To foster a culture of adaptability, engagement, and high performance on your team, you need to demonstrate consistent curiosity about your employees, yourself, and your organization. Here’s how:
Curiosity about employees. Organizations are a collection of the mindsets, attitudes, and values of the people that work within them. To shape your team’s culture, you need to understand people’s values and motivations. Talk to employees directly, formally survey them, or engage in focus groups about the team’s culture to tap into your collective wisdom.
Curiosity about yourself. As your culture evolves, you must too. Reflect with open-mindedness on your own role. Ask yourself: How have I evolved over time within this team and this organization? The better you understand your own position in the culture, the better suited you’ll be to lead and shape it.
Curiosity about the organization. Great leaders don’t just shape culture once—they stay curious about the changing nature of their companies and contexts over time. How have your organization’s mission, vision, and values changed? How has the personnel changed? And how have all of these factors affected the culture along the way? The more you understand your cultural context, the better equipped you’ll be to navigate it.
Curiosity about the domain: What are the changes in your field? What is current research? Regulatory shifts? Best practices? The more you understand the external landscape, the better equipped you are to establish a vision of excellence.
At the SQA’s Quality College, I presented a workshop on Quality Culture. In interests of time, I glossed over the ISOs and wanted to come back and treat them in more detail.
ISO 9000 is a set of international standards on quality management and quality assurance developed to help companies effectively document the quality system elements needed to maintain an efficient quality system. Designed to be general in approach, they are not specific to any one industry and can be applied to organizations of any size.
There are some 25 series 9000 standards, with the core for this topic being:
ISO 9000 Quality management systems -Fundamentals and vocabulary
ISO 9001 Quality management systems – Requirements
ISO 9004 Managing for the sustained success of an organization – A quality management approach
The ISO 10000 series supports standards in the ISO 9000 series with more specific guidelines, there are several here relevant to the question of Quality Culture:
ISO 10010 Quality management — Guidance to understand, evaluate and improve organizational quality culture
ISO 10015 Quality Management – Guidelines for competence management and people development Training
ISO 10018 Quality Management – Guidelines on People Involvement and Competence
I recently joined Just Evotec Biologics as the Senior Director of Global Quality Engineering and Validation. For a variety of reasons (just look at my past company on my LinkedIn bio and search the news to find one) it was a good time to move. I had decided that I wanted a position that was tied to an innovative manufacturing company and was deep in domain expertise. The combination of Just Evotec Biologics innovative technology aims and the ability to deep dive into one of my favorite topics was just too much to resist. Add to it the opportunity to work with a leader I deeply respected again and well, here I am. And feeling very good about it.
When I first started I met with the team and laid out my 30-60-90 day goals.
As well as talking a little about how I operate.
A big chunk of my time has been getting the lay-of-the-land institutionally. Setting some standards, doing gap assessments, figuring out what-is-what, and getting to know all my partners and stakeholders. For reasons of confidentiality, this post won’t be going deep on that.
What I do want to talk about is our team values and ways of working. I’ve been focused heavily on three areas with the team:
Team Values
Team Decision Making
Team Competencies
Team Values
We did a few workshops where we identified a set of values:
Leader to Team: How I expect the team to perform
Team to Leader: How the Team expects me to perform
Team to Team: How we expect each other to perform
This exercise really helped me understand what was going on within the team and through it I really started to understand some priorities.
For each of these, we created a Value Statement. Here are some examples.
Value: United Front
Definition: Decisions are made and recorded honestly and transparently. Employees understand decisions and how to execute them. The entire team represents the decisions made, and the decision-making process with one voice.
Desired Behaviors:
I hold myself accountable for representing the decisions made by the team.
I work to anticipate and fend off the possibility of failures occurring.
I engage with decision making and respect the decisions that result.
Value: Open to Change
Definition: Willingness to listen to the team. Actively looking for feedback and input from the team before making decisions that impact the team. Open to changing established ways and revisiting previously made decisions.
I will create an environment where new ideas are welcome and challenging ideas are encouraged.
I will include the team in decision-making where applicable.
I will actively seek out individual and group feedback to enable continuous improvements.
Value: Learning Culture
Definition: Share lessons learned from projects so team can grow together and remain aligned. Engage in knowledge-sharing sessions.
Desired Behaviors:
I will share lessons learned from each project with the wider QEV team via teams channel &/or weekly team meetings.
I will encourage team members to openly share their experiences, successes, and challenges without fear of judgement.
I will update RAID log with decisions made by the team.
I will identify possible process improvements and update the process improvement tracker
Team Decision Making
Currently working with the team to define decision-making, introducing the RAPID model and working on a matrix of decisions.
Team Competencies
Starting with technical skills we are defining our core competencies. Next, we will tackle, with the larger quality organization, the soft skill side of the equation. This is definitely a work in progress.
Skill
Area
Key
Aspects
Proficiency
Levels
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
Expert
General
CQV Principles
�Modern
process validation and guidance
�Validation
design and how to reduce variability
�Able
to review a basic protocol
�Able
to review/approve Validation document deliverables.
�Understands
the importance of a well-defined URS.
�Able
to be QEV lead in a small project
�Able
to answer questions and guide others in QEV
�Participates
in process improvement
�Able
to review and approve RTM/SRs
�Able
to be QEV lead in a large project project
�Trains
and mentors others in QEV
�Leads
process improvement initiatives
�Able
to provide Quality oversight on the creation of Validation Plans for complex
systems and/or projects
�Sets
overall CQV strategy
�Recognized
as an expert outside of JEB
Facilities and Utilities
�Oversee
Facilities, HVAC and Controlled Environments
�Pharma
Water and WFI
�Pure
Steam, Compressed Air, Medical Gases
�Understands
the principles and GMP requirements
�Applies
the principles, activities, and deliverables that constitute an efficient and
acceptable approach to demonstrating facility fitness-for-use/qualification
�Guide
the Design to Qualification Process for new facilities/utilities or the
expansion of existing facilities/utilities
�Able
to establish best practices
Systems and Equipment
�Equipment,
including Lab equipment
�Understands
the principles and GMP requirements
�Principles,
activities, and deliverables that constitute an efficient and acceptable
approach to demonstrating equipment fitness-for-use/qualification
�Able
to provide overall strategy for large projects
�Able
to be QEV lead on complex systems and equipment.
�Able
to establish best practices
Computer Systems and Data Integrity
�Computer
lifecycle, including validation
�Understands
the principles and GMP requirements
�Able
to review CSV documents
�Apply
GAMP5 risk based approach
�Day-to-day
quality oversight
�Able
to provide overall strategy for a risk based GAMP5 approach to computer
system quality
�Able
to establish best practices
Asset Lifecycle
�Quality
oversight and decision making in the lifecycle asset lifecycle: Plan,
acquire, use, maintain, and dispose of assets
�Can
use CMMS to look up Calibrations, Cal schedules and PM schedules
�Quality
oversight of asset lifecycle decisions
�Able
to provide oversight on Cal/PM frequency
�Able
to assess impact to validated state for corrective WO’s.
�Able
to establish asset lifecycle for new equipment classes
�Establish
risk-based PM for new asset classes
�Establish
asset lifecycle approach
Quality Systems
�SOP/WI
and other GxP Documents
�Deviation
�Change
Control
�Able
to use the eQMS
�Deviation
reviewer (minor/major)
�Change
Control approver
�Document
author/approver
�Deviation
reviewer (critical)
�Manage
umbrella/Parent changes
�Able
to set strategic direction
Cleaning,
Sanitization and Sterilization Validation
�Evaluate
and execute cleaning practices, limit calculations, scientific rationales,
and validation documents
�Manage
the challenges of multi-product facilities in the establishment of limits,
determination of validation strategies, and maintaining the validated state
�Differentiate
the requirements for cleaning and sterilization validation when using manual,
semi-automatic, and automatic cleaning technologies
�Review
protocols
�Identify
and characterize potential residues including product, processing aids,
cleaning agents, and adventitious agents
�Understand
Sterilization principles and requirements
�Create,
review and approve scientifically sound rationales,
validation protocols, and reports
�Manage
and remediate the pitfalls inherent in cleaning after the production of
biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical products
�Define
cleaning/sterilization validation strategy to meet GMP requirements
Quality Risk Management
�Apply
QRM principles according to Q9
�Participate
in a risk assessment
�Determine
appropriate tools
�Establish
risk-based decision-making tools
�Set
risk-based approaches
�Define
risk management program for CQV activities
I’d love feedback on this.
My Overall Philosophy
I’ve been focusing on five key tasks as a leader in this organization:
As the weather thaws, so too is my brain. I’ll be honest, it has been a bad six months for me, and one can tell by my lack of postings and all the other balls I’ve managed to drop in professional circles. It should be no surprise that we are in the midst of a post-pandemic mental health crisis with the rise of serious mental health issues being through the roof with reports of severe depression and anxiety making a steep climb in the last few years. And unfortunately, these numbers suffer from a great deal of under reporting. The Center for Disease Reporting shows the rate of suicide in the US at record highs not seen since the 1940s. Chances are multiple people in your circles are grappling with mental health.
I’m in a better place. I’ve got help, I am working on my relationships, I’ve changed jobs for better balance. I’ve got a lot still to do, but I’m going in the right direction.
If you are dealing with mental health issues, please get help. And if you need someone to talk to who is still doing a lot of work, please do not hesitate to reach out.