Summary

During a period of rapid growth, a global biopharmaceutical firm partnered with Principia to strengthen its leadership decision-making capabilities. The collaboration centred on a custom-designed leadership summit that integrated moral philosophy with hands-on workshops to translate the company’s newly established Guiding Principles into behaviors. Leaders emerged equipped with practical tools to aid effective decision-making and a clear strategy for cascading these principles throughout the organization, ensuring ethical and effective leadership at all levels.

The Challenge

At a critical inflection point, the firms leadership recognized that rapidly scaling its global operations would test its strong values-led culture. The company wanted to take proactive steps, ahead of time, to prepare its most senior leaders to make increasingly complex decisions while preserving its core cultural strengths.

Strategic Objectives

• Transform abstract principles into practical, actionable leadership tools and behaviours
• Equip leaders to consistently make ethical decisions
• Deploy the firm’s new Guiding Principles as the cornerstone of organizational conduct and decision-making

How we helped

Principia led the firm’s Executive Committee and Senior Leadership team through an intensive three-day summit. The program focused on applying newly established Guiding Principles to critical leadership challenges and equipping participants with practical ethical frameworks for navigating complex choices.

Discovery Phase

To ground our approach, we conducted comprehensive interviews with leaders across business lines and functions. This enabled us to gain insight into the organization’s decision-making culture and specific challenges. We reviewed existing leadership development materials, conduct guidelines, and decision-making frameworks to ensure alignment with current practices. We used this systematic analysis to craft five critical ‘moments that matter’ to leaders of the firm – the times where organizational values come into conflict and most significantly impact leadership decisions.

Summit Experience

At the summit Principia guided leaders through a carefully structured learning journey. Beginning with an exploration of ethical decision-making fundamentals, participants gained clarity on why robust guiding principles are essential. Through hands-on work with ‘moments that matter’ drawn from participants experience, leaders had the space and support to put principles into practice. The summit culminated with a train-the-trainer module. This session enabled participants to develop concrete strategies to embed the Guiding Principles across the organization and secured leaders commitment to implementation.

Impact

The program established a robust foundation for the firm’s accelerated growth while ensuring ethical decision-making remained at its core. Leaders emerged with enhanced capabilities and practical tools for principled decision-making, including:

• Understanding of ethical complexities in leadership decisions
• Heightened awareness and ability to identify ethical dimensions of strategic and business problems
• Common language for discussing and addressing ethical considerations
• Practical frameworks for cascading these practices throughout the organization