Sarah Bauder is the senior editor at Lab Manager. She possesses a diverse background spanning editorial, digital marketing and film and television production. She brings over 15 years of experience
In laboratory management circles, "leadership" gets most of the attention, with conferences and books promising to turn managers into visionaries. But Dustin Jenkins, global technical director at Alpha Resources, argues that emphasis skips a step. Speaking at the 2026 Lab Manager Leadership Summit, he made a case that runs against the grain of much leadership literature: before a lab manager can lead, they have to master the unglamorous mechanics of running the operation. "It's going to be very difficult for you to build influence with your team if you're not exercising that authority," Jenkins told the room—because a manager who cannot keep the lab running has not earned the standing to point it somewhere new. For the lab manager, that means getting three operational fundamentals that keep a laboratory running right first: workflow oversight, personnel management, and coordinating logistics.
Management vs leadership: why the fundamentals comefirst
Jenkins, whose career has spanned commercial testing labs operating under standards such as ISO/IEC 17025, a Fortune 500 polymer producer, and the reference-material laboratories he now oversees in the US and the UK, is candid that management and leadership are not the same job. Laboratory management, in his definition, is about maintaining the status quo—keeping the lights on, meeting metrics, and ensuring quality-management systems run smoothly. Leadership is about driving change and growth.
The mistake many managers make is trying to leap to the second without securing the first. "I'm a big believer that we never graduate from the fundamentals," Jenkins said, reaching for a sports analogy: an athlete who drills the basics finds that the higher-level skills tend to take care of themselves. The same holds in the lab. When operations are stable and well-run, a manager earns the credibility and the breathing room to think strategically. When they aren't, no amount of vision-casting will compensate.
That is why Jenkins spends so much time on what he calls the exercise of authority—the formal, position-based responsibility for directing work, managing resources, and enforcing standards. It is necessary, and it comes before anything else.
Workflow oversight: knowing the work, not just
Dustin Jenkins, PhD, Global Technical Director at Alpha Resources.
assigning it
The first fundamental is workflow oversight, and Jenkins argues it is the one managers most often get wrong. Overseeing a lab's workflow means being responsible for on-time delivery, the quality of the team's output, and the assignment of work—but doing that well requires something many managers skip: actually understanding the work.
"This person tells me that they're working as hard as they can, but I kind of feel like they're not being as productive as they could," Jenkins said, describing the uncomfortable, squishy middle a manager occupies when they don't know a process well enough to judge it. Without that knowledge, a manager is left guessing—unable to tell whether a bottleneck is a genuine constraint or a performance issue.
His remedy is direct and low-tech. When stepping into a lab where he was unfamiliar with the processes, Jenkins would interview and shadow his own employees. "Shadowing and interviewing employees to learn processes is always a fantastic thing to do," he said, "because if you learn those processes yourself, then you know, hey, it should take 30 minutes to get this task done." Armed with that baseline, a manager who sees a task consistently taking an hour knows something is amiss—and can address it with confidence rather than suspicion.
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Good workflow oversight, in Jenkins' account, rests on a few habits:
Clear communication of expectations: deadlines and assignments spelled out explicitly, with no room for misinterpretation.
Deliberate check-ins: regular formal or informal touchpoints on deadlines and progress, rather than assuming the work is running on autopilot.
Expertise in your own standards: knowing the lab's SOPs, systems, and accreditation requirements well enough not to outsource that knowledge entirely to quality assurance.
That last point carries particular weight in accredited labs. Jenkins argues that a manager should personally know the standard their lab is credited to—the requirements that accreditation bodies assess against—rather than treating it as someone else's department. The lab, not its quality-assurance function, is ultimately accountable.
Personnel management: the human side of keeping a lab running
The second fundamental is personnel management, the performance-management side of laboratory management that spans everything from onboarding, training, supervising, and evaluating employees to attendance, performance, and workplace behavior. A lab manager may delegate the hands-on execution of training, Jenkins noted, but the ultimate responsibility for its success remains with them.
Here his advice is unambiguous about one temptation in particular: letting problems fester. "Hoping they'll go away is not a great strategy," Jenkins said of employee issues. A single problematic employee can quickly drag down an otherwise high-performing team. Jenkins urges managers to address issues proactively and utilize the structural tools at their disposal.
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Doing that effectively means knowing the tools available. Jenkins recommends that lab managers build a working relationship with HR before they need it, so they understand how their organization expects employee issues to be handled. Organizations differ sharply on this—some go to great lengths to work with struggling employees, others move quickly to document and act—and a manager who knows where their organization stands can act decisively instead of second-guessing.
Jenkins also makes a case for a tool many managers underuse: the performance review. Rather than treating reviews as a box-checking exercise, he encourages managers to be thoughtful and specific, delivering both genuine constructive feedback and honest recognition of what an employee does well. Done right, managing employee performance through a review is one of the clearest windows a manager has into an employee's trajectory—whether a strong performer is quietly slipping or a struggling one is turning a corner.
Coordinating logistics: the resources behind the results
The third fundamental is coordinating logistics—the resource management that keeps the lab supplied and operational. It typically covers:
Instrumentation: scheduling and maintaining the equipment the lab depends on.
Supplies: keeping reagents, consumables, and materials stocked before shortages stall the work.
Employee time: allocating labor hours across tasks and priorities.
Budget: managing the operating budget and, often, capital purchases.
It is the least visible of the three, and, Jenkins suggests, the easiest to let slide when the calendar fills up.
One item on this list deserves more attention than it usually gets: cross-training. "Cross training is something that often goes kind of by the wayside, because we get so busy on things," Jenkins acknowledged. The risk is obvious in hindsight. If a single employee is the only person who can run a critical task, their departure leaves a hole that is expensive and disruptive to fill. A lab manager who invests in cross-training builds resilience into the lab and mitigates the key-person risk that comes when only one scientist knows how to run a vital assay, so the loss of one person doesn't become a crisis.
Coordinating logistics well, Jenkins says, comes down to knowing what should be prioritized and what the current state of the lab's resources actually is—which in turn means keeping trackers, inventories, and systems up to date rather than relying on memory or good intentions.
From fundamentals to growth: continuous improvement as the bridge
Mastering the mechanics isn't meant to keep a lab manager trapped in maintenance mode permanently. On the contrary, Jenkins frames the fundamentals as the launchpad for everything that comes next. Once the daily mechanics are handled well, a natural progression opens up: from managing operations, to continuously improving them, to leading real growth.
Continuous improvement is the hinge. A manager who has a firm grip on their workflows, people, and resources is positioned to ask sharper questions—how the team could work better, where a process could be streamlined, what new capability or service the lab could add. That mindset of adaptability and continuous improvement, Jenkins argues, always serves a manager well, because it turns a stable operation into an improving one.
It also reframes the fundamentals as something more than obligations. Delegation, professional development, and process improvement all become ways a manager extends their reach and grows their people at the same time. The manager who has mastered the basics isn't trapped by them; they're freed to look up and forward.
The mindset that holds it together
Underlying all of this is a disposition Jenkins returns to throughout: a commitment to the fundamentals paired with a willingness to keep learning. He describes himself, and many lab managers, as type-A perfectionists inclined to pile pressure on themselves to arrive at some finished version of leadership. But growth, he cautions, rarely happens under constant self-imposed pressure.
The healthier posture is what he calls a journey mindset—accepting that every manager is still learning, still improving, and never fully "arrived." That humility is not at odds with mastering the fundamentals; it's what makes ongoing mastery possible. A manager who honestly examines where their workflow oversight, personnel management, or logistics are lagging is already doing the work that separates competent operators from genuine leaders.
Final thoughts
The temptation in laboratory management is to chase the high-profile elements of leadership—the grand strategies, the vision statements, the inspiring speeches—while treating operational mechanics as an afterthought. Jenkins' argument turns that instinct on its head. The grind is the foundation. Workflow oversight, personnel management, and coordinating logistics are not obstacles to leadership; they are the ground it stands on.
A manager who masters those fundamentals earns something no title can grant: the credibility to be followed, the stability to take risks, and the room to grow the lab beyond its current state. As Jenkins put it, the higher-level work tends to take care of itself once the basics are solid. For lab managers wondering where to focus, that is the most practical starting point there is—not the newest leadership framework, but the disciplined, daily practice of running the lab well.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the core fundamentals of laboratory management?
According to Dustin Jenkins, the three operational fundamentals are workflow oversight, personnel management, and coordinating logistics. Mastering these forms the foundation a lab manager needs before moving on to higher-level leadership and growth.
Why should a lab manager understand the actual lab workflows?
Without hands-on knowledge of how long tasks should take, a manager cannot tell whether a delay reflects a genuine constraint or a performance issue. Shadowing and interviewing staff gives a manager the baseline needed to oversee work with confidence rather than guesswork.
How should a lab manager handle a problem employee?
Jenkins advises addressing issues proactively rather than hoping they resolve on their own, since one difficult employee can drag down an entire team. Building a working relationship with HR ahead of time helps a manager understand the tools and expectations available to them.
Why is cross-training important in a laboratory?
Cross-training builds resilience, so the lab is not dependent on a single person for a critical task. When that person leaves, a cross-trained team absorbs the loss far more easily, avoiding an expensive and disruptive gap in capability.
Sarah Bauder is the senior editor at Lab Manager. She possesses a diverse background spanning editorial, digital marketing and film and television production. She brings over 15 years of experience in editorial writing, B2C and B2B content creation. A student of history, she graduated from York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She can be reached at sbauder@labmanger.com.
