From Potential to Performance: What Talent Needs to Truly Succeed
Potential isn’t something you spot. It’s something you build over time.
At Fortrea, we have a deep thirst for innovative talent. Recognising potential is not a side activity for us, it is a deliberate leadership expectation. Like many CROs, we are rich in high potential, future potential, and untapped potential. That is a strength, but it is also a responsibility.
Potential needs to be nurtured, refined, and coached. It requires guidance to help individuals find their path and importantly, potential is not a guarantee of high performance, nor a prerequisite for it.
On its own, potential does not deliver results.
Potential alone will not navigate the complexity of operational execution across global clinical studies. It does not automatically ensure data integrity or inspection readiness. And it does not, by default, equip someone with the capability to truly collaborate with sponsors to help solve the intricate regulatory, time sensitive and financial objectives that define modern clinical research.
Over the years, I’ve learned that the space between potential and sustained high performance is where culture, leadership, and environment matter most.
The modern workplace continues to evolve at pace, and the next generation of talent is entering the workforce with different expectations around growth, feedback, flexibility, and purpose. At Fortrea, we are committed to creating the conditions where talented people don’t just arrive with promise but can genuinely thrive, contribute, and deliver impact.
Learning Agility Is the New Advantage
One of the most significant shifts I’ve seen in recent years is the speed at which skills now expire. While this creates incredible opportunity for variety and growth, it also means that roles evolve faster than job specifications and what made someone successful five years ago may not be what carries them forward today.
This is especially evident in talent functions themselves.
In traditional recruiting, the role has moved far beyond networking and fulfilling a headcount request. Today’s expectation is to provide market intelligence, shape workforce strategy, and build sustainable internal and external talent pipelines. The relationship between hiring managers and recruiters has evolved, driven by tighter labour markets, reduced availability of niche skills, and the need for far more intentional planning.
Add to this our intentions to explore hybridized roles, adopt new technologies and own elements of promoting our employer brand, you can see just how diverse the skills map for someone working within Talent Acquisition can be.
In the CRO environment, learning agility has become one of the most valuable capabilities an individual or an organisation can possess.
At Fortrea, we have been intentional about embedding accountability, succession, training, development, and performance management into how we operate. We want our people to have access to modern learning tools and, just as importantly, opportunities to apply those learnings in real world scenarios.
Through several transformation initiatives, we are creating genuine opportunities for skills activation or operationalised capability as we like to call it. Layering capabilities needed for future roles, not just those listed on today’s job descriptions. We are investing time in understanding what motivates someone, how can we provide access to mentors and experiences that will help them achieve their own career aspirations, be that with us or one of our clients in the future. We are leaning into inherent behaviours and placing people where they can thrive and have real impact.
Personally, some of the biggest growth moments in my career came not from learning something new but from unlearning what no longer served me. That process unlocked a different level of effectiveness, perspective, and confidence.
Technology Accelerates Work — People Give It Meaning
Technology is fundamentally transforming how work gets done. Automation, AI, and digital tools are compressing timelines, increasing scale, and opening up possibilities that simply did not exist before.
Across Fortrea, the most meaningful outcomes have come from people who invest the time to truly understand the opportunity and the limitations of technology, those who test, learn, challenge assumptions, and apply tools thoughtfully to real problems. The value is not in adoption for its own sake, but in intentional use.
Fortrea’s approach to technology is grounded in clear principles: quality, ethics, customer impact, and trust. Our investments in intelligent technology and AI are designed to support better decision making, strengthen oversight, improve delivery and not to replace accountability or human judgement.
Speed matters but the more important question is where we should move faster, and why. For us, that answer always comes back to the patients and sponsors we serve. Technology is an enabler, but people give it meaning through how they apply it, govern it, and connect it to outcomes that matter.
Clarity Turns Talent Potential into Real Performance
Many of us appreciate working autonomously and given the trust to solve problems independently, however, when business expectations are vague, and priorities compete it’s easy to feel like there’s fuel in the tank but nowhere to point the car.
One of my previous leaders once said the phrase “Directionally correct, operationally lost,” this stuck with me as a reminder that intent without clarity can stall progress.
When success is defined differently depending on who you ask, even highly capable people can stall.
Within our Talent Strategy Team, those who have something to aim at, tend to deliver great results. It’s not always clear when business continuity has impact on team goals, but when people understand the standards what we’re aiming for and their role in the project, effort turns into impact.
Non Linear Careers Are a Strength, not a Risk
We are all familiar with the term Career Ladder, it’s ingrained in our mindset, it’s predictable and tidy to think we just climb the ladder at specific point of progress in our role. That model has evolved, there’s an expectation on the employer to offer variety, engagement and opportunity and in response an expectation from the employer to try and maximize the potential of the workforce.
Careers today are increasingly non-linear. People move across roles, departments, industries and geographies. You step sideways, experiment and often reset as you add to the building blocks of your career.
It can be difficult to adjust to this mindset, but horizontal growth is a real thing and not one to shy away from. As an employer we see it as a sign of adaptability, range and personal hunger for development.
For Fortrea, we’re building transferable enterprise level capability. For the individual, they broaden their scope and advance to pursue new opportunities when they arise.
From my own experience, I’ve made several horizontal moves throughout my career and led projects outside the business vertical I was managing at the time. That breadth of experience has created opportunities both professionally and personally. Without those moves, I wouldn’t have expanded my network or built the confidence to learn and operate in new areas of the business. I’m confident that individuals closer to workforce agility initiatives will, over time, develop a broader and more rounded perspective.
Performance Thrives When you create the Right Conditions
Fortrea is working to create an environment where courage, conviction and accountability fuel meaningful impact for patients, sponsors, and colleagues alike. As a purpose driven organization, Fortrea values rigor in science and delivery, ethical decision making, and a culture where people are encouraged to think critically, act responsibly, and continuously improve. This is an environment that expects high performance while recognizing that sustainable success comes from engaged, capable, and trusted teams.
At its best, Fortrea is building a culture that balances pace with quality, autonomy with accountability, and ambition with inclusion. One that rewards effort and outcomes, encourages learning and mobility, and gives people the space to do purposeful work that truly matters, while evolving how we work so the organization and its people can grow together
While our industry will always value deep, specialist career paths, the expectations placed on critical roles continue to expand. The real question is not whether opportunities will come, it’s whether you’ve intentionally prepared yourself to step into it when it does.