Decoding Moderna: The Mindsets that Drive their Innovative Culture
In this episode we are joined by Amanda Sorrento, VP & HR Business Partner for R&D at Moderna, and Noah Rabinowitz, VP of Moderna University.
Noah and Amanda discuss Moderna's unique culture and how it plays a crucial role in the company's success. They describe the 12 Moderna mindsets as tools used to build the culture together, and note that the mindsets are aspirational and constantly evolving. They also acknowledge that not everyone can excel at all 12 mindsets, and that leveraging individual strengths and partnering with others who excel in different areas is key to success.
Episode Highlights:
How The Moderna mindsets Act as the north star, operating system and code to their Culture
How The Run/Build/Rebuild philosophy increases the pace of innovation and challenges in the status quo
How the Moderna University is elevating the role learning plays in our business, strategy, culture, science, and lives
Learn how to cultivate more future-minded leadership across your entire organization in the full Winter Insights Report from BetterUp Labs.
-
Noah 0:00
You can start to put mindsets together and see how they interact. For example, two that we talked about a lot that come together in a really important way is is accepting risk and pivoting fearlessly. You know, if you accept risk and can't pivot, you're just you're, you're reckless. But if you accept risk, really smart, calculated risk as a way that you think about running your business, and then you use data to pivot when new information comes in to get smarter and smarter and adjust course, it's a really powerful way of conducting your business. And so and that's just two that come together, you can make lots of different permutations between the 12.
Chris Rainey 0:45
By one Welcome back to the HR leaders podcast. On today's episode, I'm joined by Amanda Sorento, who's the Vice President and HR business partner for r&d at Madonna, and Nora abowitz, whose advice for President of the Madonna University shooting episode Amanda and Noah share how the Maderna mindsets act as a North Star, offering system and code to their culture. It talks about how the run, build and rebuild philosophy increases the pace of innovation and challenges the status quo, how to COEs and HRBPs are partnering for success. And how numbers donor University is elevating the role that learning plays in our business strategy, culture, science, and lives. As always, before we jump into the video, make sure you hit the subscribe button, turn on notification bell and follow us on your favourite podcast platform. With that being said, let's jump in. Now. Amanda, welcome to the show. How are you both
Unknown Speaker 1:39
doing great, thank you.
Chris Rainey 1:40
Nice to see you.
Noah 1:41
Doing good. Chris. Good to be here.
Chris Rainey 1:43
Nice to have you back. Noah. I've said just before we hit record, I was like it was your six months in when we last spoke. And you're still here, which is a good sign. It's a good sign still here.
Noah 1:52
Still here, and still super excited to be on this journey. Yeah. And really excited to talk to you today.
Chris Rainey 2:00
No interest. I'm so excited to hear what you've been up to. And I obviously noticed that your your job titles changed now. Vice President at Madonna university is that is that a new addition?
Noah 2:11
That, you know, I started with the title of VP of learning and development. Yeah. And I went to VP of learning and development and modernity University. And so now I've decided to simplify to just BP of modernity University, I feel like it encompasses everything that's going on. Yeah, and really kind of sums up the learning work we're doing so and it also generates a lot of good conversation
Chris Rainey 2:32
I was about to say probably is a conversation starter, as well. Amanda, before we jump in, tell her one little bit more about you personally, and your sort of journey so far and Madona, to where we all know,
Speaker 3 2:42
I absolutely. So I am the VP of r&d HR. So I'm their HR business partner, been with Maderna since just after the pandemic started. And we really started the build of the organisation. So I July joined in July of 2020. So almost three years in, and we have really got to see this organisation, scale up from about 900 employees when I joined to, you know, now we're tipping the scales close to 4500. So it's been a crazy, wild and fun ride over the last three years.
Chris Rainey 3:20
We're both still smiling. For anyone who's on the audio and can't see that they're smiling. You still got your energy and passion and and look, we'll pretend we'll pretend for a second that No, it's not here. But how has it been partnering with Noah?
Amanda 3:37
Oh, that's great. No, no is a great partner and a great addition. And I think something that we really have wanted to build in our organisation. We've always had this mindset of learning in the organisation. And that's how we've done a lot of what we've done. And now to have an expert like Noah really come in and formally build that out. It's it's just awesome.
Chris Rainey 4:01
Yeah. And that kind of goes back to our original conversation, our first podcast, but recap that for everyone. What was it that attracted you to the organisation? To come in and join?
Noah 4:11
Yeah, so many things. And it's I think it's something that Amanda and I share is kind of what what attracted us here and what keeps us here. And what engages us so much is that first that the mission and purpose of the company is truly truly transformational. It's it is a company that is looking to reinvent human health on a level that is hard to imagine sometimes hard to fully comprehend. But the potential to just make this massive global impact on the way we do human health is one of the things that just gets me out of bed every morning. And then the culture, and I know we'll talk a lot about culture, but it is truly a unique differentiated culture and we want to keep it that way. So a lot of the things that we work on are focused on I'm really developing our culture. And when you combine a great mission and purpose with great leaders with a great culture, and the freedom to innovate, and it's, it's just a formula for engagement, that's the reason we're smiling.
Chris Rainey 5:17
I was gonna let diamond super labour, let's jump into straightaway, like I loved I was reading through your Maderna mindsets earlier. In fact, it impressed me so much that I said to Shane, my co founder, I feel like we need to revisit ours, our, our why our values apart, because I just love the way you've laid it out. I love the the videos, you created some videos on YouTube I came across which really explain what you mean. Because sometimes when you read values, you can interrupt people can interpret in different ways, if that makes sense. And I love the fact that you took the time to create those small micro videos on YouTube that accidentally came across in Google search as I already made videos for all these things. So could you just walk us through the process, and then also how you went about listening and making sure that you built these around the employee sentiment and what you were hearing internally?
Speaker 3 6:11
So you know, the beauty of those mindsets are they're really grounded. So you know, we're about a 12 year old company, and those mindsets are really grounded, and how from the very beginning, this company has operated as an organisation. So if you go and you talk to anybody who's been here, and call it like preach pandemic, right, so call, call it the people before we really started are massive growth. When they look at those mindsets, they're very obvious to them, they would say, yeah, these are the ways in which we've we've always worked. And so as we really rapidly grew, and we rapidly scaled, it became apparent that we needed to actually write them down. Because usually culture is passed down right from from leader to employee, and then employee to employee, we grew so quickly, that we were so quickly outnumbering those employees who had been here and understood that this was always the way you know, kind of Maderna worked. And so that's really how the mindsets, you know, were generated and became written down and then became the videos. So that way we can help all the employees who are joining really understand what I think of as like our secret sauce. I mean, I think what makes us so unique and special as an organisation and I echo what Noah said, it's one of the things I absolutely love about being here is this deeply ingrained culture as driven through the mindsets, is that we truly believe that our culture is what drives our success. It's what enables us to do, you know, have amazing science, it's what enables us to then, you know, create a vaccine in under a year, which was unheard of, you know, being in especially being as small as we were at a time. It's what enables us to go out in the marketplace, head to head with a Pfizer, day in and day out, which is 10 times the size of what we are probably better, I actually don't know, the right statistics there. But it's it's those mindsets and people acting in accordance with those mindsets. And so where a lot of companies will write down their values, and you can interpret them and they're big, and they're broad. We've all worked for those companies. And you you actually get in there and you get into that company or like Yeah, I kind of see where the values come in, you walk into Maderna, and you feel the mindsets, every day in action. They're not just words on a paper, they really truly are how people people operate here. So I think that makes us very unique and special as an organisation. No, I have, please feel free to add anything on there. Or correct me if I'm
Noah 8:51
wrong, nothing wrong. I just agree. It's we sometimes Chris column, the the our operating system, or the code to our culture. And I really liked the analogy of an operating system because there's 12. And they work together in really interesting combinations to power, our success to power, our capability. And so you can start to put mindsets together and see how they interact. For example, two that we talked about a lot that come together in a really important way is accepting risk and pivoting fearlessly. You know, if you accept risk and can't pivot, you're just you're, you're reckless. But if you accept risks, really smart calculated risk as a way that you think about running your business, and then you use data to pivot when new information comes in to get smarter and smarter and adjust course, it's a really powerful way of conducting your business. And so and that's just two that come together, you can make lots of different permutations between the 12 So no, I completely agree with Amanda. I think it really does give us a unique way as thinking about how we run our business and scalar culture and, and it's a skill, right, using these mindsets is definitely a skill that we're working on developing.
Chris Rainey 10:09
I love the fact that on the website, you put at the top, it says clarifying our culture. And then below that, it says the fees and mindsets are tools were using to build it together. And I just loved the fact to your, to your point, their tools, and their skills. And I love the fact that you took the time to clarify, this is what our culture is, you're very intentional about it as well. And
Noah 10:34
aspirational. So we don't feel like we've arrived. And I think, you know, I had a career in consulting, for many years, I got to see many companies and how they use whether whether you call them values or guiding principles, or whatever name they give it, and a lot of times people in the organisation look at them and roll their eyes because they're like, Okay, that's not the lived reality. Yeah. And it feels hypocritical almost. And they actually end up having a negative effect. It's like, Oh, I see this thing, but I don't experience this thing in my daily life, we understand what that we're never truly there. So we have to work through storytelling through capability development, through training, through learning through leadership, we have to build this this operating system and scale it because like Amanda said, we're a growing organisation. So we got lots of new people coming in that need to learn this operating system we've got, we're, you know, we're rapidly scaling organisations. So we have to be really intentional about how we bring that that code into our, into our daily lives.
Speaker 3 11:39
Ya know, if I can add on to that, too, you know, just in terms of, you know, at the company level, we don't ever feel like we fully arrived. But we also don't expect any employee to be able to be great at all 12 of them as well. I think that's another beauty of these mindsets is that we all have our different strengths. And so we look to capitalise on the strengths that people have, or their ability to know how to pull in one mindset versus the other given the situation that they've got at hand. But we're never on this mission to say everybody has to be able to nail all 12 of those those mindsets, because that's just impractical. And then we believe we'll just end up coaching everybody to, you know, kind of the middle, if you try to be great at 12 things, you're going to be you know, probably okay to good at them. But how do we really leverage where people are truly great, and then pair them up with people who are great at different mindsets to really be able to get the boat the most out of them.
Chris Rainey 12:41
That's such a good point, right? Because we know what you see, see them in the past of a lot, wow, that's a lot to live up to. And to be and to be great at. So I'm glad that you made that point. Because it is pretty unrealistic to be great at every single thing. It's kind of overwhelming. But there's strength in that difference. And then you know that that encourages that partnerships, that ad innovation, that collaboration, when you look at it from that lens. Instead, I love the fact that you have things in there, like we accept risks, you just don't see that within companies within your industry, I can tell you that if I go for all of your competitors, less than they won't have access, we accept risk. And we pivot fiercely. You know, some of the things that are in here, we behave like owners. I love that one personally, it's probably one of my favourites. And something that I tried to speak with a team about here is having a real sense of ownership and now going beyond the job. And so yeah, some of the things that I saw when I came in here I wasn't expecting, but in a good way. Yeah, how what how are you then taking these and then going from this and implementing that into the business from a practical point of view, for example, with someone? What does it look like for someone who's just joining the business?
Noah 14:00
So we use lots of different mechanisms to to bring the mindsets into the business and the culture. And like Amanda said, we're always experimenting again, I will just emphasise it over and over that one of the things I love about working here is the freedom to innovate. So we were trying things with the mindsets, and we're like, okay, that worked really well. Maybe this one didn't work as well. Let's do more of this less of this. And it's just iterative. It's highly, highly iterative. And we're trying to get smarter about this operating system as we go. That said we from from the very beginning of a person's employment here they are getting exposure and immersion really into the mindsets. Our Maderna one onboarding experience has a large segment dedicated to culture and the mindsets. And it's immersive. It's not a teaching experience. It's hands on experiential with a large part of our executive population. We do kind of Self Assessment on the mindsets, we coach people around the mindsets, we use storytelling, we use the case study methodology to teach chapters in our history. For example, the COVID chapter, which was a pretty formation, formative period in our, in our history, to tell that story to have people really also bring the mindsets out to kind of interpret them themselves. Yeah. Because because you've really got to understand them through the power of interpretation and making them your own and putting them in the context of your own lived experience. So we were using lots of different capabilities and tools to bring the mindsets to life.
Speaker 3 15:48
Beyond, you know, all of the the more structured learning programmes, there's just the practical things that we do every day to that layer into it. And one of the most simple examples is how we interview. And so we have a broad panel. Before we interview, we assign mindsets to the panel that that interviews, and then when we do the debrief, we explicitly talk about what mindsets we saw where we saw the strengths in the candidate where we saw the gaps. And as much as we assess for the functional capability of the role, I would say we assess even harder for that cultural fit. And did we feel like we could see the mindsets in that candidate. And we're not afraid as an organisation, if we've got a candidate who's a great functional expert, but we don't see them leaning into the mindsets, or we don't see where they're going to be able to adapt to the way we operate. Because let's be honest, nobody comes in with all of them, because it is a very unique, you know, culture. But can they can we see, you know, kind of the the desire to learn them? Can we see them leaning in, can we see the raw makeup in that person that says they're going to be able to demonstrate these mindsets, if we don't feel like they haven't, we're not afraid to pass up on a candidate, even if they have all the right functional expertise. So it starts very early in the process. And then we you know, bring them on to that onboarding programme that Noah talked about. And then continue to just through real, you know, life experiences on the job, continue to bring that that forward, until they're eventually, you know, a culture carrier for us as well.
Noah 17:30
In addition, I saw something the other day, very experimental, still very early stage, but it got me super excited, which is using a chat GPT type tool internally, where you can upload transcripts, you can even upload, for example, the transcript of this podcast. And there's a logic built into it to understand which mindsets the person might be demonstrating. And so you can get real time feedback through through a generative AI capability that says, This person is really demonstrating, obsessing over learning this, this person's really demonstrating acting like an owner because we're seeing things in what they're saying and articulating in real time. And I was like, Okay, now Now we're getting into it. Now. This is this is cool. And it got it got us really excited. I
Chris Rainey 18:22
was gonna ask you, how do you measure that? And how you test for that? I was gonna ask that. And that's this is where technology can come in and help right
Noah 18:28
to be able to do Oh, absolutely. Yeah, technology can play a huge role. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 18:33
yeah, by the way, I already do that with my transcripts on the podcast. So I take the transcripts from my podcasts, I asked them to put into kind of bite sized key takeaways, which I can then use, when I post publish it on our website or on LinkedIn. So I say, take the transcript and write a article or LinkedIn article using this transcript, and it'll condense it into here's the key five key takeaways from this podcast. And it's like, normally, that would have taken me hours, for hours and hours and hours. And even if it's not perfect, right, it gives me that 70% It was done 70% of the hard work, and then I can go in and improve that. But yeah, that sounds like a really, the fact that you can train the AI we've we've we've all of those, how many was it? Seven, eight, sorry, I forgot now 12 hours? I know it's well, it's Well, the fact that you can train AI with those 12 mindsets and to look for that it just is just incredible to be able to do that. So I'm assuming a lot of the work then is with the line managers, because that's really where a lot of the experience and the interaction with employees. Right, that so what kind of training and development are you doing with those leaders to help them?
Noah 19:43
I think you're right, Chris. I mean, the the managers are the kind of the frontline of the employee experience and the frontline of the culture. And we've recognised that and, you know, Amanda talked about our growth, right, well, we've got over 1300 managers now. So we're at a level of scale, in terms of the number of managers that are affecting that everyday culture. And they also they have a role in hiring others, they have a role in doing performance management, they have a role in giving coaching, feedback, setting goals, doing OKRs, you know, resolving problems, coaching, driving the business, really. And so your managers need to be role modelling, and embodying those those mindsets, it's and that is a that is a big lift, especially when you've got 1300 of them around the world. So we've we've started a managers Academy, which is inside of our modernity, university structure. The managers Academy is about five or six months in at this point where we've been emphasising the experimental approach, we're taking a very experimental approach, seeing what's working. We've done work on coaching, and feedback, we are doing a very immersive session for our people, managers on innovation and innovative ways to problem solve, called leading for innovation. We are also using some some digital coaching tools, we better up had a great experience with them. And maybe I'll pass it over to Amanda because because the partnership between us at you know me leading a CLE and man and Amanda being in the business as a business partner. We agree on the the need and the importance of a scalable managers Academy. Yeah, so I kind of am working on building the systems and processes and tools and programmes and she's really bringing the voice of the manager and this need. I mean, Amanda has been really beating the drum of the need for manager capability development.
Speaker 3 22:05
Yeah, yeah. If I can, I'll add a couple of things on to this. So I think a lot of companies, you know, I've worked with different companies, and everybody has, you know, their version of manager Academy. And our but I would double down on ours are really centred around our culture and how we want to lead in a very unique way. And so part of the remit here is really understanding, you know, what are those unique things that we need our managers to be doing to really be leading in the way that's akin or aligned with our culture. And so most of what we're doing can't be off the shelf products, because we don't actually see management in the same, you know, kind of traditional way that companies have been training against for 20 years, you know, we see it as very unique, very Maderna specific, and that directly links to all of the mindsets. How do you make decision? You know, as an example, how do you make decisions in an environment where we do accept risks? Where you do pivot fearlessly? How do you give feedback to your employees, there's an element of our culture of we're very, we want to be and we do model a very honest, direct feedback approach. And so how do you train managers to be able to have a very open conversation with their employee on what they're doing? Well, where their gaps are, how you're gonna help them, but in a very uniquely Maderna dirt away, and you're just not going to find that training prebuilt from from most vendors, it's something that we're going to really have to create or CO create, with, with an outsourced partner. And then, you know, part of my role as the HRBP is, how do I take all of this great work that no one is team are doing, and pull that that into the business? I've actually shifted my team a bed, and I'm going to have roles on my team that are yes, focused on, you know, kind of working day to day with the managers, but really, a huge piece of their objectives are going to be taking the grade stuff that that Noah's creating, and that people may be going going through on an enterprise level, and then figuring out how do you really apply that in an r&d setting and pulling that through and making that a very specific focus of an HR VP? And really trying to get them out of that? How do I coach every manager with one in a moment, but how do I actually build you know, focus building that capability in a very r&d centric way?
Chris Rainey 24:45
I love that and I love the fact that like everything links, links back to the Madonna mindsets, and then it kind of becomes part of the culture itself is ingrained. And, and every touchpoint of the employee Journey or experience, you're constantly linking it back. So it comes to the point where it just becomes forbidden away.
Noah 25:11
It's a code to our culture, that's, that's the way we refer to it. And if you look at institutions that have scaled, and that institutions that have stood the test of time, and reinvented themselves over and over, they have something that anchors them, and says, This is the unique thing about our organisation that we believe is truly the differentiation of, of how we do it. And otherwise, you're gonna regress to the mean, and you're just going to become average and an average, average, in our industry, there's some great companies that are average, I mean, average is still pretty good. But we have no desire to be average, we have, we have the desire to be highly differentiated in an elite organisation, a high performing organisation that that is making this impact on the world and on the health of our, of our patients. And so we have to push we have to perform, we have to get better at but you also need something a Northstar that says this is the way we do it. And that's the role that the 12 Maderna mindsets really, really play for us.
Speaker 3 26:17
And you're right, Chris, it's all very intentional, right? So we start with those 12 mindsets, it then becomes you know, as you as you pull that into, you know, our piece of the business, the HR piece, it's about what are then the people philosophies that inform and then our people platform, and really ensuring we have these red threads, no matter what we're pulling together, whether it's on how we hire, whether it's on talent, whether it's you know what Noah's building, from a learning perspective, or how we think about well being, it's all anchored in this people platform, which is stems from the culture and the people philosophies and forms.
Chris Rainey 26:58
I love that even I love the fact that even when you're assessing technology, you're looking at it through that lens as well, it's so unique, because sometimes we can get lost in all of the different products, solutions and technologies. But you probably filter out half of those immediately, or more than half immediately by going, is it in line with it with these with these 12? If not, then we don't even need to have a conversation about it. Yeah, make decision making a lot easier as well, right? Because you always know where even if there's chaos and ambiguity, you can always kind of come back to that foundation. And we're like, this is where we operate from, in terms of in terms of our decision making. Well, Amanda
Noah 27:36
mentioned a platform, you know, and that's the really the idea of systematising this across the employee lifecycle, right, so that it's built into your reinforcing systems from hiring all the way through to when you're leaving the company and everything in between, and that that journey, that platform, it's got some predictability to it. And that you can innovate on that platform. Because platform is we're a platform company, we are not a product company. So building platforms is is, is what we do. So we're thinking about a lot of this the systematisation of the culture into the people platform and making it scalable, making it predictable, and making it really powerful. And also continuing to take that experimental approach to it right, using new information, using our experience using feedback, using listening to our employees, as the way to just make it better and better and better and better. Which also, you know, from we talked a little bit about, you know, some of the external partners that we have, it makes working with us, I'd say really rewarding, but also kind of really hard.
Chris Rainey 28:44
I was gonna say this all sounds great. But what if I'm sure it can't be easy, right? Because so
Noah 28:50
easy, because the way we onboard partners is, is we don't we kind of just don't want generic solutions. You know, we want to do it our way. And we've got a defined way of doing it. And so bringing on board a partner to say come on this journey with us means there's a lot of upfront investment, there's a lot of time, there's a lot of understanding, there's a lot of mistakes that are going to be made. And not every partner out there has a business model that set up to do that.
Chris Rainey 29:22
Yeah, many of them are the opposite of what you're describing. Exactly. Because it takes time energy. And yeah, exactly. Is that one of the reasons why you chose better up because they are quite well known for that from the other clients that I've spoken to and work with.
Noah 29:37
They've definitely spent a lot of time and energy getting to know us pretty well and they've invested in us for sure.
Chris Rainey 29:44
Yeah. Good to hear. Tell us a bit more about the Madonna University and what you're building there.
Noah 29:52
Yeah, so So modernity University is kind of the the flagship brand for all things Learning and Development at at Maderna. We have a huge vision for the University. I know, we've spent most of our time on this call so far talking about the internal kind of application of the university growing our people developing our people, stealing our culture. But there's this other half to the vision of modernity University, which is equally as powerful, which is that we, we, as a company, have this amazing concentration of expertise, we have really smart, talented people working here, some some eminent people in their fields. And we have the ability to contribute knowledge and education to the world. And, and because of the role we played in the pandemic, there, there is a desire to kind of know what's going on at Maderna. And to serve as a type of a beacon of Leadership, Research knowledge, culture. So we're looking at part of our strategy for the university is what we call pushing beyond our walls, which is really about going external, which is something that in the tech space, you know, if you look at Google's relationship with Coursera, for example, they have really delivered, I mean, a huge amount of upskilling to the world on things like UX and data and analytics and project management, we have a similar vision, to bring our knowledge and expertise out out to the world out to talent pipelines. Because we know we want to reach people that are coming from non traditional sources, diverse talent pipelines. And so the university is meant to be a university, really. It resembles an academic institution in a lot of different ways. We have colleges, we have Dean's, we have research, we have development, we have events, we have programmes, we have a course catalogue, we have a digital platform, we have a campus that we're building. And sometimes when I talk with people about this, I say the only thing that's really distinguishing us at this point from a real university, if you want to call it that is we don't issue degrees. But we're starting with digital badges. And pretty soon we'll be giving out career certificates. And those are starting to play almost this like degree type of role in the world. So I think, someday, in the not so distant future, modernity University will be a university. Wow. And it's going to be a really powerful part of our business and kind of part of our employee value proposition part of our employee experience. It's it's just, it's thrilling. It's so cool to work on it.
Chris Rainey 32:44
Did you want to add anything to that? Amanda? Before? There's a lot there. Yeah, so many questions aren't back today? Like, what was when I first heard about it? i My initial thoughts was that you're using this as also as a talent pipeline, to develop talent, you know, just to bring in, but it's so much more than that. of what you just said, as well, how is that going to work? Are you going to like partner with the community and institutions or community? or can anyone anywhere in the world accessing what is new, if that makes sense that what is the approach,
Noah 33:22
we want to do both, we want to do both, and in some ways are already doing both that, you know, there are MOOCs out there that allow you to reach millions and millions of people now, so you can deliver knowledge and education out to the world through through all kinds of channels. And you can also work through things like apprentice programmes and community colleges and technical colleges and Co Ops. And so there's lots of ways of reaching people with the things that we have expertise in where that unique contribution that we can make to talent pipelines to, to the world. So yeah, we really have a big vision for what the role that the university can play in, in our, in our strategy,
Speaker 3 34:07
one of the things if I can add, and it's early days on this, but one of the things we talked about in terms of the Reach to is not just, you know, in the community at large, but also how do we support other, you know, kind of startup biotechs, as well with some of our learnings where we have, you know, kind of the be ability to create this and some of these smaller companies don't necessarily and so how do we also reach out to them and give them access to some of the stuff that we're creating? And I think that only goes to continue to reinforce you know, kind of where we come from at our core here at Maderna, which is, you know, we're really trying to help society right, we believe we have a platform that really reaches into patients, and if we can help each other by Rotax with similar type missions, that's only good for everyone's and patients and everybody. And so how do we, we leverage the privilege that we have, in terms of you know, where we've been able to grow and scale to help other companies that that can then help society. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 35:19
I'm so happy you brought up by the way, because it's so important. And again, a lot of companies save that in their values, but didn't really deliver on it. And you're really demonstrating that I was speaking to a CHR o from a very large cybersecurity company recently. And they had they have their own internal university, that they actually take graduates, graduates, and even if they have actually, even if you haven't even gone to school, you can even apply for their programme. And they put it and they put them on a three year course. And half of it is educational, which is also internally in the company. And the other half is practical, apprenticeship style. And they say that at the end, something like more than 50% actually go to competitors. And I was like, that's crazy. And, Chris, this is by design. I was like, What do you mean? What do you mean, because Chris is our job to help upskill the cybersecurity leaders of tomorrow, regardless of the weather, for us, our competitors, our partners, our customers, and it just kind of just took me aback and the like, and again, that was part of their wider purpose statement and emissions values, like Chris, these are our values. So we have to demonstrate that in our actions. And I thought that was absolutely incredible. So like, they said to me, Chris, we don't even have enough places free, even if he wanted to hire everyone that we have, but that's not what it's about. And, but she was saying the amount of of them that want to stay, of course, after their intention is crazy. Also, the interactions that even when those those students will go and work for a competitor, or a customer, they will naturally want to work with them, because they are helped to help develop them. So it's hard to measure everything. But they really, they really do your point is it's bigger than just the organisation is about really making an impact and living up to it's about the
Noah 37:09
role that you play in the world and kind of how you think about your mission. And if your mission is truly driven by patients and human health, yeah, you're gonna look for other ways than just putting medicine out into the marketplace, you're going to look for other ways to and we believe so strongly in our mission, and we have such a strong culture that we think we can influence the industry in, in other ways, and almost even have that responsibility. Yeah. So the role that the university plays in that is really, really powerful, and really engaging. And we want people to be inspired and to look at Maderna as a source of knowledge, a source of talent, a source of, of exporting, that not just, you know, pulling it in and keeping it off for ourselves and having that proprietary mentality. That's just about, you know, that scarcity mindset. It's just, it's just not who we are.
Chris Rainey 38:07
I love to talk. In terms of I know, people are probably listening thinking this university, is that something you built yourself?
Noah 38:13
So I would say built would be the wrong word. Because that's past tense. It's built building, building. Yeah. actively building. But we have a lot of partners, we have a lot of partners. And again, the university consists of, of curriculum, it consists of physical spaces, digital spaces, programming, and it's an ecosystem for sure. It's a complete ecosystem. Absolutely.
Chris Rainey 38:41
Because I was thinking like, everything you're describing doesn't fit within one vendor. Oh, well, no one partner that does Inessa unless I've missed something that doesn't exist. So I imagined it was a combination of multiple partnerships, and building that together. Let's talk about the belt. Yeah, no, yeah, building continuous there's always going to be always going to be evolving. I love to talk about your the philosophy, your the Ron build, rebuild philosophy. Could you share more about that with with our listeners?
Speaker 3 39:18
Uh, yeah. I mean, I can take a stab in terms of, you know, starting that with, you know, kind of just real practical in terms of what it looks like. So, if I could, you know, paint a little bit of a picture here, when I joined the organisation, back in 2020. In r&d, well, let's talk about development. I think we had about 50 people in development at that time, and we're about to launch a massive phase three, three trial, and for anybody who's in the industry will know you know, the fact that we had about 50 employees sounds just absolutely. Just wild to even think that we were going to launch a That's the phase three trial that we did at that point in time, when we close this year just for perspective, we'll probably be well over 1000 employees in development alone. So in three years time going from 50 employees to well over 1000 employees. And so, you know, I think that really captures, you know, kind of that run, build rebuild, from the standpoint of, you know, go back to 2020, we had real work, we had to get done, you know, we were trying to help the world out of this pandemic, which meant meant the leaders with what they had, they had to run the business, while they were also building the capabilities that were needed to be able to do the work. So a very unique challenge that, you know, I would venture a guess, you know, almost 99% of those leaders had never fully had, right, which is how do you run and build all at the same time? And they did an amazing, right, look what they delivered, you know, there's no, you know, no arguing those results, but very unique, very challenging experience, to be able to run in build. What's really interesting now, three years later, is as we're moving on to our next, you know, kind of phase of growth in our next part of the journey. We're asking our leaders to take a step back and look at what they built over the last three years and ask themselves, is that also what we need to continue building for the next three years to get to achieve what we think we're capable of achieving? Or do they actually have to go into their organisation and pivot to use that mindset and rebuild their organisations? Now I don't want to miss capture that as saying or making it sounds like that's a negative, because it's not. But it's, it's really a moment in time where we're asking our leaders to really reflect and say, Okay, what got us here is amazing. Is it? What's going to get us to that next, you know, phase of growth? Or do they actually have to go in and rebuild a bit for the next three years. And it's a tough, it's a tough, tough thing for leaders to do. I already mentioned, it's tough to run and build at the same time, but now for them to actually go in and look at, you know, what they've built and mentally say, okay, but is that the right thing for the next three years? Or do I have to pivot and again, is just another, you know, kind of layer of challenge that we're asking our leaders to go through, but it's, it's kind of the source of innovation and, you know, constantly be challenging ourselves. It's why I made the joke earlier about Maderna University never being built, you know, in the past tense. We're constantly in this rebuild of like, what's the next wave? How do we need to change? And how do we need to pivot? How do we need to operate differently? Because it goes back to the old adage of, like, what got you here won't get you there.
Noah 42:58
I mean, there's another one of the 12 mindsets that we haven't really talked about as much today, which is dynamic range. And dynamic range is really around, being able to operate on those three dimensions, run, build and rebuild. And it is hard. I'm gonna agree with Amanda that it's, it's, it's hard because you are you are an operator, also a strategist. And also thinking about the disruptive technologies and models that are going to power the future all at the same time, all wrapped up into one person. And I can say just, you know, from from building a learning organisation, I mean, I am way down in some really operational stuff, programmes, scheduling room booking, catering materials, audio, visual, setups, leases, you know, getting purchase orders out the door, and I'm like, okay, cool. At the same time that we're thinking about the spaces in places of the future, the use of the metaverse the use of virtual reality technologies, nano learning, micro learning, AI, you know, you go home some days and you're like, Oh my God, my brain is gonna explode. Because you're like living in these very different worlds of heavy duty operational work, heavy duty strategy and innovation work and then when you just when you think you've got it figured out and you're like, Okay, this thing's starting to work out for me, boom, you got it, you got to break it and rebuild it to build it for for the next chapter of growth. So it is it's super challenging, but also super rewarding, super engaging. And when you have a great team around you, you just kind of get fired up around it and it really gives gives a lot of inspiration.
Chris Rainey 44:41
No Amanda, you finally given me the words to describe when people ask me what does it mean to be an entrepreneur? And I really should be honest, like new perfectly encapsulated it I always struggled to describe where to your point you'd like deep in the weeds and then, you know, an hour late eel in the sky looking down, like it. And yeah, I've always struggled to explain it. But now I can even like, run, build, rebuild. Like it's such a great way of encapsulating that. And the part that I, and I'll be honest, I'm not great at which you mentioned is taken a step back, like you mentioned, to look at, you know, Marshall Goldsmith, what got you here won't get you there. Right? I'm not me and Shane, not great event. And we're trying to get better at taking a step back and reflecting. And because
Noah 45:34
we're happy to give you some coaching.
Chris Rainey 45:37
Because we're so busy running 1000 miles an hour in one direction to build the business, sometimes we don't take a step back to actually to your point to do that. And that's where that's where we get tripped up. So it just made me really think about that. A lot of biker, I really relate to what you're saying is, and as leaders, it's really hard to be in both both places at the same time both headspace is
Noah 46:02
well, one of the humbling parts about it. In in leadership, there's a dominant logic of as I grow up my leadership, I move out of the operational and move into the strategic I kind of earned my way to be strategic, but we don't buy into that we believe that a great leader needs to be at both ends of that spectrum. You got to be in the details. You have to know your business, you have to act like an owner. And you have to be creating the
Chris Rainey 46:31
example today, right? Like before we hit record, I told you that my producer had to leave. And I made it my mission. And when we built the studio that I understood every single piece of technology, the hardware, the software, I spent probably 100 hours, sitting there watching videos about how our production desk works, how the cameras work, how our digital screens work, all of the technology behind it. And today, I had to step up and figure out how to do everything, but it's a perfect example. And people always I've had a few people actually asked me like, why do you do that you're the CEO, you don't need to, I get joy and satisfaction to be honest. I love it. I'd be like really like my wife saw me watching a four hour video the other day on YouTube, like a really in depth detail about new software that we've implemented to run the whole studio. Like Tinder not is that not boring? I don't know. I love it. Like, I can't wait to go and play around and bring it to life. And no, I thought even my job I want this, I will very rarely ever have to touch it. But to your point I love being in the weeds sometimes.
Speaker 3 47:33
What was what's funny about that is when you were telling us that story before we started mentally I was going oh, dynamic range in action.
Chris Rainey 47:41
So again, you can link it back. Right? Again, this is the important part. And that's another thing like again, as entrepreneurs, I sometimes I just struggled to define those moments, right? In your case, you could immediately make that connection to one of those 12, which is really important. Sometimes people like, again, the reason I love the fact you had the videos, is it really kind of puts it into context of what you mean by each of those 12. Because it can be taken out of context, on people's interpretation. But like no, this is what it is. This is very clear, very intentional about that. And it's so important because it creates that common language for the whole business. So when someone says that they know exactly what you mean, as well. I'm sure it must help from a remote perspective with a hybrid workforce. Because again, when when you're remote and you're not in a workplace, you have to be even more clearer in terms of just systems processes, why purpose because that, that then becomes sort of the glue, and connective tissue that brings everyone together even if you're working in different parts of the world.
Speaker 3 48:46
What so I started during the pandemic when everybody was remote. And it was hard, you know, for that first year, to really get a full grasp of who Maderna was how we operated. And I'm just saying this from my experience, you know, as an employee, and then coming back in and being able to see people and being able to touch it, feel it be a part of it. changed my whole perspective on this, this company. I knew the company was awesome. I knew it was great. I knew we had amazing science and the leaders seemed really great. But I didn't feel like I could fully appreciate the culture or adapt myself probably more importantly adapt myself into you know, kind of how to operate within those mindsets until I actually was able to come in and experience so you're you're absolutely right. You know that language is super important as we've grown globally. Because when we think about you know we were talking about the office that we're you know, the opening up in Harwell, we want those employees to operate from those same set of 12 mindsets, and so having the strong language and all of the programming that we're doing is so important for people to really understand it. The other thing we really do is try to get people to come in to to Cambridge very early in their, their tenure with Maderna no matter where they sit in the globe, so they can have that firsthand experience learning truly understand it from the you know, their colleagues around them. It is it is so hard, but it's so important to us.
Chris Rainey 50:30
Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. I feel like if I didn't ask you about AI, I would be missing something here. No, I'm gonna jump in. We spoke we mentioned, we mentioned chat GVT earlier, briefly, a lot of stuff here about how you're thinking about AI and in talent and also how to get flows into the academy, etc.
Noah 50:51
We've been talking about AI for for a while now. So I know there's sort of like a frenzy happening with AI at the moment, but we've been on the AI build for for years. So and one thing going back to the mindsets, one of our mindsets is digitise everywhere because we're a pretty young organisation, we have the ability to be really intentional and thoughtful about how we build how we're building this organisation. Lots of organisations that that didn't build digital first or AI first are going back now and thinking how do we retool the entire art you know, the consulting term transform. So to become an AI powered company, and we're in this sort of privileged position that we can we can build it right from the from the get go. And, but that requires a lot of thought a lot of innovation a lot of time and energy to and a lot of capability building because AI is a skill. And and we're looking at it in every part of our business manufacturing, supply chain, legal finance, every part of our business to become more productive and to really to serve patients. Again, it goes back to that mission for patients, how do we use AI as a tool to serve patients? And so that we've recognised a couple years ago that that's a skill area that yeah, we're gonna hire for it. But we also have to develop it from within and that's where the the AI Academy comes in as part of modernity University, the AI Academy has multiple programmes, it's a full time job. To me, it's a three
Chris Rainey 52:29
I want in app, I want to join AI Academy, I felt like
Noah 52:33
you know, we talked about our internal development and then pushing beyond our walls for external development to an AI I think is honestly something that we can contribute AI skill development is something that we can contribute to the biopharma industry and to the world, because it's a set of skills. It's data visualisation, it's data preparation, it is AI ethics, it's defining use cases for AI application. It's it's low code, no code, algorithm writing, it's it's it's the tools, but it's also the mindsets and the mentalities and of identifying places where AI is going to make your business better, or faster, or cheaper, or more effective, or serve patients better. And then moving that through just like any idea of moving that idea through the system through leadership to get to an outcome. Yeah. And that's a skill that we're working on in the academy at every level in the company from operator up to the C suite. I mean, we are we are putting a huge investment into the AI Academy and building that capability.
Chris Rainey 53:32
I feel like I've just opened up a can of worms, but I know I gotta let you go. Now. Where can people connect with you both if they want to reach out and say, hi, where's the best place to find you?
Speaker 3 53:40
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, I mean, LinkedIn is always a great a great place to start a connection. So I'm, I'm on there, I've got a profile, so please feel free to reach out in that way. Amanda Sorento, so.
Noah 53:55
And same for me, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, I tried to make a personal connection with every every person that reaches out and you know, have a dialogue, have a chat, share some some ideas or information. Yeah. And same with me, Noah Rabinowitz, I'm on LinkedIn, I spend a little time on there every single day. So I'd be I'd be happy to connect with amazing listeners.
Chris Rainey 54:20
Well, well, you both now and say Don't blame me when you get loads of messages. So I'm just gonna put it out there. But honestly, thank you so much for both of you coming on. I'm honestly I love what you're doing. And I think there's so many HR leaders listening right now, that are going to be I'm going to say they're going to they're going to be still in sync with your ideas. So I would say I would say I would say you know, in a good way, and I can't wait to learn more and see the evolution of the of the university and all of the what you're doing because it truly is making a difference. So I appreciate it. And I look forward to speaking to you again soon.
HR Leaders Newsletter
Sign up below and well send our weekly newsletter packed with actionable insights, podcasts, clips and compelling content directly to your inbox.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Steve Degnan, Advisor, Board Member, and former CHRO of Nestlé Purina.