Celebrating Failure and Personalising Learning: Inside a Pharma HR Leader’s Mindset

Pharma Now: It’s a pleasure to welcome Mr Sreeni to the Pharma Now podcast, a professional who brings a rich blend of experience in HR leadership, talent development, and organisational capability building. His insights offer a grounded yet strategic view on how companies can evolve their people practices to meet future challenges.

Mr Sreeni, could you tell us about your journey? How did you enter HR and talent management, and what were the defining moments that shaped your approach to people and learning?

Mr Sreeni: Thank you for that question. I’m a graduate in biotechnology, and I started my career in manufacturing right after finishing college. I spent close to a year there. Manufacturing can be a tough place to begin, with multiple shifts, early mornings, late nights, and as a junior, you don’t always get to see the bigger picture. You start right at the shop-floor level.

From there, I got an opportunity to move into research and development within the same organisation. But at every stage of my career, there was at least one person who supported my transition to the next level.

One individual gave me candid feedback. He told me, “You’re not really suited for manufacturing. Your skill set seems more people-oriented than process-driven.” He suggested that I continue my studies, perhaps pursue an MBA, and explore human resources.

That single conversation changed the direction of my career. I left that role, went to a management school for my MBA, and entered HR and training. That’s how the journey really began.

Even in my second and third roles, I had people who guided, mentored, and coached me. If I had to summarise it in one line, it would be this: we’re fortunate when we’re surrounded by people who can recognise our potential and help steer us in the right direction.

I truly discovered my interest in training and development while working with an organisation involved in patient support programs. That’s where I realised I could engage people, to make them listen. Colleagues pointed it out, and that feedback helped me see training as a real opportunity.

There was a point when I understood that pharma training and development was the field I wanted to be in, but that realisation came a little late, around the age of 23 or 24. Ideally, I would have liked to discover it earlier, but once I did, I began working on myself.

I started looking into certification courses and speaking with people already working in pharma learning and development. At the time, I wasn’t formally in HR or training, but those interactions gave me clarity on what I needed to build to move in that direction.

Those conversations created a roadmap for where I wanted to go. I sincerely hope that listeners, wherever they are in their careers, find people who can guide them, show them the right path, and help them understand the choices ahead.

This is still a journey. It hasn’t ended. But today, I genuinely enjoy what I do. Even if you had called me at one in the morning for this interaction, I would have joined, because these conversations matter to me. Helping people grow is what keeps me motivated, and that’s what brought me here today.

Pharma Now: That’s an exciting journey. When you first heard that you weren’t suited for manufacturing, how did you take it? Did it feel discouraging at the time?

Mr Sreeni: Of course it did. You work day and night, and then your supervisor tells you that you’re not good at what you do; that’s hard to hear. At that time, I was barely 20 years old, just a few months after finishing my BSc in biotechnology. I genuinely felt shattered. I thought I was doing well, so hearing that made me question myself. It felt like I wasn’t making a mark, like something was missing.

But when I look back now, I firmly believe that if that advice hadn’t come when it did, I might still be stuck in that role, and not enjoying what I truly wanted to do. At the moment, it was painful, but in hindsight, that feedback changed my life for the better.

Pharma Now: Moving to a broader question, within pharma, where compliance, regulation, innovation, and speed all intersect, what are the unique challenges for HR and L&D? And how should organisations prepare to handle them?

Mr Sreeni: That’s a great question. To be honest, I don’t really see these as “challenges” in the negative sense. Every organisation needs boundaries and guardrails, and those exist to ensure we ultimately reach our goals. I see them more as checkpoints, opportunities to pause and ask whether we are still on the right track. Compliance and legal functions play a vital role in that.

From an HR or learning and development perspective, the first step is to understand what is possible within your organisation clearly. Whenever you’re designing a new initiative for employees, involve legal and compliance early. Get their input and confirm whether the idea is feasible.

If they give a green signal, you move forward, but keep them informed as the program evolves. Share what the next steps look like and ask if there are any risks to be mindful of. When you treat compliance and legal teams as partners rather than obstacles, the entire process becomes smoother.

That collaboration also helps them understand our challenges as HR and L&D professionals, what we’re trying to achieve and the realities of our work. Over time, those shared experiences can even help refine policies and guardrails. These checks and balances aren’t barriers; they are essential to long-term organisational success.

Pharma Now: Absolutely, very true. From your experience, what does it take to shift an organisation from training when required to learning as a habit and culture? And why does that shift really matter?

Mr Sreeni: That’s an interesting question, and honestly, I don’t think there’s one precise answer. If you ask me whether I’m interested in learning, I’ll obviously say yes, because I wear this L&D hat. But when you go back to a frontline employee who has multiple responsibilities, different KPIs, and constant pressure to deliver results, learning can feel like just another task.

From their perspective, being told, “You must complete this course in the next one day,” might not add much value. It still feels like a push activity. In most organisations, only a small group of people truly see learning as an opportunity to grow. One of the easiest ways to change that mindset is to lead by example.

If employees can see someone within the organisation who keeps learning, keeps getting opportunities, performs well, and then climbs the ladder, that person becomes proof. As an L&D team, you can point to that example and say: Look, this is what continuous learning can do.

But at the end of the day, it still comes down to the importance each places on building skills and competencies. You can’t really force someone to learn; you can only create opportunities and pathways. Another challenge is relevance. If people learn something but can’t apply it in their day-to-day work, it quickly loses meaning. That’s where L&D teams need to focus: design interventions that are immediately usable.

For example, you’re hosting this podcast. If I give you a short session on on-camera presence, how to position yourself, where to look, how to speak clearly, and you apply it the very next day, that sparks curiosity to learn more.

But if I suddenly assign you a course on deep learning or advanced AI, and it has nothing to do with your role, you might only log in because your manager asked you to. The genuine interest probably won’t be there. We try to solve this with gamification, points, leaderboards, badges, but one approach I strongly believe in is peer learning, also called social learning.

Imagine a group of anchors or colleagues sitting together, sharing challenges: That guest was tough, how did you handle it? Someone else explains what worked for them. There’s no judgment, no assessment, just real experiences being exchanged. From those conversations, you naturally pick up ideas. And the next time you face a similar situation, you try something new.

So I genuinely feel that social and peer-based learning can shift mindsets; the key is finding the right balance between structured programs and informal interactions. That balance will always depend on the environment, the people, and where the organisation is in its journey. Many factors come into play. But ultimately, it comes back to the individual: Do I want to grow? Do I believe learning matters? That core curiosity makes all the difference.

Pharma Now: So even casual conversations with colleagues can help. We can organise team-bonding sessions too, but again, those are still push initiatives.

Mr Sreeni: Exactly. I honestly believe that some of the most powerful learning happens over a cup of coffee in the cafeteria.

Two colleagues might be chatting, and one says, “I don’t know how you’re doing this in Excel, can you show me?” The other replies, “It’s simple, just drag and drop here.” In that moment, real learning has already happened.

Often, those informal exchanges teach more than a 60-minute formal session, no matter the topic. Learning thrives when it becomes part of everyday conversations, not just calendar invites.

Pharma Now: Very accurate. So, how important is cross-functional collaboration among HR, operations, regulatory, and business teams when designing learning and people development programs, and what pitfalls should be avoided?

Mr Sreeni: The answer is actually very straightforward. We need to involve all these functions right from the beginning. Let’s say a product launch is planned for six months. The marketing team usually starts by going to customers and physicians, understanding the market, and identifying unmet patient needs. They then bring those insights back to the drawing board.

That information is passed on to the medical team, who evaluate the evidence, clinical trials, scientific data, and which talking points really matter to doctors. After that, HR or L&D typically steps in to ask: How do we upskill our field teams to communicate this effectively?

If this happens only in phases, we lose a lot of time and opportunities to co-create and learn together. Now imagine something different: one representative from each of marketing, medical, regulatory, sales, and HR comes together early to form a core committee. They sit down and say, "This is what needs to happen in the next six months. How can each function contribute?"

That kind of collaboration makes the entire process faster, smoother, and far more effective. But if departments work in silos, marketing never speaking to medical, medical not talking to sales, and HR joining only at the end, it becomes challenging for the organisation to move forward. Working in silos is a thing of the past. The organisations that truly embrace cross-functional collaboration will grow and deliver results much faster.

Some companies are still in early stages of building that culture, and it will take time. But the quicker they integrate multiple functions into learning and training interventions, the stronger and more impactful those initiatives become.

Pharma Now: And what role should cross-functional leaders play in that process?

Mr Sreeni: That role is absolutely critical. We should never see leaders simply as people who give sign-off. Let me give you an example. Suppose I’m planning a training program, and the budget comes from marketing. If my approach is to design everything first and then go to marketing for approval, I’m already on the wrong track.

Instead, I should meet that marketing head at the very beginning, not just as a budget owner, but as a partner. I need to help them see that whatever we are building is meant for their business as well, and that they are an integral part of the process. Without buy-in from senior leaders, it becomes extremely hard to drive learning initiatives in any organisation.

If leaders only see a dashboard showing that 18 training programs were conducted, the impact may feel minimal to them because they don’t know what those programs actually entailed. Now imagine the reverse. I go to them early, explain the business priorities, and they say, "Don’t do 18 programs, focus on four." These four are what the business truly needs.

That immediately changes my thinking. I become sharper, more focused, and more aligned with outcomes. And often, those four well-designed programs will deliver far more impact than 18 scattered ones. This principle doesn’t apply only to training; it applies across the organisation.

We need to keep senior leaders informed while also being mindful of their time. They have multiple responsibilities. We can’t call them for everything, but we do need to find the right balance.

As an L&D team, that means engaging leaders from the discussion stage, understanding their pain points, involving them during design, sharing early feedback after the first program's run, and refining future interventions based on their inputs. Leadership involvement should be continuous, not just at the start and the end.

If I can regularly go back to them, hear their perspective, and fine-tune programs batch after batch, the entire learning ecosystem becomes sharper, more relevant, and far more aligned with business goals.

Pharma Now: Correct. I completely agree, they know their teams far better, so they can offer sharper insights. That makes the programs that follow much more beneficial for everyone.

Mr Sreeni: Very accurate. At the end of the day, that’s exactly what we want, whether it’s learners or business heads, the program has to create real value. People should walk away feeling that the effort was worth it. Many organisations are already moving in this direction. The real challenge, though, is not in talking about it, but implementing it within the organisational setup. Implementation is the key. Talking is easy. Making it work on the ground is much harder.

Pharma Now: As pharma evolves with digital transformation, hybrid teams, and a mix of field and remote workforces, what should be the focus areas for HR and L&D over the next few years?

Mr Sreeni: One significant shift will definitely be embracing AI and digital tools. Over the next two to three years, this is going to accelerate even more. I genuinely believe there shouldn’t be a single person in an organisation who is not digitally capable, from the receptionist to the CEO. Everyone should have opportunities to upskill in the digital space. As L&D professionals, we also need to stay ahead, track emerging technologies, understand what the future might look like in the next few years, and start preparing people for it.

Another central area is data analytics. Take your own work, you might look at how many people viewed a YouTube episode, how many reposts happened on LinkedIn, or how engagement differed across podcasts. That’s all the data. But unless you can interpret those numbers, they remain just numbers.

When people learn to extract insights from data, they can improve the very next time they act.

If I understand why one episode performed poorly and another did well, I can fine-tune the next one. That’s where learning really happens.

Now add AI and generative tools to the mix. Imagine uploading an Excel sheet with engagement metrics into a tool and asking, “Compare four episodes and tell me which performed best—and why.” If technology can do that in seconds, my job becomes far more strategic.

As HR or L&D leaders, we should be scanning the market for tools that simplify employees’ lives. The easier we make work, the more agile and productive people become. That ultimately helps the organisation succeed.

There’s another shift happening as well, the diversity of learners inside organisations. Personally, I don’t like over-segmenting people into labels like Gen Z or Gen Alpha. I prefer to think of people simply as people. Pain points don’t really change that much.

What does change is how people like to learn. Some prefer podcasts. Others respond to visuals and videos. Some still love books and handwritten notes. Now imagine a learning system that only offers PDFs. What about those who learn best through audio or video? That’s where personalisation becomes critical.

As L&D professionals, we need to design learning ecosystems that cater to different styles, which we often call just-in-time learning or hyper-personalised learning. People want to know when they feel the need, not necessarily by blocking 30 minutes on their calendar for tomorrow morning.

If I suddenly want to understand something, I should be able to access it instantly, just as I can when I search online. That means learning platforms must be intuitive and straightforward, no five logins, no endless clicks before reaching a module. If access is complicated, learners will drop off. Learning has to be easy, bite-sized, mobile, and available on demand. That’s where microlearning fits in.

As L&D leaders, we must continuously study how learners are changing, adapt to those behaviours, and redesign content accordingly, so people can learn the way they want to learn, when they want to learn.

Pharma Now: Okay, significant. And what’s your take on rewarding people after strong results?

Mr Sreeni: Rewards are always good, even personally, you and I would be happier receiving them. But I think there are two types of rewards. One is monetary, such as salary increases, better increments, or bonuses. But not every organisation has that flexibility. Some might still be startups, with limited budgets, yet they still want to recognise good work.

That’s where the second kind of reward becomes powerful. It could be something as simple as a pat on the shoulder, saying, “You handled that conversation really well.” When that comes from your supervisor or someone you respect, it can mean more than a ₹1,000 Amazon voucher.

It might be a small token of appreciation. Or even a short note from the CEO saying, “I heard about what you did, and I’m glad you stayed true to our values and culture.” Imagine receiving that from your CEO or your manager. That stays with you.

Another idea could be writing to an employee’s family, thanking them for supporting that person and acknowledging their contribution to the organisation. None of this requires a big budget. But it speaks directly to people. It touches emotions. It makes them feel grounded. And that, in turn, makes people more loyal to the organisation and to the work they do.

I firmly believe it should be a mix of both financial and non-financial rewards. We need to find the right balance. It won’t be perfect at first. But instead of waiting for the ideal reward system, it’s better to start, maybe with one letter, see how employees respond, then refine it over time.

Rewards and appreciation are essential not only for learning and training, but also for the organisation as a whole. Small moments of recognition can make a huge difference. No matter the generation, Gen Z, Gen X, or anyone else, people are people. We respond to emotion. These gestures stay with us and often make us better the next day.

Pharma Now: That’s really true. I want to share a small story here. One day, my director was writing appreciation notes for the team. I passed by and saw him writing, and I noticed my name. I was thrilled, thinking a note was coming for me. Later, I went to the board where the notes were pinned, but I couldn’t find mine. I went back to his desk and saw that the note had been crumpled. Honestly, my heart broke. For two or three days, I kept overthinking, What did I do wrong? Why wasn’t there one for me?

After a few days, he noticed and said, “I didn’t want to give it to you that day because there are a few things you still need to work on. But someday, there will be one for you.”

And then, a few days later, he did appreciate me. That’s when I realised how important it is when recognition comes from a mentor. It really does matter more than a voucher, because it’s coming from someone you respect. So people should always be thoughtful about this. 

This conversation is getting fascinating, so let’s move to the last segment: the rapid-fire round.

Pharma Now: One unconventional habit or routine you practice that helps you stay sharp.

Mr. Sreeni:

I’m not really a reader; I’m more of a visual learner. That’s why I mentioned different learning styles earlier. But there was one book I came across called The 5 AM Club. Many people might already know it.

The idea is to wake up early and build a routine that sets the tone for the day. I adapted it; 5 a.m. doesn’t always work for me, so mine has become more like a “6 a.m. club.” When I wake up, I spend some time reflecting: What are the essential things I want to complete today? Is there something personal or professional that needs my attention? I jot those down. That clarity really helps shape my day.

After that, I make sure I spend about 10–15 minutes learning something new. The space I work in is increasingly digital, and I don’t come from an engineering background. But my role demands that if someone talks about AI, I should at least understand what they mean.

So every day, I read a little, maybe from newsletters I’ve subscribed to, or about a new tool or trend. Even if it’s just a couple of lines, it builds confidence. When someone mentions it later, it’s no longer entirely new for me.

That small daily habit, reflection plus learning, has made a big difference. It doesn’t have to be the same for everyone. For you, it might be practising music, learning a new recipe, or working on a hobby. The key is finding 10–15 minutes for yourself. That time keeps you grounded, happy, and moving forward as an individual.

Pharma Now: If there were no constraints, what bold HR or L&D experiment would you try in any company?

Mr. Sreeni:

That’s a tough one. I might go back to rewards, but in a different way. Maybe not just celebrating success… I would actually start celebrating failures. Failures allow us to learn. If people could openly come forward and say, “This didn’t work, and here’s why,” others could learn from it too. As an HR leader, I would promote openness, transparency, and vulnerability.

I might even reward people more for sharing failures than for sharing only successes, because failures often teach us the most.

Pharma Now: Coffee or tea to start your morning?

Mr. Sreeni:

Great question! I’m from Kerala, and there’s a saying in Malayalam that wherever you go, a Malayali tea shop follows. So I’m definitely a tea person. Tea gets me going.

Pharma Now: A personal value or principle that guides your leadership style?

Mr. Sreeni:

There’s one quote that’s stayed with me since school: “Be the change you want to see.” If I expect certain behaviours from others, I believe I should demonstrate them first. That principle has shaped how I lead and how I interact with people.

Pharma Now: Great. Thank you, Mr Sreeni. It was wonderful having you on the podcast.

Mr. Sreeni:

Thank you so much. I hope the viewers and listeners take something away from this. As I said, people are always people. Let’s work together as a community, learning, growing, and improving as we move forward.