By Sue Iannone Ah, the plan of action (POA) meeting. It can be a fantastic tool for making sure the field teams are ready, willing, and able to get the message out. Unfortunately, it can also be an exhausting and frustrating fire-drill—a mad dash to the finish—particularly for the Learning and Development (L&D) team. It […]
By Sue Iannone Famous general and former President, Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” When it comes to life sciences plan of action (POA) meetings, I’d say I definitely agree with the second part of that statement. Good planning is quite indispensable. In part I […]
By Sue Iannone According to Dictionary.com, “chaos” is defined as “a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.” Any L&D professional who’s been involved in planning a pharmaceutical company Plan of Action (POA) meeting knows about chaos first-hand. In fairness, “chaos” is probably too strong a term for describing […]
By Sue Iannone Imagine this: You are a training manager in the L&D Department of a biotech company, supporting the leading brand. The sales leader of the team comes to you and states, “Our sales reps are struggling with closing the call with their customers. We need to teach these reps how to close. Can […]
By Sue Iannone In life sciences, business reviews are conducted frequently in the commercial areas, especially sales, marketing, and market access. During these business reviews, leaders from different areas provide updates on what they’ve been doing, how well they’ve been doing it, and what’s next on the horizon. When does the Learning & Development (L&D) […]
By Nathan Pienkowski Should a Learning and Development (L&D) organization deliver above and beyond the call of duty, going “all in” to apply the latest in instructional design to every single project? That’s an interesting question and, like most interesting questions, it defies a simple yes or no answer. Sometimes, the answer is yes. However, […]
By Sue Iannone We all…well, maybe some of us…remember the chorus lyrics from a famous Rolling Stones song: You can’t always get what you want But if you try sometimes you just might find You get what you need It’s tough to argue with that. It holds true in everyday life, and it holds true […]
By Sue Iannone Let’s start this article by establishing one fact up front: That old cliché about how we all should “do more with less” is bogus. Perhaps not it all cases, but it’s definitely bogus when it comes to leading a Learning and Development (L&D) organization in a biopharma company. Training organization leaders often […]
By Sue Iannone Part Two in a Series In Part One, we outlined seven characteristics of the “Future Learning and Development Organization.” Those characteristics are shared by teams that evolve beyond firefighting mode, look forward in a strategic way, and focus on achieving the company’s business objectives rather than struggling to keep up with daily […]
By Sue Iannone and Garry O’Grady Part One in a Series The biopharmaceutical industry is not known for dull stability. Think about it… Companies must remain on a “treadmill” of innovation, always working to replace products as they go off patent. Regulatory and legislative changes are always being discussed, passed, or implemented. Market dynamics are […]
For most organizations, POA meetings are critical events that happen one or more times a year. Although POAs provide an excellent opportunity for the commercial functions to communicate with and train in-field teams, planning and preparing for a POA meeting can feel like a nightmare for the training team and leadership responsible. While POA planning and execution should be fairly straightforward, it often is complex and rarely easy. How can you make POA execution less painful and more impactful? In this Learning Lab we will review the four critical success factors to avoid POA chaos and share a framework to apply to your next POA.
In this session we will explore a challenge that training organizations face on a recurring basis—the need to redesign New Hire Training (NHT) to better align it with the changing needs of the sales organization. Portfolios change, organizational structures change, marketplace challenges change and budgets change—but training organizations will always be expected to produce new hires who can succeed from day one in the field.
The session will focus on key aspects of NHT redesign including:
Scale: Determining how broad the redesign effort will be. Will we include a “deep dive” into curriculum and content? Or will we focus more on the logistical and administrative aspects of NHT?
Research: Identifying the best research methods for gaining insights into your NHT’s current state and identifying and categorizing opportunities for your desired future state. Will we conduct interviews or working sessions? How wide a net should we cast? Will we include learner perspectives—or focus on managers’ observations? Will attitude and awareness research be valuable?
Prioritization: Applying a framework to determine which opportunities will produce the greatest value for both the sales organization and the training organization. What principles will guide our decision making? How will we evaluate one opportunity relative to another?
Socialization: Defining your vision for the ideal future state of NHT and “selling it” to your stakeholders. How much rigor will be required to garner stakeholder approval? How detailed does our workload analysis have to be if we are requesting new resources?
The session will introduce core NHT-redesign concepts in a fun and engaging way but will be underpinned by a case study based on Sunovion’s 2021 redesign of NHT.
As the learning leader, your team takes care of everyone else in the organization, from salespeople to field reimbursement managers to clinical educators. But who takes care of your team? How can you ensure they are equipped with the right capabilities that they need to support their learners?
Learning professionals often leverage competency models for customer-facing roles to identify key capabilities and inform the build out of new hire training programs, however competency models are not often used for their own L&D team. By identifying and outlining expectations on key capabilities, competency models lay the groundwork for development in any kind of role — L&D professionals included.
When AbbVie Canada wanted to elevate and formalize the expectations of its Learning Partner team, it used a new competency model as the catalyst. The new model defined expectations for the Learning Partner role across eight competencies, covering the role’s broad range of capabilities while still capturing the team’s culture and reflecting the different levels of experience that individuals in the role may have.
Once the Competency Model was built, AbbVie Canada brought it into action by building several tools to help managers and learning partners optimally apply the model toward development. These included a competency ‘Experience Map’, a Learning Pathway, a Developmental Journey Overview and Leader Guide. These tools inform team members and their managers of representative experiences on how to perform in the role and attain readiness for the next role. In addition to facilitating development, these tools also play a role in AbbVie Canada Learning’s recruiting and hiring practices.
By attending this workshop you will recognize the benefits of introducing a competency model for learning professionals and determine if a competency model is right for your learning team. You will hear how AbbVie Canada partnered with Bull City Blue and created, implemented, and built on their own model. This collaborative project was nominated in 2021 and earned Industry Partner LTEN 2021 Finalist status—come to the workshop to get an update on how this has impacted the L&D Team at AbbVie Canada.