Harvard Business Review published its first issue 100 years ago with a mission to help leaders put the world’s best management thinking into practice. To mark our centennial, we asked eight current and former CEOs from some of the world’s top companies to describe the ideas that have propelled their own careers and organizations. Two themes emerged: first, the need for constant innovation and out-of-the-box thinking as markets become more dynamic; second, the importance of purpose and a vision that encompasses all stakeholders. We look forward to many more decades of helping leaders build a better future for customers, employees, partners, and communities.
[ CEO / Moderna ] Stéphane BancelPlanning from the Future Back
Most people think about the future of business from the present onward. As humans we have a natural inclination to think linearly. However, this approach limits our creativity and inhibits our ability to achieve what was previously unimaginable.
Consider a better alternative. By thinking five to 10 years out and then “playing the movie backward,” you free yourself from the constraints of what is possible now. You can envision year 10 and then figure out what has to happen in year nine, year eight, and so on for the vision to become reality.
I used this approach as the founding CEO of Moderna in 2011. As a start-up, we had no past to anchor to, so it was natural to think big about where the company wanted to be in the next decade and plan backward from there. We made sure that all our stakeholders were aligned on our vision and gave people time to engage intellectually and emotionally with the path toward our goals.
In the early years, this way of thinking allowed us to successfully build robotics for preclinical research. Our aim was to industrialize Moderna’s ability to make mRNAs, or messenger RNAs, which teach human cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response. We started by thinking about how many mRNAs we would need to produce (thousands) and with what turnaround time to enable scientists to rapidly experiment and learn (three years). We then worked backward to understand what needed to happen when, without relying on past models or assumptions, and designed the robotic platforms to meet those goals.
More recently, this tactic helped us envision the delivery of an mRNA Covid-19 vaccine in less than a year. At the time, it was a crazy idea on an accelerated timeline, but once again we did it by thinking backward. We started with the vision of an approved vaccine and mapped backward—month by month in this case—from government authorization to completion of clinical trials to vaccine manufacture to sequence selection—an end-to-end process that typically takes years.
Reverse chronology can be a powerful management tool for any organization. It fosters the kind of unconstrained thinking that leads to big and disruptive ideas that propel business, industry, and society forward. This approach is not foolproof, of course. It can stall for any number of reasons, including failing to unite stakeholders around a clear vision and creating a plan that lacks sufficient detail. You can achieve unreasonable things only by aligning people, giving them time to engage, and creating a sound plan of action.
A future-focused mindset will continue to be an important driver of Moderna’s growth over the coming decades. We want to become the most impactful life-sciences company on the planet, and playing the movie backward will help us get there.
[ CEO / Mahindra ] Anish ShahPurpose-Driven Strategy
On November 8, 1945, the Mahindra Group, then barely a month old, published an advertisement in India’s largest circulating English daily, The Times of India. It mentioned no product or service. Instead, it listed the fundamental principles with which the company would operate. It highlighted the role of the individual within the enterprise, and, printed as the Second World War was coming to an end and India’s independence movement was gaining steam, it emphasized the role of corporations in promoting a more cohesive society. It included a call to action—to “raise the standard of living of the masses”—and emphasized that “we must have the cooperation of those who will benefit the most—the general public.”
Today, we might call that advertisement a purpose statement. The principles laid out then still form the bedrock of the Mahindra Group’s purpose and the shorthand we now use for it: “Rise.” Our modern-day motto, refined over the decades, is “Driving positive change, enabling people to rise.” It is the reason I joined the organization, and it is the reason I have stayed.
I can only marvel at the prescience of Mahindra’s first leaders for their early commitment to guiding principles that emphasized not just business success but also the greater good. By 1962, Peter Drucker was also writing about “Big Business and the National Purpose” in these pages, calling for more corporate “social responsibility.” He asserted that a large company is not “a ‘private affair’ and the concern of only its stockholders, executives, and employees”; rather, it is “a community asset and ‘public’ in its conduct, in its mores, and in its impacts.” Further thinking on ethics in management, moving beyond strategy to purpose, corporate vision, what a business is for, and shared value followed from a host of management luminaries, including Jim Collins, Charles Handy, and Michael Porter.
All the while, Mahindra held fast to its purpose, and we’ve found that those founding principles have stood the test of time and guided us through unprecedented socioeconomic shifts. They have helped us excel at a range of businesses from automotive to farming to finance to travel, embrace cutting-edge technology, and spearhead a move toward improved environmental and ethical standards. For example, we started developing and investing in decarbonization well before the emergence of ESG funds and socially responsible investing. Adherence to our founding principles has allowed Mahindra Group not only to keep up with the times but to forge ahead of them.
There’s another line in that advertisement that I want to highlight: “Neither colour, nor creed, nor caste should stand in the way of harmonious working.” Even in the 1940s, those at Mahindra knew that for the organization to succeed and serve society, it would need to prioritize diversity and inclusion. We live in an unequal world that divides us from one another. Purpose-led businesses have the potential to create a more equal world. Only when we enable others to rise will we rise.
