Developing Resilience at AstraZeneca

In this session, Dr. Linda Hoopes will provide a basic introduction to the resilience framework used at AstraZeneca, which describes a set of “change muscles” that individuals, teams, and organizations can use to respond effectively to disruptive change. Joseph Fletcher, Learning and Organizational Effectiveness Partner at AstraZeneca, will describe the approach taken to develop and deliver the training, the viral campaign that generated momentum in the US, and the preparation and deployment of internal resources to support the program.

He will also discuss the in-progress global expansion of the program, and follow-on activities to build resilience into the DNA of the organization. He will share strengths and weaknesses of the approach, lessons learned, and results to date. There will be time for group dialogue, so please come prepared to share your own questions and best practices.

Linda L. Hoopes, Ph.D.
President, Resilience Alliance

Linda brings over twenty years of experience in psychology to her work with a broad range of organizations. She is the founder and president of Resilience Alliance, an organization offering tools and training in the areas of personal, team, and organizational resilience, and the co-author (with Mark Kelly) of Managing Change with Personal Resilience. Prior to forming her own company, Linda spent seventeen years at ODR (now Conner Partners), working closely with founder Daryl Conner on the creation of assessments, including the Personal Resilience Profile, which now has a database of over 70,000 individuals. She has worked with clients in a range of industries including financial services, health care, and pharmaceuticals, and continues to work with Conner Partners clients as a subject matter expert on culture change and other issues. She served as Chief Operating Officer of ODR, and was a founding partner in Conner Partners, playing a significant role in the development of its Strategy Execution methodology. She is a licensed psychologist in the State of Georgia.

Joseph A. Fletcher, MBA
Learning & Organizational Effectiveness Partner
AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals

Joe Fletcher (“Fletch”) has 29 years of leadership and management experience, and has been in AstraZeneca’s Leadership & Organizational Effectiveness group since 2006.  Prior to joining AZ, he was a management consultant for over 13 years as both a client project leader and an internal executive.  Prior to his consulting career, he had more than 11 years of experience in project/program management, training systems development and management, and the management of major acquisition contracts, primarily with and for the U.S. Navy.  Joe has worked with several global Fortune 50-sized companies in North America and abroad, within the chemicals/petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, automotive, pulp & paper, consumer products, commodity distribution and publishing industries.  He has extensive leadership experience in the management of business process reengineering efforts, with particular focus on change management and organizational capability development in the functional areas of supply chain, operations, capital engineering and sales & marketing He has designed and led dozens of programs and initiatives to enhance organizational culture and align human and organizational systems. Since joining AstraZeneca, Joe has supported several major change management projects and organizational development initiatives globally