Background
Our client, a large biopharmaceutical business, was poised to launch a number of new drugs that would deliver world class innovative therapies in complex and competitive markets. These new products marked something of a turning point for the business, which has not launched any major new products for several years, and had focused on supporting established products rather than launching innovative new ones.
Preparing for these launches spurred the company to review its Medical Affairs function as it will now be central to growth over the coming years. As such, the decision was made to restructure Medical Affairs in order to create a separate dedicated medical organisation with a new operating model and infrastructure. MA could become more innovative and commercially-minded in future than they have been in the past.
What was now needed was a world-class medical affairs teams to ensure that business objectives are met, which is when Talentmark was approached with the brief to undertake a strategic assessment project.
Challenge
It was important to get a better understanding of the competencies, preferences, strengths and development needs of the Medical leaders both now and into the future. This meant assessing Medical leaders and their talents so that clear career paths could be mapped out as well as further development provided as necessary. This was also important for team composition.
The exercise was also designed to help the client understand the position of Medical Affairs as an independent function within the company rather than as a support function or part of another department. For example, in some regions the Medical Affairs function is perceived as a support function rather than a strategic peer-to-peer partner.
Effective collaboration between medical and marketing and commercial functions was important as they had to start working more closely together to align with the new strategy. We also had to be sensitive to potential cultural issues around this issue and make recommendations to the client where more cultural work was needed to help shift old perceptions of the role of MA.
Approach
We started by asking key decision makers within the Medical function to complete a Talent Blueprint that helped us to understand ‘what good would look like’ in the future organization. This also helped us to choose the most relevant behavioural assessment tool. The output was a guide for development with recommendations for specific actions
In total 47 senior Medical employees (e.g. Medical Directors, Head of Medical Affairs; Head of Medical Excellence) across the globe were selected by the client to take part in the assessment which had three elements.
The Dimensions behavioural assessment delivered a report focusing on strengths, development, potential and any ‘derailers’. This was followed up with a feedback session with the individuals to verify/validate and strengthen the results by adding real life examples.
We then undertook a structured, in-depth, role-specific interview focused on Medical Affairs best practice, leadership and innovation, exploring how they would set strategy and influence as well as task and delivery orientation and the ability to build competence in their teams. This exercise provided a useful and relevant insight into their ability to think more broadly, a competency required in the new structure.
A third component was external benchmarking – an assessment of the European medical leadership teams of the top 20 biopharmaceutical companies built from a range of primary and secondary data sources. This report provided an overview of the qualifications and years of industry experience of Country Medical Directors and Regional Leaders, and the data enabled us to benchmark both organisational and individual competency relative to industry best practice.
Finally, we helped our client in a strategic overview and analysis of the entire exercise, and identified key issues and areas for further attention. A specialist HR consultancy would be unlikely to have a sufficiently in-depth understanding of the nature of the business and of the medical affairs function and without medical experience you just couldn’t do those sorts of very drilled-down and in-depth interviews or give the client the level of insight and feedback that we were able to provide.
Our Team
The project team was headed up by David Nolan, Talentmark’s Group Chief Executive.
David has focused exclusively on the life sciences industry since 2001 and has consulted with small and large biotech and pharma businesses as well as investment firms on the optimal design and operating model of drug development and commercialisation.