Acumen Spotlight - Michael Claffey
I have worked with Michael Claffey for over 10 years, originally at Infinity Pharmaceuticals where our 3-person writing team supported 4 development programs. Michael has been with Acumen from its inception and leads our clinical writing team.
Anyone who meets Michael will notice a few things – his experience, sharp wit, Tom Brokaw impression, and his supreme commitment to efficiency. His efficiency allows him to deliver high-quality documents in a fraction of the time it takes most other medical writers. Like any expert craftsman, Michael can make the job look easy, which belies all the skill and experience he has gleaned over 18 years in the business. He adheres to some key principles that I think are valuable to everyone.
Master your toolset. We all use tools to do our work, whether it’s a chisel, hammer, or software platform. Whatever tools you use regularly, take the time early on to master them thoroughly; efficiency will follow. Continually fumbling about through constant small inefficiencies leads quickly to large inefficiency.
Treat time preciously (yours and your teammates’). As mortal beings our time here is limited, and needless squandering of it has moral implications to everyone around us. If you begin to see a process or work-plan leading to fruitless labor (lost time), inform your colleagues and seek to reset. Sometimes a small change in process can allow an entire team to collectively gain hundreds of hours back.
Take pride in process as much as outcome. Too many times I have heard teams say, “Well, it was really painful, but we got there in the end.” This is not acceptable and should be treated as a partial failure. We are tasked to deliver something to the world, a bridge, a business plan, a clinical study protocol. How these products come into being (cost and time) matters and should always be in our minds.
Working with Michael has provided daily lessons for me in what efficiency can be. At times, I think he was born with an efficiency mutation, especially when he is showing me around another hidden shortcut in MS Word that reduces a common problem to a 5-second fix, or when he’s shepherding one of his development teams beginning to spin out of control. Michael puts efficiency at the center of how he works; he trains it into his junior writers, and, as a leader at Acumen, ensures efficiency remains an essential part of our ethos.
Justin McLaughlin
CEO, Acumen