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Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take by Paul Polman and Andrew Winston (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021)
Typically, when I review a book, I take notes on the blank pages. Most books I review run between three and seven pages of handwritten notes. This one generated an astonishing 18 pages. The book is very well-written, but it took me quite a while to read because I kept stopping to write things down.
For ten years, Polman was the CEO of Unilever, one of the largest consumer-facing companies in the world, with more than 300 brands including Ben & Jerry’s, Hellmann’s, Dove, Lifebouy, and Seventh Generation. Winston is a well-known green business writer whose books include Green to Gold. Many examples in the book are taken from Unilever as a whole and its individual brands.
As soon as he took the reins, Polman began to shift away from the short-sighted typical business “wisdom” that quarterly profits matter more than anything else and that stockholders are the only stakeholders who count. He transformed shareholder value from a goal to a result (pp. 36-39).
And those results are terrific. Companies in the JUST Capital 100 list of purpose-driven companies created 56% higher shareholder returns over five years. Deloitte found mission-driven companies had 30 percent more innovation and 40 percent better employee retention. B Corps in the UK grew 28 times faster than the overall economy. 70 percent of consumers will pay more for more sustainable products (p. 77). 80 percent would make lifestyle changes to stop catastrophic climate change (p. 255).
By ditching this limited mindset in favor of a holistic long-term strategy of protecting the planet and its beings, Polman took a company that was a bit shaky and turned it into an astonishingly adept and handsomely profitable force for environmental and social good. Seven years into his tenure, he was able to fend off a hostile takeover by Kraft Heinz in just nine days, by rallying the allies he’d built through committing to a society and planet that works for all (pp. 1-3).
Those alliances are key for Polman. He regularly reached out to competitors, to NGOs that had protested the company’s practices, to government officials—and joined them in action-focused committees that actually create change on issues ranging from carbon footprint to sanitation (Lifebouy’s hand-washing campaign) to fair wages, to women’s self-image (Dove). He and his successors are often the first to set new and potentially scary goals, then leverage being one of the biggest players to push the rest of the industry along.
While the three goals of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, “help a billion people improve their health and well-being, halve the environmental footprint while doubling sales, and enhance the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people” (p. 101) were implemented throughout the corporation, individual brands had great freedom to choose their causes and specific approaches.
Ten years in, the USLP had helped Unilever save €1.2 billion while switching to 100%-renewable electricity for manufacturing, slashing CO2 in manufacturing by 65 percent and water by 40 percent, and increasing sustainably produced agricultural ingredients from 14 to 67 percent (among eight successes listed on p. 83).
Using the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as benchmarks, Polman and Winston see enormous opportunity for other companies, too. Hitting these global goals, according to one report, “will open up at least $12 trillion in business opportunity and create 380 million jobs by 2030 (in just four sectors of the economy)” (p. 21). They note that the SDGs are designed to interlock with and reinforce each other—and that partnership, the 17th goal, makes the other 16 possible (p. 138). One example is ELYSIS, codeveloped by aluminum competitors Alcoa and Rio Tinto in conjunction with Apple (which invested $13 million and purchased the first batch). This venture reinvented aluminum smelting to eliminate carbon emissions. Audi is now using this cleaner aluminum for the wheels of its electric sports car (pp.147-148).
Net Positive companies encourage their employees to challenge and question and push. Trane Technologies’ Operation Possible involved 35,000 employees who settled on addressing food waste. 9000 Amazon employees joined forces to pressure Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to focus on climate change (p. 89).
The biggest goals, helping us do the most reframing, typically start with “zero” or “all” and are paired with some sort of “and,” e.g., net-zero energy AND happier, more productive workers (p. 97).
And these commitments really do change the culture. Not only has Unilever continued post-Polman to be a force for good while creating great financial results, but high-level Unilever execs who leave the company either start their own net-positive businesses or take positions at companies where they can bring social and environmental action to the forefront (p. 243).
The book closes with this quote from Wangari Maathai’s Nobel Peace Prize speech:
There can be no peace without equitable development, and no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space…In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.
This review only scratches the surface of this amazing book. Get yourself a copy, dig in, take lots of notes, and implement!
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Victoria Vrana
