You know that feeling at the end of a long day when you’ve been in back-to-back meetings, responded to a string of messages, followed up on three different stakeholder requests, and yet somehow, you can’t quite put your finger on what you achieved?
This isn’t poor time management. It’s what happens when everything feels equally important.
At the recent LTEN conference, one theme kept surfacing in almost every conversation we had. The pharma landscape is getting harder to navigate. Resources are tightening. Access to stakeholders is more limited than before, and the range of topics covered is growing, with conversations on AI, product pipeline and study opportunities the norm.
And yet, the expectations on medical affairs, commercial, and market access teams to do more, influence more, and provide more, keep rising, particularly for medical affairs and commercial teams who are navigating increasing complexity across stakeholders and priorities.
This is exactly where life sciences learning and development must evolve, helping teams build the skills to prioritize, focus, and drive meaningful impact, not just activity.
The challenge most people faced wasn’t knowing what to do. It was knowing what to do first.
Think about the decisions you make before 10am on any given day:
These aren’t small decisions. They quietly shape whether you create real impact or just create activity, a tension that is particularly pronounced for medical affairs and commercial teams balancing scientific, strategic, and customer-facing demands.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: for most of us, the real risk isn’t doing too little. It’s prioritizing the things that don’t add value or make a difference to you, the enterprise, or your stakeholders.
When everything feels important, we can lose focus on what matters most. We may stay busy, but it becomes harder to point to any real achievements. You end up with a full calendar and a nagging feeling of not bringing the value you know you can.
That’s why leading organizations are investing in life sciences learning and development programs that go beyond knowledge-sharing and focus on building real-world decision-making capabilities.
With that in mind, ask yourself honestly: How intentional am I really being about where I spend my time?
The highest performing individuals and teams we observe share one habit: They don’t measure success by how many meetings they have or how many requests they respond too. They measure it by contribution, a shift that is critical for medical affairs and commercial teams expected to demonstrate measurable impact.
Before your next meeting, ask yourself these 3 questions:
To help make those choices more consistently, there are 4 filters you can apply to any activity before you commit to it:
The reality? These questions aren’t always comfortable. They force you to re-evaluate relationships and interactions you might have been treating as fixed. But that’s the point. Real prioritization leads to tough choices and the ability to say no.
Embedding these types of frameworks into life sciences learning and development initiatives helps teams consistently focus on what drives value across medical affairs and commercial functions.
Focus on your value by prioritizing activities you can begin to positively impact both internal and external stakeholders.
Look at your diary and commitments for the upcoming month and challenge yourself to apply the above filters and decide:
This exercise is a great first step toward creating more opportunities to make an impact on both internal and external stakeholders.
Explore how our life sciences learning and development programs help medical affairs and commercial teams build the capabilities needed to prioritize effectively, drive impact, and perform at their highest level.
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