I was expecting to take a role that would give me an opportunity to lead a team or drive the development of a new product. More responsibility, more leadership, the kinds of things that I will need to get better at as I work toward a leadership position in the pharmaceutical industry. Instead, I get chucked into a 21 person group that has no mission, vision, or leadership. Rather than being part of a team working to develop innovative answers to the challenges that come up during the development of a new medicine, all of us who work in the analytical labs have been relegated to providing our product design colleagues with analytical "services." Instead of collaborators, they are now our "customers."
This situation could actually be positive if the right leaders were in place, but the people that have been selected to figure out how we are going to execute our brave new leaders vision are woefully inadequate. A 21 person group with no mission or vision could actually be a good thing. In the right hands, it could become what we want it to be rather than taking the form desired by some manager in our corporate office who has never worked in a lab. That's not what will happen with this new group. Rather than letting us figure out what works best, our new management will install all kinds of crazy controls and procedures to give them some sense that they are in control. Anything innovative or new will be summarily rejected before it even has a chance to prove its worth. Our only metric will be testing samples. Developing faster methods, implementing new analysis techniques, exploring different approaches to how we handle samples will be side activities buried under a never ending pile of inane and utterly useless tasks.
I have not decided how I am going to respond to this new arrangement. When I learned that I would be staying in the analytical labs, I could only wonder why I wasn't moved to formulations. A 15 minute chat with one of my former managers cleared that up. Once I recovered from the shock of still being an analyst (I was almost certain I would moving to formulations), I immediately noticed that the comfortable autonomy that I have felt since I rejoined the company was much less comfortable. While I have no idea what will actually happen, I do know that the implicit permission to do what I think is best is gone. My new manager will not be content to let me do things as I see fit. What will I do the first time that I am confronted with an explicit instruction to do something counter to what I think is the best course?
Do I even wait until this confrontation is explicit? I want to get it out there that I want to make our group focused on getting better. The status quo, the way things have been for the last 10 years, needs to be abandoned. Let's not wait to see what our brave new leader wants, let's show him something and see if he likes it. If he doesn't like how we work, we can change. I plan on doing things the way that I have always done them. Do I come right out and tell him this in the next couple of days or should I wait until he has fleshed out the workings of the group a little bit better? I have decided that I will not simply accept an order. If I do not agree with one of his instructions, I will challenge him. I'm just trying to figure out if I should make the first move or wait until something happens.
While I work on resolving these issues, I have a few concrete steps in mind. I want to talk to some more senior scientists about what they think of the new arrangement. I would much rather align myself with a senior scientist who wants to make things better than toe the company line and dutifully follow instructions. I am going to plan a few questions for our first group meeting on Friday. Most people are concerned with the hows of the new organization. I want to focus on the vision and overall purpose of the group and how that will be reflected in our operation. I am also going to write a very ambitious development plan. I should have a chance to discuss this with my new manager directly. I think that will give me a chance to put my thoughts in front of him without being overly confrontational.
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