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Roger Perlmutter Town Hall

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Anonymous said:
There was a Roger Perlmutter Town Hall wecast today in which he gave a frank evaluation of the current MRL status. It was not pretty.
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I’m afraid it will take a bit more than just removing franchises and moving a few of the same old people around in different positions to keep this sinking ship afloat. It took decades to build MRL as being the place where science was the foundation of our excellence, a place respected across the industry and academia. It took just a few years to tear it down completely. How do you turn this around? Let’s start with seeing what went wrong. A guy with no drug discovery experience was given the job to run the ship. People who are incompetent in their job will almost always cover it up by introducing lots of process, lots of talking without substance and an introducing an endless stream of unnecessary initiatives that never lead to anything. Anyone who spoke up and didn’t agree was let go, and we lost an astounding number of excellent scientist with tremendous experience. What’s left is a bunch of smooth talking yes sayers and gaps in middle management were filled with incompetent yes sayers who have been sitting on the side lines for years waiting for this exact opportunity. Then we hired a bunch of young scientist fresh out of school who’s only examples were the process driven, empty talking points and scientifically utterly weak middle managers. And guess what happens, these young folks look at this and many will just emulate the exact same behaviors because that’s what’s rewarded and encouraged. MRL Boston is a perfect example of this and should be a case study for this particular practice. MRL is demoralized, beaten up over the years by the incompetence of their leaders and a never ending cycle of layoffs. But more importantly, we are no longer the scientifically strong organization we once were. I don’t care how many times we have to hear that we are, it’s simply not true. Getting rid of process is important, but you can’t produce and expect excellent science without weeding out the weak scientists and enabling the strongest ones, from top to bottom. THAT is real change, and that is the really difficult thing to do. That is change people may actually believe in. Without it the few excellent scientists we still have will slowly but surely get out and it won’t matter how much process you get rid of.
 








Written as an insider that clearly sees many of the issues that exist inside Merck R&D. I would like to add by generalization another observation regarding the scientific culture. There are two kinds of scientists in this organization. The ones that focus their efforts on good science and advancing knowledge and understanding. They are typically ignored, dismissed or worse, intentionally undermined. The other operational scientists are the ones that focus all of their efforts on climbing another rung on the managerial ladder. Scientifically lazy and spend their time managing up. It is no surprise who ascends in this environment and explains why there is such a talent gap in middle management. Often threatened by the productive scientists they play it safe, do as their told and don't have the wherewithal to recognize quality science let alone harness it. Their lives are made easier by simply implementing activities such as process.
 




Anonymous said:
Written as an insider that clearly sees many of the issues that exist inside Merck R&D. I would like to add by generalization another observation regarding the scientific culture. There are two kinds of scientists in this organization. The ones that focus their efforts on good science and advancing knowledge and understanding. They are typically ignored, dismissed or worse, intentionally undermined. The other operational scientists are the ones that focus all of their efforts on climbing another rung on the managerial ladder. Scientifically lazy and spend their time managing up. It is no surprise who ascends in this environment and explains why there is such a talent gap in middle management. Often threatened by the productive scientists they play it safe, do as their told and don't have the wherewithal to recognize quality science let alone harness it. Their lives are made easier by simply implementing activities such as process.
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The scientifically lazy are out or on their way out eg., Gary O., Don N. Some of the former unfortunately were also let go as well.
 




Anonymous said:
I’m afraid it will take a bit more than just removing franchises and moving a few of the same old people around in different positions to keep this sinking ship afloat. It took decades to build MRL as being the place where science was the foundation of our excellence, a place respected across the industry and academia. It took just a few years to tear it down completely. How do you turn this around? Let’s start with seeing what went wrong. A guy with no drug discovery experience was given the job to run the ship. People who are incompetent in their job will almost always cover it up by introducing lots of process, lots of talking without substance and an introducing an endless stream of unnecessary initiatives that never lead to anything. Anyone who spoke up and didn’t agree was let go, and we lost an astounding number of excellent scientist with tremendous experience. What’s left is a bunch of smooth talking yes sayers and gaps in middle management were filled with incompetent yes sayers who have been sitting on the side lines for years waiting for this exact opportunity. Then we hired a bunch of young scientist fresh out of school who’s only examples were the process driven, empty talking points and scientifically utterly weak middle managers. And guess what happens, these young folks look at this and many will just emulate the exact same behaviors because that’s what’s rewarded and encouraged. MRL Boston is a perfect example of this and should be a case study for this particular practice. MRL is demoralized, beaten up over the years by the incompetence of their leaders and a never ending cycle of layoffs. But more importantly, we are no longer the scientifically strong organization we once were. I don’t care how many times we have to hear that we are, it’s simply not true. Getting rid of process is important, but you can’t produce and expect excellent science without weeding out the weak scientists and enabling the strongest ones, from top to bottom. THAT is real change, and that is the really difficult thing to do. That is change people may actually believe in. Without it the few excellent scientists we still have will slowly but surely get out and it won’t matter how much process you get rid of.
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Excellent post. As an MRL Boston insider, I agree with everything you wrote.
 




Anonymous said:
Excellent post. As an MRL Boston insider, I agree with everything you wrote.
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Add to that a case study of how it entirely missed its intended goal of being a satellite site in a biotech/pharma/academia hotspot. I have visited this site many times and it’s remarkable how isolated they are. This is a site with probably the least amount of R&D experience but that doesn’t seem to stop them from displaying a level of self inflated importance but with very few actual accomplishments to show for it. However, we can thank the Boston site for exporting and imposing the target CV on all of us. In the old days we called this understanding your target, but it appears that running programs by process caught up with them when they were confronted with simple basic questions about the biology their target.
They also seem to have a serious retention problem, but blaming that on being in a biotech/pharma hotspot is ignoring and deflecting the real issues. If people work in an environment that’s exciting and with sufficient career opportunities they wouldn’t want to leave. So what exactly is done in Boston that could not be done at any other site?
 




Anonymous said:
Add to that a case study of how it entirely missed its intended goal of being a satellite site in a biotech/pharma/academia hotspot. I have visited this site many times and it’s remarkable how isolated they are. This is a site with probably the least amount of R&D experience but that doesn’t seem to stop them from displaying a level of self inflated importance but with very few actual accomplishments to show for it. However, we can thank the Boston site for exporting and imposing the target CV on all of us. In the old days we called this understanding your target, but it appears that running programs by process caught up with them when they were confronted with simple basic questions about the biology their target.
They also seem to have a serious retention problem, but blaming that on being in a biotech/pharma hotspot is ignoring and deflecting the real issues. If people work in an environment that’s exciting and with sufficient career opportunities they wouldn’t want to leave. So what exactly is done in Boston that could not be done at any other site?
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Target CV sounds to be typical work of MF mafia. I can easily imaging those folks come up with stupid ideas at meetings when they tried to outsmart each other, with GO smiling and nodding. Not surprised by retention problem. I know people who have stayed with other companies for a long time, even though these other companies are much smaller and not considered as good as Merck. As a scientist, who wants to work in a process focused oppressing environment except those who enjoy process themselves or those who cannot find a better place to go to?
 












The next step is here is a public way. Email requesting that we submit a copy of our resume for review on Thursday was waiting in my inbox when I arrived into work yesterday. It would appear that managers are now ready to sift through the research staff to separate the wheat from the chaff. Good luck corn huskers.
 








Anonymous said:
The next step is here is a public way. Email requesting that we submit a copy of our resume for review on Thursday was waiting in my inbox when I arrived into work yesterday. It would appear that managers are now ready to sift through the research staff to separate the wheat from the chaff. Good luck corn huskers.
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Interesting. Which site do you work at?
 








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