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 for the project profession. For more information on APM, visit apm.org.uk.