At the LTEN (Life Sciences Trainers and Educators Network)
conference in Phoenix this June,
I spoke to Serina Fischer, Head of
Commercial Learning and Development at Takeda. While Serina
herself is a fountain of knowledge,
in her role at Takeda she has taken
on the refreshing task of helping
her colleagues understand goals,
tell stories, and break down the
messaging so that it can be communicated to all stakeholders in
record time.
After more than 14 years at Lilly,
Serina came to Takeda a little over
a year ago. She is responsible for
markets, marketing, sales and
other departments, offering cross-
functional support for learning
and development. She has a very
varied background in sales, sales
leadership, operations, marketing,
and more, as well as being a certi-
fied Six Sigma black belt—not a
lightweight!
Takeda is supportive of interaction with other colleagues across
healthcare, such as at LTEN, to
learn about innovation and share
ideas. Serina presented at the conference on their transformation
journey, from a training culture to
a learning culture—the steps taken
and the measurable outcomes.
Part of this culture is a deep
respect for breaking down silos
and respecting the lenses through
which each department sees their
role. Serina noted that if you’re ad-
vocating an initiative, you’re going
to have a better chance of getting
support if you have a mutual un-
derstanding and communication
across the organization. She ap-
preciates Takeda’s internal struc-
ture, which supports stakeholder
management at each level, making
sure there’s sharing and connec-
tion. This helps achieve numerous
ends: efficiency, alignment, buy-in,
strategy.
One of the lessons she teaches
is how to tell a story in marketing, communicating the value of
what you’re doing. People often
get caught up in massive data and
analysis paralysis about ROI and
what it contributes to the bottom
line. But that ultimately isn’t important to explaining the goals, because there are so many variables.
More vital is being clear about the
