World-class experience, designed for the inside of the organization.
We all know great service when we receive it. Very few organizations design for it on the inside.
An operating model is the experience of working inside a company: how a colleague asks for help, how decisions get made, and how work moves from one team to the next. We design it with the same care the best brands give their customers, so every role is designed for, and every colleague is treated as a customer.
Great experiences are hard to describe. No one mistakes them.
Think of the best service you have ever received. A hotel that anticipated what you needed before you asked. A card company that solved a problem in a single call. A product so well designed it needed no instructions, sold in a store where every detail had been considered. In much of Southeast Asia, that level of hospitality is a point of cultural pride, and you feel it in the smallest interactions.
None of these experiences is an accident. The product, the service, the environment, and the message are designed to work together.
Now think about what it takes to get something done inside a large biopharma company.
Every role has a customer, and every role is a customer.
A study manager depends on finance. A brand lead depends on insights. A medical reviewer depends on everyone upstream. When those internal handoffs are confusing, slow, or unclear, the cost eventually shows up outside, in slower trials, later launches, and weaker experiences for patients, physicians, and payers.
Internal experience (WX) is the practice of designing work for the people who do it. Most operating models are drawn as org charts and process maps that show who reports to whom, not what it is like to get work done. We design from the experience of the people inside the model, and that is when strategy starts to show up in daily behavior.
The Pattern
Internal functions grow one request at a time. No one can say clearly what comes first, who decides, or who owns the result, and colleagues spend their energy navigating the organization instead of doing the work.
The Move
Redesign the operating model the way a great brand designs its customer experience: start with the people it serves, then build the product, service, environment, and message around them.
The Shift
From a function people work around to one they would choose to work with, with clear priorities, decisions that move, and accountability that holds.
Four elements of a great internal experience.
Work that needs no instruction manual
Processes, decision rights, and governance simple enough that people can see how to get things done. Governance is sized to the decision, so people know who decides and how quickly.
A front door colleagues trust
How a function responds when a colleague needs something: one clear point of entry, visible criteria for what comes first, timely answers, and people who own the outcome from request to result.
Roles designed around the work
Clear accountability, matched to the capabilities and capacity each role actually requires, so people can do their best work instead of working around the system.
Experience you can see and measure
A cadence of communication, meetings, and metrics that tells everyone what is changing, why, and how it is working for them, tracking the internal experience as well as the output.
No one notices a well-designed operating model. They notice that work moves.
Illustrative perspectives from inside a function once its operating model is designed around the people it serves.
A study manager
I know exactly where to take a budget question, and I get an answer before it holds up my study.
A brand lead
I asked for help on Monday. By Wednesday I knew who owned it, when it would land, and why it ranked where it did.
A function leader
My time goes to direction, not arbitration. Priorities are settled before they reach my desk, and I can see how the team is doing at a glance.
A new team member
In my first week, I could see how work gets done here, who decides, and who to ask. I spent my energy on the work, not on finding my way around.
Innovation, applied inward.
The same disciplines that create great products and services, used to redesign how the organization itself works.
01 · Listen first
Map the experience of every role that touches the function: what people need, where they wait, and where they work around the system.
02 · Reframe the challenge
Use applied creativity methods to find the right problem before designing a solution, so the effort goes to what matters most.
03 · Co-design and prototype
Build the future model with the people who will live in it, and pilot it before scaling, so adoption is designed in from the start.
04 · Implement and refine
Protect business continuity through the transition, measure the internal experience, and refine until the new model runs on its own.
Any function other people depend on.
- Innovation and business excellence functions
- Strategy and insights teams
- R&D and clinical operations
- Commercial operations
- Functions coming together after a merger or reorganization
Built on large-scale biopharma transformation.
- Led a portfolio of 30+ strategic initiatives across global product development for a leading biopharma
- Redesigned the processes and governance behind clinical trial budget management for a global biopharma R&D organization
- Designed and set up transformation offices that coordinate multi-workstream change across functions
- Certified Applied Creativity Facilitator (Basadur Levels I & II); teaches Managing Chaos for the American Management Association
The AI Transformation Office applies this same principle across the whole biopharma value chain. This page covers the operating model underneath it, which matters whether or not AI is involved.
Every engagement starts with a conversation about the specific decision in front of you, not a standard proposal.
Start a Conversation