

The Effective Statistician - in association with PSI
Alexander Schacht and Benjamin Piske, biometricians, statisticians and leaders in the pharma industry
The podcast from statisticians for statisticians to have a bigger impact at work. This podcast is set up in association with PSI - Promoting Statistical Insight. This podcast helps you to grow your leadership skills, learn about ongoing discussions in the scientific community, build you knowledge about the health sector and be more efficient at work. This podcast helps statisticians at all levels with and without management experience. It is targeted towards the health, but lots of topics will be important for the wider data scientists community.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Sep 22, 2018 • 40min
How to sell your achievements
actionable advise
Find the homepage of the episode here!
Have you ever felt bad about talking about your achievements? Did you ever thought, that you're just doing your job, when you accomplished something? Did you ever feel, that others didn't understand, how significant your contribution was?
If your answer to any of these questions is yes, this episode is for you!

Sep 10, 2018 • 47min
Multiplicity - practical tips with Alex Dmitrienko
Understand multiplicity challenges in everyday situations
Find the homepage for the episode here!
Understand and master multiplicity in practical situations - Interview with Alex Dmitrienko
Alex Dmitrienko has researched and published so much, that without a doubt, he can be called one of the world class experts in the field of multiplicity. E.g. his book Multiple Testing Problems in Pharmaceutical Statistics contains a wealth of practical information on this topic.
His career has brought him from pharma over CROs to his own company Mediana. Via his company, he provides also online courses on his favourite topic.
As a listener, you will get the following benefits from this episode:
Understand multiplicity challenges in practical situations
Learn how to actually implement it
Learn where to get further information
We cover the following topics during the interview:
What is multiplicity and why does it matter?
Should we always test as many objectives as possible or is it better to restrict the list of objectives?
How do we communicate best those objectives, that are non-significant on the multiple testing adjusted case but are significant on the local level?
Non-regulatory stakeholders like payers and physicians may have completely different views on the priority or importance of variables. How should we manage this?
There are many different ways how setting up systems for multiplicity adjustments. What are the best steps to come to an agreement with a cross-functional team on this?
How do we deal with multiplicity, if the study has different components?
How do we deal with multiplicity, if we have 2 or more studies and analyse them combined as well as individually?
What are good resources to learn about multiplicity for beginners?

Sep 3, 2018 • 1h 8min
20 key attributes of highly successful leaders part 2
lessons from Walt Offen
Click here for the episode homepage
In part 2 of this interview with Walt Offen, we cover:
Having courage to speak up in all settings
Listen carefully to others; ignore rank within the company
Instituting any new rule or policy must affect the leader equally
Grab opportunities when they come your way, even if you do not feel ready.
See the issue from other’s perspectives
Understand, appreciate, and celebrate diversity of thought, personality, skills, and beliefs
Always strive to get better and help those around you
Do not take “we’ve always done it that way” as an acceptable answer
Be a solid role model
Develop self-confidence; be able to laugh at yourself

Aug 27, 2018 • 1h 5min
20 key attributes of highly successful leaders part 1
lessons from Walt Offen
Click here for the homepage of the episode.
In this episode, I have the privilege to interview Walt Offen. A statistician that is about to end an amazing career over a couple of decades of working in the pharmaceutical industry.
Walt organized together, what he believes to be the 20 key attributes of highly successful leaders. They are organized in no particular order but enriched with great stories.
Of course, there is a difference between leadership and managing. Leadership is the ability to inspire others when there is no supervisory control. For a highly effective organization, everyone can and should be a leader. In part one, we cover the first 10:
Having a can-do attitudeBeing able to apologizeInspiring others to join the cause (without authority)Share creditShow humilityBe trustworthy and develop trust in othersEngaging everyone on the team, making them feel valued and importantRemain calm, be kind to everyoneProvide opportunities for others to shinePutting the organization, colleagues, the company, ahead of personal goals
About Walter W. Offen, PhD
Distinguished Research Fellow
Global Head of Statistical Sciences
AbbVie
Walt is currently Distinguished Research Fellow. He heads up an organization comprised of Statistical Innovation, Safety Statistics, and Non-Clinical Statistics. He received his PhD in statistics from the University of Florida in 1980. His career began at Eli Lilly, spanning 31 years. He joined AbbVie in 2012. His interests include novel clinical trial design and analysis, Data Monitoring Committees, and multiplicity. Walt was inducted as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2007.

Aug 13, 2018 • 7min
Vacation Episode 2018
Some thoughts about why we do what we do
Find the episode page here!
In this very short episode, I'm stepping back from the day-to-day business and reflect about why we go to work every day.
I have a very personal story about it, that helped me to see things very clearly and I'm sharing this in this episode.
Further, many of you will listen this during vacation time and thus, I'm also touching on the importance of taking a break.
There is no episode next week as we take a summer break as well.

Aug 6, 2018 • 36min
Multilevel Network Meta-Regression for population-adjusted treatment comparisons
Interview with Nicky Welton
theeffectivestatistician.com
Indirect comparisons provide evidence, when no direct clinical trials are available. However, the different approaches come with various limitations. Some more recent approaches take into account the baseline characteristics to reduce the bias in the estimates of the treatment effects.
In todays episode, I'm talking with one the worlds experts on this topic - Nicky Welton - who has published extensively in this field.
Starting from the basics of indirect comparisons we move into the most recent research in this area. These new approaches will help to better understand treatment effects in specific populations of interest. Possible applications run from designing phase II or III studies up to re-imbursement dossiers and commercialization efforts.

Jul 30, 2018 • 49min
Estimands in the presence of high and unbalanced drop out rates - a case study in the German HTA system
Interview with Lovisa Berggren
theeffectivestatistician.com
Every statistician in the health sector must know about estimands and how to apply the estimand framework.
In this episode we introduce the topic using a case study. We’ll cover
How does the HTA system in Germany work?
What are the 4 critical elements for the estimands framework?
How does the application of the estimand framework differ in study planning vs post-hoc?

Jul 23, 2018 • 55min
Best of PSI 2018 - my personal view
theeffectivestatistician.com
Today I'm looking back at the PSI conference 2018 in Amsterdam. You'll learn about my personal highlights and key take aways from the conference.
I have also interviewed some interesting people from the conference for you to get some feeling about the atmosphere at this amazing event.
In this episode, I'm covering the following episodes:
Nupur Kolis key note speach in the plenary session about “The Future of Healthcare: Trends, Opportunities and Challenges“
Interview with Nelson Kinnersley about the workshop "Owning Your Own Development"
The session "Not Just Another AE Table" with an interview with Maria Costa about "Personalised Benefit-Risk Assessment"
The workshop "Learn How To Swing: Hands on Workshop on Preference Elicitation in the Age of Personalised Medicine"
The session "Estimands Case Studies"
The session "Gone in 60 Seconds (Poster Review)" including an interview with Jules Hernandez-Sanchez
The keynote by Steve Ruberg about "Statistics and Data Science: Is Six the Same as a Half-Dozen?"
The workshop "Improving Your Communication"
The session "Patient Centricity"
The session "What Matters Most? - A Scientific Advice Role Play" including an interview with Mouna Akacha
The session "A Picture Says More Than 1000 Tables - Interactive Data Review"
The session "Regulatory Town Hall"

Jul 16, 2018 • 40min
4 principles about effective delegation and how not only managers can benefit from it
theeffectivestatistician.com
As a statistician we delegate all the time with programming being probably the most prevalent example.
In this episode, we start by showing in two personal examples how delegation improves your productivity amazingly or how it can lead into complete disaster.
Furthermore we cover the following questions:
Why is delegation so important?
Why are not only managers delegating?
Why should I delegate, if I can do it myself?
What task can I delegate?
How can I delegate appropriately?
Why are many people not delegating more actions?
By listening to this episode, you will also learn about these 4 principles of delegation:
Any task should be done by the most junior team member possible.
Delegate tasks in such a way, that they are interesting for the people to work on.
Specify what goal you want achieved, defining together what a great outcome looks like and support as needed, but resist the urge to tell exactly how to achieve the goal.
Delegate deliverables not tasks
The episodes concludes with a discussion on the how to create an environment where
your team members thrive,
you successfully reach great project outcomes,
people are motivated and engaged, and
both team members and leadership wins.

Jul 9, 2018 • 37min
Impactful influencing: actionable advice to get things done through and with others
Interview with Julia Carter
theeffectivestatistician.com
In this episode we have our first non-statistician as a guest. Julia has build her own consulting and training company Zestfor. She and her team specialise in developing Training programmes and resources scientifically tailored for technical markets – including Pharmaceutical, IT, and Life Sciences.
Getting things done through others is a key part or even the definition of leadership and her clients face often the same situation like statisticians. They need to convince people rather than commanding them.
In this episode, we cover the following topics:
Why statisticians need to be more influential?
Is influencing actually something bad on inappropriate?
What characterises an influential person?
Which practices help statisticians to increase their influence?
Many statisticians are more introvert. As such, how can they deal with more extrovert business partners from other functions?
Relationships are key for influencing without authority. Trust is key for building these relationships. What can statisticians do, to generate more trust?
Networking is another aspect of building relationships. What actions to take to build networks?
Many of us work in virtual settings to some extent. This poses additional barriers on influencing others as it is much harder to be heard and understood. Which techniques can we apply to overcome these hurdles?


