The concept of personalization in the biopharma industry is often discussed in the context of precision medicine, which identifies medication choices based on individuals’ genetic makeup and unique lifestyle factors, but life sciences companies are also harnessing the power of personalization to increase the effectiveness of learning and development (L&D) activities. With personalized learning plans (PLPs), biopharma companies are increasingly moving from the “one-size-fits-all” approach that many have traditionally taken and are developing training that enables employees to select training targeted to their particular strengths and development needs.

PLPs are a core element of the systematic approach to L&D. We define a systematic approach as one that is structured, methodical, and standardized across an organization, while consistently using ongoing evaluation and measurement, socializing the process with both leadership and individual contributors, and applying a mindset of continuous skills enhancement.

A systematic approach to L&D enables organizations to enhance employee effectiveness while also improving the employee experience. Part 1 of this series describes the benefits of this approach, as well as its key components. Those components are:

1. Needs Analyses
2. Capability Models
3. Personalized Learning Plans

In Part 2, we explored needs analyses and capability models in depth, examining how biopharma L&D functions can use those processes to understand their employees’ learning needs and define the skills needed for any given role. In this third and final article in the series, we look at how a systematic approach to building PLPs can help target the right learning and development to the right employee at the right time—and in turn enhance employee engagement, retention, and performance.

Defining Personalized Learning Plans

Personalized learning plans are customized learning pathways that are targeted for specific functions, roles, and teams or for specific employees based on their roles, needs, level of expertise, and career goals. These plans differ from the traditional pharma L&D model, which offers standardized training to large groups of employees regardless of their individual needs, goals, learning styles, and career paths. Instead, the elements of a PLP are customized for individual learners. Using a PLP helps continuously upskill employees on core skills while offering them the flexibility and ownership to focus on their individual needs to meet and exceed their professional development goals.

A systematic, data-driven process for developing PLPs helps ensure that they align with organizational goals while addressing individual development needs. As we shared in the second article in this series, the process generally begins with a needs analysis, which looks at the skills individual employees currently possess as well as their areas for development, ultimately identifying the capabilities they need to perform their roles. Next, we recommend that L&D organizations build a capability model based on the needs analysis. The capability model provides details on expectations for performance in each role and helps L&D functions identify and develop the learning solutions needed for individuals to meet and exceed those expectations. With a personalized approach for developing capabilities and skills, individuals have the opportunity to create a learning plan that will help them achieve their specific goals. This usually takes place through a self-assessment or during performance reviews.

A key strength of PLPs is their flexibility and ability to meet the needs of different learners and situations. They are often customized for different proficiency levels, such as beginner, intermediate, or skilled. They may also vary by company and by individual. Some may include core courses and then offer a variety of additional learning options based on each person’s need. Based on the “70-20-10” model for L&D—which says that 70% of learning happens through on-the-job experience, 20% through social interactions with colleagues and friends, and 10% in formal training experiences—learning modalities should include a variety of on-the job learning, course-type work, and social learning. At Salience, we often align with 70-20-10 via experiential learning, social engagement, and spaced micro-learning.

The PLP that the employee and manager then collaborate to write—typically in the form of a templated document or within a learning management system—usually includes several common elements. These elements include:

• Information about the employee, including role, career goals, and an assessment of current capabilities and skills
• The employee’s prioritized learning goals or capabilities
• A list of learning activities and resources the employee will utilize to accomplish their learning goals
• A timeline detailing when specific learning activities will take place and when the learning should be completed, with interim milestones specified to ensure that the plan is on track
• Expectations for employee participation
• Mechanisms for assessment and feedback

Different parts of the company can play different roles in supporting the use of PLPs. L&D organizations can provide and develop learning solutions and opportunities based on the capability model, gauging which solutions are being used most often, measuring how those solutions are helping to improve behaviors, and identifying which gaps may still need to be filled. Leadership can support their employees by allowing them to spend time conducting the learning activities and identifying ways for employees to apply the skills on the job or learn from others (known as social learning).

Benefits of PLPs

PLPs that are built with a systematic approach have several measurable benefits for both employees and the organization, especially compared with the one-size-fits-all model. First, learning that is tailored to the needs of individual learners is always more effective than standardized learning. PLPs help equip employees to perform the responsibilities of their role at a higher level. When more employees can work with greater competency, companies are better equipped to succeed in the increasingly competitive global market.

In addition, because PLPs are customized to the specific needs of each individual learner, they are more likely to engage employees. The more engaged employees are, the more likely they are to choose to remain with the company. This in turn can help companies avoid the expense of recruiting and training new talent when disengaged employees leave.

Finally, because PLPs are specifically designed for each individual, they allow progress against goals to be tracked more easily, through tools such as pre- and post-assessments and observation of behavior change. These performance metrics make it easier to assess the effectiveness of L&D initiatives and adjust them as needed.

Personalized Learning Plan Case Study

Leadership for a global pharmaceutical company knew that they needed to future-proof their cell therapy organization to stay competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace. To do so, they undertook several initiatives to invest in people, processes, and culture. After working with Salience Learning to conduct a needs analysis and develop a capability model for their cell therapy team, the company asked us to develop a personalized learning plan framework for account managers in the cell therapy organization.

To address this request, we developed a PLP framework for executive presence capability. The model included a pre-assessment for each employee, followed by learning content on executive presence, and then a post-assessment followed by a capstone workshop. The learning solutions for the PLP included a few core courses and a range of options for the account managers to select from based on their needs assessment. The options used different modalities, including workshops, podcasts, videos, and links to additional resources. The model enabled each account manager to customize a learning pathway based on their individual needs.

With a dynamic learning curriculum systematically tailored to the needs of the cell therapy organization and incorporating different modules and learning modalities, the account managers can tailor their learning to their individual needs, building the skills required to succeed in a competitive environment. They will be able to leverage fundamental executive presence skills to help the company’s cell therapy organization thrive.

Conclusion

The economic, policy, and social transformations of the last several years have put increasing pressure on biopharma companies to operate more efficiently and effectively than ever, and Learning and Development functions play a key role in preparing employees to perform at the level needed to match the moment. By approaching the process of developing needs analyses, capability models, and personalized learning plans systematically, these companies can give themselves a boost in the battle to stay competitive in today’s changing market.

The economic, policy, and social transformations of the last several years have greatly affected biopharma companies’ operational performance and strategic effectiveness. These transformations have led to greater complexity in the required skill sets for many roles, increasing the demands on the professionals who work in these companies. Those increased demands, coupled with the post-COVID increase in demand for issues such as work flexibility and professional development, are making it more challenging for biopharma companies to develop and retain great employees. However, learning and development (L&D) teams within biopharma companies can play a key role in addressing this challenge. Ultimately, the companies that work with their L&D functions to mitigate the effects of those changes on their employees are the ones that will be best positioned for success in spite of the challenging headwinds.

Taking a systematic approach to developing core capabilities is one of the most powerful ways for companies to develop staff members and thrive in this challenging time. We define a systematic approach as one that is structured, methodical, and standardized across the organization. Moreover, this type of approach consistently uses ongoing evaluation and measurement, socializes the process with both leadership and individual contributors, and applies a mindset of continuous skills enhancement.

By using a systematic approach, organizations can both enhance employee effectiveness and improve the overall employee experience. In Part 1 of this series about how L&D can develop core capabilities systematically, we described the need for such an approach, its benefits, and its key components. Those components are as follows:

1. Needs Analyses
2. Capability Models
3. Personalized Learning Plans

In this article, we explore the process of conducting needs analyses and developing capability models. We take a detailed look at what it means to approach these processes in a systematic way, and we share a case study that illustrates how doing so helped a biopharma company better support its employees’ development and retention. Later, we will conclude the series with a third article on developing personalized learning plans.

Needs Analyses

Developing a needs analysis is the essential first step toward building a capability model that defines the skills needed for success in a given role. In this process, L&D teams identify and evaluate individuals’ needs and areas for development, with the goal of finding the gaps between their current skills and abilities and those that are required to perform in their specific roles.

While some of the specifics of needs analyses can differ across organizations, a systematic approach to the issue usually includes the following steps:

• Reviewing and analyzing relevant background materials such as job descriptions and existing capability models
• Identifying the appropriate stakeholders to participate in the process, ​​including in-role employees (both new to and experienced), functional area leaders and managers, and cross-functional partners who work with individuals in this role
• Conducting group and one-on-one interviews with stakeholders

The topics explored during the interviews depend on the gaps being explored. Examples may include:

• Current capability gaps
• What good looks like in roles
• Career paths

Companies may choose to work with either their internal L&D teams or with a third party to conduct needs analyses. While internal L&D teams understand organizational dynamics deeply, they also run the risk of being too close to the issue and not seeing some issues as clearly as an external partner may. There are other benefits to working with a third party. One is that someone with an outside perspective is more likely to avoid the bias that can come from being too close to the subject. Another is that third parties bring in external expertise and thinking to the process. Finally, with their relative distance from the topic, third parties have the ability to synthesize the data collected in a needs analysis into documentation that is more understandable to a wide range of users.

Once a needs analysis is completed, its outputs are used to align on core capabilities for the organization and inform the learning pathways that support individuals’ career paths.

Capability Models

Once the needs analysis has been completed, its outputs are used to develop capability models for the organization. These models are structured frameworks that lay out the specific skills and abilities needed to succeed in a given role. They offer insight and direction on expectations for performance, and they answer two key questions: What do employees need to know to optimize their performance, and what actions do they need to take to do so?

Capability models most often include the following elements:

• Details about the knowledge and skills needed for each capability
• Descriptions of how the capabilities look in practice when an employee is using their knowledge and skills
• Definitions of the proficiency levels related to each capability, including expectations for performance by role

A completed capability model often contains components that include worksheets to support goal creation and networking/mentoring conversations, as well as short (often one-page) summaries by role with proficiency levels and select contextual examples.

A systematic approach to capability model development includes multiple key steps that are typically performed in a standard order:

1. Developing the model
2. Communicating and training teams on how to apply the model
3. Evaluating and measuring skill development based on the model

Developing capability models offers numerous benefits, both for individual contributors and for leaders. For individuals, the benefits include:

• Cleary understanding expectations for the role
• Performing the role effectively
• Enabling productive development conversations and performance reviews with managers
• Planning career paths
• Building L&D journeys that support both current performance and future potential

The benefits for leaders include:

• Deepening understanding of employees’ career goals
• Offering higher-impact development coaching
• Empowering individuals to develop themselves
• Conducting performance reviews more efficiently
• Increasing individual effectiveness and retention
• More proactive planning for future recruiting efforts

Once the capability models are complete, an organization may use them to develop focused learning that can be used for developing personalized learning plans.

Needs Analysis and Capability Model Case Study

The commercial operations function of a large biopharma company needed to develop a capability model and learning pathways for customer-facing field teams in a business unit dealing with complex treatments in international markets. Because these teams had high logistical coordination needs, a diverse set of stakeholders, and a complex product-to-patient journey, their work required them to develop new capabilities.

The commercial function began by conducting a needs analysis and then built a capability framework based on it for three functional customer-facing field roles: account managers, medical science liaisons, and patient support managers. Some of the capabilities defined included problem solver, clinical expert, organizational navigator, and influential communicator. As part of the same project, they subsequently defined learning pathways for each of the roles.

Once the needs analysis, capability model, and learning pathways were defined, the functional area’s leadership had a clear roadmap for how to implement the most appropriate trainings and when to do so, based on the organization’s new, evolving customer engagement model for international markets.

Conclusion

Needs analyses and capability models feed the subject of the third and final installment in this series, personalized learning plans (PLPs). That article will examine how to develop PLPs that enable employees to grow and thrive in their current roles, as well as progress to future roles that increase their contributions to the organization. The article will focus on how to build PLPs with a systematic approach, using a standardized process to identify situation-specific insights that drive success in the organization.

Those responsible for L&D are under increased pressure to demonstrate the impact of their training programs and show that the dollars invested are truly helping drive performance, innovation, and business success.

However, capturing this degree of impact is not easy to do and presents a significant challenge. Traditional metrics often fall short, so how can L&D develop and implement learning programs that can facilitate useful impact measurement? In this paper, we

• Explore the methods and challenges associated with learning measurement.
• Outline a systematic and holistic process for defining an effective measurement strategy.

While many industries have felt some effects from the economic, policy, and social transformations of the last several years, change has always been a constant for the biopharma industry. For pharma and biotech companies, technological and scientific discoveries, regulatory structures, health policy and politics, payor relationships, and the global health landscape are consistently in a state of transformation. All pharmaceutical and biotech companies need to be agile and adapt to these changes as a reality of doing business—and the ones that do so most effectively stand the greatest chance of success.

But as much as constant change presents an opportunity for biopharma companies, it can also put pressures on them that can strain their operational performance and strategic effectiveness. The potential effect on employees is significant. Working in an organization in the midst of transformation can create an environment of uncertainty that can lead to a drop in employee satisfaction, higher staff turnover, and a decrease in employee effectiveness.

This article is the first in a series about how learning and development (L&D) teams can use a systematic approach to developing core capabilities, not only to improve team member effectiveness, but also to enhance the overall employee experience. In Part 1, we describe the need for this systematic approach, its benefits, and its key components. The articles that follow will go into further detail about each of those components: identifying needs and developing capability models, and building personalized learning plans.

The Need for a Systematic Approach

Given the changes that biopharma companies face and the risks those changes bring, L&D teams play an instrumental role in supporting employees and having a positive effect on overall employee satisfaction. This support can help reduce uncertainty, turnover, and other challenges caused by rapid change, while simultaneously helping increase employees’ professional and career development.

To do this, L&D teams must take a systematic approach to developing core capabilities,  the specific knowledge, skills, and behaviors that are essential to an organization’s success. A systematic approach requires planning that is structured, methodical, and standardized across the organization, with ongoing evaluation and measurement, socialization with leadership and cross-functional stakeholders, and a mindset of continuous skills enhancement. L&D teams that bring this approach to their work have the greatest likelihood of success in supporting employee professional development, retention, and advancement of corporate objectives.

Benefits of Systematic Approach

A systematic approach by L&D teams to developing and implementing core capabilities offers benefits for both organizations and staff members.

Organizational

Capabilities that support company objectives can help increase employee satisfaction and, in turn, staff retention. There are multiple reasons for this. First of all, defining core capabilities shows investment by the organization in professional development. It also demonstrates clarity and consistency in the organization’s expectations for individuals’ skills. Finally, having defined capabilities like this lays the groundwork for career advancement, because people know what they need to do to be promoted into the next role or roles.

Staff Members

In addition to the organizational benefits of a systematic approach to capability development, there are also advantages for individuals at all levels of a biopharma organization: leaders, managers, and individual contributors.

Leaders

For leaders, a systematic approach helps lay the groundwork for a learning strategy that reflects their priorities, which can help them become more effective leaders. Such an approach also has several benefits for hiring. For one, it enables more strategic recruiting because it helps leaders and the HR team more effectively identify which attributes to look for in new hires. In addition, by allowing for a skills-based hiring process, it offers tangible ways to evaluate candidates based on their practical capacity for doing the job rather than simply using subjective insights about how well they talk about their experience and qualifications. Finally, it supports strong succession planning, because it helps identify the skills needed to backfill roles and enables more proactive recruiting.

Managers

Managers benefit from a systematic approach because it offers them a set of tools for guiding their teams. For example, it gives them more inputs beyond performance reviews alone that they can use to recognize high performance by members of their team. These can include dynamics such as customer feedback, completion of training programs, and attainment of KPIs. And in cases where team members are not meeting expectations, it helps identify areas of development. Importantly, a systematic approach also creates opportunities for development conversations to be both more productive and more frequent, as opposed to being held only during performance reviews. And finally, it helps make performance reviews more effective because it offers objective measurement criteria and data-driven assessments.

Individual Contributors

A systematic approach helps individual contributors by showing them the skills and behaviors they need to perform successfully in their roles. It also creates the opportunity for team members to have more productive professional development conversations with their managers. Finally, it can make performance reviews more productive for individual contributors because it consistently aligns individuals’ work with corporate objectives, for example when an organization that prioritizes developing cross-functional collaboration tracks and quantifies interaction between departments.

Key Components of a Systematic Approach to Capability Development

There are two primary components to a systematic approach to developing core capabilities:

• Identifying needs and defining capabilities
• Building personalized learning plans

Needs Analyses and Core Capabilities

A needs analysis is the process of identifying and evaluating individuals’ needs and areas for development. It does so by finding the gap between their current skills and abilities and the capabilities needed to perform the duties of a role. One of the benefits of a needs analysis is that it provides a 360-degree understanding of the support individuals need from leaders, managers, and the individuals themselves. Components of a needs analysis include the following:

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

Together, these elements become key components of aligning on core capabilities for the organization and informing the learning pathways that are used to support the next one to five years of individuals’ career progression.

Capabilities include the knowledge and skills that the roles need to adapt and flex to meet future needs. By focusing on capabilities, organizations can focus development on the knowledge and skills that allow individuals to thrive in fast-paced, cross-functional, and constantly changing environments.

Core capabilities are used to develop capability models, which are structured frameworks that outline and articulate the specific skills and capabilities required for success in a specific role. Capability models can include the following:

• Knowledge and skills for each capability
• Details about contextual examples that describe what the capability looks like in practice when a person is deploying their knowledge and skill
• Definitions of proficiency levels that share expectations for how each role should be performing related to each capability

Aligning to a core set of capabilities has several benefits, including making it more likely that individuals’ professional development supports corporate goals, offering direction on career paths, and providing consistent and clear expectations. By developing robust capabilities and aligning roles to them, organizations can help ensure that they have the necessary resources and future-focused skills to meet customer, market, and organizational needs and expectations.

Personalized Learning Plans

Personalized learning plans (PLPs) are the other key component of this systematic approach. PLPs are professional development roadmaps that are customized for individual employees. They provide curriculum options to develop and enhance individual and team capabilities, and they can be included in capability planners or leaders can refer to them during discussions with their direct reports about ways to improve in specific capabilities. Among the benefits of PLPs are skill development targeted to the individual, greater employee satisfaction and retention, and alignment with corporate objectives. Employees generally appreciate PLPs because they are personalized to them, as opposed to the “one size fits all” approach that many biopharma companies have historically taken.

Conclusion

In part 2, we will take a deeper look at needs analyses and identifying core capabilities and skills. The article will demonstrate how taking the time to conduct a needs analysis and identify the capabilities to meet those needs helps organizations ensure that they have the necessary resources and future-focused skills to meet customer, market, and organizational expectations. It will also detail the key steps and best practices for conducting needs analyses and developing capability models and aligning them using a systematic approach, with specific guidance for building the models in the most impactful way possible.

Executive leaders—and their companies—can benefit greatly from a strategic executive leadership development journey. Such a journey can unlock immediate value in leaders’ enhanced capabilities and go far deeper by impacting teams, functions, and the entire organizational culture. However, there are some special challenges when creating and implementing such programs.

This paper:

1. Outlies why executive leadership development is important
2. Identifies common development needs of executive leaders
3. Identifies the unique challenges associated with executive leadership development
4. Shares some best practices for overcoming challenges
5. Reviews key requirements for the communications program that must support any executive leadership journey

Senior leaders are important and influential people within any organization. It’s necessary that they stay at the “top of their game” and are well-equipped with the capabilities needed to drive their organizations forward. In Part 1 of this series, we outlined why executive leadership development is so important for these individuals, their teams, and the organization and identified some common development needs. Part 2 addressed the unique challenges associated with creating and fielding development programs for senior leaders, offering some solutions along the way.

At the end of Part 2, we noted that a well-orchestrated communications strategy is essential to the success of any development program for senior leaders. Without that, senior leaders will likely be unclear on how to take advantage of a program or dismiss its value, resulting in low participation rates and minimal impact. In this installment, we address the key components of a good communications plan, unique challenges in communicating with senior executives, and some high-level solutions to those challenges.

Key Components of an Effective Communications Plan for Senior Leadership Development

An effective communication plan for any change initiative–which is what an Executive Leadership Development Program is–should have defined objectives, consider cognitive constraints in absorbing information, and be developed in stages.

Recommended objectives for a communication plan include the following:

1. Communicate how the program is linked to business strategy and impact, and why it is a priority for the company
2. Educate executives about why their development is critically important for themselves and why they should commit to participating in this program
3. Clearly and concisely show how they should participate in the program, what they are supposed to do, and when
4. Enable them to track their progress and see how others are doing
5. Provide a platform to give the learners a voice and provide feedback

This might sound relatively straightforward, and perhaps accomplished by simply preparing and sending out a few emails. Unfortunately, that is exactly how fantastic programs fail to reach their potential. In any change initiative, there is usually a lot of important information to communicate, which often results in a mad rush to get the information out, neglecting the learners’ ability to process, internalize, and act on it. One must keep the learner at the center, and importantly, consider the ways in which cognitive constraints impact a human’s ability to absorb information.

The intricate processes of human memory can significantly impact one’s capacity to absorb and retain information. Working memory is often a bottleneck, as it restricts the amount of information that can be processed at a given moment. Moreover, encoding, which determines how information is initially registered, can be influenced by factors like attention, prior knowledge, and emotional state, affecting successful processing.

In addition, long-term memory storage, essential for retaining absorbed information over time, is impacted by the frequency with which information is processed and if the leader has elaborated or crafted meaningful associations during that processing. As our recommendations highlight, it is essential to account for the cognitive constraints all leaders have in a communications plan in order for leaders to first remember and then act on a development journey’s opportunities.

Finally, a communication plan is not a one-and-done deliverable. While back-of-the-napkin ideas are great and creativity should be fostered, developing, socializing, and deploying an effective communications plan typically follows five core stages:

• Define your audience and any additional stakeholders, and understand their priorities
• Develop key messages that are closely linked to the business and company context
• Identify the best tactics to communicate the key messages
• Develop a communication plan and validate with the right stakeholders
• Execute the communication plan, track progress, and improve on an ongoing basis

Objectives, awareness of cognitive constraints, and a solid development approach will put any communications plan ahead of the curve. That said, specific nuances and watch-outs should be incorporated and accounted for in communications plans that target senior executives.

Unique Challenges in Communicating with Senior Executives

Everyone is drowning in communications. Emails. Teams chats. Yammer posts. Slack streams. Not to mention LinkedIn articles, white papers. Reddit feeds, and on and on and on. Senior executives are no different – and in reality, likely even worse off.

Senior executives receive a very high number of communications.

Senior executives are the key drivers of a company’s vision and strategy, critical decisions, and change initiatives. Every internal stakeholder with a deliverable and a dream likely wants to inform, discuss or gain a senior leader’s input, advocacy or stamp of approval. It is impossible for a senior leader to read every communication. Hence they have Executive Associates and make choices or they would never sleep, not to mention achieve their business objectives.

Senior executives often don’t consume common communication channels.

In addition to receiving a boatload of communications, senior executives are often privy to privileged and confidential information that goes way above and beyond topics disseminated on common, all-access communications channels. Add in the reality that they are usually in meetings all day and travel frequently, and typical communication channels that cater to broad sections of the organization likely won’t be on their radar.

Senior executives have constantly changing agendas and priorities.

Lastly, in an era of a constantly changing external landscape, being a good leader requires the ability to quickly adapt and pivot. Senior executives have highly dynamic agendas that are continually reshaped by changing business needs. A priority today might not be one tomorrow. The value proposition of an Executive Leadership Development Journey must be continually measured against what senior leaders need at that moment, with clear links to current corporate priorities. If not, the journey risks becoming irrelevant, falling off senior executives’ crowded radars.

Best Practices when Communicating with Senior Leaders

Is communicating with senior leaders challenging? Yes. Is it impossible? No. Below are some recommendations to customize a communications plan for senior leaders to drive impact.

Get the C-suite to say it

Hearing messages from above goes a long way. Having the C-suite deliver the value proposition of an Executive Leadership Journey increases the likelihood the message is taken to heart. How to do this? Meet corporate communications.

Almost all C-suite members have a dedicated corporate communications team member.  These individuals typically reside in the Corporate Affairs function, which can stand alone, be embedded within a public affairs or compliance function, or be a component of the executive leadership team. Along with many other responsibilities, corporate communications team members are responsible for coordinating, drafting, and approving the high visibility communications a C-suite member sends or delivers internally and externally. Their partnership and support is critical.

An L&D team should partner with the leadership communications team members to identify the optimal C-suite leader to advocate for the journey as well as the most appropriate content, platform, and timing for communications. A key here is to connect the value proposition, vision or objectives of the Executive Leadership journey to a C-suite member’s other priorities.

For example, if the Executive Leadership journey focuses on diversity and inclusivity capabilities, then the Chief Diversity and Inclusivity Officer would be key (note, this might be the CHRO). If driving innovation or new ideas is a focus, consider a Chief Research Officer or Chief Commercialization Officer. Connecting the Executive Leadership journey’s value proposition to a C-suite leader’s other organizational priorities creates a win-win for the C-suite member to participate and advocate for the initiative.

Engage the stakeholder groups close to the senior executives.

To increase the likelihood that a senior executive internalizes the what and why and acts on the how of a communications plan, it is important to engage the key individuals that surround a leader – their proverbial circle of trust. This includes the aforementioned Corporate Affairs team members and extends to the leaders’ Strategy and Operations team members, HR business partners, executive assistants and other company-specific roles that have linked priorities or regular touchpoints with senior leaders.

Finding and connecting with these individuals in a 30,000-employee global organization may seem daunting. Consider leveraging the Learning leadership team or the Chief Learning Officer to establish access and develop rapport. Investing the time to communicate the why, what, and how of the Executive Leadership journey pays returns in their championing and fostering the senior executives to engage in it.

Use highly effective and relevant content.

Following that senior executives are very busy people, they have little time to sift through verbosity. Content must be relevant, concise, and actionable. Asks should be at the forefront, not buried beneath the fold; content and key messages should be in alignment with business priorities.

Balance planning with agility.

All of the above requires planning, networking, and stakeholder management. L&D must identify the right stakeholders, understand their priorities, get on their calendars, gain their buy-in, and get their help in shaping the communication plan. With busy schedules, this takes a long time. That said, as mentioned, senior executives’ needs and priorities can change quickly. Just like their learners, the senior executives, an L&D team must remain flexible and agile throughout the lead up and execution of an Executive Leadership journey.

Effective communication is vital for the success of any senior leadership development program. Without a well-crafted communications strategy, even the most meticulously designed program will likely fail to engage senior leaders and drive meaningful impact. By following best practices such as partnering with corporate communications teams, engaging stakeholder groups close to senior executives, delivering concise and relevant content through effective channels, and maintaining agility to adapt to changing priorities, organizations can increase the chances of their senior leaders internalizing the value proposition and actively participating in the development journey. Ultimately, a thoughtful and comprehensive communications approach is essential for ensuring senior leaders stay at the top of their game and are equipped to drive their organizations forward in an ever-changing business landscape.

“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.