CASE STUDY
Mirum Pharmaceuticals, a public commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company, is growing quickly and expanding its teams and global footprint. As in many scaling life science organizations, talented individual contributors are stepping into management roles for the first time, and often rely on their technical expertise ahead of developing the skills they need to lead a team.
Mirum’s HR team saw this clearly and wanted to get ahead of it. Rather than wait for management gaps to become performance problems, they chose to invest in their new managers proactively, giving them the tools, language, and confidence to lead while the company scaled around them.
Mirum’s rapid growth created three challenges that its HR team wanted to address before they turned into performance problems:
Confidence gaps in important people skills
In a pre-program survey, Mirum’s managers rated themselves across a range of management and leadership skills, revealing variability in both competence and confidence. They scored lowest on addressing poor performance, managing their own time and energy, and having career development conversations with their teams — all important skills they would need to lean on as their teams grew.
A common language across functions
Mirum had already defined its Leadership Commitments and had a strong culture behind them. The team wanted a practical way for managers in every function to learn the same frameworks to follow through on those commitments, so manager behaviors and expectations remained consistent across the organization.
Connection across a scaling organization
As headcount climbed, managers were increasingly heads down in their own functions. Mirum wanted a peer network where managers learned from each other and kept that support going after any learning programs ended.
“The Elevate partnership has been great. The team anticipates what we need before we ask, and our learning and development score from our engagement survey went up exponentially.”
Tory Martinez, Vice President of Global HR, Mirum Pharmaceuticals
Average workshop rating
Coaching sessions utilized
Lift in self-rated management effectiveness
Manager Quickstart: a fully custom leadership program built on Mirum’s Leadership Commitments
Elevate started by learning Mirum’s culture from the inside, then designed a fully custom program for a pilot cohort of 23 newer managers. This new program, called Manager Quickstart, was built to run for 5 months and serve people new to management or new to Mirum.
Rather than teach generic management theory, Elevate built each session on one of Mirum’s Leadership Commitments, turning company philosophy into practiced skills. Managers worked through 5 workshops, administered once per month:
A Mirum executive kicked off every workshop to speak to why each workshop topic mattered to the business, connecting each Leadership Commitment to company strategy. Elevate’s facilitator, Stacey Levy, led all five sessions, so the cohort worked with the same person across the full program.
The Leadership Commitments we learned in the sessions were so relevant and helpful. Stacey led the course with empathy, clarity, and encouraged everyone to share with each other without it feeling forced.”
Workshops were then augmented with dedicated one-on-one coaching for anyone who needed more individual attention. Hour-long sessions were available on demand between workshops, with the scope left open so managers could bring any situation they were working through.
Confidence rose across every skill measured
All 14 measured management competencies improved between pre-program and post-program surveys, with the largest gains ranging from 24% to 33%:
Management Competency
Workshops had an average rating of 9.5 out of 10
Across post-session survey responses, average likelihood to recommend came in at 9.5. Lead with Heart and Action Heroes were the two most popular, scoring 9.9 and 9.8, respectively. The ratings held through a busy end-of-year stretch, when competing demands on managers were heaviest.
Every coaching session was used
Participants booked all available coaching sessions, most as 1:1s. The most frequent request in the program survey was for more coaching time.
The content was great reinforcement of behaviors for successful leadership. I wish this was available earlier in my leadership career.”
Managers started having the conversations they used to avoid
Mirum’s L&D team saw the change in behavior directly. Managers began raising performance issues they would previously have let sit, coming to HR either for support or to report conversations they had already handled on their own.
Mirum extended the program past the pilot
On the strength of the first cohort’s results, Mirum brought Manager Quickstart back for a second cohort, now underway and rating even higher than the first.
“Over the past six months, managers have seemed more comfortable having conversations and holding their teams accountable. They’re starting to come to me and say, ‘I need to address this issue, how can you help me?’ or, ‘I’ve already addressed it, and it actually went really well.’”
Erin Campany, Chief People Officer, Mirum Pharmaceuticals
We are on a mission to help leaders be the kind of manager they would want to work for. Speak with a leadership development expert to learn how Elevate can level up your team’s leadership skills:
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We've helped hundreds of leaders, managers, and rising teams with our science-based frameworks and sessions. 98% of attendees say Elevate improved their confidence to manage their team, and 95% of attendees said they’d recommend Elevate to others.
We've helped hundreds of leaders, managers, and rising teams with our science-based frameworks and sessions. 98% of attendees say Elevate improved their confidence to manage their team, and 95% of attendees said they’d recommend Elevate to others.
