Jonathan Kirschner

Drawing on 251 coaching engagements with senior leaders across pharma and biotech, this session offers a view no single case study can: what leaders are working on across the industry, how those priorities differ from every other sector, and what that says about what it takes to succeed here.

Learn why influence has overtaken communication as the top development priority for pharma leaders – the only sector in our data where that ranking is reversed – and what leading without authority actually requires. Understand why five of pharma's ten most-needed development priorities are inner-game skills like executive presence, confidence, and self-awareness, what that reveals about the leaders in your organization, and why these capabilities don't respond to traditional training.

This interactive Q&A examines the tension at the heart of enterprise L&D design: how to achieve scale and consistency without losing the local relevance that makes learning land. Drawing on both the centralization journey and the global-local operating model approaches explored in the Discover sessions, participants will examine how AI, governance, and platform decisions interact to determine whether L&D becomes a genuine enterprise growth engine or a well-intended but underutilized function.

Where does the balance between central standardization and local autonomy typically break down, and how do you reset it?

• How do you build AI-enabled learning capabilities in a large organization without creating new silos?
• What governance structures enable both enterprise consistency and affiliate responsiveness?
• How do you calculate and communicate the ROI of L&D investment in language that CFOs and business leaders find credible?