This case study demonstrates how The Big Picture program transformed a pharmaceutical organization’s approach to collaboration. The program helped their team evolve beyond traditional coordination to true partnership, enabling them to overcome complex challenges and deliver tangible business results.
By combining training sessions with practical application and long-term habit-building, the program ensured that new skills were consistently applied in daily work, resulting in sustained behavior change and improved performance.
The insights shared in this case study come from participant feedback collected during the program and in-depth interviews conducted seven months after completion, revealing both immediate impact and sustainable change.
Note: This case study has been summarized from our work with a Medical Affairs team in the pharmaceutical industry. While we’ve made it accessible for a general business audience, healthcare professionals can access the original, more technical Medical Affairs-specific version in our detailed Medical Affairs case study.
Key Business Outcomes
Participants reported several significant business achievements following the program:
- Breakthrough on a complex cross-functional project – Successfully influenced a key external stakeholder by coordinating multiple internal departments that had competing interests and priorities
- Improved stakeholder engagement – Identified and resolved communication breakdowns with an external partner, leading to consistent involvement in a critical external stakeholder process
- Enhanced customer education – Delivered coordinated messaging across product teams where previous fragmentation had created customer frustration
- Strengthened leadership capabilities – Developed enhanced stakeholder management and influencing skills, which enabled leaders to present their perspectives with greater clarity and impact
Case Study Overview
The remainder of this post explores the program’s impact through the following sections:
Individual and Team Development: The program fostered significant shifts in mindset, team cohesion, communication effectiveness, and leadership capabilities across the organization.
Tangible Business Impact: Participants achieved tangible results in cross-functional collaboration, customer engagement, stakeholder management, and strategic execution.
Keys to Sustainable Success: A structured approach to implementation ensured lasting behavior change through practical application, peer learning, and systematic reinforcement.
Summary: A concise synthesis of key findings and overall program impact, highlighting the connection between skill development and business outcomes.
What Senior Leaders Are Saying: Feedback from senior leaders who have worked with Mark Fourman on collaborative leadership initiatives.
Individual and Team Development
Participants experienced profound changes in how they approached their work:
Mindset Shift: From Reactive to Proactive
One team leader described a fundamental shift in perspective: “The most significant change has been the complete transformation in our team’s mindset. We’ve moved from feeling like victims and believing ‘we cannot change things’ to consistently asking ‘what opportunities do we have?’ This shift has empowered us to address longstanding challenges that we previously considered insurmountable.”
This proactive approach improved morale, enhanced problem-solving, and accelerated progress on strategic priorities.
Team Cohesion Through Better Understanding
The program strengthened team relationships by deepening understanding of different working styles and communication preferences. One participant noted: “Participating in the program together created a deeper understanding of how my colleagues approach problems and process information. This ‘teamwork muscle’ helps in everything we do, especially during high pressure periods.”
Teams demonstrated greater resilience when facing challenges, with members better able to understand colleagues’ reactions and respond constructively.
Enhanced Communication and Conflict Resolution
Participants continued applying practical conflict resolution tools months after program completion:
I now approach challenging conversations with a completely different mindset and toolkit. Recently, I was able to push back on a request in a fact-based, constructive way that maintained relationships while addressing the issue directly. This led to a collaborative solution where everyone aligned around a shared objective.
Leadership Development
Leaders reported significant improvements in:
- Establishing effective feedback mechanisms with their teams
- Reducing micromanagement tendencies
- Creating unified leadership voices across departments
One leader shared:
Previously, I felt powerless in presentations with competing agendas. The stakeholder mapping approach helps me understand each person’s perspective and tailor my communication accordingly. Now I can effectively present my insights while addressing the specific concerns of each function.
Tangible Business Impact
These new capabilities directly resulted in measurable business outcomes:
Cross-Functional Collaboration Success
One particularly complex example involved a challenging initiative requiring alignment across multiple functions. By applying stakeholder mapping tools and the influencing framework, a team leader transformed their approach:
The influencing framework was really helpful for presenting our perspectives with greater clarity and impact. It helped me understand stakeholders’ different needs and create alignment, bringing everyone together in a joint project where each person could feel, ‘Yes, now we are reaching a conclusion that works for all of us.’
Another success involved improving team involvement in a critical process managed by an external partner. Despite previous unsuccessful attempts to address a recurring issue, the team applied stakeholder mapping to identify root causes:
We found out that some of our feedback never reached the right person. We identified and contacted the responsible person directly, and we met to explain why our involvement was important. We clarified that we weren’t trying to do their job but that we could make the process much more impactful if we were involved.
This targeted approach solved a longstanding problem: “Now we are consistently involved in the initial project launch meetings, which changes the whole downstream effectiveness of each project.”
Enhanced Customer Engagement
A notable success involved coordinating customer-facing initiatives across product teams:
Our team successfully coordinated education topics across multiple product teams—something that had previously involved fragmented messages and customer frustration. By bringing diverse perspectives together through structured partnership discussions, we’ve created consistent, sequential engagement that builds understanding over time.
Improved Stakeholder Management
Participants developed stronger stakeholder alignment capabilities, particularly in:
- Coordinating different perspectives across functions
- Managing key relationship development
- Building influence across organizational boundaries
Strategic Planning and Execution
Teams demonstrated improved ability to:
- Set coordinated strategic goals
- Implement commitments consistently
- Track and measure progress effectively
Keys to Sustainable Success
The program’s unique approach ensured lasting behavior change through several key elements:
Practice-Based Support
The program was designed with structured, application-focused sessions. To ensure sustained impact, participants engaged in:
- Regular check-ins and progress reviews
- Peer learning and best practice sharing
- Digital coaching and real-time support
This multi-faceted approach ensured that new skills were not just learned but actively applied and refined over time.
Continuous Improvement and Peer Support
One team leader emphasized how the program’s practical structure ensured concepts were actively applied rather than remaining theoretical:
What made your program stand out was the practical implementation structure, where I consistently applied concepts to real projects and used reminders to track my progress. This practical approach made all the difference. It ensured that what we learned actually translated into genuine behavior change rather than becoming just another binder collecting dust on the shelf.
This systematic approach directly addressed the common challenge of training transfer, moving new skills beyond understanding to consistent application in daily work.
Implementation Challenges and Solutions
While the program created significant impact, participants naturally faced challenges in applying new approaches within their busy work environments:
It’s very easy to drop something in the day-to-day routine. We are very busy and there are a lot of processes to manage. To make the time to reflect on something like stakeholder mapping is really hard.
Participants successfully overcame these common implementation hurdles through practical strategies:
- Anchoring to existing habits – Integrating new tools into established routines
- Using challenges as catalysts – Applying new frameworks when faced with difficult situations
- Celebrating early successes – Creating momentum through shared wins
- Leveraging structured reminders – Using the program’s follow-up system to maintain focus
These approaches helped participants overcome implementation challenges, as they shared:
The hard part was taking that first significant step, but once we saw our first positive result, it validated the time investment and created momentum for further application.
By connecting the stakeholder mapping to my Monday planning routine, it became much easier to maintain. What started as an extra task is now just how we approach our work.
The structured reminders and peer accountability made all the difference. When everyone is applying the same tools and sharing their experiences, it creates a positive cycle of continuous improvement.
Summary
The Big Picture Program established a foundation of skills, mindsets, and practical approaches that translate into tangible business results. By guiding participants to immediately apply these capabilities to real business challenges, the program creates both individual growth and organizational impact.
The program’s emphasis on practical application supported by systematic reinforcement has been key to its effectiveness. Participants reported that regular check-ins and actionable frameworks helped them implement new approaches in their daily work, allowing them to solve long standing challenges in stakeholder management, cross-functional collaboration, and strategic implementation.
Seven months after the program, participants continue to apply and adapt the frameworks to meet new organizational challenges, demonstrating the program’s ability to create sustainable change in how teams operate and deliver value.
What Senior Leaders Are Saying
Mark Fourman designed and delivered a program that addressed our challenges head-on. The workshop equipped our team with practical frameworks for stakeholder mapping, influencing without authority, and organization-savvy prioritization. What set this experience apart was the focus on immediately applicable skills rather than abstract theory. I highly recommend Mark to any leader looking to expand their team’s influence and strategic impact across organizational boundaries. — SVP and Head of Data Science, Global Pharmaceutical Company
Mark Fourman has a remarkable ability to distill the latest behavioral science research into high-impact leadership behaviors. To ensure lasting behavior change, he created practical tools for leaders to use back at work. Two years after delivering the program, I encountered a senior administrator who had attended the training. She stopped me and said, “I’ve still got the skill card, and I’m about to use it!” I would wholeheartedly recommend his programs to any organization committed to enhancing team performance and cross-functional collaboration. — Senior Director, Talent and Organization Development, Columbia University Medical Center
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