{"id":17085,"date":"2021-12-10T10:16:59","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T10:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sygnaturediscovery.com\/blog\/leadership-perspectives-andy-black-on-company-culture\/"},"modified":"2021-12-10T10:16:59","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T10:16:59","slug":"leadership-perspectives-andy-black-on-company-culture","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.sygnaturediscovery.com\/fr\/blog\/leadership-perspectives-andy-black-on-company-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership Perspectives: Andy Black on company culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life sciences entrepreneur Andy is a business expert \u2013 and a big believer in getting your organisation\u2019s principles right\u2026<\/p>\n

Andy Black is a man with many hats.<\/p>\n

Having previously spent three years<\/a> as Non-Executive Chairman here at Sygnature Discovery, he\u2019s currently chairman of three companies, holds directorships at two more, heads up his own firm, Black Life Sciences, and works as Professor of Practice at King\u2019s College London.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s enough to keep anyone busy.<\/p>\n

Interesting, then, that of all the aspects of business he\u2019s clearly passionate about, there\u2019s one that jumps out time and time again in conversation: company culture.<\/p>\n

A realisation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Andy\u2019s appreciation of the value of company culture stems back to what he calls a lightbulb moment in 2010.<\/p>\n

Back then, he was CEO of Kinapse, an advisory and implementation services firm that had been growing rapidly since being founded just five years earlier and was now dealing with the challenges posed by the 2008 financial crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d gone from around eight people when I co-founded the company to about 100,\u201d Andy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suddenly realised my role needed to shift from being primarily externally facing to more internally focused; I had to work with the team to develop the business, and focusing on our culture was central to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, leading Kinapse\u2019s culture became Andy\u2019s top priority as CEO.<\/p>\n

\"Andy<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were growing so fast. I wanted to be explicit about what we needed to look like and redefine what our business was all about so that everyone was on the same page and pulling in one strong direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour culture pervades everything you do, so if you get it right, it correlates extremely well with your business\u2019s performance, growth, value and profitability.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut without buy-in from the top, it\u2019s incredibly hard to instil the appropriate culture \u2013 I firmly believe it needs the CEO to take a strong lead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Culture defined<\/strong><\/p>\n

But hold on a minute. What exactly does \u2018company culture\u2019 mean, anyway? Has it not been watered down to a buzzword, another piece of confusing corporate jargon?<\/p>\n

\u201cCulture can be very broad in its definition \u2013 but it definitely isn\u2019t <\/em>a document, a mantra or, heaven forbid, something simply stuck up one the wall,\u201d Andy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s principally about a shared sense of values; what\u2019s most important to us collectively and individually, what our attitudes to work are, and how we behave.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s especially true in drug discovery. It\u2019s a long-term, multidisciplinary world, so the environment requires everyone to share the same attitudes, values and behaviours.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what should those attitudes look like?<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I wouldn\u2019t say one set of behaviours is \u2018best\u2019, per se,\u201d Andy continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about what a good culture looks like for your<\/em> business and being completely clear about that; everyone looks to the CEO and will hopefully follow the scene they set.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting it into practice<\/strong><\/p>\n

At Kinapse, Andy accessed coaching to help him understand how best to lead the company\u2019s culture.<\/p>\n

One thing he did was to use Gallup\u2019s Q12 Employee Engagement Survey<\/a> to assess the extent to which staff were buying into the intangibles he wanted everyone to believe in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good news was that people said they liked working at Kinapse, the main reason they gave was the culture of the business and the atmosphere, environment and approaches it fostered \u2013 which is exactly what you want to hear,\u201d Andy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a similar story at Sygnature. There\u2019s a tremendous collaborative culture with a highly motivated team and you can really sense the can-do, pragmatic attitudes of people across the organisation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s always testament to the leadership of a company, because it comes down from the top.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing pains<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Kinapse continued to grow, Andy knew that his company\u2019s culture would need to evolve with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour core values and principles must always stay the same, but of course you have to adapt,\u201d Andy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made it less about the senior team and more about the whole company by introducing structures that allowed greater engagement from all levels, which I think is vitally important.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, we even made our culture part of the recruitment process \u2013 our six value statements became part of our interviews, inductions and rewards programmes so everyone knew from day one what we stood for and their role within that.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a growing firm, Andy believes the right company culture can be an asset not just internally, but also to the bottom line.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d talk to our clients about it,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur culture was a differentiator, so if we were meeting with a potential partner we\u2019d talk to them about our values and encourage them to hold us to account for as long as they worked with us.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that sense of ownership, integrity and continual evaluation are really critical; you have to practise what you preach, and if the actions within your company start to differ from what you previously pledged to stand for, you\u2019re in trouble.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a tick-box exercise or a flowchart,\u201d Andy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to make company culture one of your biggest priorities and be really passionate about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing\u2019s for sure: Andy certainly is.<\/p>\n

To connect with Andy Black, visit his LinkedIn profile<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":17086,"template":"","category":[29],"class_list":["post-17085","blog","type-blog","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-categorise"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLeadership Perspectives: Andy Black on company culture - Sygnature<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sygnaturediscovery.com\/fr\/blog\/leadership-perspectives-andy-black-on-company-culture\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_CA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Leadership Perspectives: Andy Black on company culture - Sygnature\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sygnaturediscovery.com\/fr\/blog\/leadership-perspectives-andy-black-on-company-culture\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sygnature\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sygnaturediscovery.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/sygnature-hit-to-lead-team-collaboration-scaled.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimation du temps de lecture\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.sygnaturediscovery.com\\\/fr\\\/blog\\\/leadership-perspectives-andy-black-on-company-culture\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.sygnaturediscovery.com\\\/fr\\\/blog\\\/leadership-perspectives-andy-black-on-company-culture\\\/\",\"name\":\"Leadership Perspectives: Andy Black on company culture - 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