Innovation Requires More Than Technical Expertise
In MedTech, there can be no innovation without R&D, but R&D requires people to push boundaries, try new things, push boundaries, and question the norm. R&D teams are expected to solve complex problems and ultimately save lives. But all that progress, creation and creativity requires trust, safety and a united team.
No matter how much technical skill your team has, if the team doesn’t feel connected, supported and valued, their confidence and creativity will fail. They become siloes, work against each other, sabotage one another and ultimately stall their life-saving breakthroughs and the shareholders’ profits too.
Creatives, and that’s what these brilliant minds are, require an environment which welcomes and supports them. Allows them to push boundaries without fear and personal risk. They need to know their trusted by their leaders and team. Otherwise, mistakes happen, creativity stalls, and lives don’t get saved.
Life-saving innovation requires trust.
Pushing Boundaries
It’s not just on mountain tops where we need to trust others to help us push past our boundaries. Creative, innovative teams deliver outstanding results and operate at their best when they feel safe, heard, and beleive their contributing to something greater than themselves. Team members need to know, with confidence, that their colleagues and leaders listen, give structured feedback, challenge constructively, and support them at the inevitable bump in the road.
Without trust, people can’t take that big leap to reach the next ledge; they become cautious, doubt themselves, and their creativity, along with their confidence, dies. No more do we hear “What if we created this…”, as it’s replaced with “What if I’m wrong…”. That doubt doesn’t save lives; it doesn’t create.
When it comes to MedTech R&D and Innovation, a shift in the environment is not only costly, but deadly.
When a MedTech Team Stopped Innovating
We saw this first-hand with one of our MedTech clients. We’ve been fortunate to support many medical industries in our years at Premier Team Building.
A potential new client came to us looking for “boost morale” as the R&D team had been a bit low. Now we’ve said if once, and we will keep saying it until people listen. MORALE IS A BY-PRODUCT. You can NOT fix morale without addressing the cause. And this is exactly what we had to do with this client.
Morale was low. Pressure from shareholders was rising. Innovation… dead.
This is where we had to use our own “medical” tools and do some diagnostics. Using our Team Needs Analysis, we ran the data. Got input from the whole R&D team and a few other overlapping departments; that’s when we saw the black mass on the results… Leadership wasn’t being accountable… Leadership was blaming everyone… Leadership was killing their confidence. Leadership killed the team’s trust.
Stories emerged of how people would be blamed or faulted regularly. Because of this, everything that had once built a great team had eroded everything.
People were less likely to contribute, unwilling to share input, and weren’t challenging decisions or taking creative risks. This resulted in low morale and ate away at their creative ideas.
Leadership Treatment
It’s not as simple as just doing a great team building activation. There was something causing the low morale, and without fixing that, the morale would remain low. It’s like having a headache, taking a pill, but not hydrating yourself. Sure, it might go away for a moment… but your headache will return.
Leaders drive innovation. They create the environment which allows people to thrive, create and ultimately save lives. They are responsible to how the environment makes people feel, and this was the first thing they needed to improve.
The leaders needed to some internal development to improve their key skills, relearn not what accountability is but what it looks like to be accountable. Behind closed doors, we needed to work with the leaders to begin to shift their mindset, their communication and how they shaped the culture of the team.
Yes the team got their first all-hands team program. But it was clear to them, and the leaders, it was a Band-Aid, while the cure was being developed. And the cure was improved leaders.
Through a series of coaching, training and development programs, their leaders learnt that accountability doesn’t mean they have to have all the answers, but it meant acknowledging mistakes, listening to different perspectives and taking responsibility. Developing this allowed them to begin to rebuild the trust and confidence within the team.
As we developed the leaders, shaped the environment, and rebuilt the safety they once had, we could see the trust return. Creativity was creeping back in. People were pushing back. Innovation was in the wind.
But it wasn’t done with an over-the-top pizza party, pub crawl, or winery event. It was done with targeted, result-driven, specific skill development for the leaders.
When Innovation Stalls, Business Profits Dry Up
For this and many MedTech companies, the breakdown wasn’t just in their culture and leadership. It also had serious commercial consequences too.
As the team became less creative and more siloed, their development slowed. Fewer new ideas were being developed, and the organisation was no longer innovating or profiting at the levels they used to.
Over time, this resulted in declining business performance, which led to more pressure from stakeholders. It was a lesson in co-morbitiy for this team. Their lack of trust caused numerous other issues throughout the business. And if they hadn’t taken the right steps, it could have sunk all their hard work, and worst of all… lives could have been lost.
Preventative Medicine
So what could a MedTech leader, or you, do to prevent such an issue?
Start by creating a stronger culture, one by design. Knowing the risks of ignoring their culture and values and the impacts it can have on R&D, and the bottom line. Leaders can communicate openly, both ways, about challenges, feedback, goals and areas of focus. They can be a support network for their team, not another risk to manage.
Teams also need the opportunity to strengthen their relationships with one another. See themselves from different angles, learn from one another, and expand their knowledge base. Focused team development programs are a key way of developing not only soft, but hard skills for many teams.
But ultimately, these initiatives need to have a purpose. They aren’t just a “lift morale” moment. They need to have a “why”, tied to a goal and purpose. They need to have their own accountability. Doing a team program or training just to look busy will only cause more issues to rise faster. Your team is smart enough to know when you’re investing or Band-Aiding.
Building Cultures That Drive Breakthroughs
While MedTech and other cutting-edge industries rely heavily on technology, research, and technical capabilities. But the next big breakthrough still relies on people being willing to share ideas, ask why, voice concerns and debate with purpose. These skills need to be supported, praised and rewarded within these industries’ cultures.
Breakthroughs require change. Change is scary. And trust helps us with those fears.
At Premier Team Building, we’ve been fortunate to work with many MedTech and medical-related companies over the years. With programs which push people to debate, get frustrated, question things and think outside the box, we’ve seen amazing progress in our clients.
We’ve built many programs which support building the key skills required to push boundaries, reach new heights and hopefully one day, save lives too.
When you notice creativity slowing, innovation weakening, find the cause and address it. Morale will tell you something is wrong, but finding the cause is the only smart way forward. Take our Team Needs Analysis to get real data to drive positive change within your culture.
Better yet, book a complimentary strategy call with one of our executive leadership coaches, and let’s explore building a profitable culture.
