Wharton/GlaxoSmithKline Executive Management Program for Pharmacy Leaders

Goals and Objectives

The GlaxoSmithKline Executive Management Program for Pharmacy Leaders is designed to provide the tools necessary to lead complex health care businesses and organizations. Major themes include:

• Developing the financial acumen to advance important clinical initiatives.
• Learning the skills necessary to communicate and negotiate with key stakeholders across organizational boundaries to more effectively implement decisions.
• Applying critical thinking skills and a systems approach to make effective decisions.
• Understanding the importance of strong leadership and ethics in strategic positions.
• Thinking more broadly and innovatively about the direction of health care.

The Core Program

• Using the systems design framework, participants learn techniques to identify and analyze key stakeholders and various stakeholders’ effects on organizational performance.
• Participants explore techniques to manage and influence stakeholder behavior to achieve a desired outcome, as well as study basic marketing concepts.
• A negotiations workshop allows participants the opportunity to discover their own negotiation style and learn methods for effective negotiation both within and outside their organizations.

The program also focuses on financial strategies and performance measures. Participants learn how to:

• Interpret and understand the financial and non-financial condition of a business
• Measure the effectiveness of a business in generating a profit,
• Determine the efficiency of a business in managing its assets
• Identify potential ‘trouble-spots.’
• Review methods to analyze the income statement and the balance sheet as well as discuss specific measures of business performance.

To conclude the Core Program, participants will work with Wharton Communications faculty members in learning the most effective methods for communicating a cohesive and persuasive business plan to senior leadership of an organization, in preparation for the arrival of the participants' supervisor/administrators. The final two and a half days of the program are then devoted to the Executive Forum in which participants learn concurrently with their supervisors/administrators. During this Executive Forum the organizational pairs have the opportunity, in a non-threatening benign learning environment, to address key issues facing their organization. The Executive Forum is also an opportunity to gain further executive education training for the participants and their administrators. Leadership styles and techniques are examined, as well as common decision traps that often cause poor strategic and tactical decision making. The program concludes with a discussion on the importance of effective “re-entry” into the participants’ organizations.

Sponsors

GlaxoSmithKline

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is a world leading research-based pharmaceutical company with a powerful combination of skills and resources dedicated to discovering new medicines.<

American Pharmacists Association

The American Pharmacists Association (APhA), the national professional society of pharmacists, was founded in 1852 and is the first established and largest professional association of pharmacists in the United States. The more than 50,000 members of APhA include practicing pharmacists, pharmaceutical scientists, pharmacy students, pharmacy technicians, and others interested in advancing the profession. The Association is a leader in providing professional information and education for pharmacists and an advocate for improved health of the American public through the provision of comprehensive pharmaceutical care.

Requirements

To be considered for admission, applicants must:

• Have the support of their administrator, supervisor, or other principal.
• Each applicant’s supervisor/administrator must nominate the applicant and agree to attend the Executive Forum as a working team
• Be a Pharmacist
• Practice in the United States
• Have experience in a leadership role for five or more years

Executive Forum

The GlaxoSmithKline Executive Management Program for Pharmacy Leaders is unique for requiring the attendance of the participant's direct supervisor or administrator during the last two and a half days of the program – the Executive Forum. The reason for this requirement is simple: we want to encourage participants to apply what they have learned during their time here at Wharton to a specific management challenge in their organization. To do this we ask each participant to talk with his/her supervisor/administrator prior to arrival on campus to identify the management challenge(s) that they will attend to upon their return.

Cost

The program has, since its inception, been generously sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals. All tuition, course materials, special events and most meals are covered by this sponsorship. Participants are responsible for travel, lodging and residual meals.

In addition to didactic presentations, the program includes the use of case studies, small group work sessions, and classroom simulated exercises that help participants examine strategic business assumptions about quality and cost in a competitive marketplace. Guest experts are often invited to speak on topics of immediate relevance to our participants as a means of providing a broader perspective on forces changing today’s current business environment.

The GlaxoSmithKline program has a strong emphasis on applied learning; alumni are asked to discuss key management challenges in their organizations with their supervisors, or administrative partners prior to their arrival on campus. The program concludes with an Executive Forum – a two-and-a-half day event in which the participants’ administrators come to campus to share in the educational activities. The primary purpose of the Executive Forum is to provide each alumnus and his/her administrator with an opportunity to collaborate together on specific management challenges and to do so away from their workplace. This "mini-retreat" is an essential part of the program; no applicant is accepted without being nominated by his/her administrator, and with the administrator’s commitment to attending the Executive Forum.