Accelerate Your Success by Engaging with the Right Consultant
Dean Gray is a Partner at PA Consulting, a company with over 4,000 employees that operates globally, and helps companies in several industries become more effective. Dean also has has significant experience within industry at Pfizer, BD, Boston Scientific, Sanofi Genzyme, and Heidelberg Engineering. In this episode he shares how consulting is utilized, what a good or bad engagement looks like, best practices for consultants and what you should expect, how to begin a project correctly, the importance of building relationships and how you can be a good partner.
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Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service and is minimally edited. Please forgive the mistakes contained within it.
Patrick Kothe 00:31
Welcome! There are times in our businesses that we need help from the outside. Maybe it's a project that's too big and we don't have the resource to complete it. Or maybe you require some special knowledge that you don't have in inside the company. Or maybe things have just gone sideways with the project and you need to get back on the path quickly. The bottom line is that we can't always have the resources we need in house 100% of the time. That's where consultants come in. Our guest today is Dean Gray, a partner at PA Consulting, a company with over 4000 employees that operates globally and helps companies and several industries become more effective. Dean has significant experience within industry at Pfizer, Becton Dickinson, Boston Scientific, Sanofi Genzyme and Heidelberg engineering has spent the last 10 years consulting using the lessons he learned in industry, along with the significant resources of PA to help solve unique problems. In this episode, we discuss how consulting is utilized what a good or bad engagement looks like, best practices for consultants and what you should expect from them. How to begin a project correctly, the importance of building relationships, and how you can be a good partner. Here's our conversation. Dean, you spent the first 30 years of your career inside industry inside a little bit in pharma and mostly in medical device. And now you've spent the last 10 years in consulting, how is it different from consulting versus industry?
Dean Gray 02:25
While there's some big differences, working in industry, of course, you're very focused on following a particular whether it's a product or a business strategy, you're very focused on developing those things, following them through all the way to the end. Typically, in consulting, whether it'd be management consulting, or innovation and technology consulting consulting, firms are often focused on dealing with a specific problem. And once that problem is addressed, and the consulting firm has helped the client to implement and execute whatever it might be necessary to rectify or correct or take advantage of an opportunity, then the consultancy goes away. Whereas in business, you get to follow through to, to the end and and see the impact of your efforts, your program, your strategy, whatever it may be. One of the other things in consulting, and one of the things I find so interesting is that we are given the opportunity to work with many different problems, sets, opportunities, so it's intellectually challenging. This is one of the ways that I got interested in consulting and still get a thrill out of it is having new problems to solve that often are outside that require additional additional learning. It requires synthesis of new information. It requires learning new approaches and applying a lot of critical thinking. And the velocity and the quantity of that tends to be a little bit higher than in a typical industry job. And of course, we are working very quickly in a pace. Not that that doesn't happen in industry. But we are often tasked with doing and juggling multiple things at the same time with focus on delivering valuable work and outcomes to our clients at tastes.
Patrick Kothe 04:32
So I imagine coming from industry, and you talked about, you know, one of the big changes is that you don't get to see things through to completion. Was that a big adjustment for you may were you all about the goals and objectives and launching that product let's let's get through and was that? Did you hit some frustration when you when you weren't able to do that and get the big win?
Dean Gray 04:57
Yes, sometimes. Indeed. It was and I think as a consultant, we often want to carry those things all the way to the end, and, and see the impact on the organization see the impact in the market, whether it's been a product that we've been able to help with, or if it's other types of organizational performance improvement efforts. So So yes, but, you know, there are trade offs. As I mentioned earlier, the excitement of dealing with multiple challenges. And creative problem solving is kind of a trade off from being very focused on a on a single or a focused Initiative, or product line, or for a business unit that might be a little bit different.
Patrick Kothe 05:45
And, you know, the other thing that you talked about was how fast paced the learning environment has to be. Because I know for me, I was kind of looking at things as a puzzle, you're trying to solve the puzzle for your own your one own individual product, but you've if you've got multiple ones working at the same time, the learning really needs to get stepped stepped up. So how do you keep pace with that? How do you how do you have all these multiple projects going at the same time, as well as keeping the learning coming in to be able to synthesize that information?
Dean Gray 06:22
Well, I work with great teams. And so I here at PA Consulting, we have a very extensive and broad, large set of multidisciplinary experts both on the technology and the innovation side of our work, but also in the management consultants side. So we have very strong subject matter matter experts who are very knowledgeable about particular industries, particular domains, and certainly, also bring a broad range of skill sets. And those people have done great things in many different industries and applications. And they have critical thinking capabilities and are able to take on new creative opportunities at speed. And that's one of the things that makes a great consultant, the ability to take on a new project that might be a little bit different, and usually is from some of the things that they've done before, and tackle it in a very fast paced way. That's addressing new information that we might have to learn about access, and then analyze and process. And that's, you know, the critical thing in making us successful as consultants. So there's not just one consultant on any given project, usually, regardless of the size of the consultancy. So for us, it really comes down to teamwork, collaboration, and leadership, to understand how to deploy the expertise and the capabilities that exist in a firm like PA Consulting and focus it on the problem that we are addressing for the client in an interactive and collaborative way with that client.
Patrick Kothe 08:03
Did your experience in industry, you had p&l responsibility as a as a GM and some of that, but what was the track was your track up through the commercial side of things or internal? What was your track?
Dean Gray 08:17
So I got started in sales, like many of us do, I graduated with a degree in undergraduate cooking in political science. And I was shocked to discover, no one wanted to hire a political major in the middle of a recession. So I was very fortunate, I done some summer work for a startup and nucular cardiology. And they needed salespeople. And they were, they were bold enough to offer me a job. So I got my start by selling capital medical equipment in the 1982 83 recession. And
Patrick Kothe 08:56
it's interesting because it's at that same point in time I was working for Malecon medical selling nuclear products, right. So we're in the same spot at the same time, it
Dean Gray 09:06
must have been a theme, and it's selling capital medical equipment in the middle of recession was a hard way to make a living. But it it taught me so much about so many things, including problem solving, understanding problems that our customers have, what their perceived needs are and being able to present a solution in the form of a product that meets their needs and their perceived needs. And to do that on the fly, we focused with communicating benefit and value. And I really enjoyed that experience. I enjoyed the entrepreneurial setting. I got a taste of what medicine is about and the impact that it has on patients. And that got me hooked. So that was the beginning of my career. In medical device industry after grad school I went on to work He was some big companies like Watson scientific, Becton Dickinson. Little bit in pharma dressed after grad school, but came up through sales and marketing, but then went on to hold a range of other roles, as you mentioned, from general management also, operations including manufacturing, supply chain, strategic planning, among others.
Patrick Kothe 10:23
You've worked for some really strong companies, BD and Pfizer and Boston Scientific, Sanofi. So you've got some really strong internal processes and people that that worked worked at those companies. Did you utilize consultants in those companies?
Dean Gray 10:47
We did, certainly. And all of the large companies that I've worked at, we did in a range of roles from both on the operation side, particularly in manufacturing, one of the tasks and challenges I had at BD, was to develop a new manufacturing process for surgical scrubs that BD at the time led the market and I believe still does. And so we did use some consultants to help us think through manufacturing processes and also to design some new molding equipment, where we essentially went from a very manual intensive process with very high costs to a streamline automated process, that we were able to realize some very substantial cost savings. But likewise, on the on the on the commercial side, certainly with sales, sales training, as you know, marketing, particularly using consultants to help us understand and validate market opportunity. And also helping us to do customer and customer need validation that would drive product ideation and development.
Patrick Kothe 11:58
Some people think of consultants and they think of, okay, BCG is coming in or something somebody somebody's gonna come in, and we've got, we've got a downsizing, coming. So there's a whole lot more that you can get out of consultants than just that exercise.
Dean Gray 12:14
Absolutely. And as you know, there are all all different flavors of consultants and consultancies, all providing different types of services and offering. And if you look at the consulting industry, it's a broad range of types of consultants who come in from those who are focused on strategy and strategy alone. Those may be focused on organizational restructuring or organizational performance. And then those who might be focused on product innovation, and other again on organizational performance. And, you know, PA Consulting is really in a great place because it touches all of those things. And that's one of the ways that we feel that we bring benefit and in a differentiated way to our clients is that we're able to draw on a broad range of capabilities to address a holistic problem that with a client might involve all different aspects of, of a problem, not just for example, not just developing a product, but thinking through how does the company bring that product to market? Particularly if it's a different kind of product? A digital product or a device data connected product? How does the company that may be focused on selling either capital equipment or consumables? How do they transition to focus on a data driven product? How do they define it? How do they define the benefit? How do they define? How do they monetize the data? What's the right business model for them? What's the right business model for their customer? And then how do they bring that to market and scale and a lot of technology driven companies often overlook the importance of this scaling aspect, both internally organizationally, what for example, what is a sales force have to do differently? To sell a data product within the hospital to different stakeholders, then they may have connections and relationships with from their device and consumable oriented, prior work. And often that that requires thinking through different resources, skill sets, capabilities, and sometimes different sales and distribution strategies. And that's the kind of thing that a lot of consultancies, like PA, get involved in thinking through. And one other thing I'll mention on on scalability, particularly as we're dealing with both digital but other advanced technologies, and the importance is for so many companies to think about, how is their intended user, their stakeholder, the end user of their tech driven product, going to be able to scale and this is why it's so important that companies understand not only the clinical problem At the clinical setting, that their end users and customers are going to use their tech driven product solution, whether it's digital or physical, to fit into their workflow, hopefully improve it, but also fit within the digital ecosystem of the hospital of the healthcare system. And I think many times when companies, whether they be small or large, either overlook or or they underestimate the complexity of fitting their product into the ecosystem of their client, the interconnectedness, the interoperability, and the support that's needed to educate customers on new digital products to overcome that learning curve, and assure that the company is not presenting that customer with additional complexity and trauma, if you will, in learning how to use this new solution. And that the the use of the solution doesn't require them to to new things that are disruptive, to their clinical workflow. Well, the
Patrick Kothe 16:07
digital has got, it got its own set of issues to deal with. But even other types of products, when you got to, you've got a mismatch between the benefits in one customer group and the other customer group, let's say you have surgical robots, for knee replacement, hey, the clinical benefit may be may be greater by using that. But it may also take an extra 30 minutes per case. So now you've got a mismatch between the clinician, the business people, the staff, the turnover, all of that kind of rolls through, when you've got these these mismatches of benefits, and thinking through that many companies need help?
Dean Gray 16:57
They do they do. And, you know, this is also I think many companies like Intuitive Surgical for example, in in the areas surgical Ronix has recognized and it's acting on an opportunity to help their customers assure that they are realizing value out of the DaVinci system. So intuitive that's gonna as you know, is they have a whole consulting arm that helps hospitals manage their, their surgical robotics line to assure that patient throughput. And the use of a robotics across multiple service lines, is providing the value and the economic outcome, and ultimately improving patient's lives in a way in which is meaningful to the hospital. So I think that that's an example where a company has recognized not only a commercial opportunity, but a real need on the part of their customers to come in and help them adapt and use very complex technology that involves complex human choreography, and inter woven decision making, both economic and reimbursement related and also clinical decision making to to drive and realize desired outcomes.
Patrick Kothe 18:20
So let's talk about your practice. And what parts of the business and medical device side what what parts of the business are you primarily working with? Is it the r&d? Is it product definition? Is it commercialization? Where where are you focused,
Dean Gray 18:37
my focus at PA is anchored in product development and commercialization. And I have a focus on surgery of all kinds. Surgical robotics is a foundational core component of that. But of course, the market and the need is much broader than that. And this is a landscape that we refer to as digital surgical solutions. Or sometimes people call this digital surgery. But we're focused on understanding the surgical patient journey, the opportunity to help med tech clients build the digital ecosystem around that patient, often focused on the surgical component of the process or the procedural component, and the robot, which is kind of like a big data hub in some ways. But focus on building that ecosystem around the client's platform, and understanding helping the client understand opportunities and how to connect all of the other bits and pieces of data and devices along that patient journey from pre surgical planning to pre surgical monitoring of that patient, using wearables, for example, to post surgical recovery. Again, wearables have have a role there. on patient engagement apps, whether they be focused on rehab or patient journaling, during surgical recovery, there's a broad range of need. And we at pa are focused on all aspects of that. So we're truly end to end focus not just in terms of product development, but end to end focused on helping our clients understand how and where to play in really connecting that patient digitally. With the clinical decision makers along that pathway.
Patrick Kothe 20:34
What you described is critical to any business, it's understanding the customer, it's understanding the journey of the patient through that it's understanding how your technology fits, that is critical information that they need to have to develop that. Why is that? Not in house? And I assume that because it's so critical that these aren't typically assignments, that it's just give me that and then go away, it's going to be more of a longer term relationship, do I,
Dean Gray 21:08
Indeed, indeed, so focused in on product development and commercialization, we we excel at long term relationships with our clients, helping them think through opportunity define what that market segment or opportunity may be, what their customer need is. So you know, benefits around that need can be identified. One of the big challenges, I think, as we talked about earlier, is understanding the clinical situation and the clinical problem, and confirming that it's a clinical problem worth solving. In that someone's going to pay for it. Those are things on the front end of the product development process that's important to under
Patrick Kothe 21:52
let's dig into that for a second. So how do you do that? How do you determine that?
Dean Gray 21:58
Well, it starts in a number of ways. Often we're tasked by clients to help them understand market opportunity, just starting on a quantitative basis, go out and think about this and define a model, a quantitative way that we can assess and measure whether or not this is a new application, a new market, a new growth potential for us to pursue. And that's the place usually where we get started. And then the qualitative work really begins and doing a lot of customer discovery conversations, both with key opinion leaders, but also, you know, clinicians and physicians and health care providers in the trenches, depending on what the problem may be, and the variety of approaches that might be involved in helping to address that problem. So we do a lot of qualitative work, we do a lot of Kol engagement around product ideation and validation. And that often is helpful not only for us to understand what the clinical need is, and that solution is clear, to define what a product solution could be. But also that can help us in working with a client to derisk product development, that is iterative, end user review of early designs, early prototyping, where we can run through different versions of a product in regard to functionality. And regarding specifications, long range of different considerations, we're very adept at doing this at pace in a very agile way, using a variety of different techniques. So we can get that iterative, early customer feedback. So we de risk the chance of getting through the product development process to find out at the end, the end user really didn't want this, they wanted that, or they wanted the product to be usable in this way. And that that way we tend to by understanding the qualitative need up front and running through this iterative process, we're able to de risk some of those considerations in the front end. One of the things
Patrick Kothe 24:07
within a company, there's when you're doing this as customer discovery, there's all this confirmation bias. We think we think we know you know, we're a big company, we've been in this marketplace before we know you know, we know our customers, we know the applications, and you're out there talking to people and you're listening and you're you're hearing the things that you want to hear and disregarding a lot of that. So you've got this this issue and you're also you're always you're constantly trying to check yourself to say I gotta get out of my own head and I know I really need to be objective here. You're coming in objective, but you've got your own challenges too, because you want to make customer happy and who's right in your paycheck.
Dean Gray 24:55
So absolutely.
Patrick Kothe 24:56
So how does a consumer I often deal with that, when when you're trying to get to the bottom line. But keep your customer happy to
Dean Gray 25:09
absolutely this. This is why it's important that all all effective consultants, be trusted advisors by their client, that is the relationship that is not transactional, it comes over time. But even working with a new client, we are tasked with making sure that we both deliver the intended deliverables or outputs out of our work, whatever it may be. But along the way, we have a responsibility for helping clients to understand things that they may not understand or recognize or even value. And it is up to us to educate and help our clients learn and understand a need, or a different perspective in a very constructive way. And that's part of what we do in any assignment. We're always, particularly with novel technologies, we're always learning new things. And a lot of our effectiveness comes with a way in which we engage our clients in a very educational way. That involves them, learning together with us, where we guide this client feedback, we help frame it in a way that we think the client might understand and, and, and respond to. And again, it's up to us as consultants to kind of guide that conversation between their end users and customers. And people in the company.
Patrick Kothe 26:43
You're engaged with customers for different reasons. I guess, as I'm thinking about it, it's either they don't have the expertise, they don't have the resource, or they have got a problem. Something's Something's happened. So how do you deal with those? And are those the only three scenarios are there other scenarios?
Dean Gray 27:09
Oh, there are lots of scenarios, but those are three of the of the core ones. So frequently, consultants like us are called in to provide special expertise that a technical job or product development job may require, particularly on the front end of the product development process. And this is an area that PA Consulting excels in, where we've got heavy, heavy investment in the science part of the equation. So we have strong design and engineering capabilities. But also PII has heavy science capabilities. We have a large r&d Center, located just outside Cambridge, UK, where we do a lot of our research work. And we've got an assortment of laboratories and design studios and human factors studios and other things, as well as here in the Boston area and in San Francisco. But it's that early part, particularly in considering enabling technologies, and how they can be product eyes. And so for example, we're very much involved in work and helping clients to understand smart surgical devices, for example, that might include an array of sensors of all kinds at the end of the surgical stapler that can be integrated into and a whole device that will then provide a range of new information to the surgeon from tissue characterization, critical anatomy, identification, monitoring, staple force, or energy delivery, assessing quality of vessel seals. That's where some of the early science and capability comes in and that front end to understand which of those technologies are going to have the greatest potential in product forum? And can it be a can a product be designed and then scaled at reasonable cost? That's going to deliver the profit margins that are expected? So that's one example. One clear example we're consultancies, like PA, bringing that heavy science and tech orientation early in the process. And that's where we play a lot, both in medtech, but other industries as well. But to your question, some of the other areas are just on capacity. For example, big companies, but venture backed startups, for example, often need capacity to take on a product or in or even act as in a an entire r&d department to provide that capacity that doesn't exist in the company. And then there are all other kinds of problems. To solve from organization performance, thinking through both in terms of how do you redesign organizations, to how do you apply agile methodologies to help, whether it's an r&d department or a marketing department or other opportunities to help organizations move more quickly, focused on goals and deliverables and to realize those goals at pace?
Patrick Kothe 30:28
So you talked about the scientific depth that you have, and the depth that you've gotten on the technology side as well. And you see a lot of different technologies and you're, you're, you're in it, you're in it as well. Do you guys have a venture arm? Do you guys spin out companies? are you spinning out products and technologies,
Dean Gray 30:51
not companies per se, but pa does develop IP on its own, which it frequently will cross license with clients if indeed, that's been part of a particular project. And of course, all of those things are integrated in the project and agreed upon between the client and, and PA and I think the same is true with many other consultancies, we do generate our own IP. And in sometimes that's licensed now to other clients, as well as we do develop our own products. And that is true, particularly in the area of cybersecurity, where we have developed a data diode to provide secure networking. And that that is a p a product that we sell directly to clients in addition to providing some service along with it.
Patrick Kothe 31:48
So let's talk about your objective when you get a get an assignment and assignment could be you know, we've got a product definition issue that we're dealing with, you know, how do we how do we define what the product is? Do you look at it, like I want to go in and solve this problem, or R is your issue that you need to teach a company the processes and procedures to do that on their own?
Dean Gray 32:16
Sometimes, it's both of those things. Usually, those two topic areas or problem sets are addressed separately, it's often difficult to think about developing a product but also changing how you develop it at the same to a faster model at the same time. But typically, we we go in, I go in thinking about if it's a product development, opportunity, focused on many of the things we've discussed, particularly with starting with a clinical problem definition, I tell my clients and I also do, I'm very involved in the in the medtech innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem here in Boston, but across the country, in in in Europe, and in my mentoring advice, and in advisory roles with some of those companies, my soapbox is, understand the problem love the problem as much or even more than you love the solution. So whether it's a big company or a small company, it starts there. And understanding the context of that problem that is going to make product ideation and product development essentially easier. And it's going to de risk that. So that's something that we're very focused on in tackling with with product development, particularly if we're taking on taking on that kind of opportunity to do a true end to end from beginning all the way through commercialization to regulatory clearance, and then product launch.
Patrick Kothe 33:52
When you think of a problem, and this has fascinated me, we think of a problem, we've got a surgical device, we want to want to make sure it's done right and we want it out that's that's one thing. But when you think of we want to be an innovative company and we want to innovate quickly, there are steps that you need need to put in place to do that. That becomes you know, what, what, what an assignment could be I I'm a sports guy, I like sports. And when you think about come from Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin's offensive line coaching has been stellar they put out offensive lineman that that they knew that that was the strategic competitive advantage that they wanted to have for their people they wanted to have that other other sports you're developing develop point guards or or they're they're experts in a defensive scheme. Different companies Apple is expert in in and customer experience and packaging and things like that. Those are those are key advantages that they Wouldn't but it's a systematic program that they're putting in not necessarily a project. So, when you're dealing with companies, are most of your things projects? Or do you do you do as many of these programming issues
Dean Gray 35:16
we do, we do both. But like I say, we usually tackle those things separately. So we're recognized as one of the world's leading consultancies in Agile. So we're very adept in bringing agile methodologies and techniques into organizations, whether it be focused on helping a particular department, like r&d, work faster at pace. And understanding how to do that as a team. As an interdisciplinary team, often working closely with marketing, of course, or as an organization, as a whole, as an organization, apply Agile methodology to be more streamlined, to be more lean to be more efficient in operations. And to be goal oriented. Ultimately, that's what it comes down to. So that those are some types of projects that we often take on that are distinct and separate from helping a company to develop a particular product or solution.
Patrick Kothe 36:22
Sometimes consultants come in, and they're embraced by by some of the people, sometimes they're embraced by all the people. Sometimes they're embraced by the person who hired him and not by anybody else. So talk to me about about integration and how working relationships happen. With consultants,
Dean Gray 36:43
consultants will be most successful when they build constructive relationships with all people in an engagement, and all stakeholders at the company. And that is a kind of consistent theme opportunity, but also need for all all consultants of all types. And frequently consultants are, once we have reached agreement on a project, we frequently will meet other stakeholders in the company who have not been involved in determining to bring in a consultant. And so we often have to go through a relationship building exercise, where we're communicating what we've been brought in to help with what our approaches, it's important for us to show our, our know how our subject matter expertise, our domain knowledge and experience, and most importantly, our open mindedness and our learning mindset, that we are there to understand their problem in their context, before we do our assessment, analysis, and make recommendations. And I think this is absolutely critical characteristic of good consultant Consultants is to be able to listen and learn new things from new people, while at the same time having your eye and your focus on delivering the agreed upon outcomes out of your work. But in this way, we essentially establish new constructive relationships and credibility within the company. Sometimes that takes more time than we expected. But it's up to us as good consultants to balance the time and the effort that's required to do that kind of learning and relationship building exercise and at the same time, deliver our work on time.
Patrick Kothe 38:44
You've pointed out from the consultant standpoint, what a good consultant does, what is it from the from the company standpoint, let's say you've got a project manager or r&d person who's been responsible for a project, they haven't quite hit it. So now you're being brought in to help. And that person is going to be a little bit hesitant because it's going to be looked at as their failure right at that point. But what are the characteristics of that person to be a good steward of the company, and a good interface between the company and the consultant?
Dean Gray 39:24
Yeah, no, that's a great question. Because this is a very common situation that many consultancies run into, and have to deal with. I think some of the the approaches and techniques that I described previously about building those relationships are key. In many of these cases where companies like pa are brought in to address problems or situations where things haven't gone right. It's critical for us to communicate to all of the stakeholders that we are coming in with a particular skill set. A particular usually technical Call and then specialty knowledge and expertise. And frequently in, in discussions around that where we are if we're able to efficiently communicate our value, in most cases, and at least in my experience, we have been successful in doing that with people who might have been initially a little bit resistant to, you know, why are we hiring a consultant, and you know, we've got this. And that's not a problem. But again, it comes down to this as part of the good consultant toolkit is being able to understand that dynamic, and being able to address it in an open and constructive way and not a dismissive way. It's up to us. For us to be successful, we need to have those connections, that are going to be focused on problem identification and problem solving. And this is something that I personally put a lot of effort into, again, is helping the client to see the problem from a different way. And helping helping the client understand where our capabilities and tool sets and special skills, whatever they may be, are going to help them resolve the problem in a way it's gonna make sense for them in their company and in their environment.
Patrick Kothe 41:19
So you've had a lot of experiences with this type of individual that we just described. Can you talk to me about a successful time where someone was very hesitant? And then you came in? What did they do? What what how did they transform themselves to be part of the solution and not a backseat driver,
Dean Gray 41:44
I think taking them on a journey that's focused on the use of their, whether it's a device or their their solution. And getting that customer feedback that they may not have previously heard, or hearing it in a different way. And here's this an example this frequently happens, particularly in I'm going to use ai, ai, analytics, AI platforms, whether they be for clinical decision making support, or clinical workflow improvement, or other range of applications. Frequently, people who are involved in this are very focused understandably, on writing the best code, the technical aspects, the engineering aspects, the data science, all of the right things that are critical for developing a high functioning and ultimately valuable product. But in many cases, it's very easy to get caught up in what are features and feature development, even though the programmers might not think of them that way, while maybe not having sight or losing sight of what the so watch factor is to the end user the big benefit. And in many cases, clinical and non clinical stakeholders both want transformative benefits from using AI. And in some of these cases, where we work with clients, we've been successful in bringing whether they be skeptics or people who are resistant to working with consultants. We've brought them towards the light, so to say, by getting them in front, or in meetings with end users, and facilitating that discussion, whether it's in a focus group, whether it's in an interview of some kind, but that firsthand experience with on the part of the developer of any kind, with a end user, who is saying, Tell me, what is the big benefit? What would I be able to do using this AI solution that I can't do now? And how is it going to enable me to achieve my goals, which might be increasing patient throughput in the O R, it might be hitting all of the quality metrics that are important for getting reimbursed for that procedure. And hearing that directly in a different way, I think is an effective technique to bring others along with you. So it becomes not just the consultant saying, hey, you need to do it this way. It's the customer who is telling the med tech company or the company that this is how they want the solution provided to them and they want to understand and value the benefit. And if you can't describe the benefit, they don't care about the features and they don't care about the cool tech behind it. They they want to know how does how is this going to make their lives better as providers? How is this gonna make patients live better? And so it's that kind of thing that we deal with often in working with clients and this is a technique that I personally have found very effective not only for Learning for ourselves what's what's important, but helping our clients hear directly from their customers. What that so what factor is, and it's often different from what they've assumed.
Patrick Kothe 45:13
It's not me saying it, it's them, it's between all of us here, you're not as important as them, I'm not as important as them. It's right. And along
Dean Gray 45:25
the way, many, for example, many, many tech people connect dots with talking with clinicians in different ways. And clinicians connect dots and talking to the technical people. And it's really interesting to me, whether it's startups or even big companies, that there often isn't that dialogue that cross talk earlier in the process. And I'm just amazed at all of the aha moments that happen. When clinicians understand technology and the power of technology, whatever it is, in the form of a usable product of some kind, to address a clinical problem in a way they haven't been able to before. And it's often that dialogue that they need to have with a technical person to understand the tech and the usability of the tech, that's critical. And vice versa with getting that clinical input helps the technical people understand, Oh, if I took this approach, rather than this approach, the product configuration could be usable in this situation, and deliver this kind of outcome or benefit. And we haven't thought of that before. So it's that dialogue, this is the kind of dialogue and connectedness that that I like to establish, and that all good consultants, regardless of the project tasks are driven particular on technology and innovation to bring that connectedness between all sides, and then the business people as well, on the commercial side, together to be very focused on a problem, understand the crossover, and understand the mutual benefit and opportunity that exists in in using technology to improve ultimately patient outcomes, but to realize all the benefits that are expected by all stakeholders.
Patrick Kothe 47:14
So I'm thinking about three words, as we're going through this discussion. One is vendor, the other is consultant. And the third is coach a vendor, you just pay them and they go off and do something and and that's it. A consultant is working on a project and may be side to side with the person inside and the coach is helping that person gain helping the client gain insights. Yes, how would you describe those three things and where we're, we're good consultants live?
Dean Gray 47:54
Well, good consultants live and being trusted advisors and whether we want to call it a coach or an advisor, but having establishing relationships with clients where they understand the that the consultant and the firm has a range of offerings, and capabilities. And people because it's, it's people that make a difference. And the and the experts that we have, and the ability of our people to exercise good critical thinking, and collaboratively solve problems. Having that credibility which is established can be established quickly, or it can be established over time, is the true value of a good consultant relationship and firm. On the other hand, consultants have value in all of the other roles that you describe, more often brought in to address the specific task and project. And we can do that, and we'll do it well. And sometimes procurement people and departments and companies regardless as vendors, which of course we are, we're suppliers, we're supplying expertise, we're supplying advice. And so adept consultants really need to be able to play in all three of those areas. But where the most value is, we believe is in that building that trusted relationship where a client can come to us and say, you know, we've got this problem or we have a new opportunity and we think that you might help us think through this. Particularly if we can present ourselves as applying know how an expertise maybe from other applications or even industries outside of med tech and life science. Many cases this is the case with pa pa works in multiple industries and we've been able to apply our our learnings and our expertise in for example in imaging and image analysis from work we've done in transportation or in NASA. She'll security and defense into image analysis and medtech as well. But having that ability to bring new thinking, and new capabilities, new new know how particular technologies, that's really where clients begin to understand and get value out of that trust and relationship, advisory type role, particularly if we're able to articulate and apply it to solving a spirit specific problem, or explaining how this can drive either improvement in organization, performance, or drive innovation and ultimately bringing new transformative products and solutions to market.
Patrick Kothe 50:43
So you came from industry, I've been in industry, and typically when you're at a company, you're, you've got a way of doing things. And you think it's, it's pretty good. You know, there's probably some other things out there that, you know, that may help it, you know, the reason why you're doing it is you think it's pretty good. You've had the opportunity to see things from a lot of different standpoints. So when you come in, you've got a different, a different palette to work from, what are some of the most common things that you see when you come into a company to say, You know what, they could really use some help on this?
Dean Gray 51:23
Well, in the kind of work that I'm doing now comes back to some of the things we we've already discussed, I think it's really being prot, being able to define the problem, whether it's the clinical problem of their end user or another problem, clearly and distinctly. And to define that problem and understand that problem, and then approach it in a way in which their problem can be addressed and resolved. In sometimes the processes and the ways or the paradigms that exist, or the culture that exists in a particular company may make that approach make that problem solving exercise more efficient and effective. And other times. It doesn't. And this, this is a common challenge, regardless of what the what the consulting project might be. But again, I think having been around for a while, and worked not only for different companies, but in different roles and different responsibilities. You know, it's taught me to think, from the perspective of, of, of the person in their role. And I think, having worked in industry, I'm fortunate where I, I can see a consulting task and working with a consulting company from from the the client side. And I know how important it is to communicate in a way in which the client can resonate, that we show that we know their world, we know their problems, we know how they think. And they operate. And we know how they make decisions and how they spend money on prod projects. And that we're able to talk about an approach to solving a problem with them, that resonates with them in the language they speak, using, the style and tone that they're used to. And of course, that that, that involves us as consultants being one able to listen and learn and understand the landscape that we're that we're dealing with. But also always be able to shift gears and be able to communicate in ways that are effective with your clients that I think we're consultants don't get traction with consult with clients is when they come in with a set solution. They're discussing it in a maybe a very appropriately aspirational way. But it often at a high conceptual level that a client can understand how to get from a conceptual level to like, well, I have this problem down here. And how do I how do I get from the big concepts my problem that I need to solve tomorrow. And it's up to us to build that bridge, from a big aspirational concept around driving quality or increasing the pace of innovation to how to do it, how to integrate it, how to how to self manage it, and then bring it into their world. So having that domain expertise in med tech, in my case, in having that organizational and functional experience, I think makes me a much more effective consultant and problem solver.
Patrick Kothe 54:38
You're dealing with different companies, different technologies, different projects, and different IP and confidentiality becomes becomes an issue. How do you keep things straight, especially when you're when you're saying you know, we can help you in this area? Sometimes I forget. I Where I got an idea from? Do you? How do you manage that?
Dean Gray 55:05
We manage it very, very astutely. So we build what we call ethical firewalls around all of our projects that might be in the same industry or application. So we never have the same people working on similar projects or competitive with competitors. And we're very, very focused on that. And we're very clear with our clients. In in not only that, we will do that, but how we do it and how we will manage it. And so that is a part of being an excellent consultant. And that's something that I think pa in particular does really well. We talked a little bit about IP, and you know, as we do development work, but particularly early in the front end, where we recognize that new IP might be discovered. So again, we're very upfront with clients when we think this would happen to be very clear on who owns the IP. And if it's jointly owned, if it's client owned. So there are there's no confusion. And that is a very effective way in in dealing with the IP situation. And again, this is something that I feel very strongly that again, a PA, we do really well, because we've done it for a really long time in multiple industries. And pa particularly with its focus on on discovering innovation, has a long track record of IP development and management.
Patrick Kothe 56:31
So some companies have used consultants routinely, some haven't. Some know that they need help, some don't know that they need help. So if you're if there's somebody out there, and they don't know that they need help yet, what are some of the things what are some of the signs that they should be looking at to say, you know, what, it's not quite coming together in here, we're going to need to need to entertain, you know, getting somebody else involved in there, what's, what are some things that you can look for?
Dean Gray 57:04
Well, the most common experiences when a client says, No, I think we got this. And then a year later, they come back and they say, well, it didn't go, well. We, we tried it, we we thought we had identified either the need, we weren't able to dress that need our client and like this product, or we didn't realize the results that we're expecting. So it's that experiential element that the clients often experience, it's it this is frequently encountered where a client at first is, has said, Well, we really don't need a consultant as this time. But again, as they go out, and they learn about it, and they get there again, and use our customer feedback, then they will come back, I think and think about well, tell me again, how you think you can help us and that opens the dialogue again. So you know, we we try when we believe and know that a client would be able to de risk a project would be able to improve performance with the help of a consultancy, or an effort on like, from a company like us, we make our best educational effort in helping the client understand that. But we can't make clients hire us. So it's really a dialog and it comes down to kind of a combination of educating the client on on a degree of the problem describing some of the alternative approaches that we would take in solving that problem that they might not have considered, or thought of before. And then describing how our approach is going to help realize a solution to that problem or benefit in a different way, either faster or cheaper, or greater benefit than they currently expect. But again, in some cases, they don't want to take that approach for whatever the reason may be. And in those cases, frequently there will there will there will be a follow up dialogue, particularly if we've done a good job in communicating our value as critical thinkers and problem solvers.
Patrick Kothe 59:16
The further down the road you get, the worse it is. So kind of what you described is we've gone through the full product development, we've launched the product got regulatory approval, we hit the market and the market says what the heck, what is this? That's so late in the process and coming in as a as a relaunch is a hard thing because you may end up throwing a product out or redesigning and going back back to square one. The better way to do it is to solve it earlier. So ours is are there some questions that you think companies should be asking themselves? No Not at the tail end. But at the beginning or the middle of a project that are good indicators that they may have some needs to bring in some outside help.
Dean Gray 1:00:14
There's a range of considerations, whether it's for a product development effort in that case, it's many of the things we discussed today, it's making sure that the clinical problem is really clear the context of the problem from a clinical and non clinical stakeholder is understood, and that the product solution that's being considered by the company addresses the problem. And in the context that is going to be used efficiently. So usability is very important to consider. And in my work in product development, usability is a big, big theme. For me, because I've seen so many tech driven solutions that are not usable, again, as that's we've discussed. So usability, understanding the human choreography involved in clinical decision making and improving patient care is absolutely critical. I think on the organizational performance side, it's it comes down to thinking about and measuring, being very focused on KPIs, for example, organizations will will develop a dashboard of KPIs and organizational performance. And that's a very important first step is first coming up with the criteria and how you want to measure your Organization Effectiveness. But it's then working with that those those metrics, even initially over a short period of time, showing that the organization isn't hitting its desired metrics. That's an opportunity to come in and say, let's think about maybe some alternative approaches. Let's first understand what why and how you are not meeting those metrics. So there's a little bit of a diagnostic and analysis, step or process that consultancies go through and working with clients to understand what's not going right. But again, consultancies coming in, or consultants showing up and saying, I have the solution without understanding the problem in the context of the problem, whether it's in the clinic, or whether it's on within organization, they're not going to ultimately be effective. It's really understanding the situation. It's contextual awareness and understanding that of the problem. And the company's ability, or inability to address it is ultimately going to empower consultants to provide the most meaningful solution, but also design that solution. So it is adaptable and usable internally and implementable in an actionable way.
Patrick Kothe 1:02:49
Projects just have their own pace and their own life. And even though in a design review, you should be looking at all of these things. How many times do people just give a cursory review in a design review to say Is it is it hidden? The you know, the customer is the only asset and the customer? You know, I talked to this guy, did you really systematically go through it? And and it could be that you did your your customer needs three years ago, and nobody's gone out and validated with the customer in three years. So all of these things just kind of lead you to mid products that missed the mark when they hit when they hit it?
Dean Gray 1:03:30
Yeah, I think it's very easy, as we discussed for for companies of all types to be focused on the process, whether it's managing themselves, or whether it's marketing, or whether it's product development, and not constantly be thinking about, again, what's the benefit, the value that we're delivering? And is is a configured in the right way? And are we bringing it to market in a clear and effective way. And as you know, you know, with with digital and data, it requires organizations to deploy differently. And often that's hard to do.
Patrick Kothe 1:04:09
Every time we experience something, it helps us to build our library of things that we could draw on, when we encounter the same circumstance at a different point in time. When you're only an industry, you've got a limited amount, but when you're dealing with consultants, you've got so many more things to draw. I really enjoyed my conversation with Dean today. A few of my takeaways, first, understanding the clinical problem, but also the clinical setting. So often we just focus on the product and not on the workflow associated with whether you're a digital product or a physical product. How you fit within the work workflow of a hospital is extremely important. And don't underestimate the complexity of the integral raishin of your technology within their workflow. Second, he talked about being a trusted adviser. That's what good consultants are trusted advisors. It's not a transactional thing is looking for long term relationships and building those and that's built on trust. So making sure that you're you're coming at it from a trustful relationship and continuing to build that is a keystone to their success. The other thing is, and this was interesting to me is he talked about the responsibility to educate and help clients understand new perspectives. It's not just telling them what they want to hear, but telling them what the customers are saying, and couch it in such a way that it's going to be accepted. Finally, beginning a project the right way. I like the way he talked about, you know, building the relationship first, and learning before you speak. Understanding the problems that they're having of the client is having listening to them understanding it thoroughly before they start jumping in with with a solution to it. I think that's a great approach for consultants. But it's a great approach for everything that we encounter. When we're when someone has got an issue. Listen before you speak, it's going to be a much better relationship as a result. Thank you for listening. Make sure you get episodes downloaded to your device automatically by liking or subscribing to the mastering medical device podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, please spread the word and tell a friend or two to listen to the mastering medical device podcast. As interviews like today's can help you become a more effective medical device leader. Work hard. Be kind
