Framing Change, Finding Consensus, Telling Stories
You can't build consensus on how to solve a problem until everyone agrees what the problem is. And they won't agree on the problem until they see things from the same perspective.
In a biotech organization, each function, team or individual will initially see a problem slightly differently based on the mental model that comes from their unique background. So to get to a consensus view of the problem, you need to deliberately frame it in a way that will both demonstrate the importance of the problem and lay the foundation for agreeing to an effective solution.
In a series of posts last year, I argued that a primary goal of telling stories is to establish a single, compelling frame for a given situation. In other words, the difference between a plan that gets adopted and one that gets dropped is not how good the plan is - it's how good the story is.
If you're trying to integrate a data team into a biotech organization, finding technical and organizational solutions is only half the job. The other half is storytelling.