How To Spot Upper Management Potential In An Employee — And How To Nurture It

It was September 2007. Steve Luperchio and I were doing due diligence on site at Kai Pharmaceuticals on behalf of our employer, Cubist Pharmacueticals.

I’ve always looked for opportunities to work with then Head of Business Development, Natalie Holles, currently the SVP and COO at Audentes Therapeutics.

I stepped out into the parking lot of Kai Pharmaceuticals to take a call from Rob Perez, then Head of Commercial at Cubist Pharmaceuticals. This was a scene reminiscent of the movie “Wall Street,” where Michael Douglas is standing on a beach and says “this is your wake-up call.”

Rob was on vacation and actually physically making a call from the beach. He said “I’m your new boss. You’re now in charge of BD.”

I dismissed it at the time. I’d already been Head of Business Development for a long time. Only years later did I see the significance.

He made me own the results, become an “owner.” I’ve never had so much stress or so many sleepless nights. But it transformed me.

Now one thing I constantly find myself telling employees is to operate with an “owner mentality.” You need to be personally invested, exposed to losses even if just personally.

When you’re an owner of something, you take it seriously. Everything is important because it’s yours, and it forces you to “own” your responsibilities in a way that’s different than if you were simply an employee, collecting a paycheck.

However, I’ll also be the first to acknowledge that when I was making my way through the ranks, long before I became a CEO, I was challenged with adopting an “owner mentality” because, well, I wasn’t actually an owner. Especially when you’re in a business development setting, which was my role for many years. It’s difficult to consider yourself an owner when you’re dealing with assets worth tens of millions of dollars. Most people can’t relate to having ever “owned” something like that, and I was no exception.

It took me quite some time and a good deal of effort to think and operate like an owner.

I had to teach myself through a variety of exercises. For example, I would write letters to myself, trying to capture some of my thought processes through writing. I wanted to think about how I was thinking, so to speak, and then make adjustments accordingly. It’s one of those things that may sound easy, but for me it wasn’t at all.

Adopting an “owner mentality” is a skill in itself, and it’s one of the most telling qualities of an employee who has the potential to become an upper-level manager, or part of the senior leadership team.

This is the one quality I look for when deciding whether or not to promote someone within the company.

Our company, Morphic Therapeutic, has been in existence for two years. We now have over 30 people here, and as with any growing company, we’re beginning to point out who the high performers are — and it’s become evident fairly quickly.

Despite the fact that this group of high-performing individuals is full of different kinds of people, different ages, different experiences — the commonality seems to be that they have all adopted this “owner mentality.” You can tell that they feel responsible for their outcomes. As needed, they stay late; come in on weekends; do what needs to be done to achieve the desired goal.

That’s how an owner operates.

To take it a step further, it’s evident that the kind of people who do end up in senior leadership roles, and do well in their careers long-term, are the ones who exhibit this mentality early on. They take it upon themselves to develop that mindset, and put themselves in positions that will allow them to learn that level of responsibility from others.

What’s unfortunate is how few environments are able to spot some of these unrefined qualities in their employees and effectively nurture them.

As a leader, it’s your job to bring out these behaviors in the people you believe have the potential to one day step into leadership positions.

One thing I am very aware of is that an effective company culture does not, and should not, tightly manage their people. Some employees need to be in an environment where they’re told what happens on Mondays, Tuesdays, and so on, so they can follow the rules. We aren’t like that. At Morphic, we’re built a culture that respects people who are able to manage themselves. We care much more about outcomes rather than the way in which people get to those outcomes.

I have always been a believer that the brightest people, and the ones who are going to deliver breakthrough concepts, are not necessarily going to be the ones diligently following processes, per se, because they’re too busy thinking. They’re not on autopilot — and that’s a good thing. Those are the types of people we like to hire, and those are the ones we end up promoting within the company.

The parallel I like to draw for people is that upward mobility in your career is a lot like running. I was a runner all through high school and college, and looking back I see more than ever that nobody really chooses to run just because it’s fun. My kids play baseball. That’s a sport where, up to a point, you can tell a kid that it’s fun, they’re standing around half the time with their friends, it’s social. But you can’t really tell a kid to be a runner, because the amount of pain you have to go through isn’t something you’re going to want to endure unless you’re self-motivated.

The same could be said for employee development. Company leaders can, and should, invest in their employees, help them learn and grow, but only to a point. Eventually, they’re going to have to make the decision for themselves that if they want to move up to the next level, they are going to have to go after it themselves. Which means the leaders aren’t just giving orders, but rather facilitating experiences that allow for the right people to reveal themselves.

And the common thread between those that show promise and potential is their ability to own their work.

They have an “owner mentality.”