Hype, Grit, and the Illusion of Success: How to Tell If a Biotech Leader Is Truly Good — or Just Lucky
Biotech has a strange way of turning luck into legend.
One well-timed deal, one high-profile exit, and suddenly someone’s a “star.”
But in a business where a single data point can change everything overnight, and sentiment shifts faster than a press release, outcomes are often unpredictable and rarely tell the full story.
That’s a problem — especially when so much of an executive’s reputation rests on those outcomes.
For those of us assessing senior talent in partnering and strategy, it raises a difficult but essential question:
How do you tell real capability from a well-packaged streak of luck?
Why it matters in partnering and strategy roles
Evaluating performance in biotech is rarely straightforward. Every function operates within a web of dependencies — science, capital, timing, people.
But in partnering and strategy roles, that complexity is amplified. Success often depends on how leaders navigate ambiguity: aligning internal stakeholders, shaping narratives around uncertain data, and making judgment calls that may take years to prove right or wrong.
A deal’s success or failure depends on an intricate mix of timing, data, partner behaviour, board appetite, and market cycles.
Even the best CBOs can have dry spells; others can appear unstoppable simply because they happened to be standing in the right place when lightning struck.
Yet we often evaluate people by headline outcomes: “They sold the company.” “They signed the X-big pharma deal.”
The risk is obvious — hiring someone who rode a wave rather than built one, or overlooking someone who quietly demonstrated real strategic judgment in tougher conditions.
Common false signals
Over the years, I’ve seen several recurring mirages when evaluating BD and strategy leaders:
Deal proximity bias: Someone was around a major transaction and gets credited as the architect.
Hot-asset halo: A company’s success is attributed to its leadership, when in fact the value was baked into the molecule long before they joined.
Title inflation: “VP BD” in a 20-person biotech means something very different from “VP BD” in a 20,000-person pharma.
Exit mirage: An acquisition is treated as proof of brilliance, when it may simply reflect timing, investor pressure, or consolidation trends.
These signals can make the difference between hiring someone with repeatable judgment — and hiring someone who happened to hold the winning ticket once.
What to look for instead
So what does reveal genuine capability?
When I assess senior candidates, I try to focus less on the outcomes themselves and more on the thinking patterns behind them.
Some useful lenses:
Decision clarity: Can they explain why a deal was pursued or dropped — not just what happened?
Pattern recognition: Do their decisions show consistent judgment across very different contexts?
Integrity under pressure: Are they willing to walk away from a deal that looks good on paper but doesn’t create long-term value — even if it means one less line on the dealsheet?
Learning loops: How do they talk about deals that didn’t close? Are they defensive, or analytical about what they learned?
Stakeholder realism: Do they show empathy for counterparties, boards, and investors — understanding different motivations and pressures rather than painting every deal as “us versus them”?
Cross-functional influence: Can they bring R&D, Clinical, and Finance together around a shared deal rationale — especially when priorities or incentives don’t fully align?
Process over momentum: If you ask how they’d replicate their success elsewhere, do they describe a repeatable method — or just a fortunate set of circumstances?
These questions tend to separate people who understand cause and effect from those who simply benefited from coincidence.
The humility factor
There’s another signal that rarely shows up on a CV: humility.
The best leaders I’ve met — the ones who sustain impact across companies and cycles — tend to have a quiet awareness of how luck has shaped their journey.
They don’t deny their skill, but they recognise that timing and context can flip the narrative overnight.
That awareness often translates into steadier leadership, better partnerships, and more grounded decision-making.
They’re also more likely to attract and retain good people — because they’re not selling the illusion of control in an inherently unpredictable business.
Looking beyond the scoreboard
In a field where randomness rules the scoreboard, our job isn’t to predict outcomes — it’s to read patterns of judgment.
The question isn’t “What did they achieve?”
It’s “How did they think when the odds were uncertain?”
Because in biotech, as in life, the most valuable traits might not be brilliance or bravado — but integrity, humility, and the judgment to know when luck lent a hand.
What traits make you confident that someone’s success wasn’t just luck?