I’m going to begin a weekly “things I’ve learned” round up that I’ll publish on Fridays. The topics will span independent research topics, biotech, consulting and internet miscellanea. For the time being, these will mostly be interesting facts and links with and without commentary. They will likely create research projects that spin off into 2,000+ words posts that are customary of my site. This post is much longer than I foresee future weekly round ups because of the explanation.
Why?
My mentor, former med device CEO, ex-Accenture Strategy partner, and current badass, upon seeing my 2020 and 2020+ goals said that “average performers and wild successes have the same goals, but great people have systems and habits that get them to their goals” and recommended I read a summary of James Clear’s “Atomic Habits“. James has built an entire online business around sharing his ideas, so if you’re interested, I’ll leave the summarization to him.
Habits
My starting habits are focused on codifying the knowledge generated by my work at BTS with biotech clients, personal research, finding the valuable intersections between these areas, and then publishing them for various audiences.
Every week day habits:
- After I brush my teeth, put on running shoes
- When I sit down with first cup of coffee, write one sentence on things I’ve learned (very much using the easy principle hear)
- When browsing the internet, I must save 1 link with notes per 30 minutes or stop browsing
- Read 1 page of book immediately before I eat lunch (again, easy to say, but then I tend to read much more than 1 page)
- Read 1 page of book when I shut down computer after work
Every Friday habits:
- Curate and edit “things I’ve learned”
- Publish on andrewdornon.com
- Send to project teams
- Publish on andrewdornon.com
- Send 1 insight to client
- Send 1 related question to expert on thing I’ve learned
Like everything, these will change (I’ll certainly level them up).
Inaugural Things I Learned This Week:
Biotech
- In Japanese biopharmas, marketers are more likely to speak English than sales professionals. To move into a cross-functional leadership role (beyond marketing or sales), leaders must speak English, so sales leaders are underrepresented in the top ranks.
- In Chinese biopharmas, Commercial teams attempt to influence the choice of the Principal Investigator leading clinical trials. Compared to R&D and Medical teams, Commercial teams prioritize political connections and influence.
- Also in Chinese biopharmas, “coffee talk”is a phrase for calling a sales leader to headquarters for a performance conversation. It is the step that precedes placing the leader on a PIP.
- Vulnerability amongst leaders is stated as the gold standard in leadership attributes at a large biotech, but also not frequently observed. Is being vulnerable that hard? Is it hard to fake?
Drug Names
- Many doctors carefully avoid using brand names for drugs and opt for the generic name of the molecule. This is tricky, however, because so many common drugs are difficult to pronounce. Prozac = fluoxetine, Valium = diazepam, Nexium = esomeprazole
- It gets worse when you start to look at biologics–even common ones like Humira = adalimumab.
- Generic drug names are typically shorthand for the actual chemical name, so they can provide doctors and pharmacists with information even if they’re unpronounceable. For instance, the ending -mab, signals that the drug is a Monoclonal Antibody.
The Caribbean
- St. Kitts and Nevis is the smallest sovereign nation in the Caribbean
- On October 24, 1991, workers AND business leaders in Barbados joined together and went on a nationwide strike protesting the incompetent economic policies of Prime Minister Lloyd Sandiford.
- Over 1,000 people have applied for the Barbados remote work visa.
- If you call the Consulate of Antigua and Barbuda, a First Secretary will call you back within half an hour.
- LIAT, an airline owned by Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines along with Dominica ceased operations due to COVID-19. It’s demise leaves a huge hole in the market (250k passengers to Barbados alone annually) for other airlines to fill.
Career Path Dependency
- People have a hard time answering the question “knowing what you know now, what would you change about your education and career path?” Why?
- People are very invested in the choices they’ve made being right
- This leads them to say that 10 or 20 years of knowledge and experience has not changed their opinion
- People still think doctors save a lot of marginal lives in the developed world, when this isn’t really true (although it’s fine as career paths go)
- A recent paper shows asking about salary history let’s new employers replicate past inequities. Seems easy to stop asking.
Consulting
- Written knowledge is a force multiplier of culture and capability
- Especially in hyper-growth orgs where every year less than 50% of your employees have over 1 year of tenure
- Employees with 4+ years of tenure can scale themselves via writing
- If everyone at a company left one day, how hard would it be for a new team to come in and pick up the pieces?
- Using red to highlight things in a training document can cause the audience to shut off because of the association with a “red pen” marking up their school work