Needles are painful and scary. People hate blood tests even when its required. Elizabeth Holmes had a solution. Use the advancement in technology to run a wide range of tests from just a couple of drops of blood taken from a painless finger prick. This new relatively painless technology would mean people would undergo tests more frequently. Which would mean diseases would be detected early.

And Holmes was the right person to tackle this problem. She was smart and charismatic. She had filed for her first patent application for a drug delivery patch while she was still in high school. And she was excelling at Stanford – before she dropped out to chase her dream and build her company Theranos.

So what went wrong?

In one word? Impatience. Holmes would do anything for progress. She had raised money from the best of the best of Silicon Valley investors. But none of the investors who became her board of directors knew much about medical science. So when they pushed, Holmes came up with solutions to show them progress.

Holmes published zero research papers about her device and her methods. And often ran tests on inaccurate machines. 

Employees were pressurised to create favourable results instead of accurate ones. Non disclosure agreements and legal threats were used aggressively to stifle whistle blowing and internal critiques. 

And when push came to shove, it was found that to meet the demand, Theranos was using standard blood testing machines from her competitors instead of her own devices.

Focusing on chasing her dream at any cost is what doomed Holmes. Focusing on progress alone made her go to prison when the whole story came out.

What could she have done?

Focusing on progress, without process – is always expensive.

As Warren Buffett says: “You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting 9 women pregnant.” Impatience kills many a good ideas. Following due process takes time. But not following them takes more time as failures start mounting.

Holmes had the drive and the determination to make her dream a reality. If anyone could have built a 21st century device to make blood testing painless and easy, it was her. But unfortunately, she was in an excessive hurry. 

The story of another impatient scientist

Rosalind Franklin was always impatient. She would give short concise blunt answers that would unnerve her superiors. She didn’t have time for small talk. She didn’t have time to explain her work – even to her boss.

But however impatient and hurried she was in her speech, she was extremely patient when it came to her work. And what did she do? She took pictures. With x-ray. She worked alongside Maurice Wilkins and took x-rays of crystalline structures to understand their forms. 

This was groundbreaking work. To get better clarity, Franklin methodically improved her technique. She rigorously analyzed the data. And did everything step-by-step. 

Franklin was extremely meticulous with the process. Process of making changes, and recording output, and learning from it. There was no hurrying and cutting corners. She experimented with various different salt solutions to finally control the humidity in the camera chamber. 

Shooting the secret structure of life

And that’s how Franklin took Photo-51. A photo of the DNA that revealed its helix structure!

James Watson and Francis Crick were shown the photos of Franklin’s work. And it was this photo and Franklin’s research papers that led them to the “secret of life!” Our DNA was a double helix structure!

In 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins would win the Nobel prize for Physiology. For their accurate modelling of DNA’s double helix structure. Unfortunately, Rosalind Franklin died at the age of 37 due to cancer. And Nobel’s were not given posthumously because of which, she is rather unknown.

But it was on the back of her extremely process oriented research that science moved ahead. Her work helped us not only uncover the structure of DNA, but also the molecular structure of viruses.

Focus on the process, and the progress comes naturally.

It’s essential to find a balance between progress and process. It’s essential to understand that deep sustainable progress is a byproduct of meticulous process and planning.

If only Elizabeth Holmes had understood it as well as Rosalind Franklin, today she would have been a billionaire with a functioning product that would have helped millions of people. Instead of sitting in prison for fraud.

Quote Unquote:

“Focus on the progress, the process becomes an entry fee.
Focus on the process, the progress comes naturally.”

– Max Shank

Action Summary:

• Resist impatience. Don’t cut corners. Don’t screw the means for a good end goal. 

• Follow the process meticulously. Plan your series of actions. Monitor progress to improve your process. Do what is right. In the right way.