Companies in the life sciences sector have a daunting challenge. While developing new products that change and even save lives, they need to continually change themselves. With several compounds in clinical trials, our client decided to shift its business strategy to enable growth and change their revenue streams. This shift required changes in the organization structure and components of the culture, including the integration of different skills and experiences into this well-established firm. In addition, they needed an approach for assessing talent to determine their capacity to fill future leadership and specialized roles to execute the new business strategy.

The Solution

Sponsored by the CFO and Executive Director of Human Resources, we took a multi-pronged approach to prepare the organization to execute the new strategy.  The approach included the following:

• Assessing and designing the organization structure against the needs of the new strategy
• Identifying and defining critical and pivotal roles that were essential for successfully executing the new strategy
• Introducing a talent review process
• Creating talent acquisition strategies for critical and pivotal role gaps
• Providing change management advisory services

Results

We partnered with leadership to create a multi-year, organizational road map for the company’s successful transformation. The multi-faceted approach allowed the client to proactively identify key gaps that would impact their ability to execute the business strategy. As a well-established company, there was significant risk created by impending retirement or other potential senior leadership transitions. The organization design and talent review process provided the framework for key succession decisions, including succession for the head of a core business function. Critical leadership and specialist roles were identified and multi-year acquisition strategies were put in place to prioritize the timing of key hires. Talent reviews were integrated into the company’s core management practices. Through our partnership, the client was able to:

• Mitigate and prepare for current and long-term risks from the lack of a robust leadership bench
• Plan for key hires by Identifying leadership and specialist needs
• Ensure ongoing assessment and development of talent
• Develop change agility to successfully respond to and drive change in the future