A critical culture
Innovation is the fuel of Abraxis, a biopharmaceutical company that specializes in injectable medicines to treatserious illnesses such as cancer. But at Abraxis, which had nearly $519 million in net sales in 2005, an idea is onlya starting point.
Soon-Shiong says that when it comes to innovation, you must validate the idea and then validate the validation.
“The nature of good science is always to challenge,” he says. “It starts with a good idea, you get the good idea,then you validate the validation and you continue the process.”
Forming a culture that casts a constructively critical eye toward new ideas starts at the CEO’s desk, but that culture won’t sustain itself and take on a life of its own without putting the right people in the right places.
You must have people who are motivated by the company’s mission. At Abraxis, Soon-Shiong wants to hire people who are motivated by the belief that their work makes a difference in the world.
Soon-Shiong says if you want to have employees who are motivated to produce and refine great ideas, they mustbe motivated not just by the mission of the company, but in some cases, by the mission of the industry. “I look for two qualities in a team member,” he says. “The first quality I really look for is in people who sincerely believe that the pharmaceutical industry is the industry in which they are here to make a difference in apatient’s life. “The second is, these have to be smart people. That is the real strength of a company, if you can surround yourself with smart, intelligent people who are detail-oriented and have a high work ethic. It doesn’t matter whatindustry you are in, you will succeed because of the intelligence of the people you have hired.”
Attitude and intelligence are only parts of the equation, however. Your employees must also be secure enoughthat they are willing to accept constructive criticism, which comes back to the culture that you have formed,Soon-Shiong says.
For your employees to treat criticism as an opportunity for improvement and not as an adversarial situation,you must start by embracing criticism as something that is positive for the company and communicating that toyour team. “From that point, people know that when they are challenged, it isn’t a personal attack,” he says. “People knowthat it’s really for the good of the organization.”
Soon-Shiong says communicating and sustaining an innovative culture requires the repeated hammering homeof the same messages to your work force. It takes time and the willingness to communicate as much as possiblewith your employees.
Employees thrive on communication from management. It has a large bearing on how they innovate and createnew ideas.
Soon-Shiong says that it is up to the executive team, and ultimately the CEO, to paint a specific picture of thecompany’s direction. In an industry with many possible avenues for new business, that’s especially important.“There are so many avenues right now [in biopharmaceuticals], and I think the challenge is to make sureemployees know which direction we are going in,” he says. “As we are growing so fast, it’s hard for some peopleto keep pace. We use both internal and external communications as ways to communicate where the organization is going.”
In those communications, which include newsletters and e-mail, Soon-Shiong not only disseminates information, he solicits it.
If you ask your employees to be creative, you must make sure they can take their ideas as high as they need towithin the organization, he says. Soon-Shiong is a believer in an open-door policy, and he communicates it to theAbraxis team frequently. “It’s all about openly challenging people and having an open-door policy,” he says. “I want ideas to come all the way tothe top in terms of the head research and development people and all the executive committee members, and ultimately, myself. I am always trying to make sure that important ideas flow upward in the company. To that end, I personallyparticipate in some of our [project] review meetings.”