It’s always a good day when you get to play with Legos, and it’s an added bonus when you get to do it while working. At the recent Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) meeting, I attended a workshop on the “Best practices for building and leading medical affairs in a resource-constrained environment.” The workshop faculty included Rachel Leder Couchenour, Marianne Kenny, PharmD, and Melissa Wanner, PharmD, who brought their extensive experience to the conversation about building for launch with limited resources to optimize patient outcomes. Using a case study, we built the strategy using different colored Legos represented the many medical affairs activities, with the number of Legos selected for each color representing the budget we allocated to each activity. As you can imagine, there was spirited discussion about what to prioritize and the level of funding based on the participants’ experience and expertise.
We worked as a team, shared our perspectives, listened to others, and made the best decision(s) in the time allotted. Here are my takeaways:
· In this fast-paced environment, trade-off decisions are required.
· If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.
· Listening to others, we all gained wisdom.
· The budget only goes so far! Ensure you consider immediate needs but give thought to the investments that will impact your long-term strength.
The leadership team may need to enlist help through outsourcing if it’s not time to build the team. There are various outsourcing models available based on your needs and strategies. The facilitators did a nice job outlining the various approaches they’ve used providing examples of where outsourcing supported their success.
As a Medical Science Liaison (MSL), you may not be involved in these decisions, but you play a critical role in their success based on your support for those decisions. Part of the art of having impact as an MSL is to understand the strategic priorities and align your execution in the field to deliver results aligned. Demonstrate your value while working within those priorities. Provide feedback (with solutions!) based on your insights from the field but avoid pulling attention away from the priorities once they are set.
Our discussion led to a pile of disorganized, individual Legos organized into a thoughtful (and colorful) structure that represented our team’s thoughts about strategy.
How have you used your field experience to support the needs of the medical affairs team in a resource constrained environment?