Operational readiness: the challenge nobody notices until growth starts to hurt

Published 24 August 2026

Author(s): Latifa Wilson

Introduction

When Medical Affairs teams encounter challenges, the first instinct is usually to look for a new solution.

A new platform. A new dashboard. A new project management tool. I’ve inherited enough trackers in my career to know that another tracker isn’t always the answer.

But after spending a few years working across Medical Information, Medical Affairs and now Medical Operations, I’ve noticed that the systems aren’t usually the problem. Most organisations will already have an entire catalogue of sophisticated systems. The problem actually tends to be that nobody is quite sure of how all the different functions work, or how decisions made in one team impact everyone else downstream. They don’t have enough clarity on how the work actually gets done. From what I see, that’s more of an operational readiness problem.