7 ways business leaders can set manager expectations

Business leaders must continually ensure managers have a clear understanding of their organization's goals and what's expected of them. Every workforce management initiative must align with the company's strategic planning.

I was just reading a blog post about this from Mike Koper, Senior Projects Specialist for RWD’s Manufacturing group. (You might recall that RWD is one of our partners.)

Mike writes, "In general, leaders need to possess attributes of flexibility, agility and mastery of motivating the workforce through active engagement ... Leader’s communication must progressively articulate the challenge of the mission while accentuating the conditions. In short, leaders must ensure clarity of expectations."

Mike goes on to describe seven rules of engagement to help leaders communicate their organization's business objectives to managers and clearly set performance expectations. He also talks about how business leaders can determine whether their training and learning initiatives are aligned with their strategic planning initiatives.

His article is a good read for business leaders across industries, and underscores the importance of finding and creating organizational value through human capital management. What are your thoughts on Mike's advice? Agree, disagree?

How pharma and biotech have reacted to the recession

New reports are coming out on the effects of the recession on pharmaceuticals and biotech. And for a change, things aren't looking so grim. The world’s established biotech companies reached profitability for the first time in history in 2009, according to Ernst and Young's Beyond borders: global biotechnology report 2010.

However, companies continue to face a challenging funding climate, causing them to operate under what E&Y calls a "new normal." More analysis is in Ernst and Young's press release announcing the report findings, and one point in particular stood out for me.

"The biggest opportunities in this new normal will come from increasing efficiency: more efficient ways to fund innovation and achieve returns for investors, better outcomes for every dollar of health care spending, and more efficient R&D and operations at drug companies," states the release.

Maureen Martino also picked up on this point in her coverage of the report on FierceBiotech. I'd encourage you to give her article a read. In my opinion though, some biotechs began operating under this new normal before 2009. As I wrote in the comments on Maureen's article, some of them were using ProtoSphere to create high-performance virtual workplaces for global teaming.

These companies saw the trend to increase efficiency coming long before the economy flopped. We were already working together to get them communicating and collaborating in ProtoSphere to improve the productivity of their dispersed workforces. Today, biotech, pharma, and other life sciences companies alike are investing more in virtual collaboration.

Ernst and Young's report gives us an international view of the biotech industry. But it's also worthwhile to look at regional trends. Medical News Today published a good roundup of how the recession is affecting biotechs across the nation, looking at regions such as Illinois, Florida, and California.

There are some solid stats in there about jobs and growth. By and large, the numbers are showing increases in employment in most areas. However, one thing these companies shouldn't lose sight of is how to ensure their new and growing workforce is efficient and productive.

I explained this more in a comment on the article, but the gist is this: To really cut the cost of global collaboration, you've got to cut the cost of travel without cutting the ability to speed collaborative decision-making throughout the product lifecycle. That requires virtual collaborative workplaces. This is the impetus behind our new partnership with RWD.

So give Medical News Today's article a read-through, and then take a look at my thoughts. What's your opinion? For those of you in biotech and pharma, is your workforce growing? Are you putting plans in place to ensure teams can cost-effectively communicate and collaborate?

IBM's Cindy Skirvin joins our Executive Advisory Board

Cindy Skirvin

ProtonMedia's Executive Advisory Board is continuing to grow at a healthy clip. I'm very proud to announce that Cindy Skirvin is our latest member. She's the Partner of Strategy and Transformation Workforce and Talent Solutions for IBM Global Business Services. She joins Cisco’s Greg Pelton and Microsoft’s Sam Batterman around our advisory board table.

Cindy's sweet spot is deploying and running human capital management and corporate training and learning programs in life sciences. She's spent about 15 years consulting to organizations including Merck, Pfizer, Amgen, Abbott, and Johnson & Johnson. Having her on our board is an ideal fit for us, as we continue to develop ProtoSphere to meet the human capital management needs of life sciences companies.

If you're looking for more details on Cindy's background and what she'll be bringing to the table, take a peek at the press release we issued to announce Cindy's joining. We're also working on interviewing our new board members in turn, so watch the blog for that.

Welcome to the team, Cindy!

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ProtonMedia Adds IBM’s Cindy Skirvin to Executive Advisory Board

Partner at IBM Global Business Services will provide strategic insight into the continued development of ProtoSphere for helping enterprises improve human capital management

LANSDALE, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ProtonMedia, the developer of the ProtoSphere virtual collaboration environment for the high-performance workplace, today announced Cindy Skirvin has joined the company’s Executive Advisory Board. Skirvin is Partner of Strategy and Transformation Workforce and Talent Solutions for IBM Global Business Services.

How the ProtonMedia-RWD partnership will help companies improve human capital management

Yesterday you heard my take on our new partnership with RWD. We'll be working together to develop the first 3-D virtual collaborative workplace for human capital management.

Now hear about it from RWD's perspective. Mal Poulin, Enterprise Market Director for RWD, and Paul Bejgrowicz, Principal Performance Consultant for RWD, gathered round the table with Dr. Karl Kapp yesterday at the ASTD 2010 conference to talk about the partnership.

Tune in to the interview below to learn how we'll be integrating RWD's human and operational performance improvement solutions into ProtoSphere. Mal and Paul also explain how RWD's customers can take advantage of the data visualization and other 3-D capabilities of ProtoSphere for executing initiatives such as improving job performance.

That's all I'll say here. Watch the video for the full scoop!

ProtonMedia and RWD partner to add third dimension to human capital management

Ok, waiting time's over. I mentioned earlier today that we'd have some big news coming at you from the ASTD 2010 Conference in Chicago, so without further ado, here it is: ProtonMedia and RWD have partnered to develop the first 3-D workplace for human capital management.

RWD is a leading provider of human and operational performance improvement solutions. Thousands of organizations worldwide use RWD's solutions, including many Fortune 500 companies. They're in industries including life sciences, energy, and manufacturing, among others.

We'll be working together to integrate RWD's technology into ProtoSphere. The result will be a high-performance collaborative platform that quickly connects people to their colleagues, and gives them immediate access to the information they need.

Our partnership officially kicks off today from the ASTD Conference. RWD is exhibiting at booth #913, and I've joined them to represent ProtonMedia. If you're here at the show and have stopped by the booth, you might have noticed the signage for ProtoSphere.

If you haven't swung by yet, by all means, feel free! If you want to catch up, I'll either be at the booth or mingling around the show floor. Buzz my mobile at 215-350-2461 if you can't find me and want to chat. :)

But that's not all we have going on with RWD today. We're also co-exhibiting with RWD at the SAPPHIRE conference in Orlando. If you're unfamiliar with the show, SAPPHIRE is the leading event for SAP customers and partners to meet and learn about new SAP technologies and solutions.

RWD is exhibiting at booth #2509, and some folks from the ProtonMedia sales team are on hand to meet, greet, mingle, and share news of our partnership.

I'm excited to get things going with RWD, and looking forward to putting the new platform into the hands of employers and their people. If you're interested in more details on our partnership, give our press release a read below. We'll keep you in the loop on our progress!

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Enterprise Human Capital Management Goes 3-D

RWD Technologies, LLC and ProtonMedia forge partnership to deliver world’s first 3-D immersive workplace for human capital management

BALTIMORE & LANSDALE, Pa. -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- RWD Technologies, LLC (RWD), a global company that develops and implements human and organizational performance solutions, and ProtonMedia, the developer of the ProtoSphere virtual collaboration environment for the high-performance workplace, today announced a multi-year partnership that will add a new dimension to workforce learning, collaboration, and performance.