New England Biz Law Update
From law school graduation in 1981 until 1999, Christine Ciotti practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two large law firms and then in-house at Lotus Corporation, where she focused on software licensing and employment law.
In 1999, three years after Lotus’ acquisition by IBM, she took on the role of vice president of human resources at Lotus.
It was a dramatic change.
“Not only were we tackling some very difficult issues, we were doing it front and center,” Ciotti recalled. “After a period of time I came to the realization that I was not going to please every interested group with each decision. I had to advocate for what I thought were fair outcomes, based on my instincts and my best judgment.”
Her legal training and experience came in handy.
“Law school taught me how to break down a problem so it could be analyzed, reconstructed and solved. I’ve found that skill very useful in all of the non-legal roles I’ve taken on,” she said.
Ciotti recently took time to discuss what it was like to move into HR after 19 years of law practice.
Q. Chris, you started out as a corporate and securities lawyer, and then moved in-house to Lotus in 1988. What was your position there initially?
A. I came to Lotus during the pre-Notes days. I was hired to support various business units as well as the human resources group, although I had no experience as an employment lawyer. During my initial interview at Lotus, while I reacted positively when I found out the job involved supporting “HR,” I remember coming home and asking my husband – also a lawyer – what HR was. He said, “It’s the new name for personnel.”
Q. Did you enjoy it?
A. Very much. What interested me most was the people component. Employment law was more about people than corporate practice, and I think I was better at it. What I also liked about the employment area was there was no one answer. You had to take a variety of the intangibles and put them together to find a workable and legal solution for a variety of constituents.
I liked having the opportunity to figure out people and situations and to think fast on my feet while keeping cool. In HR there are always lots of delicate issues to handle, including terminations, harassment claims, layoffs, communication and management challenges, and the majority of them had legal implications. When there’s a problem you needed to figure out how it all fits together – and do it quickly and be right.
Q. How did you move from the legal department into the HR department?
A. A spot opened up as vice president of HR at Lotus. IBM had acquired Lotus in 1995, but left us alone for a few years in an effort to retain Lotus talent. By 1998, there was a deliberate effort to integrate the two companies. I was encouraged to throw my hat into the ring for the position.
Q. What was different about the HR role?
A. It’s much broader. What made the job even more challenging initially was that we were in the throes of a very demanding global integration, which included all systems, work projects, employee benefits, work policies and programs. And it played out in the midst of the dot.com bubble, so losing key talent was a huge concern.
My biggest surprise was the visibility of the position. As a lawyer, I was often behind the scenes. In the senior HR position, I was in the spotlight. Not only were we tackling some very difficult issues, we were doing it front and center. After a period of time I came to the realization that I was not going to please every interested group with each decision. I had to advocate for what I thought were fair outcomes, based on my instincts and my best judgment.
Lawyering was somewhat more directed in its focus. However, I did find my legal training helpful in my HR role. Law school taught me how to break down a problem so it could be analyzed, reconstructed and solved. I’ve found that skill very useful in all of the non-legal roles I’ve taken on.
Q. Was there a significant learning curve?
A. After 19 years of practicing law, I had been doing it for a while and I felt I was pretty good at it. Going into a new field at a high level was a challenge. I often felt like Mickey the dunce playing catch up. I wasn’t deeply knowledgeable about certain areas in the HR field, including benefits or compensation. I wondered whether I would ever know everything I should know.
Q. The thought of working on an enormous integration project is daunting. How did you know what to do?
A. IBM had teams of employees working on all elements of the integration. IBM’s early strategy was to build their software business through acquisition. At the time of the Lotus acquisition, IBM believed Lotus Notes would put IBM’s software group on the map. At the time of the acquisition, Lotus was a worldwide organization with 7,000 employees and IBM had over 300,000 employees. In fact, at the time of the Lotus acquisition, IBM was going through its own cultural transformation.
IBM was ahead of the curve with its awareness of how much the culture mattered in making an integration successful. To that end, it focused on assessing both cultures by asking employees on both sides what behaviors were valued and how they were recognized. It found out how decisions were made, how employees communicated and how they were held accountable. The assessments on both cultures were compared to determine the gaps and synergies and the steps needed to make the integration successful. This made sense since it has become clearer over time that unsuccessful mergers are usually caused by people issues.
Q. Can you think of an example of an issue which came out of this kind of assessment?
A. On the Rational Software side (another company acquired by IBM), the folks being acquired thought there was no clarity behind where the company was going. IBM said let’s fix this by being clearer about articulating goals. If you don’t know you have a problem then you can’t dissipate it.
Q. You moved into biotech in 2004. How is that different?
A. When I arrived at Cubist in January 2004, I probably I should have paid more attention to the pace of biotech compared with software. During my first few weeks at Cubist, I remember listening to a presentation where slides projected delivery into the market in 2010. I thought it was a typo. I had never seen anything projected so far out. The pace of biotech is slower than software given that it takes 10 to 12 years, much regulatory approval and somewhere around $800,000 to get a drug into the marketplace. This influences the culture.
At Cubist, we had our first product, an IV antibiotic named Cubicin, approved by the FDA in 2003. From that point on, we went from a small research company to becoming a fully commercialized organization, with our own internal sales force, which has been a huge change. During this time, from an HR standpoint, we’ve built compensation and training programs, conducted our first employee survey and focused on developing talent and building the culture. I felt all those things were very important, but we probably didn’t have to move so fast.
I now have a much deeper appreciation for how difficult it is to be successful in the biotech industry. Unlike high tech where there is virtually no regulation, biotech is highly regulated. It is also intensely competitive, with a higher failure rate and much higher cost to bring a drug to market. All that said, the biotech industry is more appealing to me because it is propelled by the desire to help people and to make their lives better.
Jane Sender is president of Sender Legal Search, which specializes in high level in-house placements in New England. She can be reached at www.jslegalsearch.com.
