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Part 4 of Navigation & Drift
Check Your Bearings Each Watch
Continuous recalibration under changing conditions.
Before GPS, captains regularly checked their bearings.
Not because they expected catastrophe.
But because even small deviations compound over time.
I think about this often in biotech R&D.
Markets shift.
Requirements change.
Early assumptions prove false.
New data can look promising yet still lead teams down a rabbit hole.
Without continual alignment, organizations drift.
And the longer the drift goes unnoticed, the more expensive the correction becomes.
That’s why I recommend regular alignment checks across teams – R&D, operations, commercial, finance, and leadership.
Not just to review progress, but to ensure teams are still aligned to the same destination.
This means regularly reassessing:
– priorities
– assumptions
– milestones
– constraints
– and what the business actually needs next
Staying on course is rarely about making one perfect decision.
It’s about making corrections before small deviations become expensive ones.
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