Time to assess Progress versus the Plan — Transforming Strategic Vision into Execution Excellence Through the 3C’s

As the first quarter of 2025 wraps up, organizations in the life sciences industry are pausing to evaluate their progress against annual objectives. Effective execution is not just about strategy; it fundamentally hinges on effective and compliant field force collaboration. When reviewing effectiveness, leadership typically focuses on metrics such as customer engagement, messaging delivery, and adherence to activities.  These tactical measures miss a deeper issue—the lack of cohesive and compliant collaboration between teams.

Root Causes of Execution Failures
Our experience working with dozens of life sciences organizations reveals that the missing component and often a major barrier to effective execution lies in how teams collaborate across functions and departments.  Questions such as, “are teams meeting key performance indicators?” are valid; however, the overlooked barrier is often how departments and roles work together to support execution effectively.

Looking Beyond the Surface:

When evaluating performance, leadership teams typically focus on examining what their customer-facing teams are doing:

• Are they seeing the right customers with the right frequency?
• Are they delivering the right messages?
• Are they using approved materials?
• Are they implementing the assigned activities?
• Are they meeting key performance indicators?

These questions are important and they need to be asked and answered.  However, while these tactical execution questions are the most common places that we look when evaluating execution, there is a key component that often gets missed.

The Achilles’ Heel: Missing the “How” of Execution

In today’s increasingly complex healthcare marketplace, customer consolidation and stakeholder interconnectivity have created a multi-dimensional environment that requires sophisticated engagement strategies. The days of siloed approaches and singular customer relationships have given way to intricate networks of decision makers and influencers spanning multiple departments and roles.

Successfully navigating this complexity demands a combination of customer-facing and internal roles working together seamlessly to create meaningful customer experiences and achieve desired business outcomes. Yet, many organizations continue to operate in functional silos, with limited cross-team collaboration and coordination.

The 3C’s Framework: Your Execution Excellence Blueprint

Through our extensive work with pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies, we have identified three critical factors that consistently differentiate high-performing organizations from their peers. We call this the “3C’s Framework” – a powerful lens for examining and enhancing execution capabilities:

1. Collaboration: As you review performance, examine how effectively your cross-functional teams are working together. Are your market access specialists, sales representatives, medical affairs professionals, and marketing teams truly aligning their efforts, or are they operating independently with minimal interaction? With today’s healthcare ecosystem requiring coordinated touchpoints across multiple stakeholders, genuine collaboration across roles has become non-negotiable.

Questions to consider:

• Do team members have clarity around each other’s’ roles (who is responsible for what)?
• Do team members actively seek input from colleagues in other functions?
• Is there a culture of shared accountability for customer outcomes?
• Are teams incentivized to compliantly collaborate across functional boundaries?

2. Coordination: Evaluate how well your teams synchronize their activities across different stakeholders and channels. Is your customer engagement strategy coordinated across medical science liaisons, key account managers, sales representatives, and other roles (reimbursement, nurse educators)? Effective coordination creates clear “swim lanes” that eliminate redundancy and confusion while ensuring comprehensive stakeholder coverage.  In today’s environment, where access has become even more limited, effective coordination is a strategic imperative.  Additionally, it is important to consider what the negative implications here may be related to customer experience and team performance if coordination is not smooth.

Questions to consider:

• Are customer interactions planned and executed in a coordinated fashion?
• Do team members have visibility into each other’s engagement calendars and priorities?
• Is there a mechanism for addressing and resolving conflicts?

3. Communication: Assess communication patterns both internally and externally. Are insights from customer interactions being effectively shared upstream and across teams? Clear, bi-directional communication ensures market and customer insights inform strategy adjustment and team alignment.

Questions to consider:

• How efficiently does information flow between field team members?  Between field teams and headquarters?
• Are there established channels for sharing customer insights across functions?
• Does leadership communicate strategic priorities consistently and transparently?

Moving Forward: Your Execution Enhancement Plan

Many successful organizations view this time of year not just as a performance checkpoint, but as a learning opportunity to refine how teams execute. By applying the 3C’s framework, you can transform your execution capacity and unlock the full potential of your strategic vision.

Consider these immediate next steps:

1. Conduct a 3C’s assessment to identify specific collaboration, coordination, and communication gaps
2. Prioritize 2-3 key improvement opportunities based on potential business impact
3. Develop an action plan with clear owners and timelines
4. Establish measurement criteria to track progress and effectiveness

Is your organization struggling with the execution gap? Our 3C’s workshop has helped dozens of life sciences companies strengthen their collaboration, coordination, and communication capabilities to accelerate commercial performance. Contact us today to learn how we can enhance your team’s strategic execution capabilities and ensure your Q2-Q4 performance exceeds expectations.