1.How we got here

(Series Index)

In future years, BioPharma organisations will need to operate as efficiently as they can to thrive in a much more challenging commercial world. This series of articles explores what might need to happen to the 'standard model' of collaboration in project work.

Many of the systematic project management techniques we use today were pioneered in the 1970s. For example, one of the most well-known impacts of this was in the preparation for the Montreal Olympics in 1976. By all accounts, disciplined project planning brought about a far more successful delivery in comparison to hugely inefficient efforts in prior years.

It took the pharmaceutical industry a while to learn this lesson, however. Project management approaches to drug development were introduced seriously in the1980s. At the time division heads in most companies sat atop traditional hierarchical chains of command, and cross divisional cooperation was if anything accidental! 'Throw it over the wall' was how new research molecules went successively to CMC, to safety testing, to Clinical, to Regulatory, and so on. Many a time did a new product approach launch for the commercial guys to say that there was no practical market potential whatsoever! This type of regime became so hopelessly inefficient, it had to change.

There was however, a lot of resistance. But the PM gurus of those days had developed an approach that was designed to build a bridge between older cultures and new changes: matrix management. For the academics it was the most spectacular success; this model was adopted right across the industry and has remained in operation for at least 35 years. So long that it doesn't need much explanation. Suffice to say that what made it acceptable to our power structures was dual reporting: expert staff members were appointed to project teams, accountable to the project manager for delivery of project-related work packages; but they still reported primarily to senior line managers in departments.

So much has been written, and so much development time invested in this way of working, that by now, some decades after it was introduced, it should have have been completely embedded as the way we do things, and working elegantly. However, as this series of articles hopes to discuss, it is fraught with problems now, as it was then.

Before we close this episode, let's note one thing. Could we do what we do without the apparatus and tools of project management? These days, probably not. A properly functioning project system is there to make things efficient, to translate strategic goals into ordered action; to get talented individuals to align and collaborate towards a business success; to expedite decision-making at various levels of an organisation. But let's not forget that the effectiveness of a final product comes from the brains of hard working experts, and that day-to-day, they work in functional departments with like-minded colleagues. So why is it that we so often give these engines of innovation, the derogatory term 'functional silos'?

John Faulkes, April 2025.

Look out for the next article in this series: 'Functional Silos - Alive and Well'. Also, coming soon - our "Lets Talk' session 'Leading Across Silos' - May 20th - Free to join.

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