We know from 100 years of investment management that patience is not just a virtue – it’s an asset and a vital source of durable value creation for all of our stakeholders. We also know that in an extremely competitive market – and one that is exacerbating short-term incentives, actions, and expectations – having a genuinely long-term orientation is a source of differentiation and analysis advantage.  

The best decisions that we make for our stakeholders – including our employees, clients, shareholders, communities, and suppliers – are those that prioritize their long-term success. Nurturing our culture, creating an environment that attracts and develops the best talent, and making decisions that place the value we create for others above all else has helped us to work cohesively and consistently towards aligning with our stakeholders. It has created a competitive moat around our client and employee value proposition decades in the making that allows us the surety of continuing to invest in the future health of our company.  

Bringing together leaders to solve stakeholder challenges 

Over the last few years, we have sought to structurally embed this ethos into our business by creating what we call our Client Alignment Platform, with the explicit purpose of being “an inclusive leadership forum, designed to enable, empower, and embed transformational projects and spark innovation in the organization that are aligned to the long-term mission, vision, and strategic goals” of the company; all to create value for our clients. 

The platform brings senior leaders from all departments together and empowers them to understand, explore and solve challenges that stem from any potential misalignment with our stakeholders. This can range from how we better govern the journey our employees experience, to our corporate sustainability and DEI activities, and how we manage data and leverage technology in the midst of the digital transformation underway. During the last three years, over 350 senior colleagues (~16% of all employees) have worked together in small, dedicated teams to help us to not only solve but anticipate some of the biggest challenges the industry faces and have helped us remain strongly aligned with our stakeholders.  

Addressing time horizon misalignment practically 

As an investment organization, one of the most important stakeholders we have is our client, and one of the greatest sources of potential misalignment in our industry is of course the issue of time horizons and pervasive short-termism. Therefore, many of the project teams have directly and indirectly sought to address this issue on multiple fronts. Some practical examples include: 

• Changing the way we present performance information to our Boards and our clients to underscore our commitment to long-term value creation. E.g., we included 1,3,5,10 year rolling returns pages in our product and client review books and changed the order of our performance metrics. Making seemingly simple improvements in transparency has actually enabled and facilitated discussions that are more oriented to long-term thinking. 

• Bringing the organization together on the employee value proposition and having a holistic framework to understand the employee journey over time. Identifying those key areas in the employees’ journey where they need support, challenges, and opportunities to develop their skills has resulted in low employee turnover (e.g., 3-year turnover for all of MFS is 5.8% and for investment team is 3.3%) which is so important in the asset management industry where people are your capital.  

• Transforming our mindset around data, leading to a significant multi-year investment in our technological tools that will allow us to deepen our value proposition to clients and employees in the long term. In an evolving data and technology environment, we have been expanding our platform and building new capabilities to better deliver on our purpose (e.g. evaluate risk and opportunities related to climate transition) with the client experience in mind (e.g. customization needs)   

Each one of these actions is an important part of the mosaic of how we ensure we remain long-term oriented in our decision-making. All together, they are helping us to collectively – and intentionally – shape our shared future. Creating an environment for diverse groups of leaders to come together and take accountability over that alignment has helped us to create an exciting flywheel, that is both building the future leadership of the firm and delivering positive outcomes for all of our stakeholders.