Leadership At The Interface Between Industry And External Stakeholders With Angus Hamblin
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is the third biggest killer in the world, but it seems only a handful of people know about it. In this interview with Angus Hamblin, we talk about what it is like to work at the interface of the healthcare industry with external collaborators to improve the respiratory community's response to this deadly disease. He discusses the remarkable results that can be achieved by bringing academia, clinicians, policymakers, and the government together. Angus also talks about the importance of having a personal mission, keeping a strong motivation, the characteristics of an innovative leader, and the power of patience in hitting ambitious goals.
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Listen to the podcast here
Leadership At The Interface Between Industry And External Stakeholders With Angus Hamblin
Our guest is Angus Hamblin and he has a very interesting background. He is both qualified as a Master Thatcher and a Barrister at Law. For the past many years, he has been working at AstraZeneca, where he is the Global Head of External Scientific Engagement for the Respiratory in Immunology Function. As you could imagine, with that diverse background, we had a very interesting conversation.
We touched base on topics such as the importance of having a personal mission and how to stay motivated. It's important to have patience if you want to do anything ambitious, and we also delved quite deeply into the challenge of innovating around chronic obstructive pulmonary disease because it's underfunded in terms of research but yet, the third biggest killer in the world currently. Sit back and enjoy. I found it a very inspiring and educational conversation.
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My name is Angus Hamblin, and I am Head of External Scientific Engagement for AstraZeneca, working in the respiratory and immunology franchise.
Angus, I know you are a busy person, so thank you for taking the time to come on and do this interview. I would like to start off by having people describe something in the room if possible. Something around your desk in the room you are sitting in.
It's quite interesting. It's described as a pyramid principle. Where you've got lots of paperwork on your desk, things gradually shuffle to the edge of the desk and fall off. It's a little bit like the state of my mind. I'm not going to describe one thing. I'm going to describe what my desk looks like. On my desk, I have got a little folder with some expense receipts.
I've got a shotgun certificate that I haven't filed away. I have got poll tax bills and some stuff from my boat. I've got a narrow boat that I live on during the week when I'm working in Cambridge. The boats are easy, so I move up and down. I stay on that. It's better than being in a hotel. It’s a little bit too far for me to commute. If I never stayed in a hotel ever again in my life, it would be too soon, so I like that.
I've got some stuff in my boat there, including a wire trace, because I need to track down and find a wire somewhere that isn't working properly, and I need to sort that out. I've got a book, The Autobiography of Paddy Ashdown. I've got a phone, a toothbrush for some reason, some contact lenses and an Olympus pen camera, which I bought a few years ago.
It’s a nifty little camera rather than those old Olympus ones that David Bailey and the war reporters, Don McCullum, and people like that use take out and about, but it's a digital one. I don't get as much use out of it as I should. It's one of those things. I love photography. I'm not very good at it. I don't take enough photos. I like looking at it, and I've always got this ambition that I'm going to take more photos and spend more time doing it. I always run out of time. I pick the camera up again, and it's complicated with all its digital technology, so I tend to then think, “I can't remember quite how to do that.” I am constantly relearning how to use the camera but maybe when I stop working, I will have a bit more time and do something professionally.
I had somebody else that I know in the last couple of years, retired from the pharma industry like yourself, and I caught up with him. I said, “What are you doing?” He said he's taking pictures in New York.
When I was at university, I used to in the photography of society. They used to develop them and do the actual development work in the dark room. That's so exciting when you put it in, and the picture gradually appears. Digital is great because you can do lots of manipulation if you want to but there's something quite organic about that. Getting the chemicals out, making the picture appear, and quite magical as well when it does come out, especially if it comes out well. If it comes out badly, it's like, “Oh my God.” So that's my desk.
Let's talk about it and go through some questions here for you. What impact do you intend to make in your current role?
I have been thinking about it because I don’t know how much longer I will be doing this. I don't know how much longer I will go on working in pharma. I've worked in it for 30 years, and I was thinking about in the next few years, I will then transition into doing something else but probably not pharma related. I thought, “What is it that I want to do?” My role is to coordinate and bring together all the activities that happen from the scientific perspective.
I don't coordinate, but I choose, try and make sure to work in concert and collaboratively about the external world. That’s my job. If I see some exciting science happening internally that the external world needs to know about, can help, advance or move forward, then I try and make sure that we are getting it out to the right channels and that people are aware of it and understand it.
If I see exciting science happening externally, I make sure that internally, we are aware of that as well, and we can work with that. In addition to that scientific component, I'm also trying to change the way we practice respiratory medicine for the benefit of patients. In my next years, there's probably one major thing with some strands underneath it.
The one major thing that I want to do is to change the perception of respiratory medicine in the world, in the minds of the general, the minds of patients, and the minds, particularly of policies makers, and payers, so that the respiratory patients get what I believe to be their just deserved in terms of the appropriate level of care.
It always amazes me that we have a disease, which is the third biggest killer in the world, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And yet the majority of people don't even know what that is. Say you can’t go outside, they are in the meeting rooms, and then we sit and discuss all of this, and you go out into the general public. You say, “Do you know what chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is?” The majority of people would say, “I have no idea,” but they all know what a heart attack is.
External Stakeholders: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is the third biggest killer in the world, but most people don't even know what it is.
They all know what cancer is but we don't have any traction. Also, there's morbidity that's associated with diseases like asthma. It doesn't kill that many people. It did kill people, and those deaths are preventable, which is a tragedy but in real terms, it's not that many people. The morbidity associated with it, the people who are not achieving what they could achieve or are limiting their lives because of this disease, is huge.
We need to do more about it. I think that the community, and I include myself in that, have been guilty of being a little bit complacent and probably not doing enough. We need to do better. That is my big ambition. Some of that work we've kicked off already. We, AstraZeneca part of the International Respiratory Coalition. I was part of the team that worked with ERS collaboratively to bring that together. That’s part of what I did, and that's great.
That's starting to kick off, and that will make a big difference. In addition to that, there are other activities that we've got ongoing where we are being more tactical, should I say, rather than raising the profile more generally. We are thinking about how we can help facilitate practice change. You are seeing that from AstraZeneca more broadly but that's part of what I get involved in.
That could be anything from trying to understand how we get better access to medicines in LMIC trough to how we improve patient pathways to make sure that there's better diagnostic capability between cardiovascular and COPD. Those two diseases get treated appropriately in that multi-morbid patient. These activities are the type of things that get me out of bed in the morning. They are the things that excite me. They are quite chunky. It’s not something I'm going to do in a week. It's like, “He's ambitious.”
The question I want to ask you, if that is your personal mission statement. How did you come to that? Do you think it's important to have something like that?
When you have been doing the job for 30 years, it is because it's a long time. A lot of what we do is déjà vu. They would say we have reorganization, restructure, get up in the morning, and put PowerPoint slides together. I do my expenses. After 30 years, you must have something that gets you up in the morning. It's a busy job. I'm not saying I'm unique in working hard. I'm not unique. We all work hard in the area and the function that I work in, long hours, and a significant amount of activity.
If you are not inspired and motivated by something, it becomes hard. It's vitally important to have some level of ambition beyond just your career ambition. I can honestly, genuinely say this. I've never had any career ambition. I have never been one of those people who's saying, “I've got to do the next job.” I've fallen into jobs or been asked to apply or, at some point, thought, “I'm not enjoying quite what I'm doing here. I want to do that.”
If you're not inspired and motivated by something, it becomes really, really hard.
I have never been like, “I've got to be on the next tier or the next page.” That's not what motivates me. I came into pharma quite late. In fact, I did another role before that. I used to thatch roofs but we don't need to go into that here but it was completely different. That I enjoyed, and I loved that job but I couldn't make ends meet. It was very poorly paid in those days.
I needed to do something different but I have never been one to be driven by that career ambition. It has always been, “Am I enjoying the job?” I have to say, predominantly for the bulk of the time. I’ve really enjoyed it. I've really enjoyed the people that I work with. I've met some super brains and intellect. They are kind, decent people as well that have supported me in my work and been a pleasure to be around.
Was there ever a point in your career in pharma where you didn't have such a mission?
No, it has always been there. I've done other diseases but I've always worked in respiratory medicine. I have always been massively passionate. I told you I used to thatch roofs. I worked with quite a few people but there are some people that I particularly worked with and liked at various times. One of those died from lung cancer. He had been smoking. They rolled up cigarettes since he was 13 or 14. One of them died from smoking-related cardiac disease.
He had been smoking again since he was 13 or 14, and they were beautiful lovely people who still mean a lot to me now. They both died around about 20 and 30 years ago but they are still an important part of my life. The memories and the history. Only because they smoke, that doesn’t make them bad people. They were circumstances. They were not bad people. They were fantastic people and they deserved better opportunities and better treatment. Not to say that we don’t need to stop smoking. That goes without saying. People do smoke, and I don't think the respiratory patients get the deal that they deserve. That has been behind a lot of what I've done all the way through.
Why do you think you are alluding to it there? Why do you think there is this bias against respiratory disease?
First of all, we've got some very good medications that treat asthma. If you look at the asthma side, people think that it's solved. If only patients took their medication, for the majority anyway, in mild to moderate asthmatics, then they would be all right. They need to keep taking their medication. We did a nice piece of research looking at the unmet needs in that mild to a moderate group. What's clear for those patients is that taking the medication every day is the burden of the disease in itself. They are quite frustrated by the fact that they go back to their GP or specialist in the review time. They turn up and go, “How are you? Just keep taking the medication.”
And they don't want to do it, and they vote in defeat. All this idea that somehow if you only reeducate them to continue to take the medication. They won't. They are not doing it because of a lack of knowledge. They are doing it as a conscious choice because they don't want to be defined by their disease. Taking medication morning and evening, that is defining them. Having to carry a blue inhaler is defining them.
External Stakeholders: People with respiratory problems are not pursuing treatment because of lack of knowledge. They are doing it consciously to avoid being defined by their disease.
They resent it. They see in other diseases things moving forward. The big change is they’ve got the biologics that have come in now for asthma. They are the patients. They can be life-changing but that's only for a small select group of patients and more severe patients. Relatively small. Most patients they've seen no change. They were taking the same medication when I started.
They were still on the same medication. All we've done is put it into one device. That's not great innovation per se. It helps patients. Don't get me wrong but it's not a great innovation. They see other diseases and breast cancer treatment has massively improved in terms of outcomes, and they are not seeing that. That's one side of it.
The idea that there's this level of complacency that actually asthmas all sorted. There are a lot of morbidities associated with it. As we’ve already mentioned, there's an unplanned button plan for them but it's unnecessary death that is preventable. With COPD, they think it's very much around the fact that we are a bit nihilistic in the community.
We believe that it's a progressive disease, and all you can do is moderate it, and then it will be what it will be. People will die from it in the end or die with it through cardiac disease or lung cancer. You go onto Wikipedia or whatever, and you then look up COPD. It says, “It's an incurable progressive with a high mortality rate.”
That's what people think about it. Also, then the patients themselves know that the majority of this, the majority of COPD, the whole by any stretch but the majority of COPD is being caused by smoking, so they feel guilty about it. It's very hard to go in and pick up a fuss when you've brought the disease upon yourself, and you've let your family down by doing it, and probably you are still smoking.
Remember, nicotine is a hugely addictive drug. It's hard to stop smoking. They go in and get told, “You've got to stop smoking,” which is, by the way, if any of you are smoking, the best intervention you can do is to give up smoking, so please give it up now. I'm not advocating not doing that. The patients themselves feel guilty, so it’s not very sexy. Sexy is maybe not the right word but it's not a sexy disease. You don't see people or rarely do you see people dying of chronic obstructive disease in the film. People die from heart attacks or cancer. Everyone knows about it but not the chronic obstructive disease. That’s it in a nutshell.
What does it mean to you to be an innovation leader? Obviously, trying to make this what you've described happen.
I will tell you what it means. It's quite hard work it being innovative. You think I am quite creative. As a person, quite creative and innovative. What you find is that medicine is amazing but it's relatively conservative. Respiratory is probably even more conservative than some of the other disease areas, for example, oncology and cardiovascular disease.
By nature, things are quite slow. Often, when you are bringing in innovation, it's very personal to me because sometimes, when you are talking about yourself, it's like, “You are being arrogant.” I'm not being arrogant in this at all. When I say I've got a creative mindset, I know what my strengths are. When I say I've got a creative mindset, I'm not saying that, again, in any arrogant way trying to be clever on how to have a creative mindset. I am quite creative. I'm rubbish at lots of other things. like bad at lots of other things. Creativity is something I'm quite good at. What I'm not very good at is pulling things through, so making things happen.
I need someone else to make things happen. I spend my time being creative but what you find is, being innovative. The big issue that you've got is that you think in your head or one thinks in one's head that this is the way you should be going. That's like a lot of people who are going, “That will never work.” For me, the big frustration is sometimes the lack of ambition.
You need people who say, “That will never work,” because otherwise, if you would have just people like me, you would be doing all sorts of crazy things, which wouldn't work. You do need those people. For me, that's slightly wearing as if from a personality trait perspective. It's a bit like, “Here we go again. I’m now got to convince people.” Having said that, when you do see change happening, and it comes onboard, and things do improve, you can see projects going ahead, then that's exhilarating because you know that you've done it. You've overcome some of the obstacles and barriers that were in place. For me, I see it's exciting but also worthy. It's not straightforward. I don’t know if that answers your question.
It does. It will maybe inspire some other points to be made. Have you noticed that it sometimes takes time so you put an idea out there? What I've seen because where I work with the consortium, I’ve done that for about 15 years now. Sometimes there's an idea that goes out, and even a year later, it comes back as a new idea even. What I've learned is that sometimes it takes patience.
I'm constrained by two things in some sense. I'm constrained by my own impatience because I like things to happen. If they don't happen quickly enough, I get bored, and my team sometimes call me a goldfish. I was like, “Do you know I can smack?” It’s not great. I get excited, and if it doesn't happen, then I have to move on. I have to constrain myself around that. You are right to realize that it's going to take a bit longer.
Also, organizationally, we are strange. Sometimes people will say to you, “Could you do this?” You go, “We could certainly try and make that happen. When do you need it by?” “Yesterday.” “That's not going to happen.” I'm having to fight and constrain my own impatience but also, at some points, have to constrain the impatience of the wider organization, whether that be external people coming to me saying, “Can AstraZeneca do this?”
Whether it be AstraZeneca or internal people saying to me, “Can we do this externally?” It does take time and patience. You have to look at the balance between allowing people to work things out of their system, get onboard with it, absorb it, assimilated, and realize it's a good idea. Putting your foot down on the accelerator a little bit to drive it forward and drive people and push them into a place that makes them slightly uncomfortable.
If you go too far, the project's all implode because people aren't comfortable. If you go too slowly, then nothing ever happens, so get that balance right. Very interesting observation, for me, I had an interesting observation, is when I went to work in Sweden. I'm British, born and bought up in England. I spent my time here and trained to be in a barracks. I'm called to about now. I'm non-practicing.
I never practiced. I did that. Being brought up in this adversarial mindset because the British are by nature adversaries. We have our discussions by challenging, arguing, and trying to win our argument. Ultimately, the winner prevails, and we go ahead and do it, then it fails or doesn't fail, whatever. More often than not, the winner prevails. We think we are going to go ahead and do it, and no one agrees to do it because none of us bought into it. The winner thinks he's got his way.
It's a bit of a bizarre way that we work. When I moved to Sweden, completely different. Much more consensual. Much slower in the decision-making process because everyone, i’m talking about gross generalizations here, but everyone needs to get involved. Everyone needs to come together. Everyone is expected to have their say and put it forward.
That's the frustration that you sometimes get as a British person that we still talk about it. It’s like we made the decision there. The great thing about the Swedish is that once the decision's made, then people broadly go out and implement it. That doesn't happen in the British system. I learned a lot in my four years when I was working in Sweden at those assertive and stroke-aggressive things that are trying to push things through and spend a bit more time now making sure that people are engaged and can see the value in it and are bought into it. It doesn't negate all the frustrations, by the way, but I have learned some stuff too.
The great thing is that it's almost like an art to balance that pushing versus the consensus building. Have you seen something that people thought was, “That's crazy. That's not possible,” and then seen it get delivered?
Scott, these questions are difficult for me because I'm a straightforward-looking person. I blame it on my legal. When I was training, the lawyers said, “Don't remember the law. Always go and look it up because it could have changed.” I've taken that to extremists, so I barely remember anything but know where to look it up.
What could we say? Even kicking off this international respiratory coalition, it has been something that ERS is taking a role in and, let's say, taking a role that ERS is leading on it. Even that, some time ago, prior to COVID, the people would've considered that challenging, both in the ERS and the pharma and other people who have said, “You won't get a coalition running together,” because there are too many conflicting interests and people don't want to be seen to be working so closely with pharma but at societies.
Whether it be the ATS or ALS, they like to maintain their independence, etc. Someone said that was true and that there were boundaries in place for all the right reasons. What COVID-19 taught us and my work with COVID-19, I worked on the vaccines from an external engagement perspective. I'm not one of the heroes who was designing it all and running the clinical trials. Those guys are amazing. All of the academics and the internal AstraZeneca people. People in other organizations did a great job, but I was involved in it.
What that taught me and what we should all learn from that is that when we get academia, clinicians, policymakers, government, and pharma all aligned and driving forward to achieve something, we can achieve amazing things in a remarkably quick time. One thing for me that's come out of that, and I'm an evangelist for this, is that people are changing the way that they think about the collaborations between pharma and clinicians.
If academia, clinicians, policymakers, the government, and the entire pharma industry are driving forward to achieve something, amazing things can be attained quickly.
I don't want to go back to the old days when things work to some extent in a silo because it's not the right way to do things. If people are worried broadly, people from outside the industry or healthcare worry about those collaborations and their implications of them. Just look at what we did with the COVID-19 vaccines. The best way to make sure nothing goes wrong is to have sunlight. They say sunlight is the best disinfectant.
The frameworks are the things that make sure that nothing inappropriate goes on. I have to say, all my things have changed but I haven't seen a lot of inappropriateness. I have not been involved in any myself. I hadn't even seen it going. When I first started, there was probably more entertainment and things that don't happen now but the sun lights on it. Those collaborative efforts are fantastic. They are producing some great outcomes and great results.
That's a great point about COVID, in a way, this concept of the big hairy audacious goal if you've heard that. We’ve seen it, and COVID probably is a good example of that. It's good to have a big hairy audacious goal because sometimes you can realize that goal suddenly. If you hadn't had that in your mind, then you wouldn't take that opportunity. You are a big hairy audacious goal person.
I'm a big hairy audacious goal person. I set myself unreasonable targets, knowing that I will fall short. I will probably fall short of any target I set for myself because that's also in my nature. I say, “I have to set myself a big target and achieve what I can achieve.” I'm this person. I told you, I thatch roofs but I have also, in my spare time over many years, renovated houses and stuff like that.
If you come by my house and look around, for the most part, it's nicely done. There's always a bit of skirting left off somewhere. I've got a light switch downstairs for many years. It has been hanging with the wire showing because I've never got round to finishing that last little bit. That's in my nature. I never quite finished what I meant to be doing.
There's a huge risk in the life sciences healthcare to be complacent like you said and to think, “I'm going to do some publications, and that's my contribution,” but this show is Beyond Publications. It is about what you are describing it.
That's probably true. Maybe for lots of academia that the output is the publication, then we don't care what goes beyond that. I love all the publications. I love working with great young. I say, young scientists. They are younger than me and see what they are achieving. What I like about, particularly the younger generation coming through, is that I hope they never lose this ambition.
It's that they don't see publication and academic insight as a goal. They want to see clinical practice change and see that interpreted and applied. It's more like applied science as opposed to theoretical science. If we can keep that up and maintain that, as in a spiritual community, we will see great things happen in the next few years, significant changes in the way respiratory medicine is treated and addressed more generally by society.
External Stakeholders: Leaders should not waste their energy coaching people on the things they are not very good at.
Are you saying you are seeing in the younger generation this coming up, this leadership?
These people, they would be embarrassed by naming their names but I have been on a two-day meeting. We are working with a spectrum of people from all age ranges. The younger guys are up for it. I say, guys, the guys in the more general generic sense of male and female. That's the other thing that we are seeing and starting to see. We are starting to see more diversity come in to the people.
Part of my mission within AstraZeneca is to encourage that diversity. We want to have younger people coming through so that we are getting more diverse opinions and thoughts. It's that diversity that helps creativity. It also stops that, “That will never happen,” type of attitude. As we get older, all a little bit, “I've seen that. I've done that. Nothing will ever happen.” I can say those very words myself of something. I've tried that before. That didn't work. It won't work, and I have to challenge myself and say, “Stop that.” I once worked with a boss. She was amazing. She said that she goes something that stayed with her.
I've also worked with Rachel Cunningham, and she said, “If you have been asked to implement something that you don't think is going to work, stop and write down three things that you think are good about it. If you had to make it work, how would you make it work?” Even just doing that would change your mindset about things that you think are either not achievable or are not the right thing to do. It's a good exercise if you find yourself challenged about a task.
It is a good exercise to challenge yourself and go after things you may think as unachievable at first.
That's a great way to think about it. Sometimes I think you take the first step that you can and then see where it goes. Maybe when I ask personally, what do you do to improve your leadership skills?
I try to self-coach and read a lot. I'm always trying to absorb information, and I'm listening Anything, it could be a senior leader or I will read the Paddy Ashdown book that I've got on there. I will listen, pick up any wisdom that they've got from it, then try and apply it to my leadership and management style.
That's what I do. I know that some days I'm a better leader than others. This is me being confessional but there are people who know me. I'm quite open. Over the years with COVID, it has been quite difficult for me to be the best leader. I feel that, to some extent, I've let my team down around that. There are all sorts of other things that have gone on that have made that a little bit difficult.
I'm out of that now, and I am looking and thinking, “I've had great teams in the past. What is it that's made them great?” It's the people that make them great, and it’s time to make them great. The one thing that I do is allow them the freedom to operate and try and encourage them to be the best they can be in the things that they are good at.
What I try to do is focus on what they are good at and allow them that latitude. I don't know where i picked it up but it might even be my own original thought but I doubt it. If you think about Gary Lineker with a football strike. He spends a day in and day out practicing striking the ball. He was brilliant at it. He didn't spend the majority of his time practicing how to tackle and defend.
He spent the majority of time focusing, working, and improving what he was already very good at. I don't spend a lot of time in my team finding the areas that they are not very good at and coaching them around that. That is wasted energy. What am I going to do? Let's say someone is not very good at the process but he is very creative.
External Stakeholders: The younger generation should never lose the ambition to see publications interpreted and applied to clinical practices.
If I coach very hard about the process, they might be moderately above average. That's not going to make a difference. I will coach them on being good at their creativity and how they can maximize that. That's what I do with myself. I try and coach myself on what I'm good at, accept for some things that I'm not good at, and tried to minimize those but I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it. I tell people, “I'm very open.” I say, “I'm not good at this. This is not my strength. If you are looking for me to give you this, you are going to probably have to look elsewhere and find some other way of doing it.” That's how it is. It will make it easier for me to be able to give it to you.
That's a fantastic point. Have you ever read, The Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin?
No, I haven't.
You should because it gets into this very topic. As you may know, he was this Chest Grand Master, got freaked out by the fame, and then shipped it over to push ends Tai Chi, which is a very competitive sport, and won that as well in Taiwan. He talks about exactly that. You focus on what you are good at. The art of over and over again, what you are doing, what you are good at, and the small gains that you make. That's a great book for it.
Also, you are learning these principles that learning is, you get good gains, then you start something. As you go deeper, it's harder to continue to get good gains. What happens, it starts to become subconscious. What he described as a Tai Chi push hand is that it sometimes seems like magic but what's happening is the subconscious is doing a lot of the work for you so you can think of things that others can't. That's getting to this point of don't focus on improving everything.
Also, when you start thinking about, as you go on leadership courses, your growth courses, and they bring out the best sportsman who tells you about how one gold medal at the Olympics or run like 50 marathons. That can be a little bit off-putting for people because we are not all going to win a gold. We don't all have the drive to win gold medals or that single-minded pursuit. To be honest with you, nor should we. I will be slightly disappointed if people in my organization said, “My sole goal is to work myself to death for AstraZeneca or for any other organization.”
That would be disappointing. That doesn't mean you can't do good work, and you shouldn't be proud of the work you are doing. I try to also think about how we can work with what we've got rather than try to get people to be like, “They don't all need to be Olympic athletes.” You need to be part of a well-functioning team delivering stuff but also have an appropriate interest outside that sustains and motivates them.
Allow them to come to work feeling satisfied because they've got other things going on in their lives as well. I try to do that myself. I have been through phases where I do work hard. I work the long hours but try to also have interests outside of that to keep me passionate about things and keep me thinking and enjoying life.
We have been talking about what you are doing with leadership. One thing that I've often thought, and maybe it's my own little hypothesis, is that to be a real leader, it's important to read not only just articles but books. Do you think that's an appropriate thing to say if you want to be a leader in life sciences healthcare? You should be self-coaching.
I think that people who are the best leaders are polyglots. They absorb things from all over the place. They don't just focus on science. They absorb things from the arts, science, sports, the countryside, and the planets. They are absorbing stuff all the time and then saying, “How does that impact or apply to what I'm doing currently?” That could be from television, films or the radio.
The best leaders are polyglots. They absorb all kinds of things from all over the place.
I spend a lot of time listening to the radio. Often, there will be a physicist on their own, an IT specialist, or someone talking about what they've done. I think, “Why don't we do that? Why haven't we taken that into what we are doing? Why is it you only do that in IT?” You listen to a politician talking about how they've delivered some progress somewhere or listen to what it's like and poverty-stricken in the City of Salford or in the City of New York and a lot of the implications for those people.
They are likely to be patient so that life is their life. If we are trying to create treatments for those patients. We are not treating, again, the lower middle-income countries. If we are creating treatments for the world, we can't focus it on the middle class, relatively wealthy, and dissemblance. That's not going to solve the world's problems.
The best leads are to absorb things from everywhere they go and try and incorporate that into how they lead. By the way, I do read and listen to some extent. I lead a team of people. I would never classify myself as a great leader. I don't sound like that I'm saying I'm anything above average. It's just that I have a responsibility to my team.
I have a duty and a responsibility to my team because I have some level of influence over their lives. You might determine it as being power. I have a duty to use that wisely and for their benefit. I don’t 100% firmly believe it. Do I get that right all the time? Hundred percent, I don't but that is what's driving me from a motivational perspective.
It's vitally important to have some level of ambition beyond just your career ambition.
I have one more question. What advice would you give a younger version of yourself?
Be a bit more confident when I first started. I have probably always been relatively confident as a person but be confident to take on some challenges. Maybe early on in my career, I could have moved around a bit more and done rather than staying in one place. I would always say to a younger person and everyone, be kinder to more people. I'm not saying I'm not kind to people but you can always do more.
The best sense of satisfaction is in the world, being kind. One of my colleagues talks about how being kind to people to some extent is a selfish act because they get some reward from it. You also get some reward. I would probably also say take some of the stress off yourself. To my team, even now, when people are getting stressed about the next presentation or the next PowerPoint, I say, “No one is going to die because of this PowerPoint presentation.”
Put it into perspective. Take some of the stress off yourself. That old Kipling treats triumphant disaster as the imposter that they are, you will go through phases where things seem to be going well but that will stop. You will go through phases, and nothing is going well but that will stop. It's probably what I would say.
This has been a great interview. Is there anything else you wanted to bring up or comment on?
The only other thing is that this is a well-known cliché but it's true in terms of leadership. When we think about leadership, and I didn't mention it earlier is that it is a cliché. Everyone intuitively knows it but I'm not certain that everyone does it. Don't recruit in your own likeness. That plays into that diversity part. When I've had my best teams, the reason that they've worked is not that we've got 10 or 15 Angus Hamblin. It's because precisely we haven't got 10 or 15 Angus Hamblin.
I said to you earlier that I don't do processes very well. I need people in my team who do the process. I've got someone in my team that I work with in terms of process. He knows, as we talk about it often. We're completely different in terms of our characters but we get on extremely well because I do the things that he doesn't like to do. He does the things that I don't like to do, and that's what makes a good team.
The advice I would give to younger people more generally is to say, “When you are thinking about building your teams, look for what skills there aren't in the team. What have you not got on? Recruit to that.” Some of those people will not be people that you will naturally warm to. They might not be people necessarily that you would go down the pub with or if you've got a spare afternoon. You will be the person ringing them off because they thought the personality touched up.
By the way, that's not the person I'm talking about. I would go down to the pub with them and do spend time. There have been people I worked with that are not necessarily the people I do that with but are still phenomenally valuable people in the team and in their own life as human beings. That goes without saying whether or not to reach out from the personality perspective.
Thank you for taking the time to come.
Thank you very much. It has been enjoyable to have a little bit of self-reflection, so thank you.
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About Angus Hamblin
Currently the Global Head of External Scientific Engagement for AstraZeneca’s Respiratory and Immunology function. He has worked for AstraZeneca for 30 years in a variety of roles including Global Commercial Director for Symbicort. Prior to his current role, Angus was Global Commercial Director for the Emerging Respiratory portfolio, working on a variety of assets in development from candidate identification through to Ph2.b and gaining a good understanding of the overall pharmaceutical development process. Before moving to globally based roles, Angus was Head of Respiratory and inflammation in the UK. He has a degree in Economics and postgraduate diploma in law. As far as Angus is aware, he is the only person in AstraZeneca who is simultaneously a Master Thatcher and a qualified Barrister at Law.
