The future of life science projects

Michael O’Connor, Senior Research Programme Director at US healthcare firm Medtronic’s new spinal robotics arm Mazor, reflects on the legacy of the pandemic.

Spring 2020 saw Michael O’Connor transporting “truckloads” of stuff home from his Minneapolis office: equipment, files, paperwork – all the typical clutter accumulated through years split between two entities: home and work. The Covid-19 pandemic had forced O’Connor and his team at Medtronic out of their Twin Cities headquarters and, like so many people used to an office environment, he realised life might never be so easily split between home and work again.

“My wife looked at all this stuff and said: ‘Burn it’,” O’Connor jokes from his woodland home office in rural Minnesota, two years on. “She was right, of course. I didn’t need all the paperwork, so I went through all my files and got rid of most of it. Looking back, that was the first major shift in the way people were working,” he says. Formerly Medtronic’s Director of Strategy and Project Management in Corporate Science and Technology, O’Connor took over as Senior Research Programme Director, Programme Management, for the company’s new spinal robotics arm, Mazor, in January this year.

With more than 35 years of experience in project management – the past 19 of those at Medtronic – O’Connor recognises an irreversible shift taking place in the life sciences industry, not least in the acceleration towards digitisation: “No sector has been impacted more by this crisis than healthcare and health technology,” he says. “It forced us to say: ‘There’s a lot of technology at our fingertips; we don’t have to be tied to a desk or a location.”

The outcome was that the working day itself became much more flexible – a “win-win for companies and a win-win for the employees”, O’Connor believes. But the change is nonetheless a disruptive one for managers tasked with scheduling and overseeing time-sensitive projects. “What that flexibility looks like for each individual person or organisation is still to be determined,” he says. “Even in our company we’re still asking ourselves: what is the future of work?” What is striking, he says, is that “the role of project manager itself has changed during this pandemic – and maybe we haven’t yet caught up with what that role really is or what it will be”.

Flexibility and adapting project goals

The life sciences industry found itself at the forefront of the Covid-19 response, and project leaders felt a keen responsibility to respond to the emerging global health crisis directly. At Medtronic, leaders quickly arranged meetings for colleagues to brainstorm ideas. Here, the importance of recognising team strengths was important, O’Connor explains: concerns over a global shortage of personal protective equipment had already spread, but Medtronic was not best placed to assist in that particular market. The company did have experience in producing ventilators, however. A collective decision was made to shift resources away from the company’s large-scale production of stents and towards inexpensive ventilators, and later, a 3D-printable design for medical face shields.

Focusing on a small number of achievable goals was imperative, O’Connor says. “In those first couple of months, people felt helpless and wanted to do everything: let’s make face masks, let’s make scuba gear that we could turn towards respirators… it was easy to get carried away in the innovation process with all the ideas that were put out there,” he says. “Leadership pulled back the reins and said: ‘Wait a second. Here’s what we can do well, right now.’”

According to O’Connor, an important lesson learned for the business was recognising that it has talented people all over the organisation, and when there is a need or call to action, it can be flexible and move people to where they are needed. “In our case, we were able to take talented people and move them into a more complex environment to assure quality and success.”

What are the implications for the way projects are managed? “I think the project plan changes the day it is completed. Nothing is really set and project managers need to be aware of many tasks, deliverables, stakeholders, etc, and be able to make many decisions each day to drive the project to success. It comes down to communication and being prepared for changes.”

A new approach to competition

The disruptive nature of the pandemic sparked a number of firsts for the life sciences sector – for one thing, direct competitors became open to collaboration, often for the first time. “It changed the culture – reinforcing the notion that competitors aren’t necessarily bad, and in the right venue we can collaborate to make things better for the patient,” O’Connor says, a “huge and positive change”.

He gives the example of how Medtronic worked with UnitedHealth Group and the University of Minnesota, as well as Boston Scientific – a direct competitor, with which Medtronic has clashed over patent lawsuits in the past – to create their Covid-19 ventilators.

Lessons learned

“It showed us we can collaborate and innovate on a much larger scale,” O’Connor says of the lessons learned. “When people sat across the Zoom meeting from one another, [they realised] they’re the same people with the same goals, just at a different organisation with a different title. That will open up more potential doors and avenues to do things in a different way going forward, and I think even now [Medtronic] is thinking about ways we could work together versus working separately.”

Looking to the future, O’Connor believes another legacy from the pandemic could be a greater willingness for companies to share their research and workings more openly; Medtronic took the unusual step of making the source code for one of its ventilators open (that is, free to read and download online), which for a for-profit company with shareholders was “a big deal”.

While he believes the move was a “gesture of goodwill” during unprecedented times that is unlikely to be repeated in the same way any time soon, it was a “step in the right direction” that could prompt a shift in industry attitudes towards data sharing in the longer term. “Leaders could see that it was good for the brand, good for productivity, good for people’s minds. I think we could see that collaboration-innovation part of working opening up even more.”

Empathy in the workplace

A key lesson for managers to take from the pandemic has been the dangers and disillusionment of presenteeism, O’Connor says: “We should know by now that work is really about the outcomes and not about expecting people to sit at a desk from eight until five. I think most project managers already think in that way, but I’ve heard my company talk more about outcomes over hours put in over the past few months.”

Ultimately, leaders will have to be open-minded and willing to adapt much faster to changes in culture in the post-pandemic landscape, O’Connor believes, which will bring exciting opportunities: “The risk-reward set-up is different now. Leaders are willing for you to take a chance and try something different.

“You don’t have to follow the same format as before, or even the same technology or time-frame set-up. As project managers we have to utilise this – embrace some of the new things and reach beyond our comfort levels,” he says. “Work has definitely changed forever; I don’t think there is going to be a ‘new normal’ – it’s going to depend on the people and the organisation. That will take time to work out, and I think project managers are going to be at the forefront of it.”

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE Summer 2022 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.