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Business is an unlikely hero: a force for good working to solve society's most pressing challenges, while boosting bottom line. This is social purpose at work. And it's a dynamic journey. Purpose 360 is a masterclass in unlocking the power of social purpose to ignite business and social impact. Host Carol Cone brings decades of social impact expertise and a 360-degree view of integrating social purpose into an organization into unfiltered conversations that illuminate today's big challenges and bigger ideas.
Carol Cone:
I'm Carol Cone, and welcome to Purpose 360, the podcast that unlocks the power of purpose to ignite business and social impact.
The next series of Purpose 360 episodes were taped in person on site at the One Young World Summit that was held in Montreal this year. For those of you who are not familiar with One Young World, I hope that these conversations will get you very, very excited to follow them online because they are making terrific impact around the globe. At the conference, there were nearly 2,000 changemakers. And you have to apply to get accepted to this amazing event. And some leaders at the conference say, "You know, it's harder to get into this conference than it is to get into Harvard." Wow. The young ambassadors represented 190 countries, and you should think of this like the Olympics for changemaking. Also in attendance were leaders across the board, around the world. Think older individuals like myself, who have worked in the field for so many years helping to make change.
I'm so proud that the first conversation will be with my favorite changemaker around the globe, Paul Polman.
Many of you may know him from his 10 year role as CEO of Unilever and how he positioned Unilever from the depths of the financial crisis to grow embracing social purpose at the core of the company, making sustainable living commonplace, as well as core brands of the company truly having a distinctive impact. He's going to talk about courageous leadership, and he's going to share so much of his wisdom. So let's get started.
Welcome to Purpose 360, Paul, I am just delighted that you've rejoined the show. You were on the show in the fall of '21 to talk about Net Positive. How has the book done since that time?
Paul Polman:
How time flies. How time flies.
Carol Cone:
I know.
Paul Polman:
No, but thanks for doing this. I'm glad to be on the show again. The book actually is doing well, but that was never the objective itself. We didn't write the book to just sell a lot, but it's number three on the Thinkers50 list. We see a lot of companies now picking up on it. That is more important to me. And slowly but surely, we're starting to change some mindset. As I was writing the book with Andrew Winston, the thing that dawned on me was what started out with an idea on how do we get companies to behave more responsibly? Turned out to really be, "Hey, this could be a big mindset change." We've overshot these planetary boundaries so much. Johann Rockstr�m is here right now at One Young World talking about that, but six out of the nine planetary boundaries that define the health of the world is basically we've surpassed them.
World Overshoot Day last year was August one, which is the day that we use up more resources than the world can replenish. So I would argue that every day after that, we're actually stealing from future generations. So we're living well beyond our means and this at a time that many other people would like to be lifted out of poverty. So a business model that is CSR, corporate social responsibility, which is where most companies are, is frankly not good enough anymore. It's about less carbon in the atmosphere, less plastics in the oceans, less deforestation in our supply chains. But when you've overshot these planetary boundaries, the only thing really that works is to think regenerative, restorative, reparative. And that's why we call them net positive. And that seems to resonate more and more.
Carol Cone:
Circular.
Paul Polman:
Circular is a part of that.
Carol Cone:
Yes, absolutely. So let's see. What is the most important question that young people, young change makers are asking you here at this conference?
Paul Polman:
Well, we're getting different questions, but the most important one is to enable them. There are so many people here at One Young World, again, 2000, 2,500, we now have a cohort across the world of about 17,000 ambassadors. And they're all amazing between the age of 20 and 30, changing the world one step at a time. But what they struggle with is how to amplify and scale up its speed and getting access to corporates. That's why we insist in One Young World that about 50% of the people here are corporates and give them access to them so that they can come in. I know from Unilever, I started what it was called a social entrepreneur program, and we had like two or 3000 social entrepreneurs applying for that every year. And the biggest benefit was not getting a price or getting access to some knowledge important as it may be, but being linked to the value chain of companies like ours. That's what this struck on us.
Carol Cone:
So let's turn quickly to the Business Roundtable and the BRT came out with their fifth anniversary. The purpose of a company should be stakeholder-based capitalism, not shareholder-based. And you wrote this marvelous piece in the Harvard Business Review about some progress, but not some. So since our listeners hang on every word you say, can you share a little bit about that, what your response was and some of the positives and some of the negatives?
Paul Polman:
Well, many people agreed with the article. So for the interest of time, I'll refer to that article for people to read. What we basically see is that there is marginal difference between the BRT group and the rest of society. Of course, they're a little bit more self-selected companies and a little bit more responsible CEOs. We don't want to belittle that at all, but unfortunately we're dealing here with an exponential problem and we're applying linear solutions, which is really where the bigger challenge is. So as a result, we see climate change going up, inequality going up, biodiversity destruction going up.
We're only on target for about 15% of the sustainable development goals. So what needs to happen is a little bit more ambition. And unfortunately, this is coming at a time when you see more of the political polarization and unfortunately attacks on simple works like ESG or woke discussions that you've amply covered on your program. And unfortunately you see too many CEOs shrinking back to their home base, not willing to form the partnerships or going out there and making these bigger commitments. So while things are moving, the ambitions that need to increase at this point in time, unfortunately there are very few and far in between.
Carol Cone:
So how do we get CEOs and the C-suite and their vast amount of employees to be more courageous, which is a term that you use so strongly?
Paul Polman:
Yeah, I like the word courageous because if it comes from Latin, the word cor, C-O-R, which basically says if you translate it, speak with the mouth, but comes from the heart. So that's why the French use the word cor, with is heart. So I always say, what goes through the heart sticks to the brain, what just goes in the brain goes straight out again. And courage is really what is needed right now. Courage to take responsibility for your total impact in the world as a company. Courage to set targets that science demands, not targets you can get away with. Courage to work in partnerships, which sometimes might be inconvenient at times. Courage to go to governments and do what I call positive advocacy instead of the continuous lobbying that happens for our own self-interest. So what we've seen during COVID, more so than ever was two bifurcations happening, one bifurcation on business models where you clearly saw that companies that were running their businesses for the longer term purpose at the core sustainability embedded, embracing partnership, thinking multi-generational, they were doing better.
But you also then the ones that were myopically focused on the short term and shareholder primacy. You also saw a bifurcation on leadership where you clearly saw that companies that had leaders with a higher level of empathy, compassion, longer term again purpose driven, these leaders instilled a higher level of confidence and unlocked a certain potential in their employees when times are very uncertain, when there's a high level of anxiety, and they were the ones that people wanted to follow. And all of that ultimately gets translated into results for companies. And now you're at a point that despite what some of the people might want to say, or newspapers echo sometimes is we can clearly show that there are financial returns by running your company more responsibly, by positioning your companies better for this greener, more inclusive, more equitable future that we all strive for.
Carol Cone:
And how do we get more of our Gen Z leaders into the C-suite so they can take over because they believe in this?
Paul Polman:
Well, I'm totally there with you. 50% of the world population is below 30, 35 years old. They're going to be a hundred percent tomorrow. So it's time that we don't only give them a seat at the table I advocate strongly that we give them the table at times.
Carol Cone:
Give them the table.
Paul Polman:
And in Young World, you witness it yourselves the 2,500 amazing leaders that I wish we would listen to a little bit more. So we did a survey, which we called Conscious Quitting, 30% of these young people, Gen Z's, Gen Y's, already they have left their companies because the values of the companies were not aligned with their own companies. But the stunning statistic to us was, and this was amongst 4,000 people in the U.S. and Europe, that two thirds of them are considering leaving companies because the targets are not set aggressively. The CEOs are not walking the walk, they're talking the talk. So what we are advocating is really for companies, if you want to get this engaged workforce, which we all need, and it's probably the biggest investment you can make, is set realistic targets. Take that responsibility, give young people agency, do a better job of communicating what you're doing, and then above all, form these partnerships that often unlock these challenges that nowadays for any individual company is difficult to do alone.
Carol Cone:
Thank you. Incredible wisdom in a very short amount of time, and I'd like to say with our listeners, give agency to your Gen Z colleagues.
Paul Polman:
I could not agree more, but thanks for what you're doing.
Carol Cone:
Oh, thank you, Paul.
Carol Cone:
This podcast was brought to you by some amazing people, and I'd love to thank them. Anne Hundertmark and Kristen Kenney at Carol Cone ON PURPOSE, Pete Wright and Andy Nelson our crack production team at True Story FM and you, our listener. Please rate and rank us because we really want to be as high as possible as one of the top business podcasts available so that we can continue exploring together the importance and the activation of authentic purpose. Thanks so much for listening.
This transcript was exported on Oct 03, 2024 - view latest version here.
p360_183 RAW (Completed 10/03/24)
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