The Future in Sound #39: Paul Polman - Courage

The values with which you run a business are very important, and you need to be very grounded in those and understand those. And yet so many companies struggle to verbalize their values. You know, why are you here? What is important to you? By the smallest pressure on the financial results, they might go back to short-term behavior whilst having preached long-term behavior before. So crises and these challenges that you have externally flush out, I think, the leaders from the laggards, or the ones that are truly committed to it versus the ones that pay lip service to it.

Welcome to the Future and Sound podcast. I'm your host, Jenn Wilson. This is a podcast where we discuss people, planet, and profit. In each episode, we'll learn from world-leading experts who can help us see the future we want and our role in it. This is episode 39, Courage. Paul Polman is an internationally recognized leader in sustainable sustainable business and a co-architect of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As CEO of Unilever from 2008 to 2019, he proved that purpose-driven strategies deliver exceptional results. Through board roles, impact investments, and his best-selling book Net Positive, Paul continues to inspire responsible leadership and drive global progress toward a sustainable future. I should also say that I've been a big fan of Paul Polman for probably 15 years, and it's a real honor, Paul, to have you on the podcast today. Welcome.

No, welcome to you, Jenn, as well, and thanks for the opportunity. I've been looking at the work that you're doing with WECO, and I'm equally impressed.

That means a lot. It really does. And just getting into the conversation, I mean, many listeners will be thinking, gosh, we're facing a lot of turbulence at the moment when it comes to sustainability, geopolitical changes. You're a true pioneer in corporate sustainability. And, you know, many investors and corporate leaders that I speak to have seen the headwinds against sustainability mount rapidly. I'd like to start by asking, how should business leaders think about the turbulence they're facing when it comes to sustainability?

Yeah, first of all, Jen, I would say the turbulence is not new. We've had always turbulence. If you look at any history of a company that's been around for a long time. They had to, you know, even during my tenure in Unilever, which lasted a little bit more than 10 years, we had to deal with a financial crisis when I came in, the eurozone crisis, political shocks like Brexit, COVID, food price volatility, and many of the environmental signals were already there causing stress in our system. So I don't think it's new, and there's always a a lesson in all of that for anybody, and that is in turbulence, you are better off if you have a good strategy. And if you think a little bit about some of these things happening in the environment, and then you double down, you don't quit by the first setback or bad news that you're getting. So, and the leaders there that have the courage and that stick to their strategies, I think, will prove over time to do better than the ones that go back and forth. It's not different from the ones that hop in and out of the stock market by the, you know, smallest noise or turbulence that is happening. So I don't think business has ever operated in calm seas, to say that. And true leadership is not learned in the harbors. It's when you're in the storms, obviously. So in all of this, there are some things that I think are important to keep in mind that won't change. First of all, the values with which you run a business are very important, and you need to be very grounded in those and understand those. And yet so many companies struggle to verbalize their values. You know, why are you here? What is important to you? By the smallest pressure on the financial results, they might go back to short-term behavior whilst having preached long-term behavior before. By the, you know, pressures on the bottom line, they might stop some of the investments they need to make in making their business models more resilient, which they know are needed for long-term survival. So crises and these challenges that you have externally flush out, I think, the leaders from the laggards, or the ones that are truly committed to it versus the ones that pay lip service to it. But, you know, there are some things that don't change, and that's important to mention to the audience. You know, science doesn't lie. And science is very clear, and I've always been a big believer in science. We've created a group, the Planetary Guardians. We're looking now as science is being attacked on keeping that very much to the foreground. That's very important. Environmental destruction continues. We know deforestation is going up. We know carbon emission is going up. We know water scarcity is increasing. We actually know that more people are falling back into poverty or dropping out of the middle class. So these things don't change and they're not subject to who's in any political office. You know, climate change frankly doesn't care who's in the White House, if I may be honest. So it's important that you maintain that true north and that sense of direction. And then, you know, the citizens of this world frankly are crying out louder by the day. They want healthier, better lives. They want better lives for their children, more sustainable lives, and frankly, a fairer economic system that is more inclusive and not to the benefit of a few. So I think in that environment, the only question is not, you know, what is the next crisis going to be, or how do we focus on the short term to survive, but the question is really, how do you prepare for it? And what I found the most useful thing to do is first to work on your own resilience. I don't think you can run a sustainable company or a purposeful-driven company if you don't have your own purpose, if you're not sustainable yourself, which also means investing in your own health, your physical health, your emotional health, your mental health, but most importantly, also your spiritual health. And I think that's a pyramid we always need to continue to work on. The other thing that is important is to continuously create a high level of awareness of what is going on in the world and sort of an engagement with that to do something about it. Awareness without engagement doesn't mean anything. So read a lot, go out, you know, talk to the people that you serve, be in the communities. When I was running Unilever, 70-80% of the time I spent in the markets. That's where the citizens were, and that's where the issues were prevalent and, and the ones that gave you ideas on how to respond to it. The third one is that think about this turbulence as opportunity, not as threat, and look at how you can actually grow your businesses. The fact that 1.5 billion people don't have access to toilets and have still to deal with the issues of open defecation is an enormous opportunity to grow your markets. The fact that 5 million children die before the age of 5 from infectious diseases is an opportunity. The first one on toilet bowl cleaning and all that. The second one on bar soaps. So all these challenges are tremendous opportunities and you need to seize those. And the ones that do, I think, are better placed than the ones that don't. The next element is probably, you know, be clear on what your purpose is or what your true norths are. Bill George wrote a wonderful book called True North, in which he talks about your own personal crucibles or what is important to you. But you have to live your life not by the political up and downs or the PR nonsense or, you know, many of these things, but really live truly to your values. And I think it is clear from many of the surveys that have been done that many companies lack that sense of purpose according to their employees. In fact, the majority of employees think actually that you don't have that purpose. And what you see in the US is a good example right now where pressure is especially high. There's no reason to deny that many CEOs waver from previously made commitments, that they rather follow the political course than staying true to their values or what is true to their companies. So smart companies, you know, stick to their values and they continue to do what they know is needed in society. I've talked many times about my favorite slogan, which is the need to Make the dust versus eat the dust. I think that's very important. There is a sense of uncertainty there, a sense of uncomfortableness, but it's better to take the initiative on things that you know need to happen anyway. And I've talked lately more about the ABCs of leadership in this environment, which undoubtedly is more challenging again, once more, and changing rapidly. You need what I call the ABCs of leadership, adaptive leadership. You need to know what is going on in this environment. Why did these people get elected? Why were so many people dissatisfied? What is on people's minds more than anything else? Have we communicated clearly about climate change or have we made it too abstract, too far removed? Did we put the people in the center of everything we did, adapt to the current realities and figure out why we have failed so far to address many of these challenges? And then the B stands for bridging. You know, people might have different opinions, you might like them, not like them, have them over at your house for dinner or not, but you better spend a lot of time understanding them and bridging. Because we can only solve these issues together and not alone. And it takes courage to do that bridging. I understand that. And the C actually comes from adapting and bridging, which is cooperating. I personally believe that the challenges that we face now are of such magnitude that nobody can do it alone anymore. So those are what I call the ABCs of leadership. And in my book, we obviously talk about the 5 traits of leadership, which are I think equally important, when we did our study of successful companies and non-successful companies, many of the things I just talked about came out. A strong sense of purpose, a strong sense of empathy. Purpose and empathy together drive courage. The ability to unlock energy in others and to work in these broader partnerships are probably some of these traits that successful companies, and often symbolized by successful leaders, possess.

It's really interesting. One of the topics that I want to pick up on there, Paul, is the topic of bravery.

Yeah.

Obviously, CEOs, even if we put sustainability to the side for a moment, even though that's the core topic of this conversation, there's a certain amount of bravery and consistency required in order to really pursue and go after a strategy. And usually there are targets associated with that. And what we're seeing right now is Some leading companies are walking back on targets. You've shared the importance of setting bold targets to galvanize action in the past and shared that even if it's— you hit 90% of a really bold target, that's worthwhile in setting that bold target. How can leaders maintain ambition despite the rising politicization of sustainability and the temptation to walk back on these targets?

I think it was Leo Bonnet who said, if you reach for the stars, you don't end up with mud in your hands. I've always believed when I came to Unilever, I've always believed in the principle that business is there to solve the world's problems, not create the world's problems. And CSR, which often if you read any sustainability report, it basically is CSR talking about a little less carbon in the atmosphere, a little less plastics in the oceans, or a little less deforestation in your value chain. But as you know, we've already passed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries. That define our overall health. We're actually living well beyond our means. World Overshoot Day, which is the day that we use up more resources than the world can replenish, was actually in July this time. Every day after, we're literally stealing from future generations. So we need to think regenerative, we need to think restorative, we need to think reparative, and that requires bold targets, that requires feeling uncomfortable. I've said many times, if you know how to achieve your targets, you're playing not to lose versus playing to win. And this is what most companies do. They go to their PR departments, they go to their legal departments, and they say, I make commitments on climate change, or I make commitments on human rights, if you're lucky, or many other things, if I already have the plans, or in some cases, if I already have implemented it. Otherwise, I'm getting attacked by whatever NGO or whatever legal system or governments. Nothing could be farther from the truth. What you actually see is that companies that set targets in line with science, that set targets where they often don't even know how to achieve it yet, are actually companies that are in the end getting better results and actually moving the needle faster than anybody else. In Unilever, when I came in 2008, when that was by no means clear why you would set sustainable targets, why you would deviate from looking only at the shareholder to all the other stakeholders, and trying to optimize the well-being of all of those, including planet Earth and future generations. There were no data, the financial market was not convinced, but yet we set targets to decarbonize our business model, to make our whole value chain sustainable, to extend our diversity efforts not only to our own company, which we have achieved as one of the first in the UK with a totally gender-balanced board, etc., but also in our whole value chain. So these targets made us feel uncomfortable, but it also made us feel— made us human. When we went out there and said, this is the goals that we're setting, but frankly, we don't have all the answers and we can't do it alone, all of a sudden it made us human. We got many people who wanted to work with us on these targets because they felt it equally important. We formed enormous partnerships from UNICEF to Save the Children to PSI on water and many other organizations that helped us achieve these objectives. We could have never reached 1.2 billion people in handwashing, which made our Basel business grow double-digit over these 10 years, year after year after year. We could have never reached these 1.2 billion people and saved millions of lives were it not with working with USAID, with DFID, with the Gates Foundation, with UNICEF, and many others. To do that. We could have never reached 90% of our food products being sustainably sourced and working with smallholder farmers, hundreds of thousands, and creating livelihoods were it not with all these partnerships that made that financially possible as well, but also reached the bottom of the pyramid, if you want to. So, not to be naively optimistic, but it is indeed bolder targets that science actually directs us to, that often the answer is there. And let's be clear on this one. Walking back is probably right now the most dangerous response you can choose from all perspectives. You know, investors want companies to be resilient and future growth. They might have gone out of some of these bold commitments on the, you know, the net zero alliances or whatever you have. But in essence, they're looking at their portfolios from a risk-return point of view. And they know what is happening. Citizens are looking for companies that behave responsibly. Employees increasingly, the Gen Zs and the others who enter the workforce, want to work for companies that are responsible. And what we did show in Unilever, I think at the end of the day, that brands with purpose that had put it at the core of their strategy were not only growing faster but were also more profitable. And I think when that happens, the penny dropped for, for many of us. So I think it's a firm belief that you need to have in this environment that simply doing the right thing goes beyond catering to your shareholders only, if I may say it that way.

Hey, it's Jen. I just wanted to take a quick moment to let you know a bit about Ricoh and what we do. We're a tech-enabled advisory firm that helps private market investors and companies measure sustainability metrics using our software platform. We also help you to set targets and focus your efforts on sustainability areas that really matter for your business. And finally, we help clients to translate all of this work into your core value creation strategy or your business model. Check us out at re.co.com to get in touch. All right, now back to our conversation.

So at ReCo, we spend a lot of time working with companies and investors on creating a clear link between sustainability and financial value creation. How did you consider this while CEO of Unilever? And what steps would you recommend CEOs take in considering this link between sustainability and value?

Well, as you say, Jian, it starts with a firm belief that it's not a trade-off, it's an enhancer. Obviously, when you run your company, and we've seen that in Unilever as well, You need to hire the right people, you need to have the right organizational structure, you need to invest in R&D, you need to have discipline, you need to do the right M&A. And if all these things are missing, your business results are not there either. But I think there's overwhelming data out there now that if you do all these things well, call it the basics of leadership, of running these bigger companies, then putting sustainability at the core of your business increases so much more your chances of success. And that's also one of the reasons why in aggregate, be it in the private equity business, which you are more familiar with, where they're increasingly starting to embrace these principles because they know they have to exit in 7, 8, 9, 10 years and want to prepare these companies for a future we know will happen, but also in the rest of the publicly traded companies, they are consistently higher valued by the financial market if they put sustainability at the core of their strategies. And it starts with a belief. It starts with a belief that the best return for shareholders over the longer term, over the longer term, is achieved by also ensuring that all your other stakeholders are satisfied, that your employees are happy, that the communities in which you operate, your suppliers and your value chains, as I said, planet Earth on which we depend for the success of our businesses, The air we breathe, the water we drink, the materials we use. I mean, it could not be more obvious that we are an integral part of nature, and a strategy that creates wealth by destroying on what we depend in the first place is just not a good thing. You know, Hubert Reeves said it very well, a philosopher from Canada, when he said, man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys— sorry, he worships an invisible God and destroys a visible nature. Not realizing that the visible nature he destroys is the invisible God we worship in the first place. So if we don't have that realization, we won't get there. So where do we start? Well, in Unilever, actually, the first year I did some basics in getting the business back in shape, which was not in good shape at that time. But I spent a whole year with my friend Bill George, who now teaches at Harvard, who had written this book True North that I talked about, on building, working on purpose. We looked at our own purpose, we looked at our purpose to influence others, we looked at purpose to get results. It's still the most popular training in Unilever actually today, but out of that came the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, a plan to decouple our growth from environmental impact, increase our overall social impact, a plan that was quite courageous, but it came from that courage where people knew that we had a role to play in society beyond the role that, despite being a very responsible company even then, but well beyond the role we had been playing until then. Then you look at your total impact. We did that. Many companies still think you can outsource your value chain and also outsource your responsibilities. That just doesn't work anymore. So we looked at our overall impact on all of our businesses. What is the impact on water, on CO2, on waste, on human rights, etc. And we measured them and we looked at what is material, where can we have the biggest impact even as a company. So we first brought our own house in order and then we had to build trust, and only trust can only come from transparency. So we went out there with 50 targets. Some people said it's a little bit too much, you'll get attacked if you don't all achieve them, you'll lose your job. Nothing further from the truth. By going out there with these targets, we created these broader partnerships, and as these partnerships were created, we started working on the broader systems changes. How can we work with the Indonesian government to stop deforestation related to palm oil? How can we work with Brazil on the tropical forest and maintain that? How can we work with governments on water sanitation and hygiene, what is called WASH programs? And that became in India, for example, the Swachh Bharat, the Clean India Program. How can we work in Ethiopia and ensure that any kid that goes to school has oral care, has nutritional foods, has health and sanitation that we all expect anywhere in the world? So we became more involved in these broader systems changes of driving society. And it's interesting as a company, when you start to solve the broader issues and not only look at your own self-interest, Not only do you expand your markets and grow your business, but also you start to attract the best people. Your corporate reputation goes up. Unilever's reputation at that time was twice the level of companies even like Patagonia. 2 million people were applying to us every year to work. So when you stand with the world, the world stands with you. Even when you get attacks of different economic models like Kraft Heinz at that time, which are purely driven by a few billionaires wanting to earn a few more billions, destructive for society as has shown, these are not long-term models. I called them at that time already Ponzi schemes. Then you see that everybody rallies behind you and said, no, you know, you do have a function. We like to criticize companies, we like to criticize multinationals, we always want to get them to move a little faster and higher on some of the things that seem to be, you know, not fully at the speed needed. But at the end of the day, you get rewarded for doing these right things. And that is a strength, I think, that any company should aspire to if they want to be long-term successful. And then, you know, I always said that the task of a CEO is to work on the forest, not in the forest. We spend a lot of time on looking, especially in middle management, etc., what prevents us from moving faster. And it's certainly not blaming people for not moving faster. You have to look in your own cabinets and, and say, what am I doing to prevent these people from moving faster? That's the role of a leader. And we put enabling mechanisms in place. One of them, for example, was abolishing quarterly reporting because I felt people needed to think long-term. We moved our compensation system to 5-year periods, very unusual at that time when everybody was paid on a 1, 2, or 3-year basis. And it was a casino grab hall, in my opinion. We stopped giving guidance because we didn't want to live in this foo-foo economy where we were chasing fake numbers, and we started just reporting on what we were doing and our plans. And as we did that, we started to be more strategic in our communication, attracting more strategic shareholders, changing our shareholder base as a result of that. But also our business model started to change. Likewise, we put in place enormous programs with our suppliers in the value chain. We called them partner to win, helping them be successful. And what we found was they were equally motivated by what we were doing. So the right innovation started to flow to us and the right partnerships took care of the economics. You take a lot of friction out, you start to work seamlessly. We became the lower cost producers and it actually drives a performance culture in the end. You know, food has a lot of food waste. We were one of the biggest buyers, believe it or not, of let's say tomatoes, for example, with our products, and 1 out of 4 is probably lost in the whole value chain. Regretfully, food waste is 30%, 40% of all the food produced. In Unilever, we were probably more successful attacking that than anybody else. Most other companies were looking at it as a cost saving. We can give the shareholders a little bit more money, we can show higher profits by cutting food waste. I never really was never really important to me. We said, you know, there are 950 million people going to bed hungry, not even knowing if they wake up the next day. How do we have the audacity to waste food? So that creates a motivation to drive things beyond any other efforts that I'm at least familiar with. So that sense of purpose, that sense of embedding it into everything you do in the core ultimately of your brands, you're a consumer goods company, is what is probably the most important thing. And the reason you see these companies that are publicly being called out now, increasingly so, abandoning with the smallest pressure from the political environment their previously stated philosophies, is because it was a side hobby. It was never embedded. It was run by a CSR department, often in the basement somewhere, someone close to retirement. We didn't know what to do with him or her, but it wasn't really embedded into the business, in the core of the business. And that is the challenge. And that's why it's so important what you do in Ricoh as well, is help companies see this as an imperative of longer-term success, as an imperative of being accepted by society, who gives us our life as companies in the first place. That sense of serving them, that sense of asking for permission, but also trying to strive to achieve that is a very important thing. You know, the underlying premise of that is frankly a thing we don't like to talk too much about this, but, you know, we don't value what counts and we count what sometimes doesn't value. And what we've seen in many cases now is with the enormous population growth, enormous, you know, linear consumption patterns that we have and wealth creation that has occurred, We have discovered now more than ever that we can't have this unlimited growth in a finite planet. And if you can't have unlimited growth in a finite planet, then by definition, you know, you can't be sustainable. So we need to change these economic models at a radical level. And I understand why many people struggle with that. That's why they need companies like yours and others to help them with that. You know, not everybody can invent the internet. But everybody can use it. So if you can help them understand how it works, I'm sure more companies will actually look at it because it makes so much more economic sense now and frankly would reward you for your efforts more than any other I'm aware of at this point in time.

Paul, it's really inspiring, the story that you've shared, and I know that we're starting to run out of time, but just quickly, many leaders that we work with are working to embed sustainability and getting pushback internally. And obviously, you had to create buy-in with shareholders, other leaders at Unilever, etc. And just any sort of brief comments on promoting sustainability internally against a backdrop of shifting priorities, I think, would be really welcome from the audience.

Yeah, it's not easy right now, and I don't want to belittle that in this discussion. It's difficult, and especially as we are in some parts of the world now. But the most important thing is, I think, to realize— I was just 3 weeks in the Far East, in Japan and Indonesia and some other places, and they're moving. They're moving. You look at China, they're moving. They're past peak oil now. You saw their emissions coming down despite their economic growth. You see also when they're moving what that does. We looked at 22 technologies for the energy transition, and 18 of those, they have now outright superiority. I think part of the defense in the US is to slow it down to catch up to some extent, because, you know, the president there is eager to get his hands on all the transition minerals, including suggesting invading countries to get them, but they are well behind now. And so it's an economic imperative right now that we're moving. It's a— and again, the economics are there. There's one thing with humans, unfortunately, that gets in the way is that we have evolved over a long period of time and change is going so fast and we struggle with that. We tend to be linear thinkers and change is now exponential. So where do we miss the boat all the time? Technology goes so fast, but cost is coming down exponentially. You look at the cost of solar, it's come down 75% in the last 2 years alone. It will go down another, it will halve again in the next 5 years. But we always underestimate that, even the International Energy Agency or other experts have consistently underestimated how fast technology is going down. And the other thing that we underestimate, which is also exponential, unfortunately, that the cost of not acting is going up very fast, exponential as well. As a result of that, we are paralyzed in action because we discount the future too much. Future earnings are discounted too much as a result of this. So we need to get people to really think much more in this exponential thinking, and that's what probably leaders do. So if you're in a company where your leadership doesn't quite believe in it fully yet, I think the first thing to really do is be very practical. not be preachy and link it to results. And to some extent, this correcting of the pendulum right now to go out of this virtue signaling, or some people have now called woke, into really proving what needs to happen because it makes economic sense, is healthy. In the US, actually, if you look what happens at state level or local level, 80% of the energy, 85% to 90%, I would say, of the energy expansion that has happened over the last 8 years has been in green energy. Even today, coal plants want to close. The president forces them to leave them open, but it's costing consumers billions of dollars in extra energy costs. It's costing these companies millions of dollars. They're actually starting to complain about that. So the economic forces are there, and you should point them out. That's the first thing. Second thing is form these partnerships, work with others. And come with solutions where you can't do it alone. It's so easy to say, you know, our company cannot solve this, the problem is bigger than us. But when you go together with people, it's amazing what you can do. That's why one of the reasons we created the Fashion Pact with 60 companies, 30% of the fashion industry, to move to green energy. We created the biggest green energy buying alliance, move out of single-use plastics in B2B. Work with suppliers now in India, Bangladesh to change from coal heating to green energy and do that collectively. And it's working. The industry is trying to accelerate changes that they knew would be needed. That's why we work with about 40 companies in the airline supply chain from airports to manufacturers of airplanes to engines to fuel providers in terms of getting to sustainable airline fuel. The risk is high, so there are no purchase agreements, there are no, you know, risk sharing in this value chain. So how can we bring that group together and trust? And yes, we make their progress again. That's why we work with the biggest food companies to move to regenerative agriculture. You see now commitments of $10-12 billion in that field to move faster than many governments were able to do. So these collective actions are becoming quite the norm, in my opinion. People don't like to talk about it, publicly, less often want to say they belong to these joint efforts for reasons they don't want to be on panels anymore or their names published in the papers, but these efforts are going on and they're accelerating. So be part of that and then, you know, bring the key people in the company on board. Obviously it needs to be embedded in all parts of the organization, but nothing better than having the CFOs and the operational leaders there. And so try to convince them and protect in your company the pioneers, the people that are willing to stick out their necks, to take a little bit of risk, to do the unconventional things, because that's usually where future innovations are. And, you know, moving your company to a more sustainable model, you should see it as part of your innovation thinking in a sense. So protect them, and I think you'll go a long way.

I think, you know, everybody listening should read Net Positive. And my final quick question is, Paul, if there's one book that's most shaped the way you think, what book would that be?

For me, that's a very unfair question unless I refer to one book that I think is important, which is the Bible and the Golden Rule, because in case of doubt, do unto others and the planet as you would do unto yourself, is a very simple mechanism, but very powerful when you don't have all the facts and the data. But I like to have different books on different things. When Rachel Carson in the '60s wrote the book Silent Spring, she resulted in banning DDT, resulted in establishing the EPA under a Republican president, Nixon, at that time. So that's great. When Viktor Frankl wrote his book Man's Search for Meaning, You know, he talked about, you know, it's not power that drives people, you know, a principle that was advocated by Adler, or it's not, if you want, pleasure like Freud was saying, but it's actually a sense of belonging. And that, you know, and that comes from meaning and that you can control whatever the circumstances, in his case, horrible circumstances. You know, I like Jim Collins' Good to Great because it talks about Level 5 leadership, which is humility, fierce resolve, and other things he talked about. I trained myself as a trainer in Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective Leadership, which is frankly character building around universal principles of taking responsibility, of dignity, respect, of integrity, etc. So as I look at all these books, I think at the end of the day, what it boils down to, to me, is that it's a leadership issue. That we have technology, we have the financial means, but the question is, do we have the willpower? Do we have the stamina? Do we have our deep sense of purpose? And all these books have a strong leadership message. And, you know, Mangari Montaigne said it well, there comes a time in history when man is called upon to rise to a higher level of consciousness, which he called a higher moral power. And I think that time is now. So the main deficit that we have is leadership. And, you know, one of the things I focus on is trying to create more leaders. It's kind of sad when you ask people at these international forums, who are today's leaders that stand out, and people start stuttering, you know. And for that reason, I've always said we need more leaders than trees. And these books somehow help you, you know, get to this higher level. And as we work our physical muscles and go to the gym, we need to also work our moral muscles day after day. And that's true for everybody, including myself. And that's probably what we need right now more. And as Al Gore often says, willpower, which is a human element, is a renewable resource. So that's good as well for the moment in time of where we are. So there you go.

Paul Polman, thank you so much for joining me on the Future and Sound podcast.

Thanks, Jen, for the opportunity and hope to talk soon again.

The Future and Sound podcast is written and hosted by Jen Wilson and produced This podcast is brought to you by Ricoh, a tech-powered advisory company helping private market investors pursue sustainability objectives and value creation in tandem. If you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to tell a friend about it. And if you have a moment to rate us in your podcast app, we'd really appreciate it. Until next time, thanks for listening.