Let’s Talk – Networking Sessions

In this session, we’ll explore how teams can stay aligned and move forward when leadership priorities and the external landscape shift faster than the plan.

In biotech and pharma, business objectives are typically set around December and January to guide the year ahead. These objectives help teams align with company strategy, stay motivated, and focus their efforts. They’re often endorsed by the board, tracked throughout the year, and directly tied to end-of-year remuneration.

But in reality, within weeks of setting them, the world can change: new data, competitor moves, or a change in leadership direction can make carefully crafted objectives feel outdated. Teams are expected to pivot and adapt, but the official objectives can be slow to follow, sometimes remaining unchanged for months, or even the entire year.

So, what happens then?

• Do rigid objectives hold organisations back?
• Can teams stay motivated when their goals no longer fit the reality they face?
• When is it appropriate to stop being loyal to the original plan?

Key focus areas:

• How teams can balance alignment to objectives with adaptation to new data, shifting priorities and important external events
• Practical approaches that can be used by project leaders to communicate evolving priorities to their teams and raise the issue of outdated objectives to senior leadership and governance bodies
• What project leaders can do to keep teams engaged and accountable when outdated objectives affect morale and performance
• Whether project teams should rewrite their own objects when company objectives become outdated