Welcome to the APM Podcast, brought to you by The Chartered
Body for the Project profession. This episode is part of our
series of Senior Leader Interviews hosted by APM Chief
Executive Professor Adam Bodison.
This time, Adam is speaking to Doctor Karen Skinner of medical
research charity Life Arc. The charity aims to advance
early scientific discoveries to the point where they could be
developed into the next generation of diagnostics and
treatments for patients. Aaron's Life Arc Chief Project
and portfolio officer, and she brings more than 25 years of
experience within life sciences, pharmaceuticals and biotech,
cutting out her career as a bench scientist.
She later discovered that she excelled at planning, building
relationships and getting the best from teams, which led to a
long and successful career in project management.
So listen on to here Adam and Karen discuss the role of
project management and getting new drugs to patients, why
medical research projects are so high risk, and why projects
success relies more on people management than robust planning.
So I'm delighted to welcome to the APM Podcast today Doctor
Karen Skinner from Life Arc. Welcome Karen to the APM
Podcast. Thanks, Adam.
I I think before we dive in to life arc and the project
profession more broadly, maybe we can start by you telling us a
little bit about your career journey and and in particular
how you came to be in the project profession in the first
place. I started out as a bench
scientist. I I loved science at school and
I just knew at the outset that's what I wanted to do.
So after I did my O levels I I did my science A levels.
Then I did my first degree in pharmacology at the University
of Bath and then a pH. D in neuroscience at the
University of Oxford. And then during my studies I did
a year out in industry at the pharmaceutical company.
It was Glaxo at the time, now GSK but that was back back in
the day when it was pre merger. So it was just Glaxo at the time
and they also kindly sponsored my PhD.
So I did further secondments there.
And from that experience, I just knew that I wanted to apply my
understanding of science to improve the lives of those
living with disease, to innovate and accelerate development of
new and improved medicinal products.
So after my studies, I got my first job and again that was
another major pharmaceutical company, Merck, where I got a
really good grounding of drug discovery there and then my very
first taste of project leadership working in small
project teams. I then moved to a high growth
biotech company called BTG and all my experience up to that
point was all in preclinical development, but I really wanted
to move closer to the patient. And so I joined their clinical
development team. And when I joined BTG, it was
really small. It's only about 70 people.
We had project leaders, but we didn't have a dedicated project
management team at that time. But we grew really fast.
We grew through organic growth and through multiple
acquisitions and we started to take products further down the
development path all the way to launch.
So the skills we needed were more varied.
We needed regulatory, market access, sales.
So our project teams were much more complex and our employees
or across multiple geographies that became apparent.
We really needed dedicated skilled project management.
And so although I really love the science and I still do
through my role on those projects teams over the years,
it was clear that my strengths were in that planning and
organisation in establishing processes so that fit for
purpose in getting the best from teams and building
relationships. So I started doing more and more
of that and ultimately I ended up building and leading the
project management department at BTG.
So I'm really a firm believer that although scientific
innovation is the core of the industry, great science just
doesn't get the drug to the patient.
It takes a large, complex team of people to do that and it
takes a really strong project management to get the best from
those teams. So that's why I've kind of
focused my career more lastly in that project management space.
Yeah, that makes sense. And I thought it was really
interesting about what you were saying there Karen was all of
those aspects of project management like stakeholder
engagement, other kind of the people side of the project
profession, if you like, they're really, really important because
sometimes I get asked about well you know is project management
the same as product management. And one one of my responses to
that is that I always feel a project management has got much
more of the kind of EQ side of things in it than than purely
being a product focused. Although clearly there is some,
some overlap between the two. I don't know if you would agree
with that. Absolutely.
I couldn't agree more. I felt like, you know, 90% of it
is that people peace getting the best from the teams rather than
actually, yeah, the the, the, the project management and
getting the job done. Yeah, that makes sense.
So let's talk about your current role then.
So how long have you been in the role and what's a typical day,
such a thing as a typical day? Well, I've now been at Life Up
for about four years actually, so a life arc.
I don't know if you know so much about them.
They're one of the largest self funding, not-for-profit medical
research organisations in the UK.
I'm a member of the executive team and I'm accountable for
their portfolio of translation challenges.
These are really, really ambitious research programmes
focused on complex healthcare needs and then the way we've
structured the leaders of all those challenges reporting to
me, as does the project management organisation under
our head of PMO. OK now that makes sense and
really, really interested that you talk about portfolio there.
So for for people listening to this I I should offer a
disclaimer in advance that sometimes the APM we we we use
the the word project interchangeably when we
sometimes mean a programme or a portfolio just because it takes
too long to talk about all three of them all of the time.
But but for this question I do particularly want to ask you
about the portfolio because I suppose that life arc there's
probably no shortage of of projects and programmes that you
could run and and and could pursue.
How do you decide which ones to do?
That is quite a challenge because there's so much
opportunity there out there. So a life arc are our aim is to
make life science life changing for people living with disease.
So we're working to source the most promising early research
validating those discoveries and supporting them through their
next steps and their development towards the clinic.
And as a not-for-profit, we can focus on smaller patient
populations that typically attract less investment because
they're not commercially viable areas such as motor neurone
disease for example, where which is a, I mean that's a
particularly debilitating and life limiting neurodegenerative
disease, but it's relatively rare compared to other
neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease.
So we'll know that the large pharmaceutical companies, they
will invest into research and outstanding disease, but not so
much in a smaller population. So those are the areas that we
prioritise as a not-for-profit. And so we've got projects that
are developing new drugs and diagnostics, medical devices,
digital solutions all aimed at changing the lives of those
patients. And again, it's on on those
relatively underserved areas. Now that that that that makes
good sense and and what I really like about about the work that
Life Arc does is when people think about projects and
programmes it's quite easy to think about.
I don't know construction and telecoms and infrastructure but
actually you're kind of living proof if you like that actually
the project profession is is a genuinely pan sector profession
that is making a difference to people's lives every day.
So that's really powerful. So so let's tell me more about
the project delivery profession within life Arc.
How how many people are there within that profession?
How what size of the workforce is it and and and is that kind
of a growing area with within life arc?
Tell me. Tell me a bit more about that.
Yes, So what life up to date, we're relatively small
organisation in terms of people. So we've got about 300 employees
today, but I would say we're growing.
So over the next year we'll probably add another you know 50
to 100 to that number. So we really are growing.
I would say we're largely a project based organisation.
So the majority of our employees are in project teams.
Those teams are led by an appointed project team and then
we're made-up of members of our science organisation, members of
our our partnerships teams, you know, folks in business
development and alliance management because we're very
collaborative with external partners and we're also
supported by enabling functions such as legal, communications,
HR and finance. So in terms of the actual
project management professionals, we've got quite a
lean structure I would say supporting that.
So there's around about 15 of us with varying degrees of
expertise and competency that we assign to those portfolios and
programmes based on the level of complexity they have.
And then we provide guidance to others within the organisation
who manage their own smaller, lower risk projects themselves.
And what about the kind of challenges and risks?
You know, I talked before about the fact that, you know, this is
maybe a different sector than most people are used to hearing
about projects within other some unique challenges and risks that
either to life arc itself or to or to this particular sector.
Well, I would say in this sector it's a very high risk
environment. Medical research is very risky.
You know, we expect a lot of the projects to fail.
Actually I think it was, there's a famous quote from Einstein,
you said if we knew it, what it was we were doing, we wouldn't
be calling it research, which I think is always quite funny.
So I think when you're conducting have based research,
often things just don't work out and actually that's when project
management really comes into play because it's very difficult
for project teams to drop their own baby.
You know it really requires strong project management to
hold people to their delivery milestones and their go no go
decision points. And when things aren't working
out we need to kill them fast rather than allow the teams to
kind of flog a dead horse. And it's really important
therefore to define the measures of success up front to prevent
that drift. I would say another unique
challenge is you know we've got a very collaborative working
one, lots of external partners. I'm saying in healthcare no one
organisation can do it all. You need an ecosystem of players
to bring new products to patients And so life art
collaborates really heavily with others whether they you know,
they can bring their knowledge or access to novel technology or
their ability to Co fund with us.
We collaborate with a broad range of stakeholder groups.
So we we we collaborate with the patients themselves, with other
charities, academics, pharma, biotech, the regulators, the
NHS. So I think that really does
generate some quite unique challenges in terms of alliance
management, where individuals and organisations have very
different agendas, different priorities, So you have to work
even harder at defining ways of working and ensuring alignment
on priorities when you have such a diverse ecosystem of partners
that you're working with. There might be people listening
to this today, Karen, who are maybe project professionals in
other sectors who are saying this sounds really interesting.
I'd love to be involved in a project that's making this kind
of difference to to to to people and to the, you know, to society
at large. But they'll think, oh, but you
know what, I haven't got a life sciences background or I don't
really know a lot about science. I mean, do do you need to have a
a kind of scientific background to to work in your kind of
organisation? Is it realistic to kind of
transfer between sectors into a very specialist area like yours?
I mean I would say it helps. It helps to have that
background. I would say the vast majority of
our team do have degrees in life sciences but and when we have
got project managers in our team who don't have a science
background but they are typically focused on our IT and
business change projects, we need project managers in that
space as well because of the technology that we're working
with and just the smooth running of the organisations.
So we don't have, you know, not everybody has that science
background. I mean I consider myself a
really accomplished project manager but when it came to
building the extension on my house, I knew I couldn't project
manage that because I just didn't have the knowledge to
challenge around the timelines and the costs and I didn't have
the time to build that knowledge either to do a decent job.
But it I mean if if people in other professions are thinking
and and moving into this area. I mean I have to say you know
what a wonderful area to work in in terms of that per purpose of
life sciences. In terms of you know changing
the world for the better and helping people living with
disease. I think you know you can move
across. I said, I would say the
different it's is if you're thinking and moving you just
have to be willing to take the time to engage with the science.
So, so not come thinking well you know that isn't for me.
I will just do the basic kind of project management.
I think if you engage with the science, you listen and you
learn, you know, I think then it's possible to develop
sufficient awareness and understanding in order to do
that role effectively as well. I was kind of thinking of the
maturity of the project profession compared to other
professions I, I don't know HR, marketing, finance and so on.
And in those professions where they are also operating kind of
pan sector, you know if it's let's say marketing or legal or
probably probably good examples there, there is this kind of
expectation. I suppose that it's OK to move
between sectors and yes, you might pick things up as you as
you go along and as you say, you have to immerse yourself in the
sector that you go into, but it's not really frowned upon in
in that way. But I thought I find in the
project profession, there's keep people sometimes identify with
their sector before they identify with their profession.
Uh, which is as I say, probably an indication of, UH, our
maturity being a little bit further behind some of those
others, UH, but but I think that's also we're going to be an
indication that we're making progress when there is that kind
of freedom of movement between sectors, so when we get there.
Well, yeah. And I would say sometimes it
really helps to have people that aren't so close to the science.
As I said, you know, we're trying to engage with lots of
stakeholders. We're trying to engage with the
patients and with the public on the work that we're doing.
You know, and sometimes we forget the the words that we're
using are jargon that other people don't understand because
we're so used to using them. So actually having people that
aren't so familiar on the team that can actually call you out
and say what does that acronym mean?
Can you phrase that in a different way?
Actually really helps with our communication with other people
in the community. We're a PM, the only chartered
membership organisation for the project profession.
When you become an APM member, you'll receive the resources and
support you need to make an impact delivering better
projects with better outcomes. Plus you'll access exclusive
training and benefits to support your ongoing career development.
Find out how we can help you reach your potential by visiting
apm.org.uk, Because when projects succeed, society
benefits. Let's talk about the kind of
charity aspect of of life arc. I know that even the big, big
corporates that I talk to are delivering projects.
They find it difficult to recruit really talented project
professionals. I guess trying to attract people
into the charity sector is, is that an advantage because lots
of people want to work in the charity sector and you know,
because it gives you that real feel good factor that you're
doing something directly for the public benefit.
Or do you have the same challenges as the big
corporates? It's just hard trying to find
good people? Well, I think we take a lot of
kind of different approaches to, to help us identify the best
people and would say, you know, first of all, we really work to
build our networks. I'm connected to a network of
project professionals, you know, through membership of
organisations like the PM for example, And by attending events
and participating in that community really helps build the
network and actually actively contributing as well, whether
presenting the events or delivering webinars or or
podcasts like this one. That also helps to really raise
the profile of the organisation that you're working for.
I know actually a member of our team, Matt Franklin, he's an
early careers ambassador for the APM.
So that's really actively encouraging our team and others
to attend early careers events. Another thing we do is
mentoring. You know, I gain a lot from my
mentors that I had in the early days of my career and I enjoy
giving back to as a mentor now. And actually it's not just about
giving back. I gain personally from those
relationships, you know, expanding my own network and
gaining fresh perspectives from another's experience.
So I think all of that kind of helps to raise awareness of life
arc on what we do here. And then I think the other thing
we do track people is we do offer a really clear career path
for project professionals within Life Park.
You know we have apprentices, project coordinators and then
increasing maturity levels of of project programme and portfolio
managers all supported by learning and development plan.
So I think that you know when people can see there's an
opportunity for progression both in their career and actually you
know a fantastic place to work both based on why we exist and
what we're trying to do for society.
I think we don't have too many problems in terms of attracting
people to come to work for us. APM strap line, it's because
when projects succeed, society benefits and it's trying to kind
of link I suppose project success with with with societal
benefit. Now obviously the work that
you're doing, clearly the outputs of those and outcomes of
those of those projects are going to benefit society.
But are there other opportunities?
Either through the way you deliver projects, the way you
design them, and the things you decide to do where where you
kind of add social value through the work that your team does at
Life Arc? Well, I mean absolutely, I mean
as you say, I mean at Life Park it's that societal benefit
that's what really drives us. You know, we're really driven by
that opportunity to address health problems facing
communities, changing health options and outcomes for
patients, improving the lives of people living with disease.
That has a much broader impact on society as a whole given the
economic impact of healthcare. So I mean we, we engage a lot
with the patients. We consider the patient voice to
be absolutely critical to make sure that whatever we deliver is
going to really meet their primary needs.
We're really committed I would say to equity, diversity and
inclusion and that's both in terms of the patient populations
that we aim to serve but also in the inclusive approach that we
take to delivering them as I say engaging the patients even
working within our teams, we share, we engage across the
organisation that everybody understands that the role that
they play in in terms of the project team and and everybody I
suppose is is part of the success that we have.
We make sure that we share the knowledge that we generate about
science and disease with others in in the community.
We still see we you know play a big role in training the
scientists of tomorrow and the work we do, we're building the
ecosystem necessary to deliver those healthcare innovations.
So forming strategic partnerships with others in the
fields. And then I would say our project
management life like we really monitor and evaluate the impact
that we have. So we really learn from we're
doing and channel our resources towards the projects that are
really going to make a difference.
We we couldn't possibly have a discussion, I don't think,
without drifting into the elephant in the room, the AI
discussion. Everybody's talking about AI at
the moment and I'm just wondering whether that's
something that that's already starting to impact project work,
you know, your organisation, and if not, what you think might be
the impact over time as it starts to really bed in as a
standard technology? That's had a huge impact already
when I think back to when I started out in science, so when
I was at Glaxo, it was all 100% in the lab, you know, wet lab,
that's what I call where all the scientists were in the lab.
Well, it's not like that today. I mean now as we look at our
labs, you know, I would say it's getting towards half and half,
50% dry lab, if you know what I mean by working in AI and
machine learning rather than wet lab.
So we're already seeing that big change and actually that creates
change for the project managers as well.
So it's not just in the resources and the workforce, but
there's a challenge for project managers and how we're storing,
processing and analysing that data.
Um, that requires kind of new infrastructures, new new tools,
new expertise. And so we're seeing big changes
there. And you know, I think it's going
to transform science even more. You know, researchers can
analyse enormous datasets now and and discover much more
complex relationships and I think that's really going to
accelerate scientific discovery. I would say things like ChatGPT
and AI art generators, they're already commonplace and you know
and you see some people concerned about the impact
that's going to have. But I I'm not concerned at all.
I think they're only going to increase our efficiency.
We don't need to see them as a threat.
It's just an A great opportunity and we just need to embrace them
as as much as possible and use them wisely.
I want to talk a bit about project success, if I may.
I'm kind of thinking more generally about the, you know,
project profession. Now, I've seen recently that
some people when they talk about project success, what they mean
is I've delivered my project on time, within budget to the
required specification. And then there's other people
that say no, no, no, hang on a minute, you can't possibly know
that because just because you've delivered the project doesn't
mean it's successful. You know, success is about long
term benefits, realisation and we might not know that for maybe
even 10 years. I mean I'm, I'm guessing for
some of the work that you're doing it's yes, you've got all
the trials and everything else that you might do.
But I guess it's going to be several years afterwards before
you get the kind of real mass data as to what the impact of of
some of your work has been. I mean how do you go about
defining what you what you mean by project success and is it the
same in every project? Well, now it's different in
every project, which is why it makes it a bit of a challenge.
But what we do actually is we start with the end in mind.
So you start with that, what's the impact that you want to have
in the world, You know, what do you wanna do for this patient
population? And then we work back from there
and think, well, if is this the impact we want to have, then
these are the outcomes we need. These are the outputs, These are
the programmes of work we would need to do.
These are the people we would need to engage with.
These are the inputs that we need and almost like build your
road map of of projects that will lead you towards that
success and then also it gives you those measures on on the
way. And these these are the
activities we need to get underway.
These are the outputs we're expecting, these are the outputs
we need to get I think to achieve that ultimate impact
because all the time we're working in that early
translation space. So as you say the ultimate
impact the patient isn't until probably five years down the
line. So actually really mapping that
out so you're understanding they're actually you're heading
in the right direction is important.
And I I mean in terms of that success, I mean with my project
management hat on, you could say it's all about having that clear
road map, that clear business plan and project plan.
And as you said, let's make sure we're clear on the aims and the
tasks and the the timelines, the customer resources.
But actually it's always about the people I think in terms of
that project success about pulling together that highly
capable team who are really working towards that goal and
communicating effectively with each other.
That's the thing that actually is most likely to get you the
impact that you want at the end of the day.
Let's talk a bit about leadership.
Obviously, you know, I'm really inspired by our conversation
today. You are a project leader in your
own right. I guess you've obviously worked
with lots of other project leaders.
What what makes a really good project leader really great one?
Any particular characteristics? Well, I think as a project
leader you you leading the team and so you it's about being
inspiring you know and believing, believing.
I mean look a lot of people there's been a lot of fantastic
project ideas but without a really strong sponsor leading
and inspiring everybody else to get behind that, things won't
happen. So I think, I think believing in
themselves and having that self a self-awareness as well team
building skills because nobody can achieve anything on their
own. So actually being able to kind
of garner the support of the team, to support them and work
with them is really important and actually then be really
focused on the outcomes, actions and outcomes to drive forward at
pace. I mean in this in the scientific
field in particular, things move on so quickly.
So you need to be moving at pace with that and being really
flexible because actually as I said, things don't work out the
way you thought they were going to do.
And so you have to be able to spot that quickly and pivot and
move and be flexible and then change the plan.
So I think, I mean it's quite, it's quite a magical person that
we're expecting this project leader to have all these
competences, but that's almost what you need.
Somebody can do all those things and then just drive drive to
deliver projects to successful completion.
There might be some project professionals listening to this
who are maybe relatively new to the profession or early in their
career, and they're listening to, you know, where you've got
to in your career and all those twists and turns that you
described at the beginning of our conversation and how you got
to be in the great role that you're in now.
And I'd be thinking I'd love to do a role like Karen's one day.
What advice would you give to those people who are trying to
to get to that point in life? Well, I would, I would say
dedicate time to your professional development.
You're like you're I'm not done learning now, I'm quite old now.
I would say you're never done learning and I would say so.
So certainly at Life Arc we have a kind of 70, 2010 approach to
our learning. So 70% is on the job trying to
find projects and and assigning yourself to tasks that enable
you to grow and development 20% learning from others.
So certainly getting a coaching or a mentoring relationship, you
know, attending conferences and webinars and then 10% doing
studying itself more, you know, in the classroom stuff, taking
courses, earning accreditations. I would really say find yourself
a good mentor and then change mentors as you progress
throughout your career and certainly I would say as you
progress in your giving back to others as well.
Yeah, I really like that. What you talking about there you
you talking about 30% almost a third of your time is, is there
on kind of learning, development, shaping and so on,
you know and that's quite a big commitment, isn't it?
But it sounds like that's what you've got the kind of
investment you've got to make if you really want to make it in in
in this field. So, yeah, brilliant Karen, it's
been an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast.
So thank you very much for coming along and thank you for
all the work that you and your colleagues are doing at Life
Arc. You're obviously making a huge
difference to society and it's great to see that in action and
and thank you for your time today.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Much appreciated. Thank you for joining us for
this episode of the APM Podcast. If you enjoyed it, don't forget
to subscribe, leave us a review or contact us with your feedback
at apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk.
We're keen to hear from listeners with your ideas on the
topics you'd most like us to feature on the podcast in 2024.
This podcast has been brought to you by APM, The Chartered Body
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visit apm.org.uk.