Dad, Will the Planet Be OK When I’m Your Age? with Founder and Executive Chairman of Future Planet Donal Daly #30

After all, all art is experience.

Hello and welcome to The Company Doctor. This episode, we're very pleased to be joined by the founder of Future Planet, Donal Daly. We'll be discussing how to advocate sustainability within business, the challenges future generations may face, and how ethical business practices can drive better business performance. Gary, Donal, it's over to you.

So hi, Donal, thank you so much for joining us on this episode.

How are you? I'm really good, Gary, thank you. Nice to, uh, nice to meet, nice to chat.

Yeah, that's gonna be great. Looking forward to this session. I think people are really in for a treat today, um, looking at some of your background. The topic is sustainability, so we've got lots to talk about, and I thought probably the best way to get started is for you to introduce yourself briefly and obviously give us an intro to Future Planet in the high level.

Yeah, so I'm a software guy. I've had 5, now 6 software companies. I started my first AI software company in 1986 when AI was cool, and then it wasn't cool for 30 years, and now it's cool again. So I had a few different companies, and largely in the SaaS software space for the last 20 years. I sold my last company a few years ago, and my son, who is now 18, asked me about 3 years ago, he said, should I be worried, Dad? And I said, about what? And he said, will the planet still be okay when I'm your age? And yeah, so that's a tough question to answer. And I felt that I would think about whether I could use the experience that I've gained over the previous years to help companies on their sustainability journey. So I founded a company a couple of years ago, or started a company a couple of years ago called Future Planet. And Future Planet helps medium to large size companies on their sustainability journey so that they know what to do, where they're starting from, how to get to the nirvana of, of their goals, and then deal with all the compliance and, and reporting stuff that they have to do.

So fantastic, and such a great topic, and obviously it's at the front of mind of a lot of people and organizations. Maybe the best place to start, because I want to dig into your past and some of your future because you're a fascinating guy. But what does sustainability mean to you? And I guess, why does it matter?

Well, it means to me leaving the Earth in a better place than we found it, or at least not much worse. And I think in any relationship that a person has, whether it's with an individual or with a— or in this case, with the planet, we have a responsibility to leave it better than we found it. Or at least not make it worse. And fundamentally, sustainability for me comes down to responsible consumption. There is a limited set of resources that the planet has, and in July of this year, we as a planet will go through what's called the Overshoot Day, which means we have used our year's allocation of resources by mid-July. And as you'll appreciate, Different countries do that earlier in the year than others. Ireland did it on the 27th of April of this year. So we'd used all our allocation of resources for the year, and now we're burning up stuff that really belongs to other people. So it matters because with growing population, we use more resources. The planet can only regenerate a certain amount. So for me, sustainability means responsible consumption. And when I first thought about this topic, I said, okay, well, actually this is quite solvable. This is easy to solve. If everyone just stops consuming.

You're such a problem solver, see?

Well, that's it, just in one thing. Let's stop consuming. And then of course you think about it, you go, well, that's not actually really going to happen. So how do you help people to consume more responsibly? And in a corporate context, that means how do we get people to buy in a different way or buy more responsibly, buy less, buy in a more structured way, buy more locally, And that talks about, that then gets into the complexities of supply chain and all those kind of things. And thinking about not just the price of an item, but also its carbon content, its impact on the planet and all those kind of things.

Yeah, no, it sounds, it's really important stuff. I think, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of talk in the market about sustainability and ESG and people get confused about what these things mean. Again, for the uninitiated. What's this ESG and what's the difference? Is it connected to sustainability?

Yeah, so ESG is environment, social, and governance. So environment, which is what people think about often when they think about sustainability, it's about the planet. It's about air, water, carbon emissions. So that's the environment piece. It's about biodiversity. Ideally, it's about helping the planet to regenerate. To replace what we extract. So that's the E piece. The S piece is about social, and social is about employment laws. It's about gender diversity. It's about racial equality. And fundamentally, so that's the S piece, and I'll come back to the broader topic. And then G is the governance piece. So what do I need to do to behave in a responsible way? So ESG is kind of about the company and sustainability is about the world. Because sustainability in my mind is fundamentally about fairness. So it's about fairness, it's about equity, it's about the things I mentioned, the gender balance, the racial equity. My kind of social conscience, if you like, that I've tried to balance a little bit over the last maybe 15 years has been about human rights. I get upset when I see inequity in any way. And in reality, what we're doing to the planet is the greatest injustice in a climate injustice way. 'cause what we do in the Western world has a disproportionate effect to people, let's say in Sub-Saharan Africa and the consumption. So your consumption, if you're average Gary, and you're probably not average, right? But if you're average in the UK, you're probably about 10 tons of CO2 emissions every year. In Ireland, it's about 12 tons on average. In the US, it's about 16 tons on average. In Canada, it's 19 tons. In Mali, it's 1.1. Right. So, so everything that we do, and unfortunately it's one connected planet. So sustainability is about trying to have equity in its broadest sense. And ESG is about making sure that the companies are compliant.

Very good. It's a good description. That's really helpful, actually. Helps help me a lot. I was reading an article that you were in, in the Irish Times. And you said the planet is burning and someone had to fix it. What do you mean by that? And is it one of those Bruce Willis films? I mean, is it really urgent and should we be really worried like your son asked?

Yeah, it's kind of "Yippee-ki-yay, mother." I won't finish the rest of that, right? But so we should be worried, but we need to be optimistic. So I saw just yesterday the EU put forward a bill, it's not passed yet, to ensure biodiversity regeneration. By 2030 across Europe. I see lots of great things happening around the younger generation taking responsibility for stuff that they do, who care an awful lot more about this than the people of, let's say, of our age, Gary, who didn't really— I mean, I flew back and forth across the Atlantic 500 times without even thinking about it. So Spain is due to hit record temperatures this month. We've seen the wildfires in California. We've seen the flash floods. We know, well, you may know in Southeast England right now, it has greater water stress than Sub-Saharan Africa. So in other words, the water that's available isn't sufficient to meet the need. This is all a consequence of climate change. So as we think about everything that we do, then we need to think about how we do it in a considered way. That's considerate as well as considered so that we use less resources. If we do that, I think we can dig our way out of this. If we don't, it'll be a long, hot summer.

And you've got a really interesting past, and, you know, a lot of your past has been in sales transformation, I guess, if that's the right heading for it. I was interested to know, again, threading some of those things together, what was your experience from the past that you could use to Help power the future. I'm sorry, I was, you know, you've got 3, I think you've got 3 bestsellers and 6 books out there, and one of them I was reading, I was interested to know your thoughts.

It's interesting. I used to say in my last company, which was called Altify, it was a sales transformation software application that helped sales professionals selling enterprise solutions in large kind of B2B sales. All right. So it was the, That's what I did. And I used to say nothing happens until someone sells something. And it was about how we made that happen more effectively. However, that book that you refer to is called Digital Sales Transformation in a Customer-First World. And the bit that actually connects it to this piece, and I haven't been asked that question before, so, is the customer-first piece. And I would always have believed that successful salespeople were people who actually cared about the outcome for their customer. In this case, the customer is the planet, right? And that's the customer we have to take care of. And as I used to say, you know, nothing would happen before someone sells something. Now I say nothing bad happens until somebody buys something. Yeah. Right? So that's how I kind of connect those two things. I spent a long time helping salespeople sell stuff, and now I want them to stop.

You want them to stop. But interesting, you talk about customer first, and it's obviously important in the sales environment. But if you talked about the importance of customer first, how do you transform people's thinking to sustainability first?

Because it's about fairness. If I use— if we have a limited number of resources, Gary, available to you and I, and if we're the total population of the world and I use more than my fair share, then it's less for you, and that's unfair. So I need to think about that for you, and I need to think about it more importantly for my kids and future generations and people who are less equipped to deal with the impact of climate change. We're going to see a huge amount of climate migration. We're going to see a lot of people leaving hot, wet countries that are getting hotter and wetter. And we need to think about it shouldn't be just those who can afford to do that can do it. So it's the simple stuff, you know, it's the— just because the food is past its expiry date doesn't mean you throw it out because it's probably fine, you know. If it's a can of beans, you don't have to throw it out. You know, you can keep it for 5 years beyond its expiry date. It's fine. Or if it's a block of cheese that's still sealed in its wrapper, you don't have to throw it out. But you have to think about the fact that that, you know, half kilo of cheese or whatever that you have is the result of fertilizing a field, growing a cow, milking the cow, making the cheese, you know, all the resources that it takes to get it to you., and then you go, "Ah, screw it, I don't need it," right? And then it goes to landfill and you get methane from the landfill. So becoming aware of the fact that wasting resources is a lot more complex and a lot more impactful than we would have thought. Everything that we do, there are choices we can make. We can make better choices. When I sold my last company, my I'm a bit of a petrolhead, right? So I like cars. I was going to buy an F-Type Jaguar in British Racing Green. I saw this, this was like sex on wheels, right? And two of my co-founders, one bought a new Range Rover and one bought a Maserati. And I just couldn't do it. I went and so I bought a bus pass, right? And my now 18-year-old is going, 'Oh, and you got a Range Rover, and she got a Maserati, and you got a bus pass.' I go, 'Yeah, I just, I don't need it,' right? So I think everything needs to be considered.

Well, it's an interesting point of view, especially if you're a petrol head, you know, you're almost giving up something that you're really passionate about. I mean, most of our audience are business-to-business people. Yeah. And I'm interested in your thoughts. What do people really need to consider about sustainability as they grapple with this kind of really challenging business climate, uncertainty, what advice would you give them to kind of work in that environment? Otherwise it can get lost, I guess.

Yeah, so I think the good news is sustainability is a wonderful opportunity for forward-thinking salespeople because in the end, customers want to buy products that don't kill people, right? Customers want to buy from companies that don't kill people. And sustainability is now a competitive advantage, right? If I think about how the products that I have can be used to help my customers' sustainability journey, to help their customers' outcome, I have a competitive advantage. If I actually think about it and say, will this product be good for my customer, then what happens? I start thinking about what's good for my customer. When I start thinking about what's good for my customer, then actually, oh, oh, so if I was the customer, I'd buy this. Oh, then I should sell the customer that. So you actually become, by putting the customer at the center, and in this case, put the customer at the center alongside the planet at the center, it's a huge advantage for contemplative salespeople who think about what the actual impact is going to be. I used to say in my sales world, I used to say, that the impact on a salesperson of a lost deal is typically far less than the impact on a customer of a bad buying decision. So if you think about it, you know, someone buys the wrong ERP system or someone buys the wrong thing, the customer is screwed. The salesperson goes and makes the next deal. So if people believed that to be true, and this was one of the core tenets of the Digital Sales Transformation book, if people believe that to be true, then they think about the impact on the customer. Right now, the customer has to think about the impact on the planet. So, the forward-thinking salespeople are helping the customers on that journey.

So, it kind of gives your customer-first, kind of, not a rebirth, but it makes it even more important now than it was before, by the sounds of it.

Yeah.

Like it. And if you were giving advice to people, and you said, right, the 3 things that should make the biggest difference, what would be the top 3 priorities in sustainability, do you think? If I could only do 3 things, what should I focus on?

Buy less. I kind of say buy less, buy less, buy less in some ways. But I'd probably think about it in the context of a circular economy. So I'd think about refuse to buy something. There's a kind of 9 Rs, right? There's kind of refuse, reduce, reuse, rethink, refurbish, repurpose, recycle, reimagine.

Wow. I just had one more, remember. I'm amazed you remembered all of those.

I'm not sure I did. Do not, but like, somebody will check us, right? But so that's kind of the thinking about how I do it. So, so that's one thing I would say. The other thing I would say is I'm trying to help people think about the usership model as opposed to the ownership model. So I live in a park here. There's maybe, let's say, 20 houses in the park. And wouldn't it make so much sense if we had a shared electric vehicle that we could use? Because not everyone's going to buy an EV because it doesn't go far enough when you want it sometimes.

Right?

Tell me about it. You know, so I think the usership model is something to consider. I think leasing things are better. Right? I think that if you're a golfer, instead of buying your electric hand trolley for your game of golf, go and rent it every time you use it. It's probably cheaper over time. And it's less impactful. So thinking about that usership model, so first thing is buy less. The next thing is share. You don't have to give up your convenience. And third thing is lobby your elected officials to make sensible decisions. Because at the end of the day, the governments can make decisions and impose on people things that they don't want to do themselves, let's say, like don't go party, you know. So governments can direct things for the greater good. Without being answerable to folks really. So we should be ensuring that our politicians have an answer to how they're balancing the spend of our taxes in a way that takes care of our kids.

I must say, I wasn't expecting the third one. I get, I understand it. That sounds like it could be quite a bit of a campaign. Is that, yeah, how difficult is that?

Yeah, so I mean, you or I should go and sue our respective governments for not taking actions to look after future generations. I mean, that's why we elect them. They're not doing their job, right? So they should get fired or they should get sued, right? If that is true, right? I'm not saying all governments are bad or all politicians are bad. Is it? But fundamentally, I mean, across Europe, and I'd say the EU and the UK was probably part of this decision when it happened, the plan was by 2020 we'd have a pan-Europe Biodiversity Regeneration Law, right? They're talking about it now, so we're like 2 years late and it's still not done. So we have to hold those folks accountable because they're the folks who are supposed to be considering their nation's futures. So I think that's important.

No, I think it's great. I'm going to switch gears just a little bit because earlier on you talked about AI, and I know the foundations of your new business are around AI. Can you just explain what is AI and how can it help me in relation to sustainability?

Yeah, so the "what is AI?" question is just something that's been around for so long time, you know, and it's— so I think AI is a system of sorts that enables non-experts to have access to the knowledge of experts. So for example, the most widely used AI platform on the planet is Google Maps, right? So it's used every day. By millions and millions of people, possibly billions of people, but it has to be, in the first instance, it has to be infused with knowledge. So the way Google Maps was built is Google licensed all the maps in the world from a company called TeleAtlas, licensed that, made an application around it, and all of a sudden you could figure out where you were and it could give you a map to get there. And then over time, with lots of people taking a lot more journeys, it had a lot more data and it would kind of, oh, the most effective way to get from Cork to Waterville is this way. So it learned that over time. So there are a couple of different things in AI. One is there is a level of declarative knowledge that is necessary to give you context. So I'm using my Google Maps example, and that says, here's a map that people would normally use. Then there's experience over time that's learned from lots of journeys that people take. And then it gets better. Sustainability works exactly the same way. So, in our world, we have built the maps around how to reduce single-use plastic. We have built the maps around how to reduce carbon, how to deal with waste, how to deal with water, how to deal with your emissions. Then over time, as more companies take action— so that's all the declarative knowledge, and we've baked in gazillions of data points and policies and practices and standards and all those things into our platform. So that if you or I wanted to go and guide somebody on how to reduce single-use plastic in their organization today, right through the value chain, the software will tell them what to do. So then as people take actions over time, you'll go, oh, Company A did this and it got this outcome. So, so maybe Company B, who's starting on the journey, should follow that action too. So it's a bit like on Amazon, people who bought this also bought this. You know, so that's an example. So I break the AI into two pieces. One is the declarative knowledge that we bake into the system, and two is the discovered knowledge from the data of lots of interactions to make the system smarter.

Sounds pretty smart to me. I've got two questions. I'm going to get to your musical taste, but you've got an amazing career, you know, going back in time. You've written lots of books, you've involved in lots of startups. Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently? And what would your advice be to a younger self?

Because I'm not that young anymore, people do ask me, so I'm thinking of doing a company, what do you think? You know, and I go, well, it's much easier to start than stop, right? So by that I mean is once you start a company and you get a customer, you have a responsibility to deliver to that customer. Once you have an employee, you have a responsibility for their mortgage and their family and their kids and all the rest of it. And once you take investment, God help us, you have a moral obligation to deliver on that. So there are things that need to be considered. Most companies, at least all of mine, go through tough times. And you have what a co-founder of mine would say in the last company, we had periods of intestinal fortitude. So you need to stay the course. So did I know that before? I didn't, because I started my company because I didn't have a job and I'd not thought I You know, I needed to earn money, so I started my first company because of that. So I would say that it's important to learn from others, but it's important to follow your dream, believe in your instincts. And I think that respect and perspective are probably the two most powerful words in the world.

Nice, very nice. Okay, I got my last question, and we're going to go to your musical taste.

Okay.

I was really struck by your comment, and we spoke before this episode, that, you know, you were about to hang up your boots. You've built a successful career, but that sort of question from your son, you know, Dad, is the planet going to be okay? It's kind of caused you to have one more go at stuff, I guess. And so my last question is, you know, threading together all your experience, for people listening, what would be the top 3 takeaways for people listening on sustainability that would make the biggest difference? If they can only have 3 things, what would it be?

So the 3 things is consider the impact of every action you take, every cup of coffee you take, every mile you walk, every bus trip you take, every flight you take. Everyone has an impact. And I'm not suggesting that people should don the hemp woven coat or whatever that is, but just think about it, you know? So be considered. I think they should advocate and be activists within their organizations. To ensure that their company considers the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit in everything that they do, recognizing that good business can be good business.

That's cool. Okay, we're going to your musical taste. Now, we— for those people listening, we have a Company Doctor playlist. So give us a tune, Donald, that is something that either inspires you or just something that you really like, and we'll add it to the playlist.

Yes, that's such the hard question, right? But I would just— I think the— I would often and always listen to Great Gig in the Sky, Pink Floyd. Yes, I mean, oh my God, you know, the vocalization that was just riffed in the moment is just, you know, that's an awesome choice. So that's probably my— that's probably my contribution to your playlist.

It's good. We've got a really good diverse playlist, but it's all very inspiring. So that's a great choice. Thank you so much. And thanks so much for joining us this morning. It's been really insightful and really appreciate you taking the time.

Thank you. That was fun.

Thanks for listening. And a special thanks once again to Donal for joining us today. Be sure to visit futureplanet.com for more information on the company's mission and thecompanydoctor.com to stay up to date with upcoming episodes including a very special live event in July, and of course, show notes and blog posts from the company doctor himself. Cheers, and see you next time.