Leading with purpose: Łukasz Nowak on building strong teams and scalable operations

Q: You’ve been closely involved in building Ardigen’s teams and delivery culture. What have you learned about scaling a knowledge-intensive organization rooted in collaboration and expert talent?

I’ve learned that scaling a knowledge-intensive company isn’t about headcount – it’s about compounding shared judgment. At Ardigen we do this by strengthening our neotribes in Maffesoli’s sense: identity-rich communities with shared purpose, symbols, and rituals that create belonging and enable fluid collaboration across projects. Each tribe makes “what great looks like” explicit – scientifically, technically, and operationally – by codifying best practices into playbooks, SOPs, and technical standards, then reinforcing them through design/code/pipeline reviews and structured decision logs. We keep power distance low: product owners and technical leads act as first-among-equals in teams, while a Tribe Leader holds people’s decisions and coordinates across workstreams, so teams have high autonomy with just-enough governance. We scale capability through apprenticeship at pace – senior experts mentor, run clinics, and turn know-how into reusable components and templates – supported by cross-tribal guilds. Our leaders are recognized as much for how many people they enable as for what they deliver. Multidisciplinary teams assemble around outcomes rather than functions and work from shared artifacts, so biology, data, and engineering align early. Because our “how” – rituals, roles, and shared artifacts – is as explicit as the “what”,  expertise is portable and we can add teams or spin up new tribes without losing momentum. That’s how we compound judgment – and scale with care.

Q: Ardigen operates at the intersection of science, AI, and operations. What are the key challenges in delivering complex, high-impact projects in this space?

Delivering at the science × AI × operations edge means orchestrating biological uncertainty, model brittleness, and delivery rigor within client SLAs, auditability requirements, and IP boundaries. It starts with the data: robust data governance is the critical success factor for any model – intake due diligence, harmonization to shared schemas, and strict versioning/lineage. With curated, governed data in place, we translate research into production while maintaining a tight AI↔lab loop with partners – model claims are continuously checked against wet-lab or orthogonal evidence, and decisions account for drift, edge cases, latency, and cost realities. Because biomedical data are scarce and heterogeneous, domain-in-the-loop validation and reproducible pipelines are non-negotiable; otherwise technical or structural gaps can stall even strong teams. Interdisciplinary alignment at speed is another constant: biologists, data scientists, engineers, and project leads bring different epistemic cultures, so we use exchange zones and boundary objects to keep complex work legible without forcing a single vocabulary. Bottom line: high-impact AI-driven CRO delivery is not about a “perfect model” alone, but about governed data, auditable MLOps, and continual translation between evidence, ML systems, and a client-grade operating rhythm that learns fast, safely, and at scale.

Q: What does operational excellence mean to you in the context of a company like Ardigen?

Operational excellence at an AI-driven CRO like Ardigen means delivering our promise to raise the probability of success from discovery toward the clinic, continuously improving value creation. It’s friction removal with guardrails shaped by our values: Trust (transparent traceability), Knowledge (codified know-how), Persistence (root-cause until it works), and Quality (clinic-ready evidence). In practice, we automate the repeatable and elevate judgment so expert time goes to the “what-would-change-our-mind” analysis that turns outputs into decision-grade insights. We manage the exploratory nature of projects with a cadence that ends learning loops in decisions, not dashboards, and we keep performance visible with a small, stable set of signals. We learn in the open – structured retros and incentives that reward improvement, not heroic firefighting. Excellence shows up when predictability improves and teams feel lighter, not heavier – and when that lift in probability of success is evident to our clients.

Q: How do you maintain the right balance between agility and structure as the company continues to grow?

As I outlined earlier, our neotribes – outcome-owned teams with cross-tribal guilds, low power distance, and a Tribe Leader for people/coordination – are the chassis; to extend that balance as we grow, we run guardrails, not gates through a risk-tiered explore-harden-deploy path where evidence thresholds, not headcount, set the process. We work in agile: short sprints and Kanban where it fits, with a Definition of Done that includes scientific validity and acceptance criteria. Our agile-for-life-sciences authorship framework maintains clear contributor roles, review checkpoints, versioned artifacts, and a transparent chain from raw data to decisions- so speed never compromises provenance. Clear decision rights and a steady cadence run on a small, durable set of metrics. Bottom line: autonomy where uncertainty is high, predictability where stakes are high – so the system keeps compounding shared judgment as we add teams and spin up new tribes.

Q: As someone who has led both people and processes, what do you believe is the key to keeping teams engaged, focused, and motivated over time?

Keeping teams engaged over time comes down to mobilization – turning mission into daily energy, security into focus, and ownership into long-term commitment. At Ardigen we do this through three pillars: Culture & Mission with Code Against Cancer as our battle cry – so people identify with our values (Trust, Knowledge, Persistence, Quality) and see line-of-sight from their work to patient impact; Annual Salary & Benefits at market level – so basics are secured and attention stays on craft; and an Employee Stock Option Plan – so we share a common perspective, think long term, and participate in Ardigen’s success. We’re proud of what we do, and we make the mission tangible in outcome-owned teams with internal poster sessions and demo days; we act with our values by building a Trusted environment – transparent goals, clear decision rights, and psychological safety – where Knowledge sharing is the norm, not the exception, so people can grow. We celebrate craftsmanship and learning more than heroics; we remove toil with automation so experts can spend time on thinking. Clear growth paths and apprenticeship keep mastery rising, while Persistence and Quality show up in everyday habits, reviews, and results. We have gathered at Ardigen world-class engineers and scientists who share these values and mentor, and are mentored by one another. Result: people feel the purpose, have the security to focus, and own the outcome – engagement that compounds.

Q: How do you ensure that the way we work today supports where we want to be in five years?

We use a North Star strategy: become the strategic partner to Big Pharma that reliably raises the probability of success from discovery to clinic. To make today serve that future, we run a clear value-creation plan – prioritize programs where we can own outcomes and deepen multi-year partnerships; avoid unfunded, high-risk moonshots. We take responsibility for results through outcome-based scopes, explicit acceptance criteria, and executive business reviews, and we learn from every project, codifying what works into reusable technologies, governed data assets, and playbooks that compound across accounts – already scaling out technology platforms such as Ardigen phenAID and the Ardigen Biologics Platform. Financially, we operate smart and steady – disciplined OPEX, healthy margins, strong cash conversion – so a stable cash position funds people and platforms without betting the company. Equally important, we develop leaders as guardians of our culture and values and keep the mission vivid with Code Against Cancer, so the culture stays where we want it: high standards, psychological safety, and craftsmanship over heroics. Net effect: today’s choices consistently build the capabilities, relationships, and behaviors that put us exactly where we intend to be in five years.

Q: What is one leadership lesson that’s stayed with you throughout your journey at Ardigen?

Ask early, ask well. The lesson that endures for me is that leadership scales through others. In complex work, the smartest move is to ask for help early, and do it with rigor: frame the problem, state what’s been tried, name constraints and decision criteria, and invite the right people to stress-test the logic (welcoming dissent, not just agreement). Practiced this way, help-seeking models humility and psychological safety, surfaces blind spots, accelerates learning, and protects outcomes and people. Asking early, and asking well, isn’t a detour from leadership; it’s the essence of it.