Context
Genentech, the world’s oldest and largest biotechnology company, has spent nearly 50 years pioneering breakthroughs in biological medicine—finding cures for a wide range of diseases and improving the quality and longevity of life for millions worldwide.
In the late 2010s, amid intensifying market competition, regulatory uncertainty, and a rapidly shifting landscape, Genentech launched its most ambitious transformation to date. The globally renowned consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, designed the initial transformation strategy. To implement that vision and build long-term internal capacity, Genentech selected a small cohort of the world’s top executive strategists and agilists. Lawrence Ellis was one of them.
Client Testimonial
“I had the privilege of working with Lawrence during a critical phase of our shift from a conventional organizational model to a distributed ecosystem. Our Houston ecosystem—anchored in the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest medical complex and a hub for many of the top-ranked institutions across multiple disease areas—was one of the pilot sites.
Lawrence was assigned as our executive strategist and lead agilist. Under his guidance, the Houston ecosystem became one of the most successful in Genentech. A large part of that success was due to the cohesive, high-performing team structure Lawrence helped us build. He supported us in developing agile, human-centered—and in his case, planetary-centered—ways of working. His contributions spanned executive coaching, team development, customer engagement strategy, and organizational design.
Lawrence became a trusted advisor and executive coach to two of our top leaders and helped transform our entire ecosystem into a high-functioning, agile unit. He led structured engagements with our medical and customer-facing teams that built sustainable internal capabilities and allowed us to continue thriving even after his departure.
His strategic brilliance was evident in both internal and external settings. At one three-day all-ecosystem retreat, he led a process that allowed us to ‘download’ our collective knowledge of the customer base. Through generative conversation and synthesis, we developed a visual and text-based map of our insights—one that many of us found more valuable than the premium-priced marketing reports we had relied on, and which guided our marketing strategy in the subsequent months.
Externally, Lawrence joined our executive team and several officers of the company at a full-day strategy session with our counterparts at MD Anderson Cancer Center, generally regarded as the preeminent cancer treatment center in the world. During a pivotal 15-minute segment, he opted to forgo a presentation, instead posing incisive, powerful questions that sparked high-impact dialogue between both organizations. That moment was a turning point and laid the groundwork for a new collaborative service model that we continued to refine for weeks afterward.
Two years into the transformation initiative, after all thirty-one ecosystems had launched across Genentech North America, I believe Lawrence was the only executive strategist and agilist who became a full-fledged member of an ecosystem’s leadership team—an extraordinary testament to the value and trust he inspired.
Later, as one of the top executives in the Houston ecosystem, I co-initiated a nationwide Disparities of Care initiative focused on closing critical healthcare gaps. We invited Lawrence to be our executive strategist. Over several weeks, he educated us on the distinctions between conventional and complex adaptive strategies—insights so valuable that we turned his frameworks and case studies into roadshow content to help shift mindsets across the company. Our presentations to the company’s C-suite helped catalyze broader adoption of complex adaptive approaches.
This initiative ultimately propelled me and my cofounder to new roles with significantly greater scope and visibility—partly due to the visibility and success of this work. I was promoted to lead a new team focused on Health Impact and Health Equity for Genentech’s entire Customer Engagement business unit, I again turned to Lawrence. I wanted the best—and he agreed to join us.
In his new role, Lawrence supported us in three critical areas:
- Developing my new team;
- Supporting the Nevada lung cancer team (in a state ranked among the bottom five nationally for lung cancer outcomes, with screening rates for high-risk individuals falling below 13%…); and
- Advancing a company-wide initiative to close urban-rural health disparities—a persistent and severe gap affecting up to 20% of the U.S. population. His work helped make the business case and establish a community of practice across ecosystems.
It was bittersweet when Lawrence left Genentech to launch One Thriving Planet, his global initiative addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and related areas. My colleagues and I are deeply grateful to have been beneficiaries of his stellar expertise, consummate professionalism, and transformational impact.
Lawrence doesn’t just bring skills—he brings a way of thinking, collaborating, and leading that leaves organizations forever changed for the better.”
— Audrea Juny Simpson, Head of Health Impact & Health Equity, Customer Engagement at Genentech & Healthcare Director, Houston Ecosystem at Genentech