Helicopter Skills and Why Your Next IT Leader Needs Them
People hear “helicopter skills” and think of helicopter parenting. Hovering. Checking in on everything. Never letting the kid, or in this case the team, out of your sight.
That’s not what I mean by it. Not even close.
When I use the phrase with a client, I’m not talking about hovering over anybody. I’m talking about moving up and down the organization.
In Biotech IT, Helicopter Skills Mean Working the C-Suite and the Engine Room
When I talk about helicopter skills, and I bring this up with clients a lot, I mean helicoptering up and down the organization. Being able to float up to the C-suite, sit in a strategy conversation, and speak business to business, not IT to business. Then bringing that same roadmap down a level and translating it, pulling the pieces together, and actually solving something with it.
And then going lower still. All the way down to the base level, the engine room, because most of these leaders came up out of a technology background. They used to turn the wrenches themselves. So part of what I’m looking for is whether they can still get down into that engine room, understand exactly what the technical team is doing, and explain each nut and bolt: how it works and why it’s being turned the way it’s being turned.
That’s the range. C-suite at the top, the belly of the engine room at the bottom, and the ability to move between them without losing the thread in either direction.
Plenty of leaders are strong at one end. Far fewer are strong at both.
And the two ends depend on each other. Speaking business to business at the top only works if what you’re saying is grounded in something true about how the technology actually runs. Explaining the nuts and bolts at the bottom is only useful if it connects back to a roadmap the business needs. A leader who can do one without the other is giving you half a picture, even when the half they give you sounds impressive.
Big Biotech Hands You the Strategy, So a Lot of Leaders There Never Have To Build the Range
There are leaders who hear all that and just scoff. I’m not doing all that, that’s not my job. And almost every time, those are the big company folks.
It makes sense once you think about how they came up. In a big company, the strategy usually gets handed to you. Unless you’re way, way up at the top, you’re not setting it, you’re executing it. Somebody above you already did the thinking, already fought the internal battles to get it approved, already lined up the budget. Your job is to move it forward once it lands on your desk. That takes its own kind of skill, and I don’t want to make it sound easy, because it isn’t. But it’s a different skill than the one I’m describing here.
Smaller and medium-sized biotech companies don’t work that way. Nobody’s handing you the strategy. You are the strategy, for your team and for your business unit. There’s no committee upstream that already decided the direction and just needs you to carry it out.
So if you can’t helicopter up and down the way I just described, you’re going to be pretty ineffective in that seat. Honestly, you probably won’t even get hired at a small or medium company if you can’t demonstrate it in the interview. The people across the table have already watched what happens when someone can’t.
A Billion-Dollar Biotech Still Wants Leaders Who Can Get Into the Weeds
People assume this is a small-company problem. It isn’t.
I worked with a billion-dollar-plus revenue company last year and placed a few VPs there. They reported to the CIO, and two of them ended up being two of the three IT representatives on the company’s executive leadership team, business-wide, not just for IT.
Those two still had to demonstrate the lowest level of helicopter skills, down into the weeds, understanding what everybody on the technology side was actually doing. Getting a seat at that table wasn’t enough on its own. The requirement still exists at companies that are just starting to get big, and at the ones already well past that.
The Biotech IT Leaders With Range Usually Came Up Through ERP or Infrastructure
I get asked a lot whether you can spot this early, before someone’s ever run a team. If you look at the leaders who end up with that kind of range, there’s a pattern. It doesn’t hold for everybody, but it comes up again and again.
I go back to a sports analogy for this. The catcher makes a good manager. He’s the one who sees the whole field from behind the plate, every pitch, every runner, every signal. In IT, the equivalent is the person who handled the ERP systems, or the person who owned infrastructure. They’ve watched how every piece of the operation connects to every other piece, because their job forced them to see the whole thing at once. I’d say that background accounts for a large majority of the leaders I see get to that next level. Not everybody, but most of them.
Beyond that, the leaders who go furthest are usually the ones who stay curious about what the business is doing, not just what IT is doing. In our business specifically, that means keeping the patient at the center of the strategy, whatever form that takes: getting therapies to people faster, supporting the research behind them, tightening up the supply chain, handling the insurance and payment side of getting a treatment to someone who needs it. The people who keep asking how to make that easier, faster, and smarter for the patient tend to do well long-term.
That curiosity is also where you see leaders cross over from technologist into business partner. Somebody who came up owning ERP or commercial systems moves into a role that’s business-IT for the business’s sake, not IT for IT’s sake. Although we’ve been drifting backward on that lately, with a lot of leaders getting pulled into IT for IT’s sake because of AI. Different topic. I’ll come back to it another time.
Small and Medium Biotech Companies Won’t Hire You Without Both Ends
If you’re hiring the next technology leader for a biotech company, don’t stop at what they’ve run. Ask them to talk you through the business strategy, business to business. Then ask them to walk you down into what their team is actually turning, and why it’s being turned that way. The ones who can do both will show you fast. So will the ones who can’t.
And if you’re the leader reading this, it’s the same question in reverse. If you can only do one of those two things, that’s the one to work on before your next move. The smaller and medium companies will find out in the interview, and honestly they have to. Once you’re in that seat, nobody is handing you the strategy.
You are the strategy.
About The Author:
Steven Swan is the Principal of Swan Group, where he places technology leaders in biotech, from small and medium companies where one leader sets the entire technology direction to billion-dollar organizations with IT seats on the executive leadership team. Much of his work comes down to the range this article describes: which candidates can hold a strategy conversation with the C-suite and then walk into the engine room and explain what their team is building, and which ones only look like they can. He also writes The Biotech Brief, a newsletter for the CIOs, VPs of IT, and heads of infrastructure running technology inside the industry.
Are you looking for top IT talent in the pharmaceutical or biotech industry?
Contact us to discuss how we can bring top-tier IT talent to your organization. The Swan Group are executive leaders with extensive IT recruiting expertise in the biotech and pharmaceutical space. Our goal is to ensure that each professional we place and each client we work with achieves a competitive advantage based upon our services.
Are you a professional looking for a new opportunity?
Contact us to discuss your career options or browse our opportunities. As a small boutique firm, we are in the business of building careers, not just filling positions.
ABOUT THE SWAN GROUP
Our goal is to ensure that each professional we place and each client we work with achieves a competitive advantage based upon our services. Our specialty is high-level INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY placement within the Pharmaceutical, Bio-Pharmaceutical, and Consumer Products industries. Thoughts, comments, or would like to discuss further, please contact us.
