Partnerships
By Wendy Heckelman, Ph.D., and Tianna Tye
In today’s dynamic and fast-paced life sciences industry, fostering a strategic business partnership with your cross-functional stakeholders is not just beneficial — it’s essential. For a life sciences learning function to thrive, collaboration with stakeholders and business leaders offers immense value. It allows learning professionals to shape effective training programs, enhance organizational performance and align with broader business objectives.
Let’s explore the significance of strategic partnership.
A strategic partnership is much more than a transactional relationship. It is an active collaboration where both parties contribute to shared goals and mutual success.
For life sciences learning functions, this means being recognized as trusted allies who hold a “seat at the table.” This term, often mentioned in leadership discussions, refers to becoming valued contributors to strategic planning and decision-making processes rather than being peripheral participants.
Having a seat at the table in an organization signifies several things:
Being viewed as a valued partner whose ideas are seriously considered.
Actively sharing expertise and contributing to decision-making conversations.
Establishing credibility and trust as indispensable members of the organizational foundation.
Encouraging team involvement, where leaders ask for input like “What do you think?”
These elements collectively empower learning teams to be proactive, not reactive, ensuring their influence extends beyond delivering training content.
For a learning function, strategic partnerships address multiple priorities:
Aligning training with business goals: A well-designed training program must support organizational objectives. Whether enhancing key account manager (KAM) capabilities, developing marketplace knowledge learning modules or preparing employees for future challenges, close collaboration ensures alignment.
Elevating training outcomes: Strategic partnerships allow learning teams to focus on performance outcomes by delivering clear, purpose-driven content that supports tangible improvement.
Strengthening stakeholder relationships: Building trust and collaboration with commercial stakeholders fosters deeper connections. This is particularly important in situations where stakeholders may have conflicting priorities or expect swift, effective solutions to pressing challenges.
Enabling innovation and adaptability: Working closely with stakeholders provides insights into industry trends, enabling learning functions to innovate and adapt training programs to meet changing needs.
Strategic partnerships go beyond merely attending meetings or completing tasks. It involves active engagement, intentional actions, and relationship building. Here are some key aspects:
Proactive involvement and alignment: Being part of a strategic partnership starts with proactively identifying opportunities to engage early in key projects, meetings and initiatives. Learning professionals, like effective salespeople, must ask questions to better understand the issues and gain alignment on how learning can help address the desired behavior change.
Building trust and credibility: Establishing trust is a cornerstone of successful partnerships. Trust is built by consistently delivering high-quality learning solutions, showcasing expertise in adult learning principles and demonstrating a deep understanding of clinical data and instructional design.
Tailoring content and context: Stakeholders often expect clarity around what they “need to know” versus what they “want to know.” Overwhelming learners with too much information and not providing the context for how to use it with customers results in missed opportunities for effective engagement. For life sciences learning teams, this means providing focused content that is actionable and relevant.
Creating a value-driven narrative: Storytelling plays a pivotal role in stakeholder engagement. Learning teams are instrumental in setting up field-based employees to effectively deliver the product and company’s value-based proposition. This means ensuring there is a deep understanding of marketings’ brand goals and helping field-based teams utilize stories that disrupt and reinforce the customers’ thinking.
Here are practical examples that showcase the impact of strategic partnerships in life sciences learning:
Collaborative content development: One organization wanted to accelerate time to competency and reduce home-based learning. By streamlining the disease state and product curriculum from four to three weeks, learners had time for more field-based shadowing and other sales and marketplace skill development. This approach highlights the importance of collaboration in simplifying content delivery.
Leveraging expertise: A successful partnership requires expertise. For instance, learning teams must master clinical data, instructional design and adult learning principles to deliver impactful training that focuses on application. Additionally, aligning these skills with stakeholder priorities ensures that training programs resonate with diverse audiences.
Proactive communication: Strategic partnerships thrive on consistent communication. By proactively sharing achievements and updates, teams can maintain alignment and close the loop on agreements. This builds trust and accountability while reinforcing the perception of training as an indispensable organizational function.
Despite its importance, establishing strategic partnerships comes with challenges. Stakeholders may have conflicting priorities, limited resources or varying levels of engagement. To overcome these hurdles, learning teams should focus on:
Early alignment: Engage stakeholders at the beginning of projects to set clear goals and objectives.
Continuous improvement: Evaluate and refine learning solutions based on feedback and performance metrics.
Resilience and creativity: Stay adaptable to address evolving needs while fostering innovation.
Strategic partnerships are the lifeblood of a successful life sciences learning function. They ensure alignment with business goals, elevate training outcomes and foster trust and collaboration. By earning a seat at the table, proactively engaging with stakeholders and demonstrating expertise, learning teams become indispensable contributors to organizational success.
As learning professionals, being curious coupled with a mindset focused on building partnerships allows a life sciences learning function to achieve its mission: empowering individuals, enhancing performance and driving success across the organization.
It’s not just about delivering content – it’s about shaping the future of the industry through collaboration, innovation and leadership.
Wendy Heckelman, Ph.D., is president and founder of WLH Consulting and Learning Solutions. Email her at wendy@wlhconsulting.com or connect through linkedin.com/in/wendy-l-heckelman-phd.
Tianna Tye is a consultant for WLH Consulting & Learning. Email her at tianna@wlhconsulting.com or connect through linkedin.com/in/tiannatye.
