From Priorities To Practice: Supporting Your MSL Teams To Execute With Confidence

 

A Playbook For Medical Affairs Leaders

Following kick-offs and vision setting meetings – February often feels like the time when the gap between strategy and reality is felt.

Priorities are clear. Messaging is aligned and plans are in motion. Yet, early signs of misalignment can show up quickly: 

• Teams interpret priorities differently 
• The scientific narrative drifts in the field 
• Insights capture varies in quality 
• Confidence and field-readiness varies across individuals and regions

 

Strategy does not become actionable only because it is communicated well; it succeeds when it translates to consistent field behavior. 

 

The Strategy Cascade Challenge 

They are mostly built around: 

• Slides 
• Briefings 
• FAQs 
• Key messages  

 

And the hope that consistency follows. 

The Medical Affairs landscape in the life sciences industry, however, is judgement heavy. Your team is not just sharing a script and following talking points, they’re executing high-level decision making in real time: 

• How to explain evidence with confidence 
• How to navigate scientific uncertainty while keeping maintaining rapport and trust 
• How to probe, clarify and dig deeper under challenges 
• How to identify what is an insight vs just information 

 

That’s why strategy must always be filtered through the lens of the capability layer too: shared judgement, practiced. 

 

The Strategy Cascade Solution 

Across organizations, leaders who build the strongest foundations for the year, do three things around this time: 

1. Translate priorities into observable behaviors – defining what this looks like in the field is key here: 

• Each MSL can deliver a 60 second scientific narrative clearly 
• We respond to difficult questions using a replicable framework 
• We capture insights with consistent quality signals 

 

When you can observe it, you can measure it and scale it 

 

2. Identify and align to shared “gold-standard” practices – teams move fast when they have examples of: 

• Great quality actionable insights write-ups 
• Strong responses to challenging questions 
• What excellence looks like in the field with real world, applicable examples

 

This reduces the cross-region and team variation and builds confidence quickly 

 

3. Build confidence through facilitated practice; this approach gives teams: 

• A safe space to rehearse and fail when the stakes aren’t as high 
• Peer learning 
• Rapid calibration on “what good looks like” across the team 
• Consistent framework that is real-world applicable for your organization, not one size fits all 

 

Not more information, more space to practice. 

 

Team Skill Kickstart – Use this to generate conversation in your next team meeting 

Run a 60-minute “Strategy to Skill” activation session to create shared judgement and shared practice 

Agenda: 

1. Reconfirm the year’s top priorities (10 mins) 
2. Agree on what excellence looks like in the field (15 mins) 
3. Practice 2-3 real world scenarios as a team (25 mins) 
4. Commit to 1 team action or habit for the next 30 days (10 mins)