Featured in LTEN Focus on Training Magazine

The Life Sciences Training & Education Network (LTEN) featured Exemplary Performance's Jaime Torchiana in their Focus on Training Magazine, spotlighting how performance-based approaches are transforming talent development in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries.

Beyond Traditional Training

"The life sciences industry has a unique challenge," Torchiana explains in the feature. "You're dealing with highly educated, highly specialized professionals who often see traditional training as beneath them — and honestly, they're not wrong. Generic training programs built on competency models rarely move the needle for these populations."

The article explores how Exemplary Performance's methodology — rooted in studying what top performers actually do differently — offers a fundamentally different approach to capability building in pharma and biotech.

The Performance-Based Approach in Life Sciences

Torchiana details how the Exemplary Performance model has been applied across several major pharmaceutical companies, focusing on three critical areas:

Sales Force Effectiveness

Rather than relying on product knowledge assessments and call-frequency metrics, EP studied what separated the top 15% of sales representatives from the average. "What we found surprised everyone," Torchiana recalls. "The differentiators weren't about product knowledge at all. The top performers had mastered a set of relationship-building behaviors and clinical conversation techniques that couldn't be taught in a classroom."

Medical Science Liaison Development

The MSL role is one of the fastest-growing in pharma, yet most organizations struggle to define what excellence looks like. EP worked with a top-10 pharma company to build Role Excellence Profiles for their MSL team, uncovering that the gap between average and exemplary MSLs wasn't scientific acumen — it was the ability to translate complex data into actionable clinical insights for physicians.

Manager Effectiveness in R&D

Perhaps the most impactful application has been in R&D management. "Managing scientists is fundamentally different from managing a sales team," Torchiana notes. "But most companies use the same leadership development programs for both. When we studied exemplary R&D managers, we found a completely different profile — one centered on creating psychological safety, protecting creative time, and making strategic bets on which projects to champion."

Measurable Impact

The LTEN feature highlights several case studies where the EP approach delivered quantifiable results in life sciences organizations, including a 35% improvement in new product launch effectiveness, a 28% reduction in time-to-competence for new MSLs, and a significant uplift in R&D manager engagement scores.

"Training organizations in life sciences are under enormous pressure to prove ROI," Torchiana observes. "When you start from what your best people actually do — rather than what a competency model says they should do — you build programs that demonstrably move performance metrics."