“To admit ignorance is to exhibit wisdom” – Ashley Montagu

Senior executive leaders are often the most experienced people within a biopharma company. With double-digit years of industry experience, they’ve often come up “through the ranks”, gaining a wealth of wisdom during the course of their professional journeys. Tenure and tacit knowledge aside, in a complex, ever-changing industry like biopharmaceuticals, learning should never stop.

In Part 1 of this series, we outlined why executive development is important and its ability to positively impact a company’s trajectory when done right. We also covered senior leaders’ most common capability gaps, including decision leadership and change management. Designing and implementing development journeys to address these common gaps is not easy. Along with known, common challenges to educating any adult, some challenges are unique to a senior executive audience. Here, we outline those challenges and explore some potential solutions.

Unique Challenges to Senior Executive Leadership Development

Time-pressed, academic-brand conscious, sophisticated; three characteristics of senior executives that create unique challenges to impactful executive leader development.

Senior executives are very busy people.

If everyone is busy these days, senior executives are busier. Time is senior leaders’ most valuable resource, and there are many different needs, duties, and stakeholders vying for that time. Getting them to carve out time to engage in development becomes a real challenge.

Senior executives demonstrate brand consciousness for academic learning.

Top executives, especially in biopharmaceutical companies, are often highly credentialed. They have one or perhaps multiple advanced degrees: a masters or PhD in their area of expertise, or perhaps an MD or MBA. They are high-utilizers of academic institutional learning. As such, they tend to be “brand conscious” when it comes to their own professional development, showing a preference for development offerings from academic institutions.

Top universities’ executive development programs can be very good. They often address burgeoning topics, bring together learners from across industries, and offer deep subject matter expertise. While valuable qualities, viewed differently these offerings tend to be generalized, rarely focusing on an industry and, less so, a specific company and its challenges or contexts. This broad approach demands more effort on an executive’s part to transfer the concepts to his or her specific company and situation and distill relevant insights to action immediately to drive new ways of working or business results.

This is not to say that broad offerings are sub-optimal. It’s the extra effort required that becomes less ideal when the learners are busy executives and not full-time students. Think back to your days as a full-time student. Most likely, you attended a professor’s lectures to glean concepts from their immense subject matter expertise and then spent additional time on your own–and perhaps with teaching assistants–to transfer the theory and concepts into tangible actions or skills you then applied. Top executives simply have less time to make the abstract meaningful.

While engaging with learners from across industries is valuable, this should be assessed against the value of a cohort of leaders from within a company experiencing and learning together. Universities have shifted to accommodate for this by offering customized learning for specific companies, and this may be a viable option. It is important to recognize that, in the end, the finished customized program often sits outside the company; making the company beholden to the university should there be interest in redeploying or expanding it.

Senior executives are skeptical of their need for development.

Many humans have suffered the slings and arrows of overconfidence bias. Cognitive research has consistently revealed that most adults tend to rate their abilities, whether those be business or non-business related, as above average. Senior executives are not immune to this calamity and theoretically they might be at greater risk. If a leader has been in the same environment for many years, it is possible that their capabilities could become a bit “ossified,” rendering them less able to adapt to—or lead—change.

In addition, senior executives—who neglect their development— may have missed significant developments that would have kept them abreast of change. While a leader may have earned an MBA 20 years ago, MBA programs of today are radically different from those even 5 years ago. The world changes. Key knowledge and capabilities change. Similarly, many senior leaders in key functions rose through the ranks in their companies more than a decade ago, largely before the cross-functional “revolution” took place in the biopharma industry. While leaders may have very deep expertise within their own functions, they can have gaps in the holistic, cross-functional understanding that is so important to strategy and operations today.

Those are just two small examples, but the key point is this: leaders who have been in senior roles for a significant period may not be aware of areas in which they could improve and develop.

High-Level Solutions

Senior executives need development opportunities that are specific to their needs and contexts and that fit within their schedules. This is why individual one-on-one executive coaching is often seen as the best approach for this learner population. And for small populations, coaching is the answer, but it also has drawbacks in its difficulty to scale and hyper-individual focus. The question is:  How can L&D combine the principles of individual coaching and then deliver them on a large scale? Answering that question correctly is the key to overcoming the challenges of creating a learning solution for senior executives.

Make it relevant.

Earlier, we drove home the idea that any learning program must be highly relevant to the learners. This means that the content should not only relate to the biopharma industry, but also to the individual learner.

The key is to communicate from the start that the program will be custom-fit to them as individuals, then actually deliver on that promise as things move forward. To do this, L&D should keep the following points in mind:

• An up-front needs assessment at the macro level is essential. This provides a foundational understanding of the needs that any program must address, and serves as a type of “North Star” that guides subsequent development efforts.
• Given the high visibility and general skepticism around executive leadership development programs, conducting a robust needs assessment is also critical to creating a compelling business case for the program.
• Needs assessments are also needed at the micro—or individual—level. While the macro assessment helps define the prioritized library of learning content that must be developed, the micro-level assessments determine how various pieces of content will need to be curated for each specific learner. These micro-level assessments typically take the form of short self-assessment exercises that learners must complete early in the program.
• As stated, the curated content must be contextualized to the learners’ specific roles, situations and development needs, as will the exercises they must complete throughout the program.

Design to accommodate their busy schedules.

Busy executives do not have time for long sessions held at scheduled intervals. Learning programs must be designed to accommodate the reality of their day-to-day schedules. From a practical standpoint, this means:

• Self-assessments should be short, perhaps requiring a five- or ten-minute commitment.
• Learning sessions should also be short and designed to build upon one another.  The design process should incorporate classic microlearning principles and approaches.
• The learners should have a high-degree of choice regarding when their learning takes place.  Therefore, most content will be delivered asymmetrically.

Make it a collaborative initiative.

A large-scale executive leadership development initiative should be a “big deal” within the organization, with a well-designed communications campaign and visible buy-in from top leadership. They should lead by example and be vocal about it. 

Even though learning experiences will be customized to the needs of individual executives—and learners will have a high degree of choice regarding how and when they engage with the content—the program should still be structured as a collaborative, group initiative. This can make the experience more enjoyable and introduce a healthy bit of social pressure to engage and participate in the program. Potential techniques for doing this can include:

• Providing regular updates on the learner group’s progress
• Setting up the ability for learners to “review” courses, rate their experiences, and share their opinions

Communicate, communicate, communicate.

We’ve mentioned the importance of communicating with the learners the need for development, its relevance to them, and the benefits.  However, we don’t want to give the impression that such communication can be achieved with a few emails and a meeting or two. In fact, effective communications must be done in a highly coordinated fashion that uses multiple channels and that truly engages the learner population in an ongoing way. This coordinated, integrated approach to communications is a highly essential part of any change management initiative…and that’s precisely what a comprehensive leadership development program is: a change management initiative. This aspect is so important that we will dedicate Part 3 of this series to it.  Stay tuned!

In this episode, Iris Hill and Amy Parent from Salience Learning continue their conversation with Gordon Johnson (Head of Marketing) and Nick Eriksen (Chief Technology Officer) from Eurekos. Recently, Salience Learning and Eurekos jointly won a Brandon Hall Gold Award for Best Use of Blended Learning.

They discuss how Salience Learning’s design approaches and Eurekos’ technology made a winning combination (part 3 of 3).

You can listen to the episode here.

When you hear, “leadership development,” what comes to mind? Most think of programs for aspiring or new managers. Programs that empower individual contributors to transform into efficient and effective first line leaders. But what about existing leaders? And specifically senior executive leaders? 

In our experience, executive leaders—and, by extension, their companies— benefit greatly from a strategic executive leadership development journey as it unlocks immediate value in leaders’ enhanced capabilities and goes far deeper by impacting teams, functions, and the entire organizational culture. So, why doesn’t senior executive leadership development typically come to mind? And what does good senior executive development look like?

Over the coming weeks, we will publish a series of articles on leadership development for senior executives. Here, in Part 1, we address two key topics:

• Why Executive Leadership Development
• Common Needs of Executive Leaders

Part 2 explores the unique challenges related to executive leadership development, as well as some high-level solutions. Part 3 outlines the value of –  and helpful guidelines for – communications efforts that drive participation to ensure executive leadership development initiatives are a success.  Let’s dive in!

Why Executive Leadership Development

Developing executive leaders unleashes a wealth of untapped tacit knowledge and achieves a multiplier impact on an organization’s culture.

Executive leaders are typically the most tenured people within an organization. They house years and years of expertise in their heads, much in the form of tacit knowledge – knowledge that is difficult to explain and relevant to a specific domain. Executive leadership development builds, elaborates on, and propagates tacit knowledge across an organization, acting as a competitive differentiator. 

Executive leaders are the social influencers of an organization. They have an overweight impact on a company’s culture via the philosophies they silently or expressly espouse and their observable actions, truly leading by example. The example they set may be intentional or unintentional, but make no mistake, their example gets noticed and is often adopted and repeated, whether they want it to or not.

Knowledge and influence become critical success factors for organizations operating in a rapidly evolving and highly competitive environment. Executive leadership development harnesses leaders’ expertise for new, innovative ideas and empowers them with a megaphone of influence to impact everything from day-to-day operating norms to huge transformations. Data supports this. A study by McKinsey and Co. showed that companies who invest in developing leaders during significant transformations (which are quite common in biopharma) are 2.4 times more likely to hit their performance targets. 

Executive leadership development taps into senior leaders’ power and knowledge, enabling organizations to better achieve business results.  

Common Development Needs

Executive leaders often show gaps in their cross-organizational strategic thinking, decision leadership, digital fluency, and ability to advocate for and empower change.

Leadership development programs geared towards new or aspiring leaders typically focus on foundational capabilities such as communication, collaboration, and coaching to name a few. This makes sense, as this audience is transforming from individual contributors to first-line people managers. When it comes to executive leadership development, most senior leaders are experts at these core capabilities and their needs are typically more sophisticated. Like most adult learner populations, these needs are often quite diverse, yet there are a few common gaps.

Strategic Thinking Coupled with a Cross-Functional Mindset

Generally speaking, most senior leaders have a solid foundation in strategic thinking. They define objectives, identify barriers, articulate and evaluate options, and formulate an integrated approach to overcome the barriers to achieve the objective. They do this adeptly within their functional domains. 

However, in today’s biopharma industry, strategy development has become an increasingly holistic and cross-organizational endeavor. As senior leaders grow into their functional areas, they often have a blind spot when it comes to other functions. In some cases, internal political and/or competitive factors can also limit cross-functional awareness and collaboration. Today, with the increasingly integrated nature of the biopharma industry and the more holistic nature of strategy development, SVPs and VPs must more carefully consider how strategic decisions within their own functional areas can affect—as well as be impacted by—other functional areas’ strategies.

It’s important to note that some leaders have been operating with a broader cross-functional mindset for some time. The past 5-10 years saw the explosion of cross-functional commercial planning. For example, a commercial VP planning for a new product launch understands the interplay between Marketing, Market Access, Training, Medical Affairs and Regulatory and Compliance, and can integrate those areas’ strategies accordingly. With the speed to market accelerating and the global marketplace shrinking, executive leaders must also understand and consider other cross-organizational areas’ strategies, dynamics and needs. Creating an optimal launch strategy more often requires that same VP of commercialization to understand and adjust to broader organization strategies.  Think government affairs strategy. Or a health equity strategy.  A good executive leadership journey expands senior leaders’ pan-organizational understanding and enables connections between these leaders to ensure they can craft optimal strategies that move at the speed of business.

Decision Leadership and Innovation

The biopharma industry must innovate to survive and thrive. It must develop new and better therapies on an ongoing basis. This need to innovate extends beyond scientific innovation. Every functional area including research, development, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, medical affairs, market access, business development, and more, must innovate to stay ahead of competitive and market changes, regulatory issues, payer dynamics, and so on. What most senior leaders neglect to accept is that innovation is predicated on what many in these roles consider anathema – failure.

Innovation expert Matt Ridley writes, “Tolerance of error is therefore critical [for innovation]”.  Think of how many times Thomas Edison “failed” before developing a working light bulb (over 1,000 times). Top leaders usually ascend to their roles by being successful. While, don’t get us wrong, success is a great thing, individuals who are accustomed to success have a tendency to develop an intolerance of failure and exacerbate their underlying loss aversion. Loss aversion is a known cognitive phenomenon where, in spite of being quantitatively equal, humans assign disproportionately more pain to losing (for example) $100 than joy in winning $100.

Mitigating for loss aversion bias and developing a mindset of failure tolerance requires decision leadership. Executive leaders with strong decision leadership establish decision architecture across their teams (they enable team members to make decisions within clear parameters and they manage that process, versus simply making decisions).  They view and bundle decisions in a portfolio approach versus individual decisions. These capabilities power a faster, more urgent way of working and also develop failure tolerance. Consequently, they can encourage a culture where new ideas and approaches are welcomed, even if they don’t work perfectly.

Change Management

Much ink, both real and virtual, has been spilled on the topic of change management over the years.  So, we won’t dive into its various sub-topics here.  However, it is a common area of need in leadership development, as articulated by senior leaders themselves.

In a rapidly (and constantly) evolving industry like biopharma, the ability to successfully facilitate and/or manage change is critical.  Highly tenured professionals learn a lot of habits during their career and can become “set in their ways.”  However, as leaders, the company looks to them to forge a way forward in a change-filled environment.

A strong senior leadership development program is often effective at helping these professionals

• Optimize their individual attitudes to change as well as those at the organizational level
• More effectively lead their teams, functions, and companies through change

Digital Technology and Fluency

We all know the cliché about how parents must rely on their children to show them how to operate a smartphone.  Well, senior leaders usually don’t need that kind of development support.  However, with the rapid advent of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), it can be challenging for anyone to understand what a given new technology is, what it can be used for, and how the company might be able to leverage it.

We often see executive leaders who want a deeper understanding of new technologies and how they might impact their business.  Such an understanding can also help facilitate more innovative thinking and better results for the company overall.

In Part 2, we will explore the unique challenges associated with leadership development for senior executives.  But don’t worry: along with those challenges, we’ll also look at some potential ways to overcome them.

Before designing any new learning and development program, most L&D professionals start with some form of needs analysis.  After all, it’s not wise to design a program without first gaining a deeper understanding of the need (or needs) that it’s supposed to meet.  A good needs analysis involves a robust methodology for:

• Defining the current state
• Defining the desired future state
• Determining the knowledge, skills, and capabilities needed to bridge the gap between the two

Recently, the Salience Learning team gathered for a company retreat in Las Vegas, NV. Our goal was to pool our creativity and devise fresh ways to enhance how we deliver solutions to our clients.  In one session, we focused on ways to improve the needs analysis process.  In this short blog article, we share a few high-level thoughts and ideas.

Traditional Methods for Needs Analysis

To kickstart our creativity, we considered a scenario involving a commercial pharmaceutical company seeking to craft a capability model and identify the knowledge and skills required to future-proof their customer-facing roles.  In this scenario, the company (our hypothetical client) also wanted to:

• Represent to “voice of the employee” from all levels and regions
• Leverage technology to incorporate global perspectives

Our initial step was to compile a list of traditional methods for gathering insights from target learners and leaders during project initiation.  These typically include:

• Internal research to assess organizational objectives
• External research to identify industry trends driving change in the company’s environment
• Interviews with learners, managers, and corporate leaders to gather insights into what learners need to know and do differently to improve performance and adapt to change
• Focus groups with cross-functional partners to define opportunities for enhancing cross-functional partnerships and improving matrixed ways of working
• Surveys to validate initial insights with a broader range of stakeholders

Newer Ideas

With these traditional methods established, we then ventured a bit farther afield to generate some out-of-the-box ideas.  We proposed several potential strategies that could more effectively uncover the true learning needs within the company, such as:

• Collaborating with internal departments to access field coaching reports and performance reviews to gain further insight into potential gaps
• Engaging with external customers (e.g., healthcare providers, payers, strategic accounts, and others) to acquire insights into customer engagement needs
• Partnering with external research firms and recruiters to access benchmarking
• Leveraging social media platforms for intelligence gathering
• Exploring analogous roles in different industries to draw parallels
• Implementing a nudge strategy to glean insights over an extended period
• Integrating advanced technology tools for more efficient analysis

Now, it’s true that in various cases, budget constraints may prevent a company from implementing some of these ideas.  For any given situation, the team would need to evaluate the feasibility of any given method and ensure that it’s properly aligned with the company’s strategic objectives and available resources.  As we move forward, we recognize the need for continued innovation, as well as evaluation and alignment with client expectations to ensure successful outcomes for L&D programs.

Stay in Touch!

Be sure to check our Insights Center on a regular basis to read short blogs like this one, as well as longer papers, how-to guides, podcasts, and more.  And don’t hesitate to contact us if you need assistance with any learning and development initiative!

In this episode, Iris Hill and Amy Parent from Salience Learning continue their conversation with Gordon Johnson (Head of Marketing) and Nick Eriksen (Chief Technology Officer) from Eurekos. Recently, Salience Learning and Eurekos jointly won a Brandon Hall Gold Award for Best Use of Blended Learning.

They discuss how Salience Learning’s design approaches and Eurekos’ technology made a winning combination (part 2 of 3).

You can listen to the episode here.

In this episode, Iris Hill and Amy Parent from Salience Learning are joined by Gordon Johnson (Head of Marketing) and Nick Eriksen (Chief Technology Officer) from Eurekos. Recently, Salience Learning and Eurekos jointly won a Brandon Hall Gold Award for Best Use of Blended Learning.

They discuss how Salience Learning’s design approaches and Eurekos’ technology made a winning combination (part 1 of 3).

You can listen to the episode here.

In August of 2023, Salience Learning, along with partner, Eurekos, won a Brandon Hall Gold Award in Learning and Development for our Capability Academies.  These academies help develop must-have capabilities for professionals working in the life science industry.  They are available in role-specific versions and include:

• Critical Thinking Academy
• Generating Insights Academy
• Strategic Thinking Academy

The Capability Academies are blended learning programs that use the latest in learning science and incorporate e-learning, micro-learning, instructor-led components, practice plans, and social learning.  Underpinned by Eurekos’ LMS platform, they are part of biopharmaceutical companies’ Learning and Development offerings to help upskill and reskill their team members for success.

This downloadable case study was developed by Eurekos with input from the Salience Learning team.  It provides an inside look at the academies, their approach to delivering role-specific content for easy learner application, the innovative LMS system that underpins them, their impact on learners, and how results were measured.

This is the third time our Capability Academies have been associated with a prestigious award. Previous awards acknowledging Salience Learning’s work include a Brandon Hall Gold Award in 2022 for Technology Excellence (awarded to one of our partners, DominKnow) and being recognized as an LTEN Excellence Award Finalist in 2023 in the Industry Partnership category.

Salience Learning’s Amy Parent is joined by Crystal Hawkins, Director of Sales Development with dominKnow, to discuss her firm’s recent recent success, winning two Brandon Hall awards (both Gold), as well as the latest in learning and development. This is the second installment in a two-part series.

Access the episode here.

Salience Learning’s Amy Parent is joined by Crystal Hawkins, Director of Sales Development with dominKnow, to discuss her firm’s recent recent success, winning two Brandon Hall awards (both Gold), as well as the latest in learning and development. This is the first of a two-part conversation.

Access the episode here.

Nashville, TN (aka “Music City”) hosted the global annual meeting of the Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) just a few weeks ago, March 26-29.  MAPS’ mission is to “advance the Medical Affairs profession and increase its impact across the biopharmaceutical and device industry”  The global annual meeting, the EMEA annual meeting (which runs May 14-16 in Lisbon), and a range of other events are key to MAPS’ mission.

Through those events, MAPS members discuss and share information and best practices about a wide range of Medical Affairs (MA)-related topics.  Last month, we sent a combined team to the MAPS global annual meeting.  This team included people from Salience Learning as well as Blue Matter. 

After the meeting, members of both teams compared notes to see what each thought were the most interesting or relevant themes that were addressed there.  This relatively short article provides a summary of the combined team’s key takeaways regarding those themes and their implications for biopharma companies.

Read the full article on the Blue Matter website.

A lot has changed over the past few years.  Hybrid working has spread dramatically and is now commonplace.  It has driven fast technological change and imposed new ways of working for which many teams feel unprepared. The result?  Well, it’s a mixed bag but a couple of things are for certain: It has made it more challenging for team leaders to maintain team cohesion and morale.  It has also made many team members more likely to explore other job opportunities to find better pathways for advancement and development.

This has led many leaders to work on building (or rebuilding) team culture to create an environment that nurtures lifelong learning and provides clearer pathways for ongoing development.  As a result, many organizations are placing professional development at the heart of their agenda.  However, they often are challenged in identifying where to start.

In this article, we explore three related topics, each of which build upon and reinforce the other.  Specifically, we discuss how to:

• Identify what your team members should be learning or developing vs. what they could be learning or developing in this ever-changing environment
• Create clear career paths that showcase your organization’s commitment to long-term career development
• Accelerate your teams’ ability to learn just the right things at just the right time

Capability Models:  Focus on what team members should be learning

Based on my experience working with pharmaceutical companies, I recommend following a systematic process to define the capabilities that are most critical and will help to future-proof the organization.  This is called a “Capability Model.” But what, exactly, is that?

First, it’s important to differentiate capabilities from competencies:

• Competencies refer to the knowledge and skills needed to perform in the present.  For example, clinical operations competencies might include specific tasks related to conducting clinical research trials.
• Capabilities define the knowledge and skills needed to adapt and flex to meet future needs and are broadly transferable including things like critical thinking, problem solving, insight generation, and strategic planning.

Figure 1:  Competencies vs. Capabilities

A capability model is a clear and concise listing and description of the knowledge, skills, and observable behaviors that individuals need to experience success—both now and in the future—in their specific roles.

The capability model has far-reaching benefits:

• Leadership Level – It helps to align organizational development, ensuring the function or team members are developing in areas that will future-proof the organization.  It also helps succession planning, allowing leaders to identify the leaders of the future and guide strategic hiring efforts.
• Individual Level – It allows individuals to rate their own strengths and areas of development to create personalized development plans to achieve their career goals.

Career Paths: Help team members see the path forward while demonstrating your organization’s commitment to long-term career development

A capability model isn’t just some document that sits on a shelf.  Teams should use them to help guide each team member as they chart their career path.  However, the idea of a “career path” has gotten a bit more complicated in recent years.

Many reports, including one from Harvard Business Review indicate that more and more organizations are flattening their hierarchies by removing middle management positions and moving toward more agile networks of project teams.  The goals are to promote autonomy and innovation, and to drive efficiencies.  While that’s a welcome change, it also brings an unwelcome side effect.  With a less visible hierarchy, employees can be left wondering what path their career might take. When they don’t see it, they stop believing in it.

Even in organizations that have traditional hierarchies, how people move from one role to the next may be unclear.  Even worse, it could be perceived as being based on factors other than merit.  Both situations can motivate your top performers to leave the organization.

Creating clear and visible Career Paths allows organizations to demonstrate the key experiences that different roles offer and to help individuals think about future roles that they would be interested in pursuing.  Through simple but powerful illustrations, career paths allow individuals to see the skills and capabilities they need to develop in order to move into those roles.  They should provide clear examples of professional development opportunities and other career steps that enable them to gain these capabilities. Career paths unlock powerful career development discussions, allowing employees to focus on the skills and capabilities they need to develop to move to their next role.

INSERT FIGURE 2 (in development):  Genericized Career Path

At Salience Learning we have seen clients investing in critical thinking, strategic thinking, and insight generation because they are transferable capabilities that employees can deploy in every role they hold over their careers.

It’s important to help employees understand that following a particular path won’t guarantee their promotion.  Other factors, such as whether the next job opportunity exists at a given time, also have an impact.  However, if they use the career path, coupled with the learning path that we will discuss below, they’ll be perfectly positioned to seize opportunity when it arises.

Learning Pathways: Guide your team’s development efficiently

As mentioned above, a career path is most useful when coupled with a Learning Pathway.  A learning pathways is a structured series of learning experiences that narrowly direct learners along the most efficient route to gain and apply new skills and capabilities. They can be structured by role, subject, or business goal.  Perhaps a better name should be “Learning Highway,” because the goal here is efficiency and speed!

A learning pathway combines a variety of learning activities such as formal training, on-the-job learning, mentoring, and self-directed learning.  A good learning pathway is typically sequenced from simpler to more complex concepts and skills.  Ideally, the design uses carefully spaced repetition of retrieving and using the content to strengthen the memory of that content, enabling it to be built into skills through practice.  

A learning pathway considers the learner’s current needs along with their career aspirations. When a cohort of learners go through the same learning pathway together, they gain the additional benefit of cross-pollinating ideas for applying it on the job.

As an example, a learning path for a newly hired Access Marketer might include their onboarding and role-specific training. While they will already have knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry, including regulatory requirements, drug development and approval processes, they will need to know the processes and standards used in their current company to ensure they stay within the rules of engagement.

Other elements might include shadowing an experienced team member to start building an internal network for collaboration and taking on stretch assignments to develop further skills.  Combined with effective coaching from their leader or a mentor, this path can speed time to performance and drive new levels of effectiveness for the team and the individual.

If you’d like to learn more about developing capability models, career paths, or learning pathways, or if you’re interested in our Capability Academies, then please contact us here.

This video discusses the Salience Learning / BMS Critical Thinking Academy for first-line leaders. It is a component of the 2023 LTEN Provider-Partnership Excellence Award Nomination.

In mid-2022, Pew Research Center reported that nearly 1 in 5 workers are actively looking for a new job while in their current role, a rate we haven’t seen since the 1970s.

One key reason for leaving?   They feel they have no opportunities for advancement.

With the large increase in remote work, many people feel like they’ve lost their connections to their leaders, the purpose of their work, and their opportunities for growth.

But there is hope!  Here are three integrated strategies for addressing this challenge.

Strategy One:  Make Career Paths Clear

By talking to tenured team members about how they advanced through the organization, you can create a single-page Career Path document for each role.

Career Path documents show current team members their potential paths forward.  The Career Path can also help attract new talent who may be looking to move up, and thinking two or more roles ahead.

Strategy Two:  Use a Capability Model to Guide Team Member Development

Well-written job descriptions are pretty good at helping you hire the right person. Job descriptions age rapidly, and are not great at providing guidance about how to do the job well after a person is hired.  

That’s why a Capability Model is so important.  A Capability Model is a concise yet robust statement that describes what a person needs to know and be able to do to excel in their current role, grow into future roles, and meet the demands of a rapidly changing marketplace.

Combined with a Career Path, a Capability Model provides excellent guidance for any team member to develop and advance with confidence.

Strategy Three: Put a Capability Model Into Action With a Capability Planner

While the Capability Model outlines what a person in a given role must know and be able to do, a Capability Planner helps each individual assess where his or her skill level is at the present time, clearly identifying areas of strength and areas where more development is needed.  Then, the individual and their leader can create development goals and action plans that support the individual’s career goals and the company’s performance goals.

Regular development conversations between the manager and team member are essential to keeping things on track. To support your leaders in driving meaningful development conversations, we recommend our leadership guide which provides support that deepens conversations and identifies specific actions leaders can take to support their team members.

Salience Learning’s team of biopharma industry veterans and learning experts is here to help you build a motivated, productive, high-performance team. We help our clients boost performance with concise Career Paths, effective Capability Models, and actionable Capability Planners and Leadership Guides—built for specific teams and roles. We also design engaging and impactful learning experiences that drive development in individuals and teams. We can do the same for you.

Contact us

In this video, Anjani Patel describes the difference between capabilities and skills. She also outlines how “capability development” should be a top priority for biopharma companies, and why it can be critical to individual and organizational success.

In this video, Anjani Patel describes how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the biopharma industry. In particular, it changed the way biopharma companies interact with their customers and it also altered how they attract and retain talent. Anjani also provides some guidance for biopharma companies who must attract, train, develop, and retain top talent in a challenging new environment.

Fads and fashions tend to come and go. For a while, a certain thing is all the rage and then, after a time, it tends to fade away, only to be replaced by something else. This is true of clothing, television programs, music, and more. But it’s also true in learning and development. As an L&D professional, you’ve no doubt noticed this.

Well, I don’t know if this is a fad, but my colleagues and I have been noticing something of late. More and more we’re hearing clients say something like, “Our teams need to tell better stories,” or “If only our teams’ storytelling skills were better.” In addition, I’ve also seen learning programs popping up that claim to teach learners how to become top-notch story tellers.

With all this talk about storytelling, it prompted me to think critically about it. Why all the fuss about storytelling? What need is driving it? Is “storytelling” even the right solution? Do learners in the professional workforce really need storytelling skills…or is the real need something else altogether? 

If you’ve thought about storytelling or think your learners might need to build those skills, then read on.  The rest of this article may help you get to the core issue and save you time and resources when it comes to acquiring or developing a learning solution for “storytelling.”

Don’t call it storytelling

First, it’s helpful to define “story.” Oxford Languages dictionary defines a story as: an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment. The skills necessary to create great stories include defining story elements (like characters, settings, conflicts, and resolutions), applying language to express and explain those in an entertaining way, and (as most writers would attest) an immense amount of patience. So, when our clients and other colleagues in the life science industry say they need their teams to tell better stories, is this what they really need? I respectfully disagree.

In most cases I will argue that what clients are really saying is that they want their learners to be able to communicate information to an audience in a way that gets that audience to do something. Professionals are not telling stories for entertainment. They’re telling stories to drive action: action in the sense of physical movement or, as is more often the case in the knowledge economy and life-sciences industry, action in the sense of thinking movement, like changing opinions or conclusions. 

Account Executives communicate information to move a payer’s thinking that a therapy does not have value to the conclusion that it does – and then putting it on formulary. Marketing leaders communicate information to move a corporate leader’s thinking that a certain program isn’t essential to the department’s success to it being essential – and then securing the appropriate budget.  In either case, the information is communicated to generate movement.

If it isn’t storytelling, then what is it?

The solution is NOT to train learners to create interesting characters in unique settings where they resolve conflicts all tied up with a good nail-biting ending. The solution is to improve learners’ abilities to craft an argument: not an argument involving fisticuffs, but “a reason or set of reasons that someone uses to show that something is true or correct,” as defined by Oxford Languages. That something is the desired future state either as a thinking state (“This drug actually does have tremendous value”) or physical state (the drug is placed on formulary).

Being able to craft and deliver an argument requires two foundational capabilities: Critical Thinking and Effective Communication. It also requires Emotional Intelligence and a few others, but we’ll stick with these two first.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is defined as the effortful and continuous analysis of the validity of a conclusion. Think of a five-year-old asking, “Why is the sky blue?” “Why does milk come from cows?” “Why don’t I have a baby brother?”

Before communicating anything to an audience, one needs to ask “Why?” and think it through to identify the reasons an audience should move physically or thinkingly.

First, one would ask questions and gather information:

1. Who is the audience?
2. What is the desired future state (what is the “ask”)?
3. What are their needs and motivations and perspectives?
4. What are the grounds, causes, rationales or reasons that justify the desired future state? What data, information or evidence supports those statements?
5. Filter the total population of statements in #4 to identify those that are compelling based on #3.

The output of this thinking process is then crafted into a logical sequence of statements to make the case for the ask. Logical and reasonable sequencing take critical thinking to then continually question the rigor of the step-by-step argument assembled. “Would I move based on this?” “Would this move someone to action? To change their mind?” If no, then back to #4 above.

It’s not storytelling, its thinking.

Communication

When it comes time to deliver an argument to an audience—whether it’s via a presentation, video, paper, or some combination of things—it’s important to do so in a way that gets results. First and foremost, that means not arguing! If you find yourself arguing while delivering an argument, go back and think critically. Then ensure that you have:

1. Accounted for power differentials and cultural differences – meaning, include the “ask” in an appropriate way.
2. Ensured verbal and non-verbal signals are aligned – meaning, if it’s a serious decision, dress appropriately.
3. Minimized cognitive overload – meaning, give time to process and don’t read from slides.

When these attributes describe how you deliver an argument, it becomes persuasive…and persuasion yields action. 

What now?

As an L&D professional, if your internal customers say they want to develop storytelling skills—or if you are thinking about acquiring a storytelling curriculum—the first thing you should do is think critically. Why do they need to tell better stories? What outcome do stakeholders want? What’s making it difficult for learners to do that now? Once you’ve identified the core need, you’ll be in a much better position to select the right learning solution.

The second thing you should do is find that solution. Chances are, you won’t really need a curriculum that focuses on character development, settings, and conflict.  It might be better to look for a solution that empowers learners to assess their thinking process, question conclusions and gather evidence (one that helps them argue better, not tell better stories).

As an aside, this entire article was an argument, and not a dragon or damsel in earshot or a single fist thrown. That said, it did take a lot of patience.

Karen Foster and Amy Parent continue their discussion about Critical Thinking Academy, the first in a series of academies designed to build essential capabilities for professionals in life science organizations. This is part two of a two-part series.

Access the episode here.

Karen is joined by Salience Learning’s own Amy Parent to discuss the launch of Critical Thinking Academy, the first in a series of academies designed to build essential capabilities for professionals in life science organizations. This is part one of a two-part series.

Access the episode here.

Krista Gerhard and Kim Portland discuss the difference between competencies and capabilities, and why capability models matter now more than ever.

Access the episode here.

Not long ago, success in the life science industry could be attributed to how well one mastered and executed skills:  skills in selling, account planning, customer engagement and more. Someone who perfected a skill could apply it repeatedly across similar situations without breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately, in today’s world it’s rare that the same situation happens twice, and skills are no longer enough. The products are more complex, the marketplace is more complex, the ways of working are more complex. And everything is constantly changing. As the industry evolves, so must you. Success in the life science industry today will be powered not only by narrower skills like selling and planning, but also by broader proficiencies that are called capabilities.

What Is a Capability?

A capability is a set of behaviors and characteristics applied fluidly and flexibility across conditions, situations and contexts. Critical thinking is a capability. It consists of behaviors like asking questions, thinking slowly and assessing one’s thinking. It entails certain personality characteristics, such as being skeptical and comfortable with ambiguity. One could think critically about scientific data or when dialoging with a colleague or when deciding where to go for dinner.

Capabilities come in handy across situations. They are foundational and allow you to adapt to changing circumstances and a continuous flow of information. They enhance information gathering, decision-making, and problem-solving. They’re a kind of all-purpose superpower. 

What Is a Skill?

On the other hand, a skill is a set of actions executed sequentially to achieve a defined outcome in a narrow set of conditions. Cutting vegetables with a knife is a skill. To execute this skill, you would: hold the knife safely, stabilize the item on a surface, and slice the item with the knife. You would carry out these steps in order, to make a whole into parts, and could apply this to tomatoes, carrots, basil or any vegetable of your choice.

Skills come in handy when the conditions don’t change much.

But if too many changes occur, the skill loses its value. Imagine for a second that “vegetable” is replaced with “tree,” and “knife” is replaced with “chainsaw.” Are the sets of actions for cutting a tree with a chainsaw the same as cutting vegetables with knife?

Most of would say no, unless you don’t mind losing some fingers.

Why Do Capabilities Matter Now?

This is exactly why capabilities matter in a constantly changing, complex world with endless amounts of information. Skills typically apply to a narrow set of conditions, but once the conditions change enough: poof, the skill no longer “transfers,” to use the learning science term. Could someone who cuts vegetables with a knife also cut fruit or meat? Sure. What about paper or rope? Hmmm, maybe. But expand to a tree trunk and a chainsaw and you have crossed a line. A new skill is needed. More training to be conducted. More time out of the field.

A capability, on the other hand—such as using a cutting implement safely—can come in handy whether it’s a tomato, rope or a tree. Capabilities flex further. They go farther.

How do Capabilities Impact the Business?

Professionals in the life science industry need to evolve, and capabilities provide that power.

New therapeutic areas and business models—not to mention the pandemic—have created tumult in the industry. New innovations, new types of work and new ways of engaging with customers require new ways of thinking.

Learning capabilities may not seem as urgent as learning skills, but it’s a forward-looking exercise that in the long run pays off. Capabilities future-proofs a business. Oh, and they supercharge skills, too.

Where Do I Start?

The World Economic Forum recently found that “critical thinking and analysis” was one of the most in-demand emerging capabilities across countries and industries. Critical thinking—the ability to test the validity of conclusions—is a broad capability.

It consists of five key behaviors: thinking slowly, asking questions, gathering evidence, checking assumptions, and assessing the thinking process itself. You can see how critical thinking would come in handy no matter the specific task or ability. It can even help you identify what task to undertake and what specific skill to deploy.

The business world will continue to change—likely at an ever-increasing rate. So, focus on improving both the narrow skills that solve the problem in front of you and also the capabilities that will carry over to the next one.

Learn about Salience Learning’s Critical Thinking Academy