BioNTech is in the market for a new CEO, and if Stella Vnook, founder and CEO of Agile Consulting Group, had to make a prediction, her money would be on someone from outside the company. Why? Because of BioNTech’s ambition to transform from a single-product COVID-19 vaccine maker into what the company’s chief commercial officer, Annemarie Hanekamp, described last year as an “oncology powerhouse.”
In Vnook’s experience, strategic pivots demand fresh perspectives.
“That's when the skill set required for the next chapter is fundamentally different from those that got the company to where they are now,” she said.
On the other hand, when GSK needed to choose a new CEO last year, it had already successfully undergone what one of its leaders called a “strategic transformation” and tapped an internal candidate, its former chief commercial officer, Luke Miels.
While choosing a new CEO can seem mysterious to outside observers, Vnook has developed what she calls a “secret sauce” for the process.
Throughout her career, Vnook has experience being a CEO and helping companies select them. She spent a decade in business development at Merck & Co. and later built more than $500 million in portfolio and deal value while leading the formulation and drug delivery company Likarda as CEO, she said.
Now, she helps life sciences startups design, staff and run companies, including finding and hiring chief executives. Deciding whether to hire internally or externally is only the beginning. Vnook said the process requires careful consideration and should not be rushed.
“I think putting in the wrong individual could be more damaging for the company,” she said. “Don't put someone in for the sake of it.”
Here’s what Vnook considers when hiring a biotech CEO.
Can they strategically translate the science to business?
Vnook sees a lot of founder CEOs with backgrounds in medicine or science struggle with the commercial side of leading a company because they don’t know how to translate the lab work into a viable business strategy.
For instance, they might be able to explain a drug’s mechanism of action in great detail but have difficulty describing how a patient would benefit from taking it.
“It's not so much knowing everything about the science, but it's really knowing how to translate science into the patient care or the patient practice,” she said.
Do they have the ability to inspire?
“In the biotech world, we live in a space where a lot of this is personal to a lot of people,” Vnook said.
For that reason, Vnook looks at whether candidates can “transmit” their authentic passion and love for what they do into other people. She searches for this quality by asking candidates about their job experiences, and what drew them to their current position.
“It's not about impressing me with the data. After they're done telling me about their company or their role, would I follow them? Do I feel that pull into that conversation? Because a passion that is authentic, it’s a skill. It's rare,” she said. “You can tell when somebody is really working hard on impressing versus truly pouring their heart and soul into [a] company.”
Can they create a long-term vision and execute along the way?
A CEO who’s brilliant at operations but gets consumed by quarterly losses and is unable to translate a company vision isn’t acting as a CEO. They’re acting as a COO. The opposite is also true.
“Strategy without execution will never build a strong company,” Vnook said. “There are not a lot of people, I've learned, that have the ability to simultaneously deal with tactics and [the] day-to-day.”
The ideal candidate must be able to do both. They need to “create company value” in a way that’s sustainable and provides a “clear, five to 10-year, long-term strategy and vision, and then support it with a solid execution.”
Do their skills and vision fit the company’s needs?
Vnook said companies often look for certain keywords or educational pedigrees that match what they’re looking for in their chief executive searches. But relying on that alone is a mistake.
“You're eliminating quite a few other candidates that may not have fallen into that original AI screen,” she said.
Instead, the hiring team should do a “diagnostic assessment” of the current CEO’s performance and compare it to the company’s strategic direction to understand the skills, experience and knowledge gaps they need to fill.
“They might not cover 100% of my checklist,” Vnook said. “But the 80% that they have, and the passion and the vision that they have, will make them a brilliant CEO.”
