Building One Global Company
With roots in steel trading and automotive manufacturing, the 70-year-old India-based Mahindra Group (www.mahindra.com) is a highly diversified $16.9 billion (USD) multinational corporation with more than 200,000 employees in more than 100 countries. Operating in 18 industries, Mahindra's federated structure enables each of its many businesses to chart its own future and simultaneously leverage synergies across the entire group.
Through the years, Mahindra has employed a range of expansion strategies and achieved a significant part of its growth through acquisitions of companies in both emerging and developed markets.
The Challenge
By the mid-2000s, Mahindra had acquired companies in Europe, North America, and Asia, as well as in India. With all of these cross-border acquisitions came valuable new skills and capabilities—along with many new executives who were unfamiliar with Mahindra itself. To integrate these new acquisitions effectively, Mahindra needed a strategy for building relationships with new executives and for enabling executives across the world to work together as one global company. While face-to-face and remote meetings and phone calls were part of the process, they weren't always enough, and didn't immerse new executives in Mahindra's culture and mindset.
The company's top executives were also mindful of the need to broaden the company in another way. Given Mahindra's automotive roots and its expansion into areas like IT, it boasted a solid set of leaders with engineering backgrounds. But to maximize the potential for success in new markets and in the midst of rapidly changing global business conditions, CEO Anand Mahindra wanted executives to balance those quantitative and analytical abilities with creative thinking.
The Solution: The Mahindra Universe Program
One important answer to these challenges was the Mahindra Universe Program, a one-week custom executive education program championed by Anand Mahindra and developed in partnership with Harvard Business School Executive Education. Launched in 2007, this annual program brings between 40 and 50 Mahindra executives from around the globe to Boston to explore a wide range of business topics, discover new best practices, expand their knowledge of the world, and open their minds to new ideas. Led by full-time Harvard faculty, this intense week features case studies, classroom lectures, group discussions, guest speakers, and cultural excursions, enabling executives to step away from their day-to-day responsibilities and broaden their thinking.
Just as important, the program maximizes the opportunity for interaction between the firm's executives throughout the world and its top corporate leaders. Anand Mahindra and the group presidents attend every year, and other members of the group executive board attend every other year. The rest comprise senior executives from across Mahindra. The Mahindra planning team works hard to compose a group that is diverse in business units, titles, gender, and cultural backgrounds—and that also includes high-potential executives and senior executives from newly acquired companies.
For executives new to Mahindra, the program goes far beyond a typical orientation session. Ulhas Yargop, Group President - IT Sector and Group CTO, who leads the Mahindra Universe Program initiative, says, "The program creates an opportunity for them to learn about other groups within the company, discover the corporate culture, and gain confidence that they are part of a world-class global company."
A Creative Collaboration
Each year's program features a totally new curriculum that is carefully developed through intense collaboration between Mahindra and the HBS Executive Education custom program team, which includes the HBS faculty cochairs for the program—most recently Forest Reinhardt and Gunnar Trumbull—and a dedicated program director.
Several months prior to the program, the HBS team travels to Mahindra's headquarters in India for in-depth needs assessment discussions with Mahindra executives including Yargop, Anand Mahindra, and other senior leaders. These meetings provide the HBS team with insight on Mahindra's goals for the upcoming session, current areas of interest, and particular challenges facing the business. It's also an opportunity for the HBS team to collect feedback on topic ideas developed in earlier brainstorming sessions and to propose guest speakers and potential faculty. This investigative process generates an initial design that is refined into a detailed program curriculum over several weeks.
Each year's program balances sessions on business and leadership development with other sessions focused on expanding global perspective and fostering creative thinking. This diverse learning experience is delivered by a mix of faculty from both Harvard Business School and Harvard University. While most learning takes place through classroom lectures using the renowned HBS case study method, the program often features individual and group exercises. Yargop gives the HBS program design team the freedom to experiment with different kinds of sessions and new approaches to various topics. The result is a powerful program that makes a lasting impact on all participants, reports Yargop. "Every year I think, 'How could we possibly do anything better than this year's program?' And then we do," he says.
Preparing for each year's program involves more than developing the curriculum. Each minute and every aspect of the program is carefully orchestrated to maximize learning, interaction, and inspiration—from the classroom lectures, group discussions, and living arrangements to transportation, meals, and special events. "A lot of work goes into designing and running a program like this, and HBS does an outstanding job," says Yargop. "Everything is flawless, and they work very hard to achieve that."
Broader Perspectives, New Insights
The ongoing relationship with Harvard Business School, the depth and breadth of the program's curriculum, and the yearly collaboration have prompted Anand Mahindra and Yargop to describe HBS as the "intellectual headquarters" of the company—one that prompts executives to approach business challenges in creative new ways.
Anand Mahindra elaborated on this in his invitation for the most recent session, writing: "It can be very productive to remove ourselves once a year to a different environment, and consciously give ourselves time to think and take stock of where the wider world is going. Taking time to connect with things outside our work—like art, sociology or design—often raises our perceptive capabilities and gives us unexpected insights. And getting a chance to interact with the best and most knowledgeable minds in academia is a valuable way of shaping our thoughts and strategic thinking. The future, I believe, will belong to those practiced in 'whole brain' thinking and not users of just the left or the right hemispheres." For this reason, the program features a variety of non-business topics, cultural outings, and accomplished guest speakers with expertise in areas such as science, government, and the humanities.
Of course, each year's curriculum includes essential business themes like leadership and innovation, along with sessions designed to enhance specific business skills, such as negotiation. One addition in recent years is a series of cases that delve into the economies of specific countries. "These are complex cases, but our executives enjoy them and learn a great deal about doing business in that area of the world," says Yargop.
For example, the program featured a case study on South Korea shortly after Mahindra acquired a Korean company. "That case was quite fascinating for the Korean nationals in the room, but it also helped the rest of us to understand the economy in a country where we have a large operation," says Yargop. Similarly, cases about Europe, Germany, and Greece delivered insight into tensions in the European economy that will have an impact all over the world.
Creating New Bonds—and Synergy
Mahindra executives returning to their offices in India, China, the U.S., Italy, and other countries will often share what they've learned with their colleagues, presenting cases and lessons that can be applied to current business challenges and opportunities. They also take advantage of the many new connections created during the program. Yargop explains: "The program gets people thinking and talking across businesses. For example, if we study a particular country, then it becomes natural for people doing business in that country to talk with one another about their experiences there. If we study the use of social media and one of our businesses has been ahead of the curve in using social media, then other businesses—even in different industries—can benefit from learning more about what they've been doing."
The opportunity to step outside their usual roles also enables executives to interact in new ways. One recent participant says, "It has been three years since I joined the Mahindra Group, and the program was the first time that I had the chance to totally slow down and be part of conversations on a wide range of topics with a highly diverse set of leaders. For a change, I did not feel like 'the IT guy' in the room."
As Mahindra builds its global presence, the HBS custom program will continue to be a key part of its strategy. Yargop says: "The program enables us to welcome the leaders of acquired companies into our group, get to know our leadership, and become imbued with the values of the company. The program has become an essential glue, providing a common frame of reference that will help transcend the individual and regional perspectives that each of us brings to the workplace."
Business Goals
- Connect leaders across 100 countries
- Build a global corporate culture that embraces diversity
- Integrate key executives from newly acquired companies
- Stimulate creative, innovative thinking
Solution
- Partner with HBS to create a custom Executive Education program
- Deliver the Mahindra Universe Program at HBS in Boston to more than 40 senior people each year from Mahindra headquarters and Mahindra's companies around the world
Impact
- Connects corporate leaders with executives throughout the globe
- Fosters synergy, creating powerful internal networks
- Strengthens corporate culture and facilitates value sharing
- Inspires and energizes leaders