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Stephanie Perkins

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Have you seen this?

Published by Stephanie Perkins on December 21, 2010.

I’m clearly not the first person to stumble upon it, but it made a big impression on me – big enough that I shared it with others. Ironically, I found it via a friend who posted it on Facebook.

My friend Karen has a theory that social media is like an octopus – an interesting euphemism – you send info out there with many tentacles reaching out across the abyss in various different forms, in the hopes of bringing something juicy or sticky back to your brand.

I like that analogy. I was reading REWORK and they spend a short stint describing their POV on social – with a focus on building your audience via fans. Audiences reign supreme over customers and consequently fans, as when you have a message to send, your audience is already there to listen; you don’t have to buy an audience, as they’ve already given you their attention. Simple, elegant, true.

Folks use social for various different reasons: to stay connected, as therapy, as a method of getting attention, as a place to share opinions and beliefs, to get away from the daily grind, to disseminate information, to share a POV, to share great ideas, as a place of self-expression, to generate an audience, to promote a cause, to share a laugh, the list could go on and on. It’s different for everyone.

How is this relevant to pharma, to marketing? The audience. The social experience is no longer limited to the freshman facebook (which, by the way, was a printed booklet back when I was in school). It’s not fad anymore. It’s time for our pharma clients to extend their tentacles. Guess what? HCPs are part of this audience as well as consumers, payers, brand managers, etc. Everyone is. Ignoring it is just going to leave you behind.

I get it, there are barriers. HIPAA, FDA, Congress, the works. But there has to be a way to build an audience based on the commonality we all have in this industry, and the passion we share to improve health across the globe. I’m sure our resident social expert would have a POV on this.

What do you guys think?

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sperkins

5 things in 5 years of pharma I’ve learned about project management

Published by Stephanie Perkins on October 21, 2010.
  1. Don’t be a Dope about Scope
    Clearly defining the scope of the project prior to a kickoff is absolutely crucial.  Project briefs shouldn’t be boiler-plate or hastily composed to try and get to a kickoff more quickly.  A good project brief is well-written and involves all key stakeholders. It’s strategic, concise and clearly outlines the objectives, success measures, and what exactly is to be delivered as well as what is NOT included in the project’s delivery. The scope of the project should be revisited at the end of each project phase to ensure no “scope creep” is occurring.
  2. Expect the Expected
    If the last four printed sales aides, websites, campaign development projects, or whatever the tactic completed has cost $X, then it’s highly likely this one will, too.  If we know based on experience it takes three months to complete a project like project X, then there is a good chance this one will.  If every other project X has required three legal reviews, we should account for that.
  3. Hurry Up, Then Wait
    Building timelines are always a challenge when it comes to pharma because of the extensive legal, medical and regulatory reviews each piece requires.  This typically equates to shorter timelines to create the pieces than time it takes to get them reviewed through those processes.  To prevent the hurry up, then wait cycle for projects I recommend building phases into project chronologies that can overlap vs sequential task relationships.  Although this methodology can scare clients and internal teams alike, when executed well, can result in a better end-product.
  4. OVERCommunication is Key
    Let’s face it, in an agency + pharma client environment there are dozens of key stakeholders that can provide valuable  input at various stages of each project.  As such, it’s important to establish communication guidelines during the project kickoff outlining who needs what kind of information at which stage of the project.  When in doubt, overcommunicate.
  5. Reference Lessons Learned
    History often repeats itself.  Don’t ignore your gut feeling that a project will end up costing more than you have budgeted, require additional legal, medical and regulatory reviews, or include more than is originally scoped out.  Scope, time and cost are directly related to one another.  Find a method of keeping and tracking lessons learned for each project type with this key information, and refer back to it during the project planning stages for future project types.
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sperkins

Meetings!

Published by Stephanie Perkins on July 29, 2010.

While in a meeting last week, I was daydreaming…wondering how I was going to ever get my day’s work done and yet survive the remainder of my meeting-laden day. I find marathon meeting days to be draining, and all the more commonplace these days. I’ve even attended meetings set up to plan how to run an upcoming client or planning meeting. So why do we have so many meetings? To communicate!

I recently learned that while we can speak roughly 150 words/minute, we can listen to approximately 400 words/minute, and that delay in how quickly we can communicate vs listen contributes to or desire to fill the void playing with blackberries, typing emails on laptops, or daydreaming. It got me thinking of Leigh’s post and Marcee’s post on how to reduce distractions during meetings to make them a better use of time. It feels as though, distractions aside, we can do more. So we have a ton of meetings. If we have to have them, how can we make them a better use of time?

Some project management basics come to mind:

Meeting relevancy
Determine the validity of the meeting. Do you really need to have it? Are the right talent to task invited? Are too many individuals invited? Is what you need to communicate better done via one or two 1:1 conversations? Is the content/topic of the meeting relevant to all invited parties?

Meeting planning
If a meeting is called for, circulate an agenda beforehand. At the beginning of your meeting, be sure to clearly communicate why the meeting was called and what needs to be accomplished.

Meeting monitoring
Have a watchdog! Make sure you are staying on topic and accomplishing the goals of your meeting! Another fun stat reads that 25% of meeting time is unproductive. In a 30-minute meeting that’s 7 ∏ minutes of wasted time!

Meeting retention
Circulate meeting notes. These don’t always have to be formal, but are always necessary. I learned that within walking out of a meeting, individuals only retain roughly 50% of what was communicated, 25% within 2 days, and merely 10% a week later. Yikes!

I don’t want to knock meetings…they are necessary sometimes. Meetings feel more personal, more collaborative, and more ownable when having a conversation directly with individuals in a room. But by increasing meeting relevancy, planning, monitoring and retention, it’s arguable that more work can get done, ideas generated, and information disseminated more quickly and efficiently.

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sperkins

Four things to do to ensure project success.

Published by Stephanie Perkins on May 12, 2010.

In this industry (as in others) there are a million ways for projects to become delayed, derailed or just plain dead in the water.  In my experience, implementing the four steps below greatly increases the chance your project will launch on time, on budget, and on strategy:

  1. Define the strategic imperatives upfront. Make sure all key players in the project are believers of the strategy, and understand why it’s important/tied back to an overall organizational or marketing goal.  This will help prevent derailment and help stakeholders become invested in the project’s outcome.  This is also a key moment to define a measurement plan.
  2. Include key stakeholders in the development of a deliverables-based project plan. Hold an internal review to cover off on all steps, dependencies, resources and staffing required, as well as financials and deliverables at each stage of the project plan.  Make sure all parties are comfortable with the time they are allotted for their deliverables. Once project players agree on how and when a project will be executed, they are more likely to adhere to the project plan.
  3. Hold a weekly touch-base with the team on the project. In this touch-base, have key stakeholders report in on the status of their task at hand as well as communicate upcoming deadlines and responsibilities to all members of the team.  Stakeholders are more likely to hold themselves accountable in this group scenario.  This is also an opportune time to communicate changes in project scope, discuss deviations from strategic imperatives, and revisit the project plan to ensure the project is tracking appropriately.
  4. Have a postmortem. While that sounds grim, there is as much to learn about what went wrong (or right) with a project. Use this time to both celebrate project successes as well as uncover pain points for the project and an understanding of what didn’t go quite as smoothly.  Take these learnings into consideration for future projects – more often than not you’ll find insights on how to ensure project success in the future!
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