North American biopharmaceutical company: Clearer decision rights, bolder decisions

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Decision Effectiveness

As it moved from clinical research towards selling its first products, a biopharmaceutical company found its decision-making could not keep pace. We clarified who could decide what and pushed authority down to the teams doing the work, improving productivity by up to 200% and cutting the number of decisions pushed up to the top.

Outcome 1: Productivity improved by up to 200%
Outcome 2: Decisions escalated to the senior executive team fell significantly
Outcome 3: Several drug programmes advanced at once, each with clear ownership

The challenge

A North American biopharmaceutical company moving from clinical research towards commercial selling found its decision-making could not keep up. Meetings were overcrowded, decisions needed full agreement from everyone, and routine issues were regularly pushed up to the senior executive team. With several drug programmes running at once and fixed regulatory deadlines, slow decisions were costing real money.

The risk was delayed regulatory filings, slower entry to market and lower profit, not because of any weakness in the science, but because the way the organisation made decisions could not move at the speed the programmes demanded.

The approach

Working with the senior executive team and development leaders, we designed a new operating model with clear decision rights handed to the product development teams themselves. We equipped those team leaders to act as genuine decision-makers rather than run status updates, and a steering group, led jointly with leadership, cleared cross-team obstacles as they arose.

The impact

Productivity improved by up to 200%. Decisions were made faster and with more confidence, and far fewer were pushed up to the senior executive team. Several programmes advanced in parallel with clear ownership, and the culture shifted from avoiding risk towards bold, accountable decision-making.