In this thought-provoking Active Ingredient episode, host Steve Vinson tackles a leadership paradigm that's challenging everything he thought he knew about accountability. Inspired by Sheila Rohra's Forbes article on breaking people silos, Steve dives deep into the tension between traditional "one person accountable" thinking and the emerging concept of shared accountability across teams.

Drawing from his real-world experience designing process lane diagrams that keep spanning across departments, Steve explores why Industry 4.0 might be demanding a complete rethink of how we structure organizations. He examines the critical role of trust in making collective accountability work, the importance of baking collaboration into organizational structure rather than just talking about it, and how transparency can prevent destructive turf wars.

This episode is particularly relevant for life science leaders navigating the inflection point of the 2020s, where new generations bring fresh approaches to work and innovation. Steve challenges listeners to consider whether traditional accountability models are holding back the collaborative future that patients, healthcare providers, and the industry desperately need. It's a must-listen for anyone ready to question conventional leadership wisdom.

Why Breaking People Silos Is The Next Frontier In Leadership

MUSIC:

Acid Jazz-Kevin MacLeod used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

TRANSCRIPT:

HOST (Steve Vinson): [00:00] Testing, testing, one, two. All right, that seems good. This is Steve, and once again, we're going to do an active ingredient where I read an article and interview myself about it.

I just read "Why Breaking People Silos is the Next Frontier in Leadership" by Sheila Rohra of the Forbes Councils. This is at Forbes.com - I'll put a link in the show notes. Sheila Arora also happens to be the CEO of Hitachi Vantara.

This is not specific to life science today, by the way. I thought I would shake it up a little bit. And if you're leading a life science company or working at a life science company, it'll probably still apply. So I'll let you be the judge of that.

[01:30] Why This Article Caught My Eye

As a leader at a life science company, I'm always thinking about how we can better design the company, better enhance our culture, just be better. Because I believe that we always want to be improving. And one of the areas I've been thinking a lot about lately is organizational design.

This really caught my eye because I want to know what the latest ways of thinking are. And it talked about breaking the silos, which really caught my eye because I'm a big believer in collaboration and working together, and not having people just operate in their own little swim lane.

[02:45] My First Reaction - Challenging Traditional Thinking

My first reaction is I think I need to do more study because this article is really talking about shared accountability. And one of the things we were taught coming up as young engineers, young professionals, young managers was you cannot have shared accountability. One person needs to be accountable.

Now you can have shared responsibility - obviously teams can share responsibility - but one person needs to be accountable. One of the sayings that somebody used to say was "the best way to ensure a dog is going to be hungry is to tell two different people to feed it." Because of course, both of those two people are going to think the other one's going to take care of it.

[04:00] Current Challenges with Lane Diagrams

The other thing is lanes. When I'm designing a process right now - well, I'm not designing it, I'm on a team that's working on our processes for lead generation and lead conversion and then executing the work that we close - it's a lane diagram because I was trying to go through and say, "Who's accountable for what throughout this?"

And it was getting to shared responsibility, shared tasks. So I came up with a lane diagram and now the discussions are, "Well, that's not really one person that does that - it's a conversation that has to happen across lanes." And so I'm making these boxes on my PowerPoint span across lanes and I'm thinking that's defeating the purpose of having the lanes in the first place. This article hits at a particularly appropriate time for me.

[05:30] Industry 4.0 and the Bigger Picture

The article itself mentions something called Industry 4.0, which I haven't heard of. So I think Industry 4.0 is something I'm going to need to look into because I didn't know there was a 1.0 through 3.0. This is Forbes, so there's probably some latest thinking coming out of business schools about how best to optimize and approach these things.

Not that things didn't work well before, but a lot of the things I've learned over the course of my career, maybe it's time for a rethink. In that sense, it's probably a big deal.

[06:45] Connection to Current Times

We've been talking a lot on this program about risk and uncertainty and how this feels like a moment of change, like an inflection point. We'll look back and say 2020 was a huge inflection point, the years that followed, but then 2024, 2025 - I think we're going to look back and say the 2020s were really a big inflection point.

We have newer generations coming along with new ways of living and new ways of approaching work. So it really connects to how are we in the life science industry going to embrace new ways of working, new ways of thinking, new ways of innovating and developing products for patients, new ways of patients interacting with their healthcare providers and new ways of getting those medications prescribed to them, administered to them. We need to be thinking with a forward-looking focus.

[08:15] Key Strategies from the Article

Now, this article gave a few examples. For one thing, they said trust is absolutely critical because without trust, then it's just going to look like window dressing. So you embrace this collective accountability, this collective responsibility, but you have to have trust that says, "I know everybody's going to be contributing." And I know that the rewards or the recognition is going to be shared and not just given to one person when this was really a shared accountability.

There's also the concept of using structure to communicate the message. So this author is recommending that you don't just talk about shared accountability and shared things, but you actually bake it into the structure. And it sends the message that it really is real.

[09:30] Our Company's Approach

Our goals - I think our company does a good job of this where we're setting goals that reflect shared goals. And we actually use the word "shared" a lot, like shared goals, shared success. So the results of our goals, if we achieve them, we probably have financial success, we have opportunity success. By opportunity success, I mean if you're a project manager or a materials coordinator or some other project support person and you want to get more responsibility or do more cool projects, that is a success that can be shared as our company grows and gets more cool projects.

[10:30] Transparency and the Human Factor

Using transparency to prevent turf wars is another recommendation this author gives. So I'd like to hear more about that. Like what is it that should be shared, needs to be shared? Do we need to rethink how and what we share in terms of company performance, company profit margins, salary data, things like that?

And then finally, the future of work is human. I fully believe the future of work is human with AI and data systems and all the tools that are rapidly coming onto the scene. In order to be successful, as my COO said, it's called copilot, not autopilot. So there's a human factor here and we need to stay on top of that.

[11:45] Call to Action

If you want to get a hold of me, I'm at [email protected]. Visit our presenting sponsor, BPM Associates at BPM-associates.com. Check out thelifescienceeffect.com. Subscribe, like, comment, shoot me an email. Let's make this a conversation. And above all, stay strong out there.