Finding Your Sweet Spot

The Key to Job Satisfaction in Medical Affairs

Tyler Whisman
September 08, 2023

Another week, another Venn Diagram.

My fondness of Venn Diagrams amuses (maybe annoys is more accurate?) my current team. In light of that, I’ll keep with the theme and build on the Newsletter from last week.

That is, there is tremendous upside in identifying things you enjoy that are both valuable and involve work others don’t want to do. But it’s not that simple, and I recognize that.

With that, I want to discuss finding the “sweet spot” in your career.

Simply put, I’d suggest that your sweet spot is the intersection of your skills, preferred culture, and ideal scope of work. Let’s dive in.

Your Skills

This is pretty straightforward. Based on your natural talents and previous experiences, you’ll be better at certain things relative to others.

You are likely aware of your skills, but self-awareness is not a gift everyone possesses. So you might be over or underestimating your skills as this works both ways.

Some assume they’re better at specific tasks and lack the objectivity to suggest otherwise.

Similarly, a lot of people assume their knowledge and experience is commonplace. Often, it’s not. The curse of knowledge is real, and it has positive and negative implications.

You need to become hyper-aware of what you’re truly good at or risk failing.

Scope of Work

Again, this isn’t rocket science. What are the things you like working on?

This can mean different things to different people. Some thrive in operations roles where they bring structure and order to chaos. They may care less about which therapeutic area they are in since their passion is detached from some of the specifics.

Typically, there are layers here. I won’t try to complicate the visual but understand that you can niche down here.

For example, I’m partial to Field Medical work within Medical Affairs. My therapeutic passion is Oncology and my preferred customer type would be payers and population health decision-makers. Ideally, I’d find roles that involved all three of those, but I might consider a Field Medical role within oncology that didn’t involve payers (my current role).

I’ll address this in more detail, but it’s worth noting not everything needs to be fully optimized. And this is what leads to personal and professional growth.

Culture Fit

Do not underestimate the impact of culture on job satisfaction.

There have been many “perfect” or “once in a lifetime” opportunities that culture misalignments have derailed.

As addressed with “scope of work,” there are many levels of culture that should be considered. There’s team culture, division/function culture, company culture and everything in between. They’re related, but they are far from uniformly consistent.

Most people can quickly determine whether the culture is amenable once they’re in the role. The challenge is assessing this before joining a new team or new company. While it’s difficult, it’s worth investigating as much as reasonable.

I wrote about my approach to interviewing previously. I try my best to convey the team and company culture to candidates, to better inform their decision. I also attempt to determine whether the candidate will be a risk to the team culture. I want to prevent misery whenever possible.

Assuming you’ve landed a role with an organization that is a great fit culturally, aligns with your skills, and allows you to focus on your preferred scope of work, congratulations, you’ve hit the lottery you’re in your sweet spot. Enjoy it. Thrive.

But don’t be complacent.

Don’t confuse sweet spot and comfort zone. They are not the same. Staying in your sweet spot will require you to continue to grow. To improve and learn new skills. To dabble and expand your scope of work, in case there is something better. And to routinely assess the culture and environment in which you’re working.

If you’re stagnant, things get out of kilter pretty quickly.

For the first eight years of my Medical Affairs career, I was in my sweet spot. I hinted at this earlier. I was in a Field Medical role supporting teams that worked with payers and had the opportunity to launch over a dozen new products, most in oncology or hematology.

The scope of work couldn’t have been more aligned with my preferences. And my experience as a former payer gave me the skills to be successful.

Finally, I was at the same company, and while there were many changes (some more significant than others), the people and culture were generally consistent and remain appealing.

I enjoyed personal success and consistently helped gain recognition for the accomplishments of individuals and my team.

I took on new responsibilities, usually whenever they presented themselves. And through this, I learned new skills and broadened the scope of my work. Far from complacent. Hardly stagnant.

And then I sought out change. The sweet spot is great, but sometimes it makes sense to leave.

Having said that, there are risks associated with not being in your career sweet spot. Typically, it leads to misery, boredom, or failure. None of those sound ideal. So, what do you do if you find yourself on one of those paths? Let’s explore.

Avoiding Failure

When your skills don’t align with the role you’re being asked to perform, you are destined to fail. That is unless you do something about it. And, of course, that assumes you can.

To be fair, we all start in this stage anytime we do something new. Yet, it’s important to acknowledge that some skills are learned better than others.

If you’re not realizing your expected career potential, maybe there’s a misalignment of your skills. You’re only going to fail if you don’t recognize your skill or experience gaps or avoiding putting in the work to close them. The faster you address this, the better, recognizing some things take time.

People with good learning agility and motivation can survive in this environment.

The biggest risk if you’re in this situation is if the organization doesn’t provide the support, training, and infrastructure required for upskilling. If other demands from your role prevent you from addressing your skill gaps, failure is inevitable.

Avoiding Boredom

You can be successful if the scope of your work isn’t fully aligned with your preference. But, you risk boredom. And some people are perfectly content being bored. Over time however, you can become disengaged and then performance can start to slip.

I think people find themselves in these types of roles when they chase compensation or titles alone. What you work on is critically important.

As I stated above, sometimes it’s worthwhile to branch out and work on new things. A byproduct of this, is typically an expansion of your skillset. So, there might be times where you seek out these types of roles.

I did this recently. I’m currently in a role that is slightly outside my preferred scope of work. But I’ve learned so much in such a short amount of time. I’m highly engaged because I purposefully sought out this opportunity. Furthermore, if I return to a role that more closely aligns with my preferences, I’ll do so with new perspectives and it will increase my effectiveness.

Avoiding Misery

Overcoming a poor culture can be tough.

How you combat that might depend on the source of the problem. If it’s driven by one or two individuals, sometimes that can be addressed swiftly and completely. But if it’s organizational, that’s a different story.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to accurately diagnose the problem. And, as with most things, this gets easier with experience.

When the culture isn’t a great fit, it really doesn’t matter how great the other aspects of your role seem. You’ll eventually be miserable. If there’s reason to be optimistic that things will change, it might be worth sticking things out.

Culture is not a slogan or bunch of words. Instead, it’s the cumulative track record of the actions taken. Of a team. A function. Or organization. All matter, but to what degree depends on the situation.

Let’s connect all of the dots here. My goals are generally the following:

Constantly learn and develop new skills (circle grows)
Consistently expose myself to new types of work (circle grows)
Refine my preferred culture and working environment (circle shrinks!)

By learning news skills and hopefully finding new things I enjoy working on, I can be more selective on which type of organization or team I want to join. I will not compromise on culture, so to keep optionality in play, I commit to expanding my skills and scope of enjoyable work.

This has served me well but, as they say, your mileage may vary.

I enjoyed writing this edition quite a bit. I hope it resonated with you.

There’s nothing necessarily ground breaking here, but maybe this framework will help you get closer to your sweet spot or challenge you to grow.

Each week the audience is growing and that motivates me to continue writing. If you’ve found value in one of these weekly newsletters please consider sharing with a friend or colleague - Thanks! You have a special link below that is unique to you, so I’ll know who to thank for spreading the word!

Until next week,

Tyler

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