Designing a Commercial Operating Model for a Rapidly Growing Pharmaceutical Company
The weight loss pharmaceutical market continues to skyrocket, with the global GLP-1 agonists market expanding from $13.84 billion in 2024 to a projected $48.84 billion by 2030 — representing an explosive 18.54% compound annual growth rate. Against this backdrop of market opportunity, one growing pharmaceutical company found itself at a critical inflection point, struggling to scale its operations despite remarkable commercial success.
The challenge: managing growth without infrastructure
This commercial-focused pharmaceutical company achieved what many life sciences organizations dream of: a blockbuster drug that captured significant market share in the rapidly expanding weight loss medication sector. However, beneath the surface of commercial success lay a complex web of organizational challenges that threatened to undermine future growth prospects.
Leadership recognized that while its blockbuster medication generated substantial revenue, the company’s narrow therapeutic focus created both opportunity and risk. Market dynamics suggested significant potential for portfolio expansion, yet the organization lacked the infrastructure and skillsets to pursue acquisitions or develop additional therapeutic areas effectively.
Key organizational challenges included:
High turnover and widespread burnout as employees juggled multiple undefined roles without clear accountability
Crisis-driven decision making that consumed leadership bandwidth at the expense of strategic growth initiatives
Fragmented operations with siloed teams, duplicated efforts, and limited coordination across critical business functions
Strategic misalignment stemming from a narrow vision statement that constrained portfolio expansion opportunities
Critical capability voids in business development, market access, and analytics that blocked scalable growth
The approach: a phased transformation journey
Recognizing the complexity of these interconnected challenges, leadership engaged Acquis Consulting Group (Acquis) given its deep cross-functional life sciences industry expertise, robust operating model support, and end-to-end Think + Do partnership approach. Through this partnership, Acquis helped the company’s leadership team to design and implement a successful commercial operating model transformation. The approach unfolded across four distinct phases, each building upon insights from the previous stage.
Phase 1: current state assessment
The transformation began with an extensive diagnostic phase involving 20+ stakeholder interviews across all organizational levels. The assessment team engaged executives, leaders, and key functional team members to understand both explicit challenges and underlying systemic issues.
The assessment examined four critical organizational dimensions:
Organizational structure and capabilities: Mapped existing reporting lines and identified capability gaps, analyzed areas of duplication and missing competencies, and assessed capabilities essential for strategic goal achievement
Cross-functional collaboration: Examined communication effectiveness and information flow patterns, evaluated decision-making processes and authority structures, and identified barriers to coordinated execution
Operational effectiveness: Analyzed employee engagement challenges and role clarity issues, reviewed resource allocation practices contributing to firefighting mentality, and assessed productivity constraints and workflow inefficiencies
Strategic alignment: Evaluated current vision statement scope and limitations, reviewed priority-setting processes and strategic planning capabilities, and assessed alignment between current capabilities and long-term aspirations
The assessment revealed 12 distinct capability gaps requiring attention, along with numerous operational improvement opportunities that could enhance organizational effectiveness immediately.
Phase 2: vision and strategic alignment
Armed with diagnostic insights, the Acquis team facilitated an intensive leadership alignment process centered on an in-person workshop with the full leadership team. This collaborative session addressed three critical strategic areas that would shape the organization's future direction:
Vision and strategic priority development: Leadership collaboratively redesigned the company's vision to expand beyond its single therapeutic area focus while establishing clear three to five-year strategic objectives. This process transformed abstract aspirations into concrete goals that could guide resource allocation and business decision-making, creating a foundation for meaningful portfolio diversification while maintaining connection to core competencies.
Capability investment prioritization: Leadership needed to make difficult trade-off decisions about resource allocation. The facilitation process guided the executive team through structured analysis of the 12 identified capability gaps, ultimately prioritizing the most critical needs based on strategic impact and implementation feasibility.
Portfolio expansion strategy: Discussions aligned leadership around specific acquisition criteria and inorganic growth approaches, establishing clear parameters for evaluating potential targets while ensuring acquisition activities would support broader strategic objectives.
Phase 3: future state operating model design
With strategic alignment in place, the team shifted focus to designing a future-state operating model capable of supporting both immediate operational improvements and long-term growth. Acquis worked closely with the CEO to evaluate critical trade-offs that would shape the organization’s structure, governance, and capabilities.
Rather than defaulting to a single design path, Acquis presented three levels of organizational design options, each with a clear analysis of trade-offs. Level 1 (L1) models explored different executive leadership structures, determining which C-suite roles would exist and how the team would divide responsibilities among the CEO’s direct reports. Level 2 (L2) and Level 3 (L3) designs detailed the senior management and operational management layers beneath each executive, particularly for key functional areas identified as high priority during the assessment phase.
Additionally, the team provided capability maps and interdependency frameworks to clarify how functions would evolve together over time, ensuring cohesive, scalable operations across the organization.
Phase 4: implementation planning
Acquis translated the transformation strategy into an actionable roadmap that balanced ambition with executional discipline, focusing on four core components to guide the implementation:
Organizational planning: The roadmap defined new roles with clear competency requirements, established structured talent assessments to evaluate internal readiness and succession potential, and included comprehensive financial modeling that grounded all organizational changes in business realities
Transformation management: A change management plan included stakeholder-specific communications, aligned leadership commitments, and a transformation timeline that provided both urgency and flexibility
Organizational enablement: The team aligned talent acquisition to priority capability gaps, while capability development plans and training initiatives supported teams in adopting new ways of working
Governance and execution: The plan formalized oversight structures to clarify decision rights and collaboration expectations across teams while establishing metrics and performance indicators to monitor progress and guide course corrections
Two waves of strategic investment
The transformation unfolded in two waves: the first focused on building strategic capabilities essential for scaling, and the second centered on expanding executive leadership to support sustainable growth.
Phase 1: building critical capabilities
Acquis guided the client to make foundational investments across five functional areas to prepare the organization for continued expansion. These focused investments enabled the client to:
Centralize its market access function, aligning payer strategy, marketing, and engagement under a single structure to drive more coordinated and effective coverage expansion
Build a dedicated business development capability, implementing structured processes to identify and evaluate acquisition targets, and replacing ad hoc deal-making with a more strategic, systematic approach
Enhance pharmacy operations by upgrading analytical capabilities and increasing visibility into transactional performance, which improved both operational efficiency and risk management
Build out the Medical Science Liaison (MSL) function to strengthen provider relationships and support the sales team with specialized medical expertise, ensuring consistent and credible communication of clinical information
Consolidate its business analytics resources into a centralized team, eliminating redundancy and creating a cross-functional center of excellence to power data-driven decision-making
Phase 2: expanding executive leadership
To sustain capability growth, the organization redesigned its executive structure, narrowing the CEO’s span of control and elevating functional leaders with clear mandates and decision-making authority. These newly established executive roles will be rolled out against company growth and aim to clarify accountability and accelerate execution across the business.
In parallel, the Acquis team designed interdependency frameworks aligned to the future state design, aimed at eliminating silos and supporting cross-functional collaboration. These frameworks are meant to set explicit expectations for how teams will coordinate in the new structure, providing clear escalation paths for conflict resolution and reinforcing alignment across strategic initiatives.
Execution with precision and purpose
The organization approached execution with discipline equal to its strategic planning, translating vision into action through a structured transformation roadmap. This strategic roadmap outlined a phased approach to evolve from the current state to the future state, detailing the specific activities, timelines, resources, and milestones needed to achieve the desired future state. This included a prioritized hiring and onboarding plan in phased intervals — immediate (0–3 months), mid-term (3–6 months), and long-term (6–18 months) — based on business-critical needs.
Acquis assigned leaders clear ownership to each work stream of the transformation roadmap, ensuring accountability from day one. By managing role transitions in stages, the company minimized disruption and maintained business continuity. Consistent milestone tracking kept teams aligned and progress visible throughout the ongoing implementation.
To support change adoption, the organization launched a targeted change management program with customized communications tailored to specific audiences, enabling leadership to deliver consistent, compelling messages. Internally, change champions mobilized their peers, building momentum from within. Real-time feedback loops surfaced roadblocks quickly, allowing teams to adapt and move forward without delay.
The new operating reality: from reactive to proactive
The operating model transformation shifted the company from reactive execution to proactive, scalable growth. The results were both structural and strategic:
The business adopted a unified operating model, aligned to its long-term vision and strategy
Teams have clearly defined roles and responsibilities, enabling faster decision-making and reduced internal friction
Cross-functional collaboration replaced isolated teams, paving the way for integrated execution
The company developed capabilities purpose-built for growth, equipping teams to evolve to shifting market needs
Ultimately, this operating model transformation positions the organization to lead the booming weight loss pharmaceutical market — and to evolve confidently into a multi-product enterprise with durable competitive advantage.
Conclusion
This transformation demonstrates how comprehensive operating model redesign can unlock growth potential while building sustainable competitive advantages. By addressing both immediate operational challenges and long-term strategic needs, the new organizational model positioned this pharmaceutical company to capitalize on emerging market opportunities while building capabilities for sustained success across multiple therapeutic areas.
Acquis' systematic approach — combining thorough assessment, strategic alignment, detailed design, and implementation excellence — created organizational capabilities that serve as foundations for continued growth and market leadership in the dynamic pharmaceutical industry.
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