In life science, heavy regulation is a major necessary challenge. To ensure safety, this environment can inhibit agility, and thus, limit innovation. The truth is, there are ways to think with an agile mindset even in a highly regulated industry. It simply takes an understanding of when to integrate agile thinking, practice, and alignment. Our client, a major, multinational pharmaceutical company, works with us to develop their High Potential R&D professionals into leaders with agility. This fosters innovation and creativity. Professionals in R&D find agile thinking freeing once they get to practice in a risk-free environment.
Celemi business simulations are easily integrated into high potential career programs because of the ability to weave various leadership concepts into the business simulation, creating a cohesive learning journey to practice skills. In this major, multinational pharmaceutical company, new cohorts go through a 12-week HIPO program every six months. They begin with leadership training on emotional intelligence and psychological safety that was developed within the organization. Next, they experience the CELEMI Agile Move™ simulation. The KPI within CELEMI Agile Move™ are Customer Value, Team Satisfaction, Speed, and Value for Effort. Cohorts not only practice using an agile mindset through challenges in the simulation; they also practice emotional intelligence and psychological safety though teamwork and feedback on KPI. The next step in their journey is applying the knowledge learned to real challenges at work. Celemi developed the application exercises to drive desired behaviors back on the job.
Celemi created application exercises for individuals within the cohort to turn the learning into action back on the job.
Here is an example: I am involved in an initiative with a cross-functional team to improve an existing business process usually done manually using AI. One challenge is to balance how individualized the design and how automatic the process can be.When I anticipate the impact on KPI, if we make the design very individualized, it will provide flexibility and fit individual program needs better. The team will need to work a lot harder to incorporate more features and collect more input to cover all bases. It will probably take longer to implement if it can be done at all. However, if we made the design more automatic or program-agnostic, it may not be able to accommodate programs that are different. The team may deliver a usable but sometimes useless product, and the timeline will be met sooner. Thus, I need more information to fine-tune the product design features among designers/users and capability of the implementation team.
The individual then cited agile principles used both to weigh the plan and throughout the project. Uncovering this crossroads through training was a valuable insight that has now been converted into an initiative for the project. Thus, this organization is closer to achieving business value on this project.