Quiet quitting, lying flat, acting your wage, Bare Minimum Mondays, Work Not Wednesdays—these are all buzzy catchphrases making the rounds on social media that encourage employees to slack off and “phone it in,” which is literally possible because of video call apps like Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, and Zoho.
To each his own, we suppose, but in drug development at least, when lives are on the line, since patients with serious unmet medical needs depend on new medical products, doing the bare minimum won’t cut it.
Pharmaceutical drug development is the ultimate team sport—one that demands buy-in and participation from a dedicated group of individuals with a wide range of skill sets and perspectives. This includes individuals like clinicians, scientists, regulatory affairs specialists, statisticians, accountants, and clinical research associates, who must subsume self-interest and work together, not at cross purposes, for the good of the team and for the magic to happen.
All this to say, drug development is not for the faint of heart. The costs are enormous, delays are common, and the failure rate in the clinic is around 90%.
That is why, above all, drug development requires not loungers but scroungers, not faultfinders but grinders, not pettifoggers but sloggers i.e., those that roll up their sleeves, and embrace team work not team shirk.
To that end and speaking of grinding, a cup or two of quality coffee goes a long way.