Michael Short is the Founder and CEO Culture Works Consulting.
Understanding the team and its strengths are essential in a business where various pivots and changes of directions will be required. As the successful path for the business commercialisation evolves and changes to adapt to the companies developments as well as market demands, successes and failures so the path will be altered.
Team performance is not just about skills and experience, personality and behaviours; it’s about what people have natural affinity for.
A clear interview question is “what are you going to achieve in the first 100, 200, 400 days?”. To achieve high performance we will look at creating an environment where psychological safety is essential (we are going to fail) and ensuring that people deploy their knowledge, experience and personal style in the pursuit of team objectives where they are most comfortable and are naturally predestined to have their best Impact – it’s about energy of the individual and team - “You will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.”, this is a team game, succeed together, fail together – how do we harness that most effectively.
Michael knows the life. He has held senior executive positions, including CEO and President roles in Europe and the USA, in protein therapeutics and small molecule businesses. He was involved in business development with many of the major therapeutics businesses.
He was Founder / CEO of RioTech (Roche, Imperial, Oxford) focused on small molecule as well as protein therapeutics for viral infections. In 2005 he was CEO at the glyco-conjugation, small molecule and protein therapeutics business, GlycoForm in Oxford. In 2008 he moved to the USA where he became President and VP of Business Development and for BaroFold Inc, a therapeutic proteins business. He then moved to several consultancy roles in biotech and other industries where he developed his capabilities in transformation and organisational development, including health-tech clients e.g. Embera Therapeutics, Kuur Therapeutics, Elekta Medical Systems .
Michael’s focus is on purpose, strategy, organisational development, and individual coaching in the last 10 years. His understanding of the challenges of individual and executive team development comes from first-hand experience and implementation, both successful and, as important, learning from failure.
He is a firm believer in Strengths, Game Changer and Agile methods as a tool to effect positive change at a sustainable pace for the environment in which his clients are operating.