Menu
For any ambitious, rapidly-growing company, inevitable growing pains are mitigated by the stewardship of a dedicated and coherent senior management team.
Few occasions challenge the full breadth of a company more than when it prepares to go public with an Initial Public Offering (IPO). During this time of intense scrutiny, leaders must ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction.
Discover how we used Talent SM&RT as a behaviour analysis tool to fix the “inexplicably aberrant behaviour” of one Director at a critical time for a biotech company preparing for its IPO.
Video content coming soon
The Head of HR and CEO of a biotechnology company explain that one of their Directors recently began behaving in an increasingly obstructive manner. The CEO is unsure of the reason for this behavior and describes it as “inexplicably aberrant.”
The Director is responsible for a critical business function, for which he holds certain legal responsibilities for licensed products. The role is notoriously difficult to recruit for, and even if it were possible to replace the Director, the loss of product knowledge would be a significant setback for the company.
With the company ramping up in preparation for its IPO, the timing could not be worse, and some form of intervention is essential.
Difficulty in identifying the root cause: It can be challenging to identify the underlying cause of the employee's destructive behaviour, which makes it difficult to develop an effective solution.
Resistance to change: The employee may be resistant to changing their behaviour, which can make it difficult to implement any solutions.
Fear of losing a valuable employee: The company may be hesitant to take action against the employee because they are a valuable member of the team, which can make it difficult to take action.
Lack of communication: If the employee is not properly informed about the impact of their behaviour on the company, they may be less likely to change their behaviour.
Limited resources: The company may not have the necessary resources to implement effective solutions to address the employee's behaviour.
Legal and Compliance: Company must consider the legal and compliance issues that may arise from taking action against the employee.
Impact on the team: The employee's behaviour may be impacting the team and the company culture, which can make it difficult to change the employee's behaviour without addressing the broader issues.
Complexity of the problem: Biotechnology is a complex field and the employee may have specialized knowledge that is essential for the company, which can make it difficult to find a replacement if the employee is terminated.
There are several key take-aways from this case study worth considering:
1. Behaviour change can be very difficult: even for willing individuals and even more so for employers that manage those individuals. Those challenges are exaccerbated when the employee in question is a senior figure with a large degree of functional autonomy.
2. Behaviours are driven by intentions. In a therapeutic intervention behavioural changes will often fail if a replacement behaviour does not uphold the underlying intention. So in considering what will motivate change it's first important to understand those underlying intentions and how new behaviours must be congruent with them if they are to stick.
3. Behaviours are context dependent - in fact the "aberrant behaviour" surfaced when new legal responsibilities came to bear ie. the context of the employees role had changed. Equally, context changes can be deliberately applied - in this instance reframing the relationship between an employer and employee to that of client and consultant transformed the context and the "aberrant behaviour" vanished.
4. This is not a generic fix. Obviously in practical terms this was more than a perceptual reframe, it involved a change to the legal relationship between employer and employee. And for those reasons this is not a generic fix but complex behavioural challenges rarely yield to generic fixes.
We help employers attract, engage and develop top talent.
The Talent SM&RT® system creates models of attitudes and behaviours delivering an unmatched level of understanding and influence in any talent context.