Sarah Browning | The Business Case for Kindness: Why Happier Teams Are 20% More Productive | Pharma Prescribed

Sarah Browning is a "Kindness Cheerleader" with a 25-year career in internal communications and engagement. In 2021, after an afternoon of reflection on a bench by the River Thames, she founded the Time for Kindness wellbeing programme — built on a simple idea: there is far more kindness in the world than the headlines admit, and noticing it changes how people feel, and therefore how they perform.

This episode is where that idea meets the evidence. Adam puts the data audience's challenge to Sarah directly — show me the numbers — and she answers: a University of Warwick study linking a culture of kindness to employees who were around 20% more productive; a Harvard finding that leaders who intentionally model kindness find their difficult conversations easier, because they've already built the trust those conversations stand on. Her through-line: kindness isn't weak and it isn't fluffy. It's an intentional, measurable business skill.

From there the conversation gets practical. How to spot kindness in an ordinary working day. Why busyness is the enemy of noticing. The "hero stories" she collects and shares. Kindness ambassadors, team practices, and reframing the tough conversation as an act of respect rather than its opposite. And how all of this held up — or mattered more — through COVID.

Honest, warm and rigorous in equal measure. A conversation that takes a soft-sounding word and makes a hard-edged case for it.

🎧 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Ks5oLfSDf0u9F1I8GUjti Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/adam-walkers-pharma-prescribed-podcast/id1829715970 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1a43eb87-b83e-441d-9a87-321263e3f821/adam-walker%E2%80%99s-pharma-prescribed-podcast Podbean: https://pharmaprescribed.podbean.com Full transcript and episode notes: https://pharmaprescribed.com/episodes

🔗 RELATED EPISODE Sarah's evidence-led case for kindness pairs directly with Graham Allcott (Think Productive) on KIND, psychological safety and the quiet power of kindness at work: ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/1i1_TIZRBmI 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/04glB17p7bBWVmLjlwIO7z 🍎 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/graham-allcott-on-kind-psychological-safety-the-quiet/id1829715970?i=1000778402287

⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:35 Meet Sarah Browning 1:00 The Kindness Cheerleader mission 3:00 Kindness conference energy 4:00 Why kindness is powerful 6:00 The River Thames eureka moment 10:00 Defining kindness at work 14:00 The evidence: productivity and performance 17:00 Building kind cultures 20:00 Changing big organisations 23:00 A hero story in action 24:00 Team kindness practices 27:00 Reframing tough conversations 28:00 Kindness through COVID 31:00 Spotting kindness daily 35:00 Slow down, notice more 43:00 Kindness is contagious 46:00 Quickfire and wrap up

👤 ABOUT SARAH BROWNING Founder of the Time for Kindness wellbeing programme and a self-styled Kindness Cheerleader. Strategic communications consultant with 25 years in internal communications and engagement, and Internal Comms Manager for Staff Wellbeing at a Russell Group university. Speaker, storyteller and advocate for staff wellbeing as a core business measure. 💼 Search "Sarah Browning" on LinkedIn 🌐 https://www.timeforkindness.co.uk

🎙️ ABOUT PHARMA PRESCRIBED Pharma Prescribed is the podcast where leaders, innovators and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites, no spin. Just raw insight, one prescription at a time. Hosted by biometrics consultant Adam Walker. 🌐 https://pharmaprescribed.com ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@pharmaprescribedpodcast 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwalkerbiometrics 🏢 https://uk.linkedin.com/company/pharma-prescribed-podcast

#SarahBrowning #TimeForKindness #KindnessAtWork #WorkplaceWellbeing #Leadership #PharmaPrescribed #PsychologicalSafety #EmployeeEngagement #OrganisationalCulture #KindnessMatters #StaffWellbeing

Pavel Trofimov spent roughly 15 years in international B2B sales across complex technical markets before moving into clinical research — where he noticed something the industry treats as normal. Founders, scientists and operational leaders were doing the delivery and the business development themselves. In most other regulated industries, that commercial work sits with a dedicated team.

That gap became Lab-2-Business (L2B). Pavel's mission, in his own words: to help excellent scientific and technological companies be as deliberate about winning business as they are about delivering it.

In this episode he unpacks the imbalance at the heart of clinical research — delivery machines built to be precise and never make mistakes, with almost no one positioned to make the value clear and turn it into revenue. He's sharp on why founder-led growth hits a ceiling, why he refuses "twin mandates" (so he never becomes the networking "head that changes its body" at every conference), and why he rejects the word "fractional" altogether — he embeds as an extended team member, aligned on scope and outcomes, in it for the long run.

The conversation's most provocative turn is on AI-native startups. Pavel argues they face a harder sell than anyone: they're not selling a product into the clinical trial ecosystem, they're selling behaviour change — convincing people to change how they work, measure and invoice. His prediction: once the early adopters move and the regulatory rules settle, the companies that move fastest could own the clinical trial market, and parts of the old industry may simply collapse.

Adam and Pavel also trade notes on a live concern: AI "personas" now cold-approaching people on LinkedIn, and why validating that you're talking to a real human matters more than ever.

A commercial lens on an industry that rarely applies one to itself.

🎧 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Ks5oLfSDf0u9F1I8GUjti Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/adam-walkers-pharma-prescribed-podcast/id1829715970 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1a43eb87-b83e-441d-9a87-321263e3f821/adam-walker%E2%80%99s-pharma-prescribed-podcast Podbean: https://pharmaprescribed.podbean.com

Youtube: https://youtu.be/Fb4HYN0J6Zk Full transcript and episode notes: https://pharmaprescribed.com/episodes

⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:35 Meet Pavel and Lab-2-Business 2:00 Spotting the commercial gap 4:00 The limits of founder-led growth 14:00 Embedded, not fractional 18:00 The pivot into life sciences 26:00 AI-native tools and selling behaviour change 35:00 Quickfire and golden rule

👤 ABOUT PAVEL TROFIMOV Founder of Lab-2-Business (L2B). Commercial specialist with ~15 years in international B2B sales across complex technical products and services, now focused on clinical research and life sciences. Works as an embedded commercial team member helping founder-led scientific and technology companies build deliberate, systematic business development — with particular interest in AI-native companies stripping manual work and friction out of clinical trials. 💼 Search "Pavel Trofimov" on LinkedIn

🎙️ ABOUT PHARMA PRESCRIBED Pharma Prescribed is the podcast where leaders, innovators and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites, no spin. Just raw insight, one prescription at a time. Hosted by biometrics consultant Adam Walker. 🌐 https://pharmaprescribed.com ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@pharmaprescribedpodcast 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwalkerbiometrics 🏢 https://uk.linkedin.com/company/pharma-prescribed-podcast

#PavelTrofimov #Lab2Business #ClinicalResearch #BusinessDevelopment #CommercialStrategy #PharmaPrescribed #AIinPharma #ClinicalTrials #FounderLedGrowth #B2BSales #LifeSciences

Henrik Nakskov | An AI Can't Ask Questions of the Future - Data Trust in Clinical Research | Pharma Prescribed

Henrik Nakskov is a Danish life sciences specialist with more than 20 years in clinical drug development — a medical chemist by training who became one of the field's more original thinkers on data integrity. He spent a decade at Novo Nordisk in haematology and coagulation, held senior roles at NNIT, and led biometrics at Symphogen. That experience now runs through three companies: Sims Consult (his life sciences consultancy), Novyra Life Sciences (where he's CEO and Clinical Information Management Lead), and Safe Implant Technology (where he leads the science).

Henrik cares more about where data comes from than almost anyone. In this episode he explains how he borrowed from Second World War supply-chain theory and Toyota's just-in-time management to rebuild the way trial data is collected and cleaned — taking last-patient-out to database release from a normal 8–12 weeks down to one week, and in some studies to two days. He tells the story of trauma trials collecting 1,102 data points in three hours under conditions of war and car accidents, and of mapping the full chain of a stroke patient's care — onset, admission, CT scan, treatment — so precisely the FDA used it to teach what data intelligence actually means.

Then the conversation turns to AI, where Henrik is refreshingly precise. He runs Grok and ChatGPT against each other to hunt for the "black holes," builds explicit frameworks and guardrails so the models can't wander, and makes a sharp philosophical point: an AI can only work from references it has already learned — it cannot ask a genuinely new question of the future, so the more you use it, the more surveillance your safety monitoring needs to compensate for the unknowns you've introduced.

Coaching over policing, trust over box-ticking, and a continuous-monitoring vision for where quality is heading. A masterclass for anyone who works with clinical data.

🎧 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/40WRQLAD3Ed6ibFV9Fm7wZ?si=QRbYluxTT-2E6O3jeGRWiA Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-ai-cant-ask-questions-of-the-future-data/id1829715970?i=1000792188722 Podbean: https://pharmaprescribed.podbean.com

Youtube: https://youtu.be/9ZbJ9PXOJBM Full transcript and episode notes: https://pharmaprescribed.com/episodes

⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:35 Meet Henrik Nakskov 6:00 Faster trials, better quality 12:00 From Novo to consulting 16:00 Building Sims Consult 25:00 Culture and change management 34:00 Trust, standards and due diligence 39:00 Coaching, not policing 41:00 AI in clinical quality 42:00 Frameworks and guardrails 49:00 Why old-school approaches fail 51:00 The black-box risk problem 57:00 A continuous-monitoring vision 1:00 Quickfire and golden rule

👤 ABOUT HENRIK NAKSKOV Medical chemist and clinical data specialist with 20+ years in drug development. Former Project Data Manager at Novo Nordisk (haematology and coagulation), senior roles at NNIT, and biometrics lead at Symphogen. Founder of Sims Consult; CEO and Clinical Information Management Lead at Novyra Life Sciences; CEO and science lead at Safe Implant Technology. Specialist in data integrity, clinical informatics, quality management systems and the governed use of AI in regulated research. Occasional contributor to regulatory guidance. 💼 Search "Henrik Nakskov" on LinkedIn

🎙️ ABOUT PHARMA PRESCRIBED Pharma Prescribed is the podcast where leaders, innovators and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites, no spin. Just raw insight, one prescription at a time. Hosted by biometrics consultant Adam Walker. 🌐 https://pharmaprescribed.com ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@pharmaprescribedpodcast 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwalkerbiometrics 🏢 https://uk.linkedin.com/company/pharma-prescribed-podcast

#HenrikNakskov #DataIntegrity #ClinicalDataManagement #ClinicalTrials #AIinPharma #Biometrics #PharmaPrescribed #ClinicalInformatics #DataIntelligence #QMS #DrugDevelopment