Key Takeaways
- Define clear accountability during restructuring
Without a structured RACI framework, biopharma companies risk miscommunication and unclear roles, particularly in times of layoffs and organizational change. C-suites must proactively assign responsibility and ensure cross-functional coordination. - Transformation demands more than cost-cutting
Successful turnaround strategies require investment in culture, communication, and leadership development, not just operational efficiency. Cutting change management resources weakens long-term resilience and increases failure risk. - Integrity, resources, and communication are essential pillars
Transparent messaging, adequate resource allocation, and expert-led strategic communication are critical to maintaining employee trust and organizational culture through uncertainty and downsizing.
Stephanie J. Creary is an assistant professor of Management at The Wharton School. Insights from Professor Creary’s research have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, strategy+business, The New York Times, Bloomberg, NPR, Marketplace, and Time Magazine.
She currently hosts the Knowledge at Wharton Leading Diversity at Work Podcast Series where she engages in conversation with a variety of academic and practitioner experts. From 2022-2024, Dr. Creary was a visiting faculty fellow at the Harvard Business School Institute for Business in Global Society.
For her contributions to management research and thinking, she has been included in the Thinkers50 Radar Class, which acknowledges people whose ideas are predicted to make an important impact on management thinking in the future. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy from the Boston College Carroll School of Management.
Q. During the first three months of 2025, biopharma companies let go of approximately 6,000+ employees, a 23% year-over-year increase in people impacted.1 With several firms experiencing clinical trial failures and/or imminent patent cliffs, remaining employees are faced with the ever-trite “do more with less” expectations from their supervisors. Given your research at Wharton and other schools, what should smarter C-suites be doing to actually support their “most valued resources”?
A. Creary: Based on my research and years of working with C-suite executives, the first question leaders must ask during times of organizational change is: “Who is responsible for supporting these employees?”2 Too often, companies undergoing restructuring fail to create a basic RACI chart, which frequently leads to confusion and miscommunication. A RACI chart clarifies team roles and responsibilities for key actions and deliverables in a strategic initiative by defining four categories:
- Responsible: Who performs the work
- Accountable: Who makes decisions and owns the outcome
- Consulted: Who provides input
- Informed: Who needs to be kept updated
By mapping deliverables against these roles in a simple table, RACI charts help prevent ambiguity, improve communication, and ensure accountability—especially critical during organizational turnarounds or downsizings. Still, history has pointed to the persistent challenges of defining accountabilities over time.3
Consider the 2008 financial crisis where it became clear that many firms lacked a RACI framework to guide daily operations and adequately support key employee groups. This absence contributed to persistent challenges in defining accountability. Three notable observations from that period include:
- Human Resources focused heavily on enforcing policies, explaining layoff decisions, determining severance, and collaborating with legal teams to address inevitable lawsuits from departing employees.
- Diversity Leaders were tasked with upholding the organization’s culture and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
- People Leaders were expected to guide and support their teams—often with little more than scripted talking points and minimal support tools.
Although responsibilities were divided among these groups, there was often a lack of strategic thinking to address the root causes of organizational challenges—issues that were left unresolved and resulted in continued massive layoffs and bankruptcies.4
To avoid making similar mistakes again, biopharma C-suite leaders must move beyond rhetoric about valuing their “most important resource”—their people. Meaningful progress requires intentional, strategic action, starting with clear roles and shared accountability.
The absence of a well-defined RACI framework, as history has shown, only deepens confusion and erodes trust during times of uncertainty. Supporting employees should not be the sole responsibility of HR, DEI leaders, or people managers; rather, it requires a coordinated, organization-wide commitment to transparency, resource allocation, and continuous dialogue. Organizations must design for inclusion and resilience—not just compliance.
Executives need to proactively anticipate the ripple effects of change on every employee, particularly those who remain to carry the extra load. As I’ve shared in a past HBS podcast, use the “head, heart, and hands” strategy to connect and support your teams.5
Q. With the typical biopharma C-suite team having approximately 11 members, time constraints prevent them from realistically meeting their global teams in face-to-face sessions to have candid conversations. As such, what are your top three recommendations to address the needed change management tactics for a successful transformation and turnaround plan?
A. Creary: Integrity, resources, and communications are the combination of elements required for a winning transformation. As I have advised leaders over the years, you need all three and can’t get by on just one or two.
First, integrity is manifested by the C-suite’s transparent explanation of the “why, what, when, who, and where” for layoffs. And while confidence is important, transparent expectation setting needs to occur for dynamics where there continues to be uncertainty.
For instance, with many DE&I teams being scaled back dramatically, who is on point for preserving the positive traits of an organization’s culture as well as enhancing it for improvement. With culture ranking higher than compensation in importance for employees,6 one can’t just spread this work to the other two groups.
And adequate resource allocation is thus the second key element of your transformation playbook. It never ceases to amaze me that companies often cut change management portions of consulting firms’ RFPs since C-suites are focused on outputs (sales) versus culture, which is sometimes inaccurately described as the “soft stuff.”
They then expect survivors of HR and Communication departments to somehow cover the critical success factors of change and so it’s no surprise that last year Bain shared how 88% of business transformations fail.7 After all, how many people managers have had their competencies upskilled over time to support survivors and assume some of the efforts for corporate culture which used to be covered by DE&I professionals?
Third, C-suites need to bring in strategic Communication experts to craft compelling narratives for the case of change which people leaders need to learn and practice communicating in their own authentic voices. With various objectives, audiences, and communication channels (in-person, conference calls, print media, and emails) in motion, this type of effort requires experts who have the credible objectivity to help support the firm’s sustainability and employees’ jobs.
Finally, C-suite leaders need to understand the importance of bringing in experts who will state the truth in terms of what painful decisions might need to be made. Of the surviving employees who are watching how their departed colleagues are departing with two months of severance and uncertain job prospects, how many of them can be expected to truly speak their minds, versus acquiesce to whatever the company tells them?
From my own experience where I was brought in to help uncover candid employee feedback, it was interesting to see how people felt that it was easier to express true convictions with academicians versus even consultants. Fortunately, this particular C-Suite respected the confidential conversations that I had with their employees and this enabled me to frame my recommendations along the elements of integrity, resources, and communications which supported their transformation plan.
About the Author
Michael Wong is a Part-time Lecturer for the Wharton Communication Program at the University of Pennsylvania. As an Emeritus Co-President and board member of the Harvard Business School Healthcare Alumni Association as well as a Contributing Writer for the MIT Sloan Career Development Office, Michael’s ideas have been shared in the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review.
References
- Gabriel, Angela, The 5 Largest Biopharma Layoffs of Q1 2025: Updated, Biospace, May 13, 2025
- https://www.conference-board.org/publications/publicationdetail.cfm?publicationid=1711
- Frisch, Bob and Greene, Cary, To Hold Someone Accountable, First Define What Accountable Means, Harvard Business Review, June 28, 2016
- https://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/exhibition/global-impact-of-the-collapse
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPCKpMgHxs
- Chamberlain, Andrew, What Matters More to Your Workforce than Money, Harvard Business Review, January 17, 2017
- Burke, Melissa, 88% of business transformations fail to achieve their original ambitions; those that succeed avoid overloading top talent, Bain & Company Media Center, April 5, 2024
