Are Your Medical Affairs Teams Siloed? The Cost Of Silos And How To Break Them Down.
There is a lot of focus on cross-functional silos within Pharma - Marketing/Medical/Sales not sharing insights or communicating their priorities. The result - teams take longer to achieve their objectives, the team dynamic isn’t really there, stumbling blocks appear late in the project, people are left feeling frustrated and disengaged. With the focus on cross-functional interactions how often do you check in to see how your Medical Affairs team interacts?
Within a Medical Affairs team or department isolation or silos can drift by somewhat unnoticed as the Medical Affairs team members sit on different brand teams.Medical Advisors/Managers/MSLs can be so busy with their own workload and projects they don’t have the time to connect with their colleagues. Departmental meetings may be de-prioritised due to time constraints. The result is that opportunities for learning, sharing best practice and support can be lost. Individuals can feel isolated and unsupported especially if they are the lone Medical voice on a brand team. With an increasingly hybrid and remote work-force or teams spread across different geographies, new starts in particular may find it harder to find their feet or know who to turn to for advice.
How To Break Down Silos
To build a strong medical community or increase engagement at Medical Affairs team meetings people need to feel invested and gain value from their interactions.
A simple first step to address this is to ensure that the team have a clear aligned purpose and ample opportunities to learn from each other.
Build team culture by creating a team vision and purpose.
Build Team Culture:
Create a team charter and purpose.
Get the team to draft the vision for the Medical team.
What is it that you as a group want to achieve?
How will you show up for each other?
Foster Learning And Community:
Ask team members to share best practice with each other.
The value here is that potential synergies or collaboration between team members may occur. Inspiration and learnings on how to address problems can be shared by colleagues reducing time wasted and embedding best practice.
Take time together as a team.
Create a team purpose, ensure there are regular opportunities for everyone to meet, communicate and to share value.
Provide group training opportunities
Providing training opportunities for the whole team allows team members to upskill together, be on the same page regarding their approach and the shared learnings can enhance the takeaways from the training.
Provide opportunities for your Medical Team to share and develop.
The Impact
We have seen this first hand, both with our Wolf Medical workshops and our Medical Affairs Group Programme where Medical teams come together and learn to approach the development of their Medical Strategic plan, tactical implementation and how to demonstrate impact in the same way. It stimulates discussion and debate between more experienced and newer team members on how to approach issues, in a safe and supportive environment.
The result - an aligned approach and mindset across the Medical Team which can support cross-functional conversations across the organisation. This results in a feeling of community and team members will feel more supported and engaged. It supports the growth and development of team members.
Partner With Wolf Medical
Whether you want to unlock the potential of your Medical Affairs team through an aligned team vision, shared understanding on approaching challenges facing Medical Affairs, or an aligned approach to strategy and demonstrating impact contact us today for a complimentary discovery call or email us on info@wolfmedical.ie. Let's work together to elevate your Medical Affairs capabilities.
