In commercial operations, precision is not an aspiration. It is a requirement. I lead Customer Engagement Operations for the US business at Novartis, based out of Hyderabad. My team drives the full commercial operations engine behind the US field force, spanning incentive compensation, goal design, roster and eligibility management, field enquiry support, awards, and IC governance across brands.

The complexity is structural. The stakes are real. A miscalculated payout is not just an operational error. It directly impacts sales force trust, disrupts performance alignment, and has downstream implications on business outcomes. In this environment, accuracy, timeliness, and compliance are non-negotiable.

Alongside this, I have been leading our digital transformation agenda, integrating automation and AI into workflows that were historically manual and siloed. But the core question I kept returning to was not about efficiency alone. How do I build an operating model that scales with complexity, without scaling fragility, is the real question.

The Limits of Execution

The inflection point for me was not a single failure, but a recurring pattern. As our scope expanded across brands, markets, and stakeholder groups, I observed a familiar cycle. Teams are working harder to compensate for upstream data inconsistencies. Governance gaps are surfacing only during escalations. Process dependencies that relied on institutional memory rather than system design.

We were delivering outcomes. But the system was not self-correcting. I found that a disproportionate amount of my leadership bandwidth was being spent on exception handling and escalation management, rather than on building resilient processes.

This exposed a deeper gap. The difference between operational competence and operational intelligence. Closing that gap required me to step back from execution and re-examine how I was thinking about operations itself.

Beyond Frameworks

I come from a background grounded in structured methodologies, with certifications across Lean Six Sigma, ITIL, PRINCE2, and Scrum. These frameworks are valuable. They bring discipline and repeatability. But they do not automatically enable leaders to navigate complexity at scale. What I was looking for was not another Operations management course in the conventional sense. I was looking for a way to connect systems thinking with leadership behaviour and organisational design.

The Operational Excellence for Leaders programme at ISB Executive Education stood out because it is positioned not as a foundational Operations management Program, but as an advanced intervention for leaders already operating in high-complexity environments. It challenged not just what I knew, but how I applied it.

Thinking in Systems, Not Incidents

One of the most significant shifts for me was moving from incident-based problem solving to system-based diagnosis. In operations, there is a tendency to isolate problems and address them individually. The programme introduced a more rigorous lens. Instead of asking what went wrong, I began asking what in the system is producing this outcome. This reframing has practical implications. It shifts the focus from corrective action to structural design.

Another area where my thinking evolved was governance. Historically, I viewed governance as a control mechanism. Policies, escalation paths, audit checks. What became clearer was that governance is also a behavioural signal. It defines how decisions are made, what is trusted, and how accountability is distributed. Poor governance design does not just create process inefficiencies. It creates ambiguity, which in turn impacts decision quality and organisational confidence.

The concept of over-optimisation was equally important. Driving efficiency in one component of a system without understanding its interdependencies can degrade overall performance. This is particularly relevant in global operating models where multiple teams interact across time zones and functions.

Designing for Scale, Not Just Efficiency

These shifts in thinking became central when I started shaping our 2026 strategic framework. I structured it across three pillars: Run Sharp, Grow Strong, and Lead Bold.

Previously, my instinct would have been to sequence these priorities, starting with operational efficiency. The programme reinforced that these dimensions are interdependent. Operational excellence cannot be sustained without capability development and leadership alignment. A recent example was the redesign of our incentive compensation governance model. The focus was not limited to process optimisation. It extended to decision rights, escalation triggers, and accountability structures across the Hyderabad and US teams.

The critical change was in problem framing. We moved from addressing individual breakdowns to designing for systemic reliability.

Learning in Context

The distinguishing aspect of the programme was its pedagogy. Professor Vijaya Sunder M’s approach stood out. Operational excellence was not taught as a static discipline, but as a set of questions that require continuous interrogation. The emphasis was on applying concepts to real business contexts, rather than abstract learning.

Equally valuable was the cohort. Engaging with leaders from manufacturing, technology, financial services, and healthcare provided exposure to diverse operating models. Many of the most relevant insights came from outside my immediate domain. This cross-industry perspective is often missing in traditional Operations management certification pathways, but is critical when designing systems that need to scale across geographies and functions.

Leadership Beyond Execution

The most meaningful shift has been in how I define my role as a leader. My natural orientation has always been towards execution and delivery. While that drives results, it can also create dependency on the leader for problem-solving.

The programme helped me differentiate between leading for performance and leading for capacity. The former delivers outcomes in the short term. The latter builds systems and teams that sustain those outcomes. This has influenced how I approach team development. During our recent learning week initiative, the success metric was not content coverage, but whether it enabled individuals to think differently about their roles and decision-making.

I have also become more deliberate in creating mechanisms for early problem identification. In complex systems, the ability to surface issues is as critical as the ability to resolve them.

What Comes Next?

In pharma commercial operations, I see three structural shifts shaping the future.

• AI is moving from automation to decision support, helping identify patterns and risks earlier
• Global capability centres evolving from execution hubs to centres of insight and design
• Governance becoming an enabler of speed, not a constraint

These shifts require a different kind of leadership, one that can think in terms of systems, trade-offs, and long-term design. The Operational Excellence for Leaders programme has helped me build that lens.

If You Are Evaluating this Path

For leaders at scale, the risk is rarely a lack of tools. It is reliance on mental models that have not evolved with the complexity they are expected to manage. An advanced Operations management Program like this delivers value when approached with real problems, not theoretical curiosity.

The return on investment is not immediate. It becomes visible over time in how you frame problems, design solutions, and influence decisions. Operational excellence is not the absence of problems. It is the presence of systems, people, and culture that turn problems into progress.

Synopsis

Prateek Sinha, Director - Customer Engagement Operations, Novartis. An Operational Excellence for Leaders programme participant, he focuses on building scalable, intelligent systems across commercial operations. His work spans digital transformation, governance design, and leading teams to move from execution-driven efficiency to sustainable, system-led excellence.