement model at how to build an engagement with the CDMO. Um, there were two people that are considered the godfathers of that world. So there was Jim Ryder over at JJ and Pete Stevenson at uh Pharmacia, who had both been working on this independently. I was able to talk with both of them repeatedly and get them to share their concepts, right? Because they were both so passionate about it. And then I was able to deploy that model into the consumer healthcare world of Wyath, right? And it worked. But it what it did is I and I led it, right? So I led my first virtual plant, right? Right. So, and we were doing, you know, some really big name products, right? Advil liquid gels, some of the chapsticks, uh Preparation H, right? These are some of the Syndrome's, uh, they were all outsourced, right? So those were make or break for the year. So really working through all that, and that really got me focused into the virtual arena. So I started oscillating my career back and forth between uh brick and mortar plants, virtual plants. Yeah. And there were a lot of things I learned about working with CDMOs. That's like, boy, if I ever ran a CDMO, I'd do this differently, right? If I ever did this, I would be really focused on, you know, what's the end game? The end game is getting medicines to patients. You know, how do we build trust? How do we build collaboration? Can we build value together rather than both sides not having trust and just going back and forth, like trying to get the better of each other, right? There just wasn't that focused on the Venn diagram. Um then, okay, years go by, years go by, years go by. End up with um I had just come off a deployment for Pfizer uh in India, working on third-party supply from India. Um, and Pfizer had acquired Haspira. Uh so Haspira had a contract manufacturing group called One to One. Pfizer had a contract manufacturing group called Pfizer Center Source. Through the integration process, there was recognition that that there was a real synergy here by putting those two businesses together, and we could really grow this business into something pretty magnificent. And we did, right? I mean, we took this thing from $350 million to $1.5 billion. Yeah. Right. And I understand you had uh Tony Burkhardt on here from Center One. Yes, he continued that that journey, that incredible journey of that business. But so I started out as the manufacturing lead for that group and working at coordinating all the plants, right? Coordinating supply, coordinating the demand position, the supply position, um, what it would take to make sure that we could meet our obligations. I met with a lot of customers in that time with Pfizer Center One. Um, and I had the opportunity to really speak to manufacturing and really express my passion for manufacturing, my passion for what we do, and and most especially my passion for getting medicines to patients, right? I mean, dude, there are easier ways to make money than working in pharma. You've got to have a higher calling in pharma. My higher calling is patience. And I'm sure that 95% of us are more. That that's why we're here, right? Otherwise, why would we put up with some of the silliness that we put up with? Yeah. Um, but so when I was dealing with the customers, more and more leadership was looking and saying, Tom, you're being wasted in manufacturing. We want you to step over here into the commercial leadership role and really try and it's not just enough to have a commercial vision and a commercial concept, but you got to have the right people involved. And and I was I was just so blessed to be able to build something out. So I had a um I had an HR partner at that time, uh fantastic HR person. Uh, but we sat down and defined what we were looking for in the perfect team. And it was I didn't want a whole bunch of mini-me's, right? And I sure as heck didn't want a hierarchical construct. Um, so we really looked at how do we how do we define success in this space? And we tried to look at it from multiple dimensions, right? Certainly there's the technical skills, right? And we had offerings in small molecule API, we had offerings in in mammalian biotech and solid oral dose and sterile injectable. So again, people had specialties in those technical areas, right there with that technology. But the other thing I wanted was people that could backstop one another, people that could really that could really help one another and fill in each other's blind spots. So what we what we leveraged was um the Herman Brain process.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Right. And you can use Herman Brain, you can use disk. I mean, there's a lot of different ways, but to to really try and identify people's comfort areas and and try and get people who are very numerically driven, people are very process-driven, people are very people-driven, people are very strategic intent-driven, but try and bring all of that together as well and just create a broader dynamic that we had a culture that was one not just of of you know setting an objective and chasing it, which we did, uh, but also having a culture where we had to trust each other because everybody brought something different to the table. And collectively, that's where the power went.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

I feel I'm no longer on a podcast and I'm just I'm just listening and take, I mean, my notebook is is full. This is selfishly why I love the podcast because I get to learn from individuals like you, Tom. I think the big thing for me as you were walking through that answer and going back to this evolution or transition from manufacturing into commercial, especially, was uh, well, one, revenue is a team game, right? And we have to work together in order to reach that goal, which we're gonna talk a little bit more about. You mentioned disc and Herman, you know, we do disc with the birds, and that's what our founder created. So I've got my my parrot and my eagle here, and I am, you know, I'm a lot. I'm hosting a podcast. Um, the way that I handle a project is gonna be different than somebody who is an animal who is process process driven. And we have to be able to work and flex on each other's muscles in order to be able to do that. But it brings me back to something that you said earlier about the commander's intent, which is essentially hey, here's what success should look like from this mission or from this project. And we talk about all the time in one on ones within leadership and and within teams is have you showed them what success looks like? And if you can tell them what success looks like, how I get there and how someone else gets there could be a whole hell of a lot different, but we could end up in the same result. And I think that's kind of what you're alluding to here as well with the team structure is I one person could run it this way, another person can run it this way. But I also need these people to be able to kind of plug in and be these puzzle pieces in real time, you know, for a team like Ambiofarm where you're working and saying, okay, here's we have an opening. We've got a job opening. You're not just going out and saying I need the best resume. You're going out and saying I need a resume that's going to fit in with the team that I have and it's going to be a driver with the individuals, the personalities, the skill sets that we already have in place as well. And now I'm thinking you're a general manager for a sports team and we're going position by position and you start to think about it in that perspective. So you've got me, I don't even have a follow-up question to all of that. I'm just like taking all of my notes but any any added comment that you have to to my response there, Tom.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Yeah I love your analogy of manager of a sports team that that's probably the best description I've heard of it to date. So I'm going to steal that. Yeah absolutely please but you talked about you know going from the resume to understand the culture we've taken that to um we've taken that to heart right so what we've done here and it's similar to what I did back in Pfizer Center one as well is that when when we get people's resumes, we're doing a technical evaluation of the resumes right and then we'll do an initial contact and and really try and verify that technical prowess but the interview process that that we challenge folks with is actually not designed to test their technical prowess. All of our queries our explorations with people through through the the various rounds of interviewing are really all culturally driven right it's creating scenarios and how do you behave it's it's asking people you know tell me a time when something went horribly wrong and how did you handle it right I need people that that won't be shy under fire right they they've got to they they've got to be able to stand up right I mean sales rep what's the what's when does the sale start the sales starts with the word no right if you never heard the word no you really didn't make a sale you just collected a PL. Yeah right you know it's so really we we explore very detail in a very detailed way uh the cultural assessment we also do um at least one panel set on culture and when we pick the panel members we make sure that the panel members are different parts of the the disc construct right we don't want people with the the same viewpoint because we want to we want to bring people in again we want to make sure that they that they come together as puzzle pieces as you said earlier um but then the other thing that we want to do when we get them here is really teach them and show them a a a different way and what we think is is the what we think is our best practices. Yeah right so when they come in they're not just going to be selling right now when I got here we had a traditional sales construct right we had we had the regions everybody had their individual targets um and they worked independently right to achieve their targets um there was no cross collaboration there people didn't even know what each other's numbers were didn't have a view of the bigger business so the first thing we put into place was a view of the bigger business right so we set up the book of business reviews right so we review our book of business every other week right not only what have we achieved in terms of sales for for the year for the quarter for the month but what's the outlook look like and and we do our outlook on against a um a quarterly and annual basis. Yeah right so we really look at that but everybody participates in that so everybody gets to hear things and gets to to see how each other are tackling it. And it's not just the sales reps that I bring to that table. Our marketing leader comes to the table for that our finance leaders come to the table for that because they can help build their forecasts and get insight into what the what the probability of success looks like. Our program managers come to the table because they're the ones that are handling the actual hands-on execution yeah uh of the business you know and releasing the SOWs releasing the invoices trying to make sure they've got all the pieces together so everybody knows where the business is at any given time so that was step one right really trying to get that in place the next step that we did was um again it was working independently then we went to uh global monthly all hands meeting town hall whatever you want to call it yeah um and again hadn't been done right so we wanted to really do that we wanted to bring people together uh and make sure that we are sharing best practices sharing uh insights and learnings and most importantly celebrating each other's successes right I mean I when I started it um had a had a fantastic learning after the first uh first time we did it we'd run out of time and we had to really truncate the celebration at the end yeah I'll be doggone if we're gonna truncate celebration we had celebration all the way to the front of the meeting we set the tone beginning of the meeting oh I love that and then what we do is we get into the KPIs for the business right so we look at what the KPIs are um our CRM is Salesforce Salesforce is a remarkable tool right I've been lucky to work with it in several different um instances now uh but we draw down KPIs out of Salesforce but we don't measure things just to measure them what we're trying to do is measure them to understand the health of the business and make sure that we're on the right trajectory so we use that as a we use the KPIs not as a as a scorecard uh as most people do we actually use it as a trending tool and a learning tool and what we've been able to do with that is teach the reps teach the PMs teach everybody involved look this is what these metrics mean over time yeah sure you saw the revenue goals you see the revenue goals all the time in the Bob in the book of business but let's talk about some of the other things like how many business how many new RFPs from uh are dropping from new customers how many new RFPs from existing customers how many RFPs to extend programs right what is the health factor of that right and helping people understand you need new clients new programs to maintain the health of your business to maintain your pipeline you need to see new programs from existing customers because that says you're building trust you're building that that mutual objective growth together right they they're trusting you not just with one of their babies now they're trusting you with all their kids right i i mean we're running a hell of a daycare here yeah right and you know people are trusting us with those with their with their their hard fought science right so that tells us that that we're building trust right and then we get into things like where are the programs coming in are the programs coming in pre-ind are they coming in pre-clinical are they coming in phase one phase two phase three when I got here we had a whole bunch of stuff pre-IND right and the most of those programs die out really quickly and you pour a ton of resources into it and generally you take a loss there and people didn't realize that right so it's like you want to be picking up phase two b right phase three right that's where you want to pick up because they've already gone through the really hard parts of clinics now yeah things still fail in phase three but they have a higher probability of success in phase three than they have in phase one. So showing people how those metrics play to the health of a CDMO business right and how that all comes together.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

So those are just several examples of how we look at it and how we parse the numbers so what was the response right so you come in and all of this sounds amazing and and but there is cultural shift here. This is change of how we talk about success, how we measure it, how we manage it. And I opened with this in the in the introduction is you know this is not overnight. This is we're gonna build it and we're gonna start to report on it and there's gonna be a bump or two in the road as we go through this process so how did you maintain this? How is this something that if I'm a leader and I'm I'm sitting at a CDMO and I'm hanging out and I'm like, hey I want to make change here or it's my first 60 days or first 90 days at a new organization, C DMO or otherwise, but I'm in I'm a new sales leader and I I want to completely shift how we how we have how we track KPIs, how we look at a dashboard, how we look at a scorecard, how we talk about success and really format revenue as this team game that we're all working towards that it's not just sales and a silo, but it's marketing, it's sales, it's program management, it's the finance team I mean what's the level of confidence that you're offering what would you say to this individual who's just getting started about how this process takes and what resistance they might get how to overcome some of that resistance and really trust the process if you will on on building this for that organization.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

So a lot a lot of different pieces there right yeah so one when I came here I when I assessed the the role here it was not a turnaround I've done turnarounds before I've done several turnarounds uh I'm done with turnaround I can tell I can it was a pivot to growth right yeah a pivot to growth is really exciting right because all the tools are there it's just a matter of of getting them moving in the same direction.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Right going back to that row in the boat.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

So I think that was really important. So when I tackled let's say you're coming in at the start right which which I did a year and a half ago so when I tackled that I used my 90 days I used my first 30 to listen and learn right meet with a lot of people I used my second 30 to really try and figure out where the gaps were uh what what can I do that will get us to on a growth trajectory and then the third 30 days that that day 60 to 90 this was the most important part of it it was trying to figure out how not to boil the ocean right because you can you when you find those gaps in the middle right it it's you want to solve them all right away because you you know what good looks like right you just want to get there but you got to give people time to come along right so trying to figure out how can I where can I move fast that I can fix things really quickly that will make life easier for the team right that will allow them to do their job this is something all that I always keep in mind people want to do well it sounds simple but people want to do well you've got to give them space to do things well so when I laid out the game plan I came up with what I called jump start right which was the things I wanted to do after I hit the 90 day mark and went before the the the C my C suite partners went before the board to outline for them what I was doing the first bolus of activities which was really just to get things smoothed out to everybody on one page that was what I called jump start right and that was really just getting certain things in place right get getting to a common usage of Salesforce getting to common usage of sharefile and trying to build just a a file cabinet architecture in sharefile where people can actually find things right so it's really trying to get the those very basic building blocks in place and then from there it was the next phase was really starting to move towards what does it take for for sales and PM to be successful. And there we looked at how our marketing worked right and it was trying to make sure that you know marketing here traditionally had been uh had been awareness 100% awareness yeah um I am a firm believer that that sales enablement is the most important role of marketing right so we went 80 8020 um in terms of sales enablement we had uh very little interaction between marketing and the sales reps uh what we put into place was a a regular monthly session training session uh initially with sharing materials that were developed for the reps and the PMs to be able to talk to the to the client partners be able to explain to them what we're doing how we're trying to do it putting materials in their hands to empower them and then the next phase was training them on the areas where they might not be as deep right there might be people are really good at downstream processing but the upstream synthesis is a mystery to them or vice versa right and it's trying to make sure that they get both ends right as I try and explain this to people it's like you know the upstream equipment looks familiar to me because it looks like small molecule chemistry. The downstream equipment looks familiar to me because it it looks like a million downstream you know purification and processing never in a million years did I ever imagine you put those two types of chemistries together.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

That was a learning for me right I was familiar with both ends but I'd never seen them work together. Yeah yeah um but but working with folks to make sure that they've got the materials they need to be able to talk to the client partners in an effective way to be able to talk to new people in an effective way to create a an idea as to what's out there. The other thing we did was we really focused on customer personas right you how you talk to a procurement specialist at a top 10 pharma company radically different than a virtual biotech where it's two guys in a coffee pot. They have very different concerns very different ways of approaching things trying to make sure that that was in place as well so what we were doing was you know it looked to them like we were trying to build a sophisticated professional core and we were but at the same time we were doing it in a very methodical way in a very mapped out manner to get them to buy in on it. So the other thing that we did was these things were not just create it deployed boom moving on we would build um tiger teams for each one of the efforts yeah and ask for volunteers for the tiger teams the first set of tiger teams limited number of volunteers right because they you know it's like what what is he talking about? What are you talking about but the ones that got involved had a huge voice in what they were doing and they got to teach everybody else what they put into place right so then the next set of tiger teams oh boy the hands went up yeah because they have a voice they have the ability to help craft what this is going to look like so again we would lay out commander's intent here's what we need to get to here's what the end goal looks like here's what the charter says that you you need triggerable is yeah how to get to deliverable well tell me how you want to get there yeah let's hold it allows to create some accountability and capability across the team that you can continue to come back to as well. Yep thing to win people over was data right so again it's going back pulling that data out of Salesforce pulling the data out of the finance systems and just saying okay I I had people that that were really focused on if we don't win people pre-IND and pre-clinical then they're never going to come to us because they're gonna go to a Bakan they're gonna go to Cordon they're gonna go to polypeptide right and they're gonna stay there forever yeah right and it's like it's not actually how the business works right but but I had to show them it's like all right let's let's look at the fail rate of all these programs let's look at how much money we invested in these yeah versus how much they paid and you know lo and behold we're just break even now let's look at the phase two stuff let's look at investment let's look at the return let's look at phase three and the more they saw the numbers coming out of those KPIs the more it's like oh speak for itself yeah yeah well you have to lay all of the foundation and then the data goes right on top of that and it it kind of you know for lack of better terms is the the proof in the pudding Tom I um I said before we went live that I was so excited and I also said that I would get you out of here by 250 central time.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

It's 251 and I am having a blast. So I'm gonna keep you for four more minutes. We're gonna we're gonna wrap up but I have been like I said my notebook is completely full everybody that's listening to this is going to be able to take some sales commercial marketing help and some leadership help. So thank you so much for for for spending the hour with us here. I can already see myself uh knocking on your door in a couple of months and saying we didn't get enough time let's get back for another episode here in Q4. Um so just be prepared for that. We'll send that to the marketing team to get you back on the calendar but this has been an absolute delight. Oh golly we're gonna have to talk leadership more listen I know it's I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to remember yeah really really force you into it but that does leave us with the four rapid fire questions that we'll wrap up with some positive concept the four rapid fire questions I make the rules so I give out points for each at each question sub 30 seconds is the goal quick hitting answers are you prepared Tom let's go all right question number one what is one leadership habit that you rely on every day no matter what give people grace i i learned that late in my career I wish I'd learned it a lot earlier but everybody assume good intention give grace try and understand where they're coming from I I've got uh assume noble intent on a sticky note right here uh Lisa Caliclio one of the the CHROs at WCG uh shared that a couple of weeks back on the podcast it's one of my favorite sayings and um the just the concept of the whole human being is working and they're taking a lot into their existence at work. And the more grace we give to each other, the more grace we might actually give to ourselves which I think is just as important uh in today's world. Excellent answer. You get 10 points for question one question number one, which is which is a really big deal uh just so you know uh the rules change each episode but that's a great start question number two is what is the most underrated skill that a leader needs in order to be successful today humility.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

It's you know you don't know everything you you you're operating in and the higher you climb the more gray you're dealing with so be humble ask a lot of questions seek to understand right stealing from Stephen Covey seek to understand it's so important right and the answers are out there and you never know who has them yeah which which ties back to your variable leadership from earlier which I which I love uh all right on the flip side of this question number three what's one thing that you believe great leaders should stop doing working 247 you are wearing your people out you're killing them because they're reacting the way that you behave they take a lead from you you've got to respect people's time with family you got to respect people's time on holiday you got to respect people's time to sleep right if you respect their time they're gonna bring their best selves right and they're gonna be a lot better i i've seen worn out people make horrible decisions it it you 247 oh it's awful it's just awful no comment is needed from me that's 15 bonus points for that answer everybody needs to hear it everybody needs to hear it the final rapid fire question what's the best leadership advice that you've ever received oh that's an easy one susan Brown was my executive coach goodness maybe 20 years ago and one of the first things she taught me was what she called three and I have a sticky right here on my screen with just the number three on it and that three is all about every time people challenge you take the time to think of three different responses and then pick the one that you think will be most productive and it it does that it does a couple of things right first it slows you down a little bit right so it takes it can take some of the heat out of the situation second it makes you process what they say because you've got to think of three different Responses and through that time frame, it allows you to come back and really try and be constructive in selecting the one of the three that you want. But that three, I have used that since she introduced that to me. I I've recommended that to anybody that has ever asked me, you know, what's the most important leadership lesson you ever learned? Three.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Oh, I it'll be on a sticky note on my desktop here. Uh, 25 bonus points for that answer, because one, uh, it's the first time that's ever been said on this podcast, which is uh fantastic, and we don't get a ton of those. Number two, as the executive coaching firm here at Velocity Advisory Group, we love a good shout out to executive coaching. And we're talking 20 plus years later that that is still brought to the table. And number three, because I'm I I'm gonna use that today, I'm gonna use it tomorrow. I'm gonna use it on a consistent basis. I can see it becoming very applicable. So that is the first time I've ever awarded more than 40 points on a given episode, which uh technically puts you in the the front of the the the clubhouse that you're you're on top of the leaderboard here, 35 episodes into the Activating Greatness podcast, which is a really big deal, Tom. Um, and I that even beats uh the the name of our next section, which is Tony Burkhard. Uh, and that's a mutual friend of ours. And our last section is what we refer to as positive gossip. And this is an ode to Tony uh for a lot of reasons, but particularly because she brought this concept up within our podcast, and I just absolutely love it. So our last section is Tom, you know, we want to talk about somebody who's doing great work, somebody who you believe is doing fantastic work. They could be inside your organization, outside of it, somebody that you believe the activating greatness audience should learn from. Who should we interview next?

SPEAKER_00 45:54

I I would say one of the the leader who uh pushed me to take the commercial role in Pfizer Center one, her name's Joyelle Silva. So today she's at Vertex of the Um, she is the queen of challenging people to find their inner creativity and really bring it out and and just just challenge yourself to to find new and innovative solutions to challenges. Um she gave me the freedom to run, which you know was huge for me, but even more so, I I watched her leadership during during the the COVID crisis, right? And everything that we had to do around COVID. And she was just delegating like mad and trusting people to go out and do their best work, and they did. And people that were coming in with concepts and and and solutions that that just astounded me, but it didn't surprise her because she knew all along that she could get the best out of people by giving them the freedom to be their best, right? So so I really think you know, if you want to talk to somebody who's just a fascinating, fascinating leader and has just such a different way of going about it, she's somebody you want to have a chat with.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

All right. I I I'm ready to interview her right now. And it's one of my favorite things that we do is we get to cut up that little snippet of you uh saying great things about her, and then you know, I send it over in an email and say, look at how nice Tom was uh as part of this podcast. Let's get you on. Uh, I said it before, Tom, but I knew this would be a lot of fun. I didn't realize that I would blink and the time would be up. And I've got a feeling that uh our audience is gonna feel the same way. So thank you again for taking the time out of your day to share your expertise. And you said at the beginning, people need good leaders. And it's evident to me through some of the conversations that I've had with you before, hearing Tony Burkhard talk about you and then hearing you in action today that you are one of those good leaders. And, you know, hopefully you are creating the next generations of leaders. And I can't wait to have people listen to this and provide their feedback. And when they listen to it, they're gonna reach out to you on LinkedIn and connect with you and and and share what they've learned because I've got two full pages worth of notes that I have here that I'm gonna be bringing back to my sales and marketing team that I am working with as well. So thank you again, Tom, for really taking some time out and sharing some expertise with us.

SPEAKER_00 48:37

People don't just need good leaders, people deserve good leaders.

unknown 48:43

Whew.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

That's so good. Um, people deserve, people deserve great leaders. Um, I love that. All right, Tom. I kept you up for 10 minutes more than I was even supposed to, than was agreed upon. So I'm gonna let you go for everybody listening to the Activating Greatness show. Make sure you connect with Tom on LinkedIn. Let him know that the Activating Greatness podcast is where you found him. Let him know what you liked about it, what you loved about it, um, and what you might implement with your team. As always, the only way that we're able to do this show is the unbelievable guests like Tom, but also the audience that continues to listen, continues to show up, and continues to really uh just continues to drive and and really wanting to build these great leaders that that everybody deserves and continue to activate greatness. So thank you as always for listening. Thank you, Tom, one last time, and we'll see you on the next episode of Activating Greatness.

SPEAKER_00 49:36

Thanks, Ellie.