CoverStory
Jim Collins, in his book “Built to Last,” uses the concept of building clocks as a metaphor to describe building companies and organizations that don’t rely on a single person to drive success. He proposes that instead of relying on a time teller, organizations must build clocks or systems to distribute knowledge.
The goal of building a clock is to design a system that can be repeated over time so that as people and time tellers move on, the systems remain. Most importantly to the business case we’ll explore today, we want people to look for a clock before asking what time it is and to empower our teams and businesses to adjust the time.
The true power of clocks is their scalability; one person doesn’t call the shots and make decisions, clocks are shared across an entire team or organization. Clocks are efficient and consistent, they are a representation of our humility and they don’t ever have all the answers.
Learning and development (L&D) too often falls into the trap of being reactive and solving symptoms for training needs. In other words, we are eloquent time tellers. But I argue that to flip the script from training provider to business partner in the organizations we serve today, it’s time for us to become master clock builders. Let me take you behind the scenes to a business case of clock building but first let me set the stage.
At AstraZeneca we are transforming the future of healthcare by unlocking the power of what science can do, for people, society and the planet. By 2030, we aim to launch at least 20 new medicines. With an ambition of this magnitude, our workforce is in a constant state of change transformation; central to this work is the evolving U.S. Biopharmaceuticals Learning Team, a pillar of the Innovation and Business Excellence (IBEX) function.
We are an integrated medical, market access and sales L&D organization charged to build bridges between business strategy, goals and execution to elevate human and business performance. We build innovative and tailored learning solutions with diagnostics to drive business growth and continuously lift capability. Collectively, we have the privilege to lead meaningful innovation, grow hearts and minds and meet the challenges of our business and patients as a proactive learning organization that partners to drive business outcomes.
For the entire learning team, the calling to do this work is palpable and mission-driven, both individually and collectively. As humans we understand the calling and deeply feel the magnitude of the change transformation muscles required by each of us to look the mission straight in the eye, and instead of reacting, lead. We know it is hard, worthwhile and at the other end of our work sit patients who need our medicines.
Below I’ll walk you through a live, ever-evolving business case grounded in a few core lessons:
As L&D professionals, never underestimate the magnitude of a change transformation as we move ourselves, our teams and our business to build enterprise clocks rather than tell time.
Never forget our calling to drive human-centered work with humility and drive, that elevates individual and business performance. Our work is truly about leading others on a journey, as our businesses carry ever-evolving destinations in a perpetually changing world.
To shape the direction of the business and translate learning into results, we were given the concrete challenge by our leader, Miroslav Sokolov, vice president of innovation and business excellence, to develop an ongoing enterprise capability uplift program.
We would need to use design thinking to conceptualize an iterative process that would understand learners (our leadership and sales representative teams), challenge assumptions and redefine problem solving. Then, of course, we’d need to design a prototype and test. We had a rapid timeline for design, build and execution of approximately four months.
We imagined a predictable rhythm and practice arena for our field-facing teams to address the ever-evolving healthcare landscape and our own business challenges, launches and change. We contemplated the scale of the organization and the diversity of our portfolio with futuristic thinking. Key requirements were a measurement strategy to enable data-based decision making, collectively with the broad-brush stroke of a national view, team view and the precision detail of personal performance.
With these foundations in mind, the Sales Excellence Academy concept was born. This enterprise capability development program for our field teams provides the foundation for them to evaluate, elevate and continually drive human and business performance.
We set out to create an environment where our field leadership and representatives will:
Establish a baseline understanding of clinical and brand messaging fluency aligned with brand strategy.
Strengthen coaching or selling skills collaboratively in experiential simulations
Embrace an ongoing environment for incremental growth that will drive human and business performance of their sales teams
With the ideation and vision in place, we needed to rapidly find a business leader who would partner with us on priority business needs, trust us to deliver a prototype program to their leadership team and agree to be a shared stakeholder in the potential of the academy. Michael Hartman, executive business director, accepted the challenge. He leads the largest selling team in our business with more than 1,100 sales representatives, with dual product responsibilities, and we couldn’t have found a better partner, business case or leadership team to work with on the prototype.
Collectively, we agreed that his second- and first-line leadership team would be the first to experience and partner with us on the program. We agreed to start with a large group, by design, with 120 first-line sales leaders and 13 second-line leaders, energized by the challenge that if the program prototype could sustain this learner group, smaller teams would be more simplistic.
We had the makings for clock building — a vision to build a system that could be repeated over time, a business case that would show scalability aligned to business performance, a shared effort that would involve a large team of humans, both from our learning team and together, and set out to build a model that would enable data-based decisions in a consistent and efficient way.
There is a large universe between a vision and execution. We should not underestimate managing, leading, transforming and navigating this large expanse as an L&D team, a business team and individuals — all while pressing the boundaries, all while clock building.
With a vision established, we needed a framework that was non-negotiable but would allow customization to come to life across the complexity of our portfolio, from primary care to advanced specialty products, landscapes and teams. We needed a framework built out of clay that would accommodate the customization and complexity of our diverse portfolio. Strategy and operations both sit in clock design and time after time, they’ll challenge design thinking in the best way possible.
On paper, what you are about to read seems overly simplistic, but is grounded in both formative and summative assessment, predictable scaffolding and experiential learning design. What is not on paper is the complexity of change for a learning organization to be proactive in inspection, the newness of setting the stage for a required practice arena, the establishing of all processes for holistic data collection, the creation of a measurement strategy, a communications campaign, managing brand priorities in the flow of the work, operations for a program of this scale and partnership required of an IT organization on system design.
Most of all, what is not on paper is the determination and resiliency of the humans that delivered and participated in the inaugural design, build and delivery of the program. They built, held and placed the intricate pieces of each part of the clock, all working together with an intense deadline, expectation and spirit.
The framework design of the SEA is profoundly simplistic:
A sales leader or representative demonstrates fluent mastery of their brand strategy using business resource tools. They do so by video submission to their leader. The video is assessed based on business priorities and scored using a provided rubric. A portfolio knowledge assessment is also taken to ensure alignment to changing business and access needs.
Coaching or selling simulations are observed in a controlled environment using pre-designed scenarios aligned to brand strategy, performance opportunity or market access challenges. Individuals can see, watch and do in the simulations — the golden learning trifecta. Evaluation takes place in the controlled environment using a provided rubric.
The rubric provides intel back to the core data lake and dashboards are provided to all participants.
The data lake informs national, team and personal performance against the measurement standards.
With this, development and action planning strategies for business, team and individual performance is data driven, anchored to business strategy supports the delivery of performance goals.
Using the framework, and through the grit and brilliance of the team, cross-functional partners and business leaders, the inaugural Sales Excellence Academy was a success. The technology worked, the content was aligned with business strategy, the data provided value and the development planning that followed yielded national meeting workshops aligned to the outputs of the initiative. Some 120 first-line leaders joined forces in simulations with the support of their second-line leaders as coaches paired with experts in coaching and selling excellence from the learning team.
The most profound feedback was provided to us —“that was the best development experience of my career.” We celebrated, we took a victory lap; we were in the clock-making business of creating a repeatable, ongoing capability uplift system. We could identify root causes and powerful insights with this model and support business performance.
It’s tempting to focus only on the clock we built, but to do so would overlook the very real resistance that surfaced along the way. Change at this scale is never just operational, it’s personal, emotional and often uncomfortable. Many teams weren’t just learning a new program, they were being asked to work, lead and think differently.
Like any early timekeeping device, the first version required care, interpretation and guidance. In truth, it was more like a sundial, requiring us to help others see how to read it and trust in what it revealed.
What changed the game wasn’t the mechanism alone, but how we invited our partners into its construction. We didn’t just hand over a clock, we made it together. When people help build the sundial, they notice the shadow differently. They adjust with us. They see what time it is and why.
That sense of co-creation gave us traction, not only to launch, but to evolve. And that’s how resistance turned into ownership.
From a learning perspective, the insights surfacing from this experience are the kind professionals dream of. We often ask how a learning intervention truly impacts business outcomes. With the Sales Excellence Academy, we’re answering that, not just with feedback, but with behavioral data and deep-rooted shifts in how leaders coach and perform. Thanks to our amazing team and strong partnership with the marketing and sales teams that brought this inaugural program to fruition. Their tenacity and spirit of excellence was the magic behind the making of a scalable clock, an enterprise program that will stand the test of time.
If this first iteration was our sundial, something crafted with care, requiring participation and shared understanding, then we’re well on our way to building atomic clocks. Clocks that don’t just reflect the time but calibrate it. Clocks that don’t need us to interpret, because they’re embedded into the operating system of the business itself.
The sundial taught us alignment, the atomic clock will teach us acceleration.
Most importantly, we learned that when we build the clock together, we don’t just see the time, we move in rhythm. As a team, we are leading the way together.
Courtney Michener Miller is head of commercial learning for AstraZeneca and a member of the LTEN Board of Directors. Email her at courtney.michener@astrazeneca.com or connect through linkedin.com/in/courtneymichenermiller.
