ACT: Could you please tell us a little about Alcon and your role as head for the clinical data organization?
Ebert: I lead the data operations, so that’s data management, that’s clinical systems standardization, and programming. Basically, anything that goes into our clinical trials from a data and a system perspective runs through our team.
ACT: Now, over the last few years with the rise of novel approaches and new technologies, there is no shortage of buzzwords in the industry. To drive meaningful change and true transformation, what advice would you give a clinical leader?
Ebert: I would say drop the buzzwords. I’m not a huge buzzword fan. I think buzzwords create a lot of energy and focus on things that often don’t actually manifest into anything meaningful, and we spend a lot of time and energy and money on things that don’t actually show a return on investment. I would heed caution when I hear words like AI and automation and transformation; these are obviously things that we need to be aware of, and we need to leverage technology appropriately, but I think we don’t need to just jump on a bandwagon and do it because everyone else is. I think we have to be thoughtful about what problems we’re trying to solve, I think we need to know exactly how that is going to ultimately benefit the patient, so how are we creating a return on the investment that we’re doing in time, energy, financial, for these technologies, or whatever it is that we’re doing, and at the end of the day, how does that get our products to the patients faster? How does it get a better product to them? If it’s something that just has a cool tagline and makes it look like we’ve done something super substantial, but we’ve added a tremendous amount of cost and not actually shown how we are improving the overall flow and how we work, I think it’s probably something we shouldn’t be investing in. My recommendation would just be go back to the basics, get the way that you work simplified, keep things very simple, and make sure that you do them very well; reduce the variability in your organization before you start layering a lot of glitz and glamor on top of it.
ACT: Showing a change is needed, completed, and successful requires KPIs and measurement. Could you talk about the importance of metrics which drive transformation?
Ebert: When you think about going through a major, large scale transformation—you’re maybe investing in a technology, you’re completely overhauling the way you work, maybe you’re building a certain team or organization for some type of solution you’re trying to tackle—I think you have to have an idea of when you go through these projects a lot of times to get the business case agreed to you say this is going to create this return on investment, and that’s great, but then how do we actually measure that at the end of the project? This is where I think a lot of transformations and changes fail, is that you say you’re going to achieve and accomplish something, but then you don’t actually find mechanisms and ways to measure it throughout that continuum and prove whether or not that was achieved. Did you meet it? Did you get slightly below it, or did you blow it out of the water? I think from the beginning, when you’re going through these initiatives, you need to know what and how you’re going to measure it, and you need to build that in from the front side, and then actually show how you have returned that meaningful change back to the organization. At the end of the day, a lot of times organizations do come back and ask, and then you’re scrambling to put it together and it’s not always something that you intentionally paid attention to and allowed that to inform and tweak how you go along that continuum to get to what that end result is.
ACT: What do you think is the most important variable when trying to implement a new initiative or way of working?
Ebert: I think you have to set a clear vision, obviously, and then I think you have to remain tried and true to that vision throughout, so people need to know what the target is and then how to get there. I would always focus first on laying a solid foundation and getting the fundamentals right. When you think about data management, sometimes what I see is we need to strip this back and get back to just the basics and the fundamentals of core capabilities within the data management programming remit and do those really well before we start having lots of tools and add-ons to that. Can we execute to our fundamental day job well, and do that first? Usually, my philosophy with any type of change or any type of transformation is make sure within the organization that you have control, that that is excellent and it’s refined from the top down before you start expanding out, because you’re going to have the most success where you have the most influence, so get that solidified so that you can move forward and branch out into other areas, and use this data, use your operational excellence to really allow that to perpetuate more broadly within the organization.
ACT: You gave a TED Talk about hiring hippies. We’ve talked at Summit about workforce challenges in clinical trials. What advice would you give companies as they look to expand their teams?
Ebert: I would just say, think outside of the box. There’s a lot of people that are capable of doing a lot of things, you just have to unleash their strengths and their greatness within them. We don’t always just look for a tried-and-true pedigree in terms of hiring our skill sets, we look for someone that fits the organizational culture. They have impeccable integrity, great work ethic, and that they’re intelligent. Then from that perspective, we have a solid foundation on how to train and onboard and bring people up to speed really quickly, and we have found that to be really effective, and we found it to bring a really interesting diversity into our workforce that has strengthened the organization, and there’s benefits to diversity and background of what you’ve come from, your career path, and those types of things, and that’s been really interesting to see how that brings the team together in a more dynamic way.
