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Before a strategy becomes a success story, it's a judgement call.
Now in its second season, Founder's Mentality: The CEO Sessions gets inside the decisions that defined some of the world's greatest leaders - a bet the market couldn't yet see, a crisis that put the organisation's purpose to the test, and the courage to keep showing up even when you don't have the answer.
How do you stay close to the frontline as the organisation scales?
What does AI mean for the thing you have spent years building?
How do you transform the company without breaking what makes it great?
Hosted by Jimmy Allen, Advisory Partner at Bain & Company, bestselling author and leader of Bain's Global CEO Forum, each episode is a candid, in-depth conversation with leaders from Mars, The Economist Group, Khan Academy, and more.
Each episode is built around one real story, one defining moment, and the lessons that come from living through it. Dense with insight and designed for leaders who listen with a pen in hand, the series explores the outer game of markets, technology and growth, and the inner game of energy, humility and courage, and what it takes to master both.
The question this season isn't just what the CEO should do.
It's who does the CEO need to become?
Join the Conversation:
https://www.bain.com/founders-mentality/
https://www.bain.com/insights/topics/ceo-agenda
Links:
Bain & Company LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/bain-and-company/)
Bain & Company X (https://x.com/BainandCompany)
Jimmy Allen LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-allen-3442b/)
About the Host:
Jimmy Allen is an Advisory Partner at Bain & Company with over 35 years’ experience advising leading organizations. He’s the author of multiple best-selling books on growth and leadership and the host and founder of Bain’s Global CEO Community Forum. Jimmy is a regular speaker at global business events, including the World Economic Forum, and serves on the Botswana Economic Advisory Council. Outside of consulting, Jimmy started his own record label (Abubilla Music) in 2008 and supports Singing Wells, a project dedicated to preserving Kenyan village music.
Bain & Company:
Founder’s Mentality: The CEO Sessions is brought to you by Bain & Company, a global consultancy trusted by the world’s most influential business leaders. With decades of experience guiding organizations through growth, transformation, and leadership development, Bain’s executive insights offer what it takes to lead at scale.
- We always ask the cost of daring,
but we never ask the cost of not daring.
(upbeat music)
- You're about to hear
something you don't hear often,
just start and let the work teach you.
It defines why Jacqueline
Novogratz has had such an impact
on the world,
and it's a lesson that applies to us all.
(upbeat music)
I'm Jimmy Allen
and this is "Founder's
Mentality: The CEO Sessions."
(upbeat music)
Jacqueline is the founder
and CEO of Acumen.
It's a global organization
that has directed capital,
talent, and unprecedented attention
to the places the rest of the
world has quietly given up on.
700 million people reached,
markets built from nothing,
in countries where
nobody else wanted to go.
But here's what strikes
me most about Jacqueline,
she's a visionary with an
art for audacious ambitions,
but she's also a realist
that knows for each bold idea,
she'll need 1,000 conversations
to make stuff happen.
To dream, you do.
(upbeat music)
- So I was at this beautiful London lobby
owned by one of my board members
and I asked my team to
come up with a plan,
and I actually said, "I
want a billion-dollar plan."
(gentle music)
Acumen had been investing in
off-grid solar electrification
since 2007.
So now we're up to, like, 2021, probably,
maybe '22.
And I had seen how we'd gone
from two guys with a solar light,
that we invested patient capital into,
turn into 30, 40 companies,
that we had invested in,
reach 200 million people
with off-grid solar electrification.
At the same time I was going
to the big meetings like the COPs,
(gentle music)
knowing that from 2007 till
whenever that date was,
we as a world have been able
to reduce the number of
people without electricity
from 1.5 billion to 800 million.
So I just started to do the math.
(gentle music)
If one nonprofit like Acumen with one,
mostly philanthropy, but
then one for-profit fund
could reach more than 200 million people,
why wasn't the world just
getting the job done?
(gentle music)
My very wise team said,
"Given the development
finance institutions
"and what we would be eligible for,
"we should probably start
with a quarter billion,
"not a billion."
And I very grudgingly agreed,
and I'm glad I did,
because we were able to then,
a year or two later,
start to put the pieces together
for a $250 million facility
that is taking on the 18 most
challenging energy markets
in the world,
all of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa,
none of which have more than
a 45% electrification rate.
- Why did you go to the
hardest possible place
as a first step here?
- We just were looking at the math, Jimmy,
that if you recognize that,
now it's 700 million people have no access
to electricity on the planet,
85% of those people live in those,
let's say, 20 countries
in Sub-Saharan Africa,
85%,
and yet no capital flows
into those countries.
It seemed almost elementary,
why wouldn't we?
- And so from the lobby,
what did you then do to
build that community?
- It was still rather rudimentary.
When I went to the COP in Scotland
and I walked into a
meeting with the investor,
Chris Hohn, of the
Children's Investment Fund,
and he asked me, "What was on my mind?"
and I said, "What's most on my mind is
"we wanna bring electricity
to the 75 million
"of the hardest-to-reach people
"living in the most
challenging markets in Africa."
And he listened to me for a few minutes
and then he said, "I'm in
for 10 million philanthropy."
And I was sort of stunned by that,
and I first started to tell
him that he needed to wait
till our business plan was more solid.
And he said, "That's not
how I make these big bets.
"I'm betting on you.
"You've done the work,
"I see what you've done,
"you're gonna make it happen."
That $10 million investment
gave me just a huge jolt of energy,
as you can imagine,
walking into the other rooms at the COP,
instant credibility in a world
where so many don't dare,
particularly when they hear
that you're going to bring electricity
to countries like Somalia and Chad.
(upbeat music)
- Chris Hohn didn't bet on the plan,
I mean the plan barely existed,
he bet on Jacqueline,
on her track record,
on the weight of 14 years
of showing up in places
no one else would go.
(upbeat music)
He bet on her approach
'cause he knew that she
had a hidden superpower.
She had a clear vision of
where she wanted to get to
and she'd launch 1,000 conversations
and wouldn't take no for an answer.
(upbeat music)
He knew the idea would
leave the fancy lobby
and move to the front line,
and that's where we're going next.
(upbeat music)
- The next big turning point
was the next Climate Week
before the next COP.
So now we're in September,
not even a year,
and I brought together
a number of the CEOs,
higher-level CEOs and number twos
from the Green Climate Fund,
some of the institutions
we had worked with
and really wanted to talk
to about this facility.
The president of the World Bank was there
and philanthropists,
and at one point someone said,
"Jacqueline, this is the craziest
thing that you have tried.
"What if it doesn't work?"
And it was one of those rare
and wonderful cases, Jimmy,
when the then president
of the Green Climate Fund,
a guy named Yannick,
looked at me and looked
at this table of 16 people
and said, "Look,
"if she does half of what
she says she's going to do,
"quite frankly, she's gonna do more
"than anybody else has done.
"So why wouldn't we at least
give them the chance to try?"
The 60 million that we raised
on the patient capital side
allowed us to move fast.
So even before we closed
the debt facility,
we were able to experiment
and move into new markets
and really get a deeper understanding
of what we had gotten ourselves into.
I have a philosophy of just start
and let the work teach you.
Even though we were far
into thinking we
understood off-grid solar,
and we do,
these were very complicated markets
and they brought in new
challenges altogether.
- So how far from the lobby
to "Just start and let
the work teach you,"
how long was that?
- Oh, weeks.
- Weeks,
- Weeks for saying, like,
"Okay, team, let's go.
"We're doing this."
- I think what's extraordinary is
it's so easy in listening
to you as you tell the story
to hear a story of just unparalleled toil
(both laughing)
as you go from an idea
to getting your team on side
to, you know, 1,000 conversations,
and you're one of the few people
that when I say 1,000,
it was probably three,
and yet you also have this
philosophy of just start
and let the work teach you.
So you were building
towards the grand vision
while simultaneously
just getting shit done,
- Mm-hm.
- just starting with this.
And I think it's important
to understand that parallel
that all the time you
were doing and learning,
and so those 1,000 conversations,
I imagine, kept getting
more and more informed
by the reality of what the team was doing.
- Absolutely.
And I can't stress enough the power
of having that philanthropic facility
to take the early risks and
understand these countries.
For example, Malawi had gotten
a lot of aid until last year,
but 16% electrification rate,
it's a beautiful country,
and yet when you go,
what you realize is there's
one industry, tobacco,
that means there are no
dollars in the country.
So not only were we
going to have to contend
with 45% devaluation of the kwacha,
which had occurred over
the last few years,
and wasn't looking any better,
but we would have to find a way,
that even if we got paid back,
we'd have to then get those
kwacha converted into dollars
in such a way as to allow us
to pay them to pay Acumen.
We knew how to make the loan
but then we also had to buy the inventory
straight from China in dollars,
then we turned around at the same time
and did a currency swap.
We got that currency
swap guaranteed by the EU
and we thought, "Game on, let's go."
Well, the company is taking off.
I think it's reached, like,
200,000 people with electricity.
They have all the kwacha to pay us back,
but even with the guarantee
and the currency swap,
there's still no dollars in the country.
And so then what do you do?
Well, Norad, the Norwegians,
had actually given us technical
assistance money as a grant
that they wanted to be used as a grant.
I thought in very traditional
technical assistance terms,
but here was an opportunity to
think very, very creatively,
and all credit to my team,
what they realized is that
because of the currency situation,
because of the economic
situation in the country,
it was still really hard
to get more fresh inventory from China,
but there's a whole level
of damaged inventory that needs repair
that could then be sold
on a resale market.
And so the team could go
back to the Norwegians
and say, "Hey, what if
we used your grant money
"to essentially pay Acumen back
"and then we can take the
kwachas that are in the country
"to buy inventory in kwachas
that will be sold in kwachas
"and start to build out a
secondary market inside Malawi
"in service of solving this problem."
And I'm just watching a level
of creativity and collaboration
that I don't think I had the imagination
to predict when we just started.
So now that we've closed the debt fund
where, you know, it's regulated,
we've got a different set of stakeholders
that very much are focused
on getting their money back
and they then, behind them,
have all of the
parliaments and governments
counting on them.
We are so much smarter, Jimmy,
than we ever would've been
had we waited the two and a half years
to close the whole facility
before we did anything.
- Most of us either
will allow the specific
to completely distract us from the vision
or we stay so visionary
we don't have the patience
to deal with the specific.
How do you keep bouncing back and forth?
Where the hell does that come from?
- I've always seen the world
in a non-dualistic way would
be the language I would use.
I think embedded in me is that soft heart
and that hard head,
and it's always been there.
- I think you referred to it
as the bull and the dove.
- The bull and the dove,
and they struggle inside.
- You seem to run towards complexity
because in that is the magic of solutions.
And it's not to celebrate complexity,
but it's just because I
think you just always seem
to go to hard places with the
willingness to solve things.
- When you are talking about markets
for very low-income people,
you, by definition,
are talking about political markets,
not just economic markets.
Everybody thinks they have a hand
in the lives of low-income people.
Investors tend to stay away,
but you have the governments,
the charities, the mercenaries,
or the mafias that are gonna
sell at extortive prices,
you have the family structures,
the religious structures.
And so breaking through all of that
requires understanding complexity,
which starts with deep listening,
that you actually have to
care about the customers
that your companies
ultimately are serving.
They will tell you what they need.
The market is a powerful listening device,
but so is sitting with the customers.
I was in Pakistan
on a day when it was like
115 or 16 degrees out
and we were selling these
off-grid solar lights
across South Asia and
Africa like hotcakes.
And I was so excited,
and I was sitting with
these women in Bahawalpur,
these women weavers were all
sitting in the shade working
and I was asking them,
"Hey, do you think if
I could get a license
"to bring these lights into Pakistan,
"would it be something you'd
be interested in buying?"
And this woman with, like,
sweat pouring out her face,
she leans forward on her haunches
and she looks at me and she
says, "We don't want a light,
"bring us a fan."
I said, "Excuse me."
She said, "It's hot, bring us a fan."
And I said, "Well, I don't have a fan,
"I have light,
"and it only costs $7 at the entry level
"and your kids can read
and you can stay up later,
"you could even work more at night."
And she said, "We work
enough, bring us a fan."
(gentle music)
Sure enough that night,
sitting in my little guest house,
I couldn't even have a cold shower
because the water was hot.
I had this clickety-clicky
fan above my head,
and I just felt like
this woman is so right.
You go anywhere in Pakistan today
where solar has totally taken off,
you don't sell a solar
system without a fan.
So part of the understanding
the embedding ourselves in complexity
(gentle music)
is really caring about
who are the customers,
what do they have to contend with,
and are you serving them?
(gentle music)
When we finally closed
the Hardest-to-Reach
with 23 stakeholders,
that included individual
philanthropists, foundations,
impact investors, development
finance institutions,
the World Bank and the IFC,
and Shinhan Bank, Korea's
largest commercial bank,
and there were a group of
them sitting around the table
in my house,
(gentle music)
during Climate Week,
so we were all stressed out,
but we were eating a
meal at home together.
These very, otherwise, fancy people.
We went around the table
to remind ourselves why are we doing it?
(gentle music)
And we were asking ourselves,
"Can institutions build trust?"
"Can a commercial bank build trust with the World Bank?
"With a nonprofit?"
And so at the very end
when I asked everybody,
(gentle music)
"What is inspiring you?"
- That question right
there, that why thing,
in the face of all that complexity.
Complexity is a word we return
to a lot in these interviews.
It hangs over every conversation.
(upbeat music)
Complexity is central to the Malawi story
because it shouldn't have worked,
on paper, it still doesn't work.
No dollars in the country,
45% currency devaluation,
a grant repurposed in a way
no one's ever tried before,
and yet it did work
(upbeat music)
because the team was already there,
already in the market, already learning,
it worked because dealing
with complex things
is at the heart of Acumen's model.
(upbeat music)
Man, it took me a long time
to get my head around this.
Jacqueline is truly
comfortable in discomfort
and she's built a resilient organization
that understands deeply
that to achieve extraordinary things,
you've gotta navigate daily tensions,
you've gotta embrace complexity.
You can serve inefficient broken markets
and still build a model that scales,
you can do good and make
returns for shareholders.
The dove and the bull.
And there's a tension here
between scale and intimacy.
Jacqueline built a repeatable model
to bring solar to the hardest-to-reach.
And then a Pakistani woman,
in 115-degree heat, says,
"You got the wrong product."
Jacqueline listened and she brought a fan.
That's delivering
difference from intimacy.
(upbeat music)
And by solving these tensions
better and faster than others,
Acumen is changing the world.
(upbeat music)
But there's another part to this,
to master complexity, it takes resilience,
it's hard, it takes inner strength.
Jacqueline understands this.
The why needs to be so bold,
so good, so worth it.
(upbeat music)
If you're gonna devote your
time doing the hardest things,
you better make the journey worth it.
If someone asks you, "Why do you bother?"
You better be able to answer this,
(upbeat music)
"Because we dare to change the world."
In our interview with Kevin Lobo,
he stressed that we need
to change the question.
It's not what if we're wrong,
(upbeat music)
it's what if we're right?
Jacqueline's version is a bit different.
When you set out to do
something that bold,
it's not what if we're right,
(upbeat music)
it's what's the cost of not daring?
The why, it's worth it.
Ah, but it's so easy to forget the why.
(upbeat music)
At that candle-lit dinner table,
someone was about to bring the room back
to the question of why.
(upbeat music)
- A woman who essentially
controls a lot of climate finances,
she said unexpectedly, "You
know, tonight is Rosh Hashanah,
"and in the Jewish faith this
is a very important night,
"it's the new year,
"it's the night we celebrate light.
"And as we've had this meal together
"and had this very unusual conversation
"for a group of institutions like we are,
"I realize the power that
we have come together
"and that sometimes
through all the fights,
"we may have forgotten the why of it,
"but we have come together
"because we believe that it is
only when the least among us
"have access, have light
"that we're building the
world we're all proud
"to be part of."
- I love the phrase of, "We are
so often forgetting the why"
and that "resilience is
about returning to the why."
I think you would say,
"That's necessary but not sufficient."
The why better be a good why.
Can't just be power,
it can't just be profit,
it's gotta include dignity in what you do.
- One institution, not
for Hardest-to-Reach,
but for an earlier fund,
called me to her office
because she felt that she
had such respect for Acumen,
but that she had to tell me personally
that their investment committee
had turned down this investment in us
and this is an institution
set up for solving poverty.
And I asked her, "Why?"
And she said, "This is gonna
sound funny, Jacqueline,
"but we actually had a debate about Acumen
"and specifically about you,
"that if you got to a crisis
"and you had to choose
between the poor and your LPs,
"people thought you
would choose the poor."
And I said, "Are we really
having this conversation?
"Do you not think we're smart
enough to choose the mission,
"which is to ensure
"that we have long-term
profitable companies
"that are solving problems of poverty
"and yes, choosing low-income people,
"but at the same time
ensuring that we get returns
"to our LPs.
"If you don't think we can
hold those two tensions,
then it's not me
who is being questioned
"about being in this business,
"I would ask you if you really
wanna be in this business."
- One thing that is very distinct is
I think you have a very
good but different view
about the role of complexity
than I think a lot of leaders do.
- Jimmy, with big corporations,
often, I have met
incredibly visionary CEOs
and they want to partner with us
to help build more inclusive,
sustainable supply chain.
They believe it,
they're in it.
And then, we interact with the system
and the head of procurement
doesn't wanna give up five basis points.
And so then we spend months
convincing the head of procurement
that we can make this work,
but then you get to the country leader,
then your head of
procurement gets changed.
And so we have to build that why
and we have to find ways to integrate it
through the many layers of a corporation.
- One of the things that's so clear
from the way you talk through this,
it's "I will embrace the tension.
"I will recognize that
it's the bull and the dove
"that need to work together.
"What I won't do is compromise
some of the measures
"against a whole host of others."
So it is not enough
to just say we wanna have
dignity in our supply chain,
if in the same meeting we can
trade that off against cost,
against HR, against
legal, against judicial,
because then we're not
saying that's important,
it's just one of the
things we'll talk about.
When you really return to the good why,
there is also a hierarchy
of what we'll be measured
by and judged by as leaders.
- I think you have said
that so beautifully,
and we are constantly in that tension.
I will say that our capital is patient,
it is not stupid,
that what does it mean
to build dignified jobs?
I think that's what we all want,
but we lack the courage
to make the decisions that go
against the bigger current.
- I loved your phrase at one point,
"We don't have scarce capital,
we have scared capital,"
- And we always ask the cost of daring,
but we never ask the cost of not daring.
How will the world be different
or the same if we don't try?
How might it be different if we do?
- Jacqueline, look,
and I know you do a lot of training,
but you know, you've got a track record,
you can have 1,000 conversations
'cause you can enter 1,000 rooms
and everybody knows you,
but what do you tell to someone
who shares your ambition
but they're just starting?
- I was just sitting with
some of the Acumen fellows,
and as I was looking around the room,
I realized they look at me now
and think, "Oh, it's all easy for her.
"You know, she knows everybody.
"She can raise all this money."
Let me take you back,
not to when I was 25,
let me take you back to when I was 40,
and I had no money and
I didn't know anybody,
and I wasn't really sure what I was doing,
but I was told for 10 to 12 years,
so into my 50s,
that the idea of patient
capital was not a great idea.
In fact that many thought
it was a stupid idea.
It was painful, it was lonely,
and there were nights when I
thought maybe I wasn't right.
And that's the stuff you gotta get over.
That's where you have to
realize that if you don't do it,
nobody else is going to do it.
So keep trying.
I say to young leaders,
I definitely tell them to just start,
and when you fall down,
get your ego out of the way,
because ultimately, the
people who stay in the game,
particularly the game of
changing a status quo,
that by definition does
not want to change,
are the people who have
the courage to get back up.
(upbeat music)
- You know, Jacqueline's
message is pretty simple:
Just get started.
Don't wait for certainty.
Don't wait for the plan to be ready,
start and let the work teach you,
(upbeat music)
but you better have a why
that's worth the fight.
Because sometimes doing the
hardest things is complex
and there are tensions to
be managed, not ignored.
(upbeat music)
We've got to create an organization
resilient enough to embrace tension
and fall in love with complexity.
Be the dove, but also be the bull.
(upbeat music)
You know that question,
how might the world be different if we try
is available to every
leader in every room,
but most of us, we just don't ask it.
(upbeat music)
Everything from today's episode
and every episode is at
bain.com/founders-mentality,
and we'll be back in two weeks,
until then, stay curious.
Next time on "Founder's
Mentality: The CEO Sessions."
- I do strategy in the field,
I don't do strategy in the boardrooms.
When you get in discussions
about generalities,
you don't sense where are the issues,
but when you get deep inside
in the bakeries or in the sales centers,
the small things,
then from there you get the big ideas.
(upbeat music)