Building the leadership team for your next stage of growth
Why leadership capability must evolve as a life-sciences business moves from innovation to commercial scale.
Leadership teams are usually built around the most pressing needs of a business at a particular moment.
For an early-stage life-sciences company, that may mean scientific development, intellectual property, clinical evidence and securing investment.
As the company progresses, its priorities begin to change. Product development may be joined by market access, commercialisation, manufacturing, international expansion and organisational growth.
The people who helped the business reach its current position remain enormously important. However, they may need additional experience and capability around them to help the company achieve its next set of objectives.
The challenge for founders, Boards and investors is recognising when those leadership requirements are changing - and acting before a capability gap becomes a barrier to growth.
Different stages create different leadership demands
There is no standard route from scientific innovation to commercial success. Every company, product and market is different.
Nevertheless, the leadership questions facing a business will evolve as it develops.
During research and development
The immediate priorities may include:
Establishing the scientific proposition
Protecting intellectual property
Developing clinical and regulatory pathways
Building relationships with researchers and clinicians
Securing early investment
Demonstrating technical and clinical feasibility
At this stage, scientific credibility, technical expertise and a clear sense of purpose are often central to the organisation.
During clinical development and fundraising
As the business progresses, the leadership team may require greater experience of:
Clinical programme management
Regulatory strategy
Financial planning and investor communication
Governance and risk
Strategic partnerships
Operational planning
The company is no longer only developing an innovation. It is also building the organisation required to fund, manage and deliver it.
During commercialisation
Commercialisation creates another significant shift.
The business must decide which markets to enter, how to reach customers, what evidence will support adoption and whether it will sell directly or through partners.
Leadership requirements may now include:
Commercial strategy
Market access and reimbursement
Sales and marketing leadership
Customer and clinical engagement
Pricing and channel strategy
Manufacturing and supply-chain capability
International market development
A product can be scientifically compelling without being commercially ready. The leadership team must be capable of connecting clinical value with a realistic route to adoption and revenue.
During scale and international growth
Once commercial traction has been established, the challenge changes again.
The organisation may need stronger systems, clearer accountability and more experienced functional leadership. The CEO may no longer be able to remain personally involved in every decision, customer relationship or operational issue.
The focus begins to include:
Building and leading larger teams
Developing organisational structure
Expanding internationally
Managing performance across functions and territories
Strengthening financial and operational controls
Protecting culture during rapid growth
Considering partnerships, acquisitions or future strategic transactions
The leadership model that worked for a small, highly connected organisation may need to evolve as the business becomes larger and more complex.
Evolving the team does not mean replacing it
Leadership planning is sometimes treated as a question of who should stay and who should leave.
That is often too simplistic.
In many businesses, the answer is not wholesale change. It may involve adding complementary capability, redefining responsibilities or providing existing leaders with greater support.
A founder with exceptional scientific vision may continue to play a central role while an experienced commercial CEO builds the organisation around that innovation.
A capable finance leader may benefit from the support of a commercially experienced NED before the company requires a full-time CFO with public-market or transaction experience.
An existing commercial leader may remain highly effective in a core market while an international appointment takes responsibility for expansion elsewhere.
The objective should be to preserve the knowledge, commitment and strengths already within the business while introducing the capability required for the next stage.
Signs that leadership requirements may be changing
Leadership gaps do not always appear as an obvious vacancy.
They may initially become visible through recurring organisational problems.
Potential indicators include:
Too many decisions continuing to sit with the founder or CEO
Important initiatives repeatedly losing momentum
Unclear accountability between members of the leadership team
Senior leaders spending significant time outside their core expertise
Commercial expectations that are not matched by market capability
Operational systems struggling to keep pace with growth
Board meetings becoming dominated by immediate operational issues
Investors repeatedly raising the same capability concerns
Recruitment becoming reactive rather than planned
Succession depending upon a single individual
None of these automatically means that a new executive appointment is required. They do indicate that the leadership structure should be examined.
Executive, Board, advisory or interim support?
Not every capability gap requires a permanent executive hire.
The right solution depends upon the importance of the requirement, how frequently the expertise will be needed and how quickly the company must act.
A permanent executive appointment
A full-time leader may be required when the capability is central to delivering the business plan and requires daily ownership.
This could include a CEO, Chief Commercial Officer, CFO, Chief Operating Officer or senior functional leader.
An independent NED or Chair
A Board appointment can introduce experience, challenge and external perspective without adding another operational executive.
This can be particularly valuable when a business is preparing for fundraising, international expansion, commercialisation or a future transaction.
An adviser or fractional leader
Specialist support may be appropriate where the business needs access to particular expertise but is not yet ready to create a permanent position.
This can help the company develop its plans while building a clearer understanding of its longer-term leadership requirements.
An interim appointment
An experienced interim leader can provide immediate capability during a period of transition, transformation or unexpected absence.
However, the objectives and authority attached to an interim appointment must be clearly defined.
Development of the existing team
Sometimes the right answer is to invest in the people already in the organisation.
Coaching, mentoring, clearer responsibilities and exposure to experienced Board members can help strong leaders grow with the business.
Define the next milestone before defining the person
One of the most common recruitment mistakes is beginning with a title.
“We need a Chief Commercial Officer” or “We need somebody who has completed an exit” may sound clear, but it does not fully explain what the appointment must achieve.
A better process begins with the next stage of the business plan.
Boards should consider:
What must the company achieve during the next 18 to 36 months?
Which capabilities will be essential to delivering those objectives?
Which of those capabilities already exist within the organisation?
Where are the most significant leadership gaps?
Does the requirement need executive ownership, Board input or specialist advice?
What should success look like after the first 12 months?
How will the new appointment work with the existing team?
Once those questions have been answered, the organisation can define the role and candidate profile more accurately.
Experience must be relevant to the stage
An impressive CV does not automatically mean that somebody is right for a growth-stage business.
A leader from a large multinational may bring valuable experience, but they may also be accustomed to established infrastructure, significant resources and well-developed teams.
Conversely, somebody who has successfully operated in an early-stage company may be highly adaptable but lack experience of the structures required at greater scale.
The strongest candidate is not necessarily the person with the largest previous title or the closest sector match.
Businesses should consider:
The scale and maturity of the organisations in which the candidate has succeeded
The resources they had available
Whether they built capability or inherited it
How they operate when information is incomplete
Their ability to move between strategy and execution
How they lead founders, specialists and growing teams
Their motivations for joining the business at its current stage
This is the difference between general experience and genuine growth-stage fit.
Align the Board before approaching the market
Senior appointments are most successful when the key stakeholders share a clear view of the requirement.
The Board, investors and executive team should agree:
The immediate priorities for the role
The capabilities that are genuinely essential
Where the candidate profile can be flexible
How decisions will be made
What package and incentives can be offered
How the appointment will be communicated internally
If different stakeholders are looking for different types of leader, those differences should be resolved before candidates enter the process.
Good candidates will identify uncertainty quickly. Alignment gives the organisation a clearer and more persuasive story to take to the market.
Leadership planning should happen before the gap becomes urgent
The strongest executives and Board members are rarely available at precisely the moment a business decides it needs them.
Identifying, engaging and assessing senior leaders takes time. So does creating internal alignment around the role.
Leadership planning should therefore form part of the wider business strategy—not begin when a milestone has already been missed or an individual has announced their departure.
A regular review of executive and Board capability can help businesses anticipate what they will need next, develop existing leaders and approach the external market in a more considered way.
Building for what comes next
The leadership team required to establish a life-sciences business may not contain every capability needed to commercialise and scale it.
That is not a criticism of the existing team. It is a natural consequence of growth.
The role of the Board is to understand how the company’s requirements are changing, preserve the strengths that made the business successful and introduce new capability at the right time.
The most useful question is not simply:
“Do we have a strong leadership team?”
It is:
“Do we have the right leadership team for what we need to achieve next?”
RMG supports life-sciences and MedTech businesses with executive, functional and Board appointments across different stages of development.
If your organisation is approaching a new phase of growth, RMG can help assess the leadership requirement, define the right appointment and identify people with the experience to deliver it.
