Roads to Resilience

life sciences and biotech sectors ” (Chairman). In exploring, adapting to clients’ needs, and spotting new opportunities, management perceive that: “ One of the key messages … is to be prepared to improvise ” (Chairman). Ability to act autonomously It is not unusual at the beginning of a project that the client does not know exactly what they need. So project leaders must to be able to adapt and, “ half the job of the project leader is to find out what it is the client needs, not what he [or she] asks for ” (Managing Director). Project leaders need to be very flexible and, interestingly, TTP has less focus on formal project management methods than might be expected. Instead the aim is to “ manage the people rather than the process ” (Project Leader). The requirement to continually adapt as projects progress means that the individual scientists and engineers are given the ‘space’ they require: “ You are given a lot of responsibility but you are also given a lot of freedom … you don’t have managers telling you on a daily basis what to do, each person decides themselves what needs to be done ” (Project Leader). Project leaders at TTP are also given a lot of responsibility and a very high degree of autonomy: “ We give a lot of responsibility to project leaders, not just for the technical leadership of the project. Ideally they have been involved in drawing up the proposal and developing a relationship before it even starts ” (Chairman). Senior management need to monitor the progress of the typically 70 projects that are running at any one time and this poses a challenge. Managers need to set an appropriate tone in providing guidance, “ by asking a question or making a suggestion but not by saying: ‘Get out of the way and let me do it!’ ” (Managing Director). As project leaders are given responsibility for the whole project life cycle, they require a wide range of skills to be able to operate effectively. This means that, “ If somebody wants to increase their value as a project leader, then actually they have to become competent at not just dealing with the technical side of things, but also dealing with intellectual property issues, dealing with the contractual issues, actually dealing with everything ” (Managing Director). Teamworking TTP employees have a high degree of crossover in expertise and interests, so collaboration and co-operation are possible, and strongly encouraged: “ Although most people at TTP are specialists in their own right, we are unusual in the way we operate across the boundaries of disciplines to share ideas and solve problems. The result is a unique capability to look at technical issues from a broad perspective ” 2 . A key aspect of balancing the peaks and troughs in demand that are inevitable with a responsive business, is that each group is willing to help other parts of the business. This “ reinforces the idea that it is a team enterprise. We’re all in it together ” (Chairman). Co-operation at the project level helps and it is seen as “ one of the most powerful things. People will join resources from the other groups and they make a personal bond ” (Managing Director). After-work social groups, sports teams, and working on community issues all help foster a sense of shared purpose including, “ the fact that they eat in the same restaurant, that sort of social mixing ” (Managing Director). Working together and face-to-face informal communication is strongly encouraged at TTP: “ often you get a new joiner who says: ‘Why don’t we have a database where I can look up, you know, an electro-engineer with Digital Signal Processing experience?’ And the answer is because if you do

2 See: http://www.ttp.com/technology/software/

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Roads to Resilience: Building dynamic approaches to risk to achieve future success