Hi- Potential Academy in the Pharma Industry

Action Learning Project

Situation/Problem

Our client is a global Pharmaceutical company, known for its commitment towards research in the field of oncology, as well as for their passion for Patient Care and the Development of their Healthcare Professionals. Part of the company’s strategic pillars is to acquire, retain and grow potential talents. Within this context, the HR & Commercial Effectiveness Director proposed a project for the development of 15 talents in the Middle East. This entailed:

• Preparing them for career advancement
• Retaining these valuable talents within the organisation to serve company goals
• Enhance their loyalty level and their ability to inspire their teams.

Client Needs

TTM associates collaborated with the client to develop a one-year development plan that can grow the targeted talents in the following areas:

1. Behavioural leadership skills: They addressed Leadership, company Core Values and People Influence & Management
2. Technical/functional Skills: This included common understanding of:
   • Marketing
   • Customer/Sales Management
   • Market Access
   • Strategic Marketing Management
   • Financial acumen
   • Process and operational improvement

The Project solutions needed to meet the following criteria:

• Design the chartered leadership for what looks like (a great talent) within the context within the company’s, vision, mission objectives
• Design a portfolio of learning platforms that has the following criteria
  • The use of innovative methods for delivering the workshops
  • A Continuous process for learning, ideally one workshop per quarter
  • Relevance to the company’s Business Cultural Environment
  • Blended Learning Solutions

TTM Solution

In order to achieve the stated objectives by the project owners, TTM proposed a 3 Phase Approach, whereby Action Learning was the core of this approach. The three phases are described below:

PHASE 1:

This phase focused on the pre-workshop preparations by the team members, together with the project owners, and the HR & Commercial effectiveness Directors. The key objectives were:

• Determine career goals for the individual participants
• Determine the Key learning objectives from their point of views and in conjunction with the above goals
• Identify key challenges these participants were facing, and consequently the business

The outcome of this phase was grouping people based on their responses into key “relevant projects”. These projects were used as action learning projects during the implementation of Phase 2.

PHASE 2:

During this phase, TTM associates proposed an ACTION LEARNING & Multi-Modular approach to address the learning points and key objectives determined during Phase 1. This phase included the following learning tools:

• Experiential Learning Methodology:

Participants were engaged in workshops utilising the experiential learning approach that enabled them to apply the learning during and after the workshop.

• Coaching & Online Engagement Platform: all workshops were supported by the following:

• Engagement platform & Knowledge sharing areas
• Group coaching (optional, provided by TTM associates’ coaches)

Workshops: 4 workshops were designed and customised to address the Soft and Technical business skills.

PHASE 3:

This phase focused on the participants’ understanding of their career planning, and how to augment the skills acquired during the workshops such as Leadership, Emotional and Political Intelligence to evolve their career. The participants presented their Action-Learning project to a panel made of the company directors and TTM associates’ consultants. They received feedback as well as the relevant certifications.

The objectives of this presentation session were to:

• Measure the key deliverables and challenge the participants in the outcomes of the projects
• Validate the participants’ key learning, and their implementation on action learning projects
• Provide feedback to the participants on possible improvements they can consider about their career future
• Combine and harness the skills with Emotional / Political Intelligence and how this can help them evolve in their career

Outcome

Throughout the programme, TTM associates successfully developed the organisation’s pool of talents. The organisation and participants reached the objectives they wanted to achieve and won an internal global award for the best learning & developments initiatives in the company. The client has successfully run three consecutive waves of the hi-potential program, with each wave consisting of around 30 participants. As a result, 80% of participants were promoted! Since the programme groomed participants to further their careers, they were able to hit the ground running in their new roles which greatly contributed to the growth of the organisation.