"The operating model that got us here won't get us to where we need to go."

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine

Every organization eventually reaches an inflection point. The processes that once drove efficiency become the very thing slowing the business down. The roles designed for yesterday's demands are misaligned with tomorrow's. The people — talented, committed, capable — find themselves running harder just to stay in place, constrained by a structure that was built for a different era.

That was the situation facing one of the enabling functions at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine. The signs were visible to anyone willing to look: cycle times that were too long, workflows that had been patched rather than redesigned, and a capability profile that reflected where the function had come from rather than where the business needed it to go. The gap between current-state performance and best-in-class was widening — and leadership recognized that incremental fixes were no longer enough.

What was needed was a transformation. Not a reorganization for its own sake, but a rigorous, structured reimagining of how the function should be designed to operate at the highest level.

The Initiative: Fit for the Future

A small, dedicated team was assembled with a clear mandate: assess the current landscape honestly, identify what needed to change, and design a credible path to a best-in-class future state. The initiative was called Fit for the Future.

The team was deliberately small — focused enough to move quickly, senior enough to have credibility across the function. And the scope was deliberately broad: this was not a task force chartered to recommend one or two process improvements. It was charged with asking the harder question — is this function structured correctly for what the business needs from it over the next five years?

Phase 1: The Honest Assessment

The team began where every good transformation begins: with listening. A structured interview program was conducted across the function — up, down, and across the organization. The goal was not to validate preexisting conclusions. It was to build a ground-truth picture of where the function was genuinely performing well, where it was falling short, and — critically — why.

Alongside the internal interviews, the team conducted external benchmarking. What did best-in-class look like for this type of function in comparable organizations? What were the emerging operating models — the next-generation structures — that leading pharma and healthcare companies were adopting? What capabilities were table stakes, and which represented genuine competitive differentiation?

The output of this phase was a comprehensive SWOT analysis and a prioritized list of the top ten changes the function needed to make. Not a wish list. A ranked, evidence-based set of interventions — the ones that would move the needle most on performance, speed, and capability.

Phase 2: Designing the Future State

With the assessment complete, the team turned to design. The future-state operating model was built from first principles — not from the existing org chart with boxes rearranged, but from a clear-eyed view of what the function needed to deliver and what organizational structure would best enable that.

This meant making hard choices. Some activities needed to be consolidated. Some needed to be elevated. Some roles that existed needed to be reconceived entirely. And some capabilities that didn't yet exist in the function needed to be created.

An organizational framework was developed that mapped the new structure clearly — lines of accountability, spans of control, and the interfaces between sub-teams. Critically, each key role in the future state was given a well-defined job description: not a generic template pulled from HR, but a genuine articulation of what the role was responsible for, what success looked like, and what skills and experience were required to do it well.

Each role was benchmarked by level — ensuring that compensation, scope, and expectations were calibrated against the external market and internally consistent across the function.

Phase 3: The People Process

Organizational design on paper is the easy part. The harder work — and the part that determines whether a transformation succeeds or leaves lasting damage — is the people process.

The Fit for the Future team was emphatic on this point from the beginning: every employee in the function would be treated fairly and with respect, regardless of how the new structure affected their role. That wasn't a platitude — it was an operating principle that shaped every decision about how the transition was managed.

Communication was structured and proactive. To the extent possible at each stage of the process, employees were kept informed about what was happening, why it was necessary, and what it meant for them. The initiative was not announced as a finished fact — it was shared as a process that was underway, one that the leadership team took seriously and was committed to running well.

Interviews for key roles were conducted in order, starting from the n-1 level and cascading down. This sequencing was intentional: placing leaders in their roles first gave the broader organization clarity and stability before the process reached individual contributors. Each interview was structured, consistent, and conducted with the same rigor as an external hire — because the integrity of the process was itself part of the message.

The Outcome

The transformation delivered what it set out to. The function emerged with a cleaner operating model, faster cycle times, clearer accountability at every level, and — perhaps most importantly — a workforce that understood its role in where the business was going, not just where it had been.

But the real measure of the initiative's success came afterward. The future-state model designed for this one function was viewed by senior leadership as a template worth replicating. It was subsequently adopted across the broader organization — a validation not just of the design itself, but of the process that produced it.

Transformations fail for many reasons. Sometimes the design is wrong. More often, the process of getting there breaks trust in ways that take years to repair. Fit for the Future worked because it got both right: a rigorous design grounded in evidence and industry best practice, executed through a people process built on transparency, fairness, and genuine respect for the individuals navigating the change.

That combination — analytical rigor and human-centered execution — is what Altitude Consulting brings to every organizational transformation engagement.

What made Fit for the Future work

• A small, empowered team with a clear and bounded mandate
• External benchmarking to set the bar at best-in-class, not internal average
• A prioritized top-10 change list — not a sprawling wish list
• Future-state roles built from scratch, not retrofitted from the current org
• A structured interview process that treated every candidate with consistency and respect
• Communication that preceded decisions, not followed them

Is your organization ready for a Fit for the Future conversation?

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