Moving into medical-writing management
Moving from writing to management changes the skills and responsibilities a medical writer needs. Preparation, training and opportunities to try broader work can support the transition, whether it follows a career plan or an unexpected opening.
A different career path
Management should be an alternative career path rather than a reward for excellent writing. An excellent writer is not necessarily the best-suited or most interested candidate; a manager does not have to be an excellent writer, but needs to recognise excellent writing. A strong foundation in medical writing nevertheless remains invaluable, alongside management skills transferable from other fields.
Writers and managers share project management, communication, flexibility, the ability to change direction and leadership. Freelancers may already have experience of project pricing, client liaison and financial tracking that company writers encounter less, depending on the organisation. Management can add human resources, resourcing, briefing staff, freelancers and graphics, coaching, mentoring, teaching, financial reporting and meetings.
New managers move from controlling their own work to delegating work for which they remain ultimately responsible, making trust and relationships essential. Expectations can mix new challenges, meaningful influence and greater exposure with anxiety about people management, needing to know everything and managing former peers. Former peers may not all be supportive; the changed relationship can be surprising and a mentor or trusted adviser can help. Tough conversations are part of the role, but should not deter an interested writer from pursuing it.
Preparation and support
Management aspirations can be raised in individual development-plan discussions. The writer can assess current skills against the job description and manager skill standards, then agree with the line manager an action plan and realistic timeline for closing gaps. Coaching, building team culture, feedback, conflict management and influencing others may not have been essential in the writing role.
Four transition supports are:
- Manager mentoring: support for new and established managers in delegation, feedback, leadership and working across regions and cultures.
- Manager skill standards: criteria against which a prospective manager can identify competency gaps.
- Managerial-effectiveness training: development in high-performing teams, proactive problem solving, behaviour-based interviewing and change management.
- Trusted advisers: help in understanding the change in responsibilities and relationships.
Trust and a strong relationship with the line manager enable open discussions of the experience needed for progression. Development programmes should allow exploration in a forgiving environment where mistakes can broaden knowledge.
Learning management
Management can be learned rather than assumed to be an innate quality; even understanding financial spreadsheets is a skill that can be developed. Aspiring managers should identify the training they need and seek external organisations or companies if their employer does not provide it. Several programmes may need to be tried before finding a useful fit.
One medical-writing manager attended at least five leadership programmes, finding some useful and others less so. The most useful showed examples of managerial behaviour and language appropriate to a situation. Observation of others can teach both what to do and what to avoid.
Promotion does not guarantee this preparation: the same manager joined an agency intending not to manage, was promoted six months later and was immediately sent on a two-day leadership course, unlike at her previous employers. In a global leadership role, another manager benefited from intensive training in strategic thinking, anticipating industry trends and working with senior internal and external counterparts, including development of a guiding leadership-intent statement.
Opportunities and transition routes
A career plan can be a starting point, but flexibility and openness to unexpected opportunities matter; some medical-writing managers did not plan the move, and aspiring managers should be kind to themselves when opportunities do not initially work out. Opportunities should fit the writer's skills and be explored through conversations with the manager, including explicitly asking for a push where hesitation is the barrier. Good managers can offer opportunities, but the aspiring manager has to take them.
Business responsibilities
An early management opportunity can expose a writer to unfamiliar business responsibilities: four years into a pharmaceutical-company writing career, one writer was asked to lead continuing medical education and spent twelve months merging three divisions into one business unit. The work taught tax, capital expenditure, human resources implications and diplomatic navigation of a hierarchy, alongside educating colleagues and enforcing required guidelines across a global company.
At a publisher's small division, more work than one writer could complete and no resources to hire led to outsourcing. The principal writer's role shifted to briefing freelancers, reviewing their work and comparing estimates with revenues; the division's move to grant-funded continuing medical education added pricing, workload estimation, resourcing and identifying and delivering freelance-writer training.
Development projects and transferable experience
One writer's progression began with an informed-consent subject-matter-expert role accepted before she considered herself an expert, followed by a cross-functional template and guidance project, chairing a mentoring committee, leading a successful partnership bid defence and then the partnership itself. Regular catch-ups and coaching gave her manager enough knowledge and confidence in her capabilities to offer a management role when she was ready.
Management experience can also come from outside medical writing: a former senior writer's first management role followed an English-teaching diploma, with a trusting director and two experienced colleagues mentoring the move from peer to manager responsible for observing teachers and recommending retention. Taking opportunities in adjacent process or technology development can build transferable skills, including influencing people who do not report to the writer.
Shared roles and wider leadership
A job-share can combine complementary strengths: two experienced writers without formal line-management experience proposed jointly leading a European team, relying on large-project-team experience to help them learn. After formal interviews, one took line management and the other business responsibilities; there was no formal management training, so learning was steep and continuous. Two years later, one became global head without another interview; as the team grew from around thirty to several hundred, she had to delegate through new layers of managers and establish quality processes.
Broader managerial responsibilities can develop later too: in late 2020, a medical-writing leader volunteered as an office general manager alongside her main job, coordinating facilities, human resources and department heads for colleagues from twenty-five nations.