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When strategy meets reality, execution often falters – not because teams lack capability, but because they lack the right conditions to unlock it. In Insocius’ 13 years of partnering with pharmaceutical leaders, we’ve discovered that organisations struggling with operating model challenges almost always have the solutions within their teams, they just need the right conditions to unlock them.
The hidden capability gap
Most pharmaceutical companies respond to operating model friction by bringing in external frameworks or imposing new structures. But we’ve learned that sustainable transformation happens differently. When we worked with a global pharmaceutical company whose medical affairs function had lost its way, the breakthrough didn’t come from our recommendations – it came from unlocking the solution the team already knew, but couldn’t articulate or act upon.
The global team understood their science. The country teams knew their market needs. Leadership grasped the commercial imperative. The challenge was creating space for these perspectives to connect and co-create the solution.
The co-active principle in practice
We apply a core, co-active coaching principle to organisational transformation: teams are inherently creative, and resourceful. They have everything they need to forge a path forward – they just need the right process and facilitation to get there.
This shows up in our work when we see teams who get stuck and can’t talk to each other because of complexities and politics. The solution isn’t always more structure or clearer processes – sometimes, it’s about creating safe space for authentic dialogue about what’s really happening and what could work better.
Why external solutions don’t always stick
Traditional consulting methods or top-down directives often fail in highly matrixed pharmaceutical organisations because they overlook an important truth: complex, regulated industries require nuanced solutions that fit the specific culture, constraints and capabilities of each organisation. When teams co-create their own answers, they naturally design around these realities.
We’ve seen this often when clients come to us after working with large consultancy groups. The operating model looked the right solution on paper, but the reality is that in practice, the model still doesn’t work. The missing element? The teams who had to live with the model every day weren’t part of creating it.
The acceleration effect
We find that co-creation doesn’t mean slower progress – it means sustainable speed. When teams discover their own solutions through guided facilitation, implementation happens naturally because ownership is built in from the start. There’s often less need for a drawn out change management phase because change was co-designed by those who need to live it.
This is why we are able to move quickly with clients. We’re not convincing people to adopt external recommendations – we’re helping them discover and implement what they already know needs to happen in the current set-up of their organisation.
Creating the conditions
The question for pharmaceutical leaders isn’t whether your teams have the answers – they do. The question is whether you’re creating the conditions for those answers to emerge and connect across your organisation.
This requires leaders who can facilitate rather than direct, who can ask powerful questions rather than provide all the answers, and who can create psychological safety for teams to surface what’s really happening beneath the surface and feel able to put forward solutions.
The path forward
Successful operating model transformation in pharmaceuticals isn’t necessarily about implementing best practices – it can be about unlocking best thinking from the people who know your business, your challenges and your possibilities better than anyone.
The organisations that get this right don’t just solve their current operating model challenges – they build the capability to continuously evolve and optimise as their environment changes. And in pharmaceuticals, change is the one constant everyone can count on.