As I explained in my recent post, we are launching the leadership series that will include interviews with statistical leaders among the biopharmaceutical community.
I am pleased to present an interview with Dr. Gregory Enas. To provide some background information, I met Greg Enas at JSM 1997 in Anaheim, CA. Greg was the Head of Global Statistical Sciences at Lilly and I was a graduate student. Greg told me about Lilly's growing statistical organization. At that time Lilly was interviewing statisticians at an amazing rate of 5-6 people each month. After our conversation I got invited for an interview as well, and the rest was history :) I am greatly thankful to Greg for putting his faith in yours truly twenty years ago.
Bio sketch
Greg was raised in Berkeley, California and graduated from Biola College (La Mirada, California). He took his PhD in Biostatistics at the Medical College of Virginia / Virginia Commonwealth University and joined Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis, retiring in 2011 after almost 30 years, initially as a statistician and then into management of the corporate statistics division, the decision sciences function, and ultimately a management career in regulatory affairs, all within Lilly Research Laboratories. Following retirement he served with FaegreBD Consulting as a Senior Advisor in their Health and Biosciences practice in 2012-2013 and in the management consulting arena before assuming his current role of President of the Trinity Fellows Academy in 2015 (www.trinityfellowsacademy.org).
Alex Dmitrienko: How would you define leadership, and what makes a leader effective?
Greg Enas: As a noun, leadership is defined by a leader's "follower-ship"; that is, the cadre of people who seek to emulate, be, and do as the leader is and does. As an adjective, leadership is linked to those characteristics and attributes that help him or her motivate, move, and compel those who are following. Effectiveness is determined by the leader's ability to embody the very essence, behavior, and action of what he or she desires to define those that follow; leaders lead by example primarily.
Alex Dmitrienko: What is statistical leadership?
Greg Enas: Statistical leadership obtains when the probability of effectiveness defined above, given that the leader is wise and courageous, is greater than 90%! Seriously, statistical leadership is the same as engineering or humanities leadership except that the leader is catalyzing others to create, make, and decide using the best that probability and statistical thinking has to offer.
Alex Dmitrienko: What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?
Greg Enas: King Solomon did not pray for wealth or power prior to inauguration as King over the nation of Israel but for wisdom and courage -- that's what a leader needs. I remember a time many years ago when our company was learning how to punch above its weight and move into the big leagues by pursuing multiple major drug approvals and launches annually. The development organization had to move quickly to prosecute this aspiration successfully. This meant putting the right resources and the right amount of resources on the late phase III molecules, prioritizing those higher than earlier stage molecules. This strategy demanded tough decision making. I had seen the often destructive aftermath of well intentioned attempts to throw statisticians into these pressure-packed NDA submission and approval engagements without leadership and supervision that understood the right roles to be played and now to successfully navigate to the finish line. As dedicated molecule teams formed, I was asked to resource these teams with boatloads of statisticians. I said No. I knew that business as usual would be that statisticians would be deployed to the "back room" number crunching and report writing expected of them traditionally. I knew that if that's all they did, the team would do those things well but might well fail to do the right things. So I said I will give you first and foremost some of my top lieutenants who will sit on the molecule team leadership boards and they will be involved with policy and decision making at the highest levels possible, and they will know how and when statisticians should be procured and deployed so that submissions and approvals are secured in a timely manner. They will know how to allow staff level statisticians and analysts to flourish so that the team prospers and their individual careers prosper.
The teams were taken aback at first but in time were overwhelmingly thankful for this approach. The drugs were approved and launched on time and helped move the company into a flourishing, sustainable future. But there were collateral effects. In the long run this approach produced a growing pipeline of statistical leadership that permeates the company even today within and outside of the statistics function. There were personal downsides -- I took heat for pulling leadership and statisticians away from the broader portfolio and Statistics function. Early phase portfolio work and efforts to strengthen the statistics function took a bit of a hit for which I took accountability. But these hits were worth it as the company was able to secure its future by doing the right things the right way whether my management completely embraced that or not.
That's why a leader needs both wisdom to know what the right thing to do is, and the courage to do it because the right thing is most often not the easy thing to do.
Alex Dmitrienko: What is your particular leadership style?
Greg Enas: Be wise as a serpent, tender as a dove, speak softly, carry a big stick, and balance managing
"down" well with influencing "up" well.
Alex Dmitrienko: Is there any general advice you would like to share with the blog's readers?
Greg Enas: Flip the organizational chart or the client map upside down and lead from the front by leading from below
Alex Dmitrienko: How do you find time to work on important tasks and fight the routine?
Greg Enas: You got to do what you got to do -- sometimes the most important tasks are the routine tasks so don't dichotomize these two concepts.
Alex Dmitrienko: How do you balance multiple commitments and responsibilities?
Greg Enas: All of the work that is directly outward facing with management, clients, staff, decision-makers, then that gets prioritized. Then, the routine stuff that's not directly staff or client-facing, it's first in-first out in the space between these priorities.
Alex Dmitrienko: What do you think about the role of statisticians with a strong methodological background in your organization and in biostatistical organizations across the industry?
Greg Enas: 80/20 rule. Build an organization of 80% client-facing consulting, methodologically savvy practicing statisticians that can rely as needed on another 20% back office methodology research gurus that are doing the extremely challenging methods development needed by the practicing statisticians.
Alex Dmitrienko: Effective feedback is critical to successful leadership: What are the best ways, in your opinion, of gathering reliable feedback and giving feedback?
Greg Enas: Desire 360 feedback yourself and make sure you get it. In the course of getting and responding to your own personal feedback, obtain and give feedback to others in same cycle, in same manner. Do for others what you would want them to do for you.
Alex Dmitrienko: When is it appropriate to take a mentorship mentality with a leadership role and when not?
Greg Enas: People are always watching so you can never get away from "mentoring" in its broadest sense -- lead by example. But mentoring must be intentional and the costs of time and effort must be taken into consideration. These costs are worth it for there is no greater task than to coach and mentor the human beings who are part of your team. My staffs can tell you whether or not my approach to deprioritize other work or spend time "managing upwards" compared to listening and working with my staff to enhance their leadership. Not that "managing upwards" is not important – in fact it is critical! Leading upward and downward is essential and trade offs must be made to navigate well. On average, when push came to shove, my leadership was marked by taking time with my staff to ensure they had what they needed to lead.
Alex Dmitrienko: What steps does a leader need to take to inspire innovation and creativity in a biostatistical organization?
Greg Enas: Always have an insatiable curiosity, asking questions, innovating by example, be willing to share credit or even not take credit, be pleased to connect others so that creative synergies occur.
Alex Dmitrienko: Do you think it is appropriate for employees to challenge a leader’s decisions? Is the feedback of this kind useful or mostly counterproductive?
Greg Enas: A good leader will listen carefully and humbly to those who will be affected by a decision, making sure all have been heard, and then make the decision after informing employees that they must implement the decision or move along. The price for having your voice heard is to agree to implement the decision or go somewhere else.
Alex Dmitrienko: What do you do with your free time? Do any of your hobbies or activities give you a unique perspective for how you conduct yourself at work?
Greg Enas: Lots of reading; fighting for every opportunity to learn and grow. I read a lot but not to keep to myself but to share. When I read of technical innovations or leadership qualities or anything about patients with disease and illness or cultural maladies that needed to be addressed, I would pass along these readings to my staff and ask them to response to questions about the readings. Then I would follow up with them for their responses. I challenged my staff (and management as well!) with questions and engaged them in stimulating conversation about the right path forward, about how to innovate, etc. I loved to create safe places for honest challenge, keeping out of the "personal" but engaging in a critique of ideas. We created forums such as SPROM (Statistical Peer Review Opportunities Meeting) where statisticians, physicians, pharmacologists, basic scientists, and others would all come and challenge various proposals that my staff were developing for protocols, drug development programs, regulatory negotiations, whatever. Non-threatening but "scary" because you had to make your ideas clear and then address questions and deep, diverse, probing. You got to get statisticians (often introverted and keeping to themselves) out of the box and into the boxing ring to engage and win!