Way back over a decade ago, when I was still working with a vendor company, we ended up involved in a project that started taking on water and sinking fast.
The main reason why? Company failure to effectively on-board a new training manager.
This high-profile, pre-launch project was not with some small-time startup pharma. It was with a division of a major drug company. And there was a perfect storm of circumstances that propelled this project toward disaster.
This learning system initiative was begun with one trainer heading up this department, who then was cycled to a new position. A new trainer was brought on board from the field, who had no prior experience in training.
Or managing projects.
Or working with vendors.
And whose on-boarding (if there was any) didn’t even include awareness of the headquarters Medical/Legal/Regulatory review process!
Rough waters? Oh, it gets worse.
This drug was a co-promote with a startup that had never commercialized a product before, but which had its say in any kind of training and messaging to be developed!
Needless to say, this effort devolved into a navigational nightmare. It was not at all clear how were going to arrive at a safe destination.
Perhaps it was a mercy that the drug was ultimately not approved by the FDA.
Many vendor/partners have similar stories they can tell. A lack of best practices in project and vendor management can lead to very expensive mistakes and inefficiencies.
While there are many lessons to be learned from this incident, one of the key ones for me was: companies need to quickly and pro-actively on-board their trainers with the skills and knowledge needed for their new set of responsibilities. This is a relatively small up-front investment with a huge ROI in role effectiveness.
I never forgot how disruptive the incomplete on-boarding training was to to this overwhelmed trainer as he faced a bunch of unfamiliar challenges. In fact, it was one of the incidents that led me to eventually develop the Impactiviti Project/Vendor Management workshop for life sciences trainers, which we’ve delivered for many training departments over the past years.
Costly disasters like this one are preventable. Contact Steve Woodruff at Impactiviti (973-947-7429; AskSteve@impactiviti.com) to discuss best practices in on-boarding your trainers, including the annual subscription to our Project/Vendor Management course (also available this spring in on-demand format!)
ALSO: Five Compelling Reasons to Provide Project Management Training
