An executive who is rarely short on ideas needs someone to pull their big ideas through to implementation. Kaye/Bassman’s Michael Pietrack explains why this person, who he calls the implementer, may be the most important hire in the building.
Welcome to Leadership Lab, a column for biopharma executives navigating the real-world pressures of leadership. Every other month, Michael Pietrack draws on his work in executive search at Kaye/Bassman International and conversations from “The Pharmaverse Podcast” to examine the leadership decisions that most directly impact hiring, team performance and organizational outcomes.
A few years ago, I sat across from a biotech founder who described his own company with more energy than most people reserve for their wedding day. He had the science down cold. He could explain the mechanism of action to a room of investors, leading scientists or fifth graders, and each would lean forward. He was brimming with ideas, brilliant ideas. What he could not do was triage them all, and most importantly, he could not pull ideas through to implementation.
Since that day, I’ve noticed this gap increasingly: The person generating the ideas is rarely the right person to implement them or even to decide which ones to implement. Why is this so important? The company with the best ideas doesn’t always win. It’s the one that gets the right ideas through to the finish line while the rest wait their turn.
But who is the person who decides and focuses on pull through? They’re the most important person an executive can have at their side: the implementer.
To be clear, “implementer” isn’t a title you’ll find on an org chart or a job posting. I use it because it names the actual function and why the person is so important. However, despite that importance, very few biopharma companies I’ve worked with have someone whose full-time job is deciding which ideas are worth the team’s time and then executing on them.
The executive who can’t stop generating ideas
Every startup needs somebody who sees the future before anyone else does. Let’s call that person the visionary. This leader is usually the founder, or perhaps the CEO, but it could be an executive at the top of a department. The gift of the visionary is also the challenge of the visionary: They never stop generating ideas. And, while each idea on its own might be worth pursuing, the volume can be overwhelming. Without an implementer filtering that stream, a leadership team ends up chasing whatever the executive pitched most recently instead of finishing what they already committed to.
I’ve had VPs and C-suite hires at promising biotechs tell me their company’s strategy shifted every few weeks depending on what the executive had just read or heard. One person said it was like riding a mechanical bull, with the frequent change in direction enough to give you whiplash. The visionary isn’t trying to be difficult, though. Coming up with ideas is exactly what they’re good at and what got the company where it is. What’s missing is a person whose job is to catch and triage those ideas before anyone leaves with a neck brace.
It’s also worth noting that without someone who can pull great ideas through to tangible action plans, the same ideas come up year after year and never get...well...implemented.
What does an implementer actually do?
Implementers add value to an executive’s work because they triage the visionary’s ideas in a logical order. They take the ideas, sort them and decide what gets acted on now, what gets parked for later and what quietly needs to die so the team can stay focused. Then, that same person owns shepherding the chosen ideas all the way through to execution, rather than letting them stall out as slide decks that never become anything real.
Picture an ER on a Friday night. Patients arrive with every kind of complaint, some urgent and some that can wait. The triage nurse doesn’t treat everyone in the order they walked in. They assess what needs attention now and route the rest appropriately. An implementer does the same thing with an executive’s ideas. Not every idea deserves the team’s attention this month, and part of the job is having the judgment and the standing to say so, even to the person who signs the checks.
In biopharma, I have seen this pairing work beautifully when a visionary partners with someone whose strength is turning ideas into action. The executive keeps generating pipeline ideas, courting key opinion leaders and giving the keynote at JPM. The implementer decides which of those ideas make it onto the leadership team’s plate and when, then holds everyone accountable for carrying them out instead of moving on to the next shiny thing.
When this works, something clicks that neither the visionary nor implementer could produce alone. A visionary without an implementer tends to create a lot of energy and not much forward motion. An implementer without a visionary can run a disciplined process with nothing worth executing. Put them together, and the ideas that matter the most make it to market.
2 key mistakes leaders make
The biggest mistake executives make with their ideas is assuming they can implement them. They generally can’t, and it isn’t a character flaw. Still, some see bringing in an implementer as a signal that their ideas aren’t good enough to act on. It’s the opposite. It means the ideas are good enough to protect, and someone needs to help decide the order they happen in.
The second mistake is hiring an implementer (or moving someone internally into the implementor seat) who won’t push back. This isn’t a landing spot for a loyal deputy who says yes to whatever the visionary pitches last. It requires someone who can look a visionary in the eye and say an idea needs to wait, then make sure the ideas that do get greenlit cross the finish line. If your implementer rubber stamps everything, you don’t have an implementer. You have a to-do list that never gets shorter.
Finding your implementer
Before you put up a job posting for someone to fill the implementer seat, look internally. Most companies have the ideal person for this role already inside their walls. Promoting that person is usually faster and lower risk than making an outside hire, since they already understand the business and, more importantly, already have the trust of the visionary they will need to push back on.
Look for someone with a track record of running operations or programs end to end, not just advising on strategy. Ask for specific examples of times they said no to a superior’s idea, as that is a key component to an implementer. Also, find someone who has low ego about credit, since this role means making your ideas real, with you often getting the spotlight for the result.
Once you have your implementer, remember that they can’t be successful if you’re not willing to give them the authority to prioritize what needs to be prioritized. An implementer who is second guessed will turn into a rubber stamp with a fancier title. Find the right person, and let that person bring your best big ideas into reality.
