Delivering Results in the Middle of Change

It’s not every day you get to go inside a company who’s products save lives every day and while they’re in the middle of one of the biggest changes in company history.

While filming C-Suite at Life Technologies, I learned so many things about mapping genomes and what it could mean to us scientifically and personally. But there were three big things stood out to me that businesses and entrepreneurs can learn from Life Technologies.

It’s okay to take a look at your roots to find out what your real meaning is, especially in order to convey the value of who you are. Life Technologies was born out of a number of companies coming together, primarily around a company called Invitrogen. It was a successful company that sold scientific products to scientific researchers door to door. They moved beyond that into a multibillion-dollar company through a series of acquisitions. But as they brought together various brands, they became a house of brands. They felt they needed something that said more about what they do, so they pulled a brand that had been stuck away in a closet called Life Technologies. When the team saw the name it was like a eureka moment that maybe only scientists and gold miners have. Through the name Life Technologies, they created a strategy that helped them say “This is what we do”. It took on a different meaning when they re-registered the company’s symbol to say LIFE. It became a rallying cry and moved Life Technologies from being a house of brands to a branded house.

The C-Suite must be irrational. When I heard Greg Lucier say that to a group of Harvard MBA alumni, I thought “What do you mean irrational?” If anything, you want to be sane and rational. Irrational is not typically what I see! But Lucier went on to explain that you have to be so far out there sometimes in order to pull people along to where you want them to go. You know they’ll never be as irrational – being adamant about where you’re going or what you want to accomplish. For example, when someone says “I need you to drive sales by XX% by next week” and most people look at them thinking “Are you nuts?” So Lucier is saying you have to be irrational and you have to swing the pendulum so far out there – to stress the system in such a way that people move faster and harder than they have before.

In the middle of change, Life Technologies is doing their job. This is a company that let us in to see them when they’re being sold. In a time in which they can’t talk about it to a great extent, these guys are sticking to the task. They’re basically doing two things at once, with the main focus on delivering their job. They’re not caught up in what their job is going to be but on delivering the things they said they would. They made promises to existing shareholders that said they will do there job because that’s what they’re there to do. They’re there to save lives, and they’re there to do it. That was a pretty neat way of looking at it and I was very impressed because I thought there would have been more speculation, a lot more discussion, and a lot more positioning than what was being done. They’re confident in themselves and it’ll be what it is – and that’s the mark of a real professional.

Jeffrey Hayzlett is a global business celebrity and speaker, bestselling author, Contributing Editor and Host of C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett on Bloomberg Television. He is the CEO of The Hayzlett Group, an international strategic business consulting company focused on leading change and developing high growth companies.

Connect with Jeffrey on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or via email at info@hayzlett.com.