Nicki

Meet Nicki. He's a Product Director.

Let’s see if we can automate that…

I help make life easier for my colleagues working with clinical data: Data scientists, statisticians, programmers and so on. I do so by setting the direction for the digital products we build to support people in these jobs. Our team helps with setting up storage and compute solutions that ensure that the individual programmers do not have to do it themselves, and, when possible, we help with automating tasks for working with clinical data. As a Product Director in Data Science, I am responsible for defining what we build in a unit (an agile release train) consisting of six teams with capabilities mainly within software development and programming. 

These aren't the droids you're looking for

✶ I have watched all the Star Wars movies and series, even though I am normally more of an art movie fan. I watched the first two trilogies when I was a boy, and the nostalgia has stayed with me.

Joining

Data is as valuable as gold

There were three main things that led me to join Novo Nordisk. The first is that the company is investing massively in ensuring that we have a solid and scalable data foundation for the future. As I’ve been working with how to get value from data throughout my career, it is a major benefit to be at a company that is investing in and actively transforming the data area. This also leads to my second point: Novo Nordisk has an impressive product management setup. We work in larger units (agile release trains) to develop digital solutions, and I get the chance to focus more on the functional part of leadership, where I can spend most of my time figuring out what the right things to build are.

Finally, there is the people culture here. Before joining, I got a really good impression of the company’s approach to talent development and how they handle mental well-being. I haven’t been disappointed. On one of my first days here, I read a project description where part of the project's principles was described as something along the lines of 'prioritising people's mental well-being above meeting project deadlines.' I had never seen anything like that before. Novo Nordisk goes the extra mile in implementing our values in this area. 

Work

Data dynamics 2.0.  

My team and I are currently working on modernising the way our statisticians work with clinical data analysis. We’re doing this by setting up a platform that facilitates the automation of workflows and the collaboration between different programming languages to a much larger extent than we do today. The way our statisticians work with data is not easily automated, so it is really interesting to work closely with data experts to figure out how their daily work can be done more easily. During the coming years, we expect more clinical studies than ever, meaning that we need to do things smarter to adapt. 

My career

Studies

When choosing what to study, I went for a combination of mathematics, statistics and economics. This has served me well in roles where I work as the glue between people who can code or develop software and the people who benefit from that.

My first full-time

In my first full-time role, I worked at Maersk, a shipping company with headquarters in Denmark. I started as a data scientist, coding predictive analytics solutions in R, SAS and Python. However, as the team grew, I gravitated towards a role of what I would today call a product owner. This helped me realise that I enjoy figuring out the value of code more than building perfect code.

Pricing is crucial

For a few years, I worked as a team lead and project manager at a Danish distribution company, AO Johansen. Here, I was tasked with building a digital product to support automated price-setting on thousands of products. Pricing is crucial for most companies, and I was very close to the business and could see the impact of the solution. I could not have wished for a better way to learn stakeholder and change management – and seeing the importance of it.

Delegation done right

When I was working as an advisor at SAS Institute, I tried leading without a formal mandate. My job was to gather all the right people from across the world to work together on building the right analytics solutions for our Nordic customers. We had experts that had been working with fraud prevention for decades, so instead of me trying to figure out the best way to build a solution to prevent fraud, I could call a colleague who knew all about it. It was a lot of fun, and it also taught me that delegation done right can massively increase a team’s performance.

Recently

Before joining Novo Nordisk, I led the Data & Analytics function at Ramboll, an engineering and design firm. There, I tried out leading leaders. My approach to leadership developed a lot in that period. My focus was on bringing the benefits of data and analytics to the entire organisation. During my time there, our team evolved from mainly doing business intelligence for the Finance team to doing that plus automation and AI across the board and the team grew from 14 to 43 people.

Tech stack
r
sas
python

Life

︎ Love and work… work and love, that’s all there is

I think family life helps you put things into different perspectives. I’ve been with my wife since 2013, and we got married in 2019. We have two daughters, one born in 2021 and a second, very recently, in 2023. My wife works as a psychologist, and our very different jobs and approaches to problem-solving have been a great advantage for us to stay curious on how to solve challenges at work and at home. Being a father only adds to this. Having two children has taught me to be even better at letting go and accepting that not being in as much control as I would like is OK. When a presentation did not go as well as it could, or I am waiting for late information from someone, I am more understanding of myself and others – at least, nobody’s lives were in danger.

I think my leadership positions have helped me to be a good dad – and the other way around. Obviously, parenting and leadership are very different disciplines, given the maturity of people you are working with, but the tools in leadership and parenting are similar. It is all about getting the other person to be able to solve problems independently – and being ready to help when there are challenges.

Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try

❑ I am really structured and use an app to keep track of my private tasks as well as work tasks. Sometimes, I might add a task just to be able to mark it as done.

"On one of my first days here, I read a project description where part of the project's principles was described as something along the lines of 'prioritising people's mental well-being above meeting project deadlines.' I had never seen anything like that."
Nicki Mørk Bolbroe, Product Director in Data Science at Novo Nordisk

...many connoisseurs consider Teuscher to be the best in the world

I love gourmet chocolate and am always on the hunt for quality chocolate when traveling. On many occasions, I've also spent way too much money on getting the best chocolates shipped to Denmark.

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