Net Positive … Is the world better because your business is in it? … the best ideas from Paul Polman’s seminal book on sustainable business
August 8, 2022
Runaway climate change and rampant inequality are ravaging the world and costing a fortune.
Who will help lead us to a better future? Business.
These massive dual challenges—and other profound shifts, such as pandemics, resource pressures, and shrinking biodiversity—threaten our very existence. Other megatrends, such as the push for a clean economy and the unprecedented focus on diversity and inclusion, offer exciting new opportunities to heal the world, and prosper by doing so. Government cannot do this alone. Business must step up.
In the excellent book Net Positive former Unilever CEO Paul Polman and sustainable business guru Andrew Winston explode fifty years of corporate dogma. Together they describe key lessons from Unilever and other pioneering companies around the world about how you can profit by fixing the world’s problems instead of creating them.
I particularly admired Polman as a CEO.
While the Dutchman led Anglo-Dutch food business Unilever, from 2009 to 2019, he set an ambitious vision to fully decouple business growth from its overall environmental footprint and increase the company’s positive social impact through the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.
During his time, he delivered financial returns more than double that of the FTSE index.
I particularly remember the day when he stopped quarterly reporting. His business was low on confidence and creativity. It had become subservient to a relentless cycle of financial reporting, and pandering to the whims of analysts. Anything significant, strategic, longer-term which they tried to do, was rejected in favour of quick wins – sustaining the existing business model, squeezing a little more out of the old manufacturing model.
In 2018, the Financial Times called Polman “a standout CEO of the past decade.” In 2019, he created a new organization called Imagine, along with co-founders Jeff Seabright and Kees Kruythoff, to help businesses “eradicate poverty and inequality, and stem runaway climate change.”
He got together with Winston to write Net Positive. To thrive today and tomorrow, they argue, companies must become “net positive”—giving more to the world than they take.
Definition: a net positive company:
- Improves the lives of everyone it touches, from customers and suppliers to employees and communities, greatly increasing long-term shareholder returns in the process.
- Takes ownership of all the social and environmental impacts its business model creates. This in turn provides opportunities for innovation, savings, and building a more humane, connected, and purpose-driven culture.
- Partners with competitors, civil society, and governments to drive transformative change that no single group or enterprise could deliver alone.
This is no utopian fantasy. Courageous leaders are already making it real—and the stakes couldn’t be higher. With bold vision and compelling stories, Net Positive sets out the principles and practices that will deliver the scale of change and transformation the world so desperately needs.
Being net positive – having a positive impact on all stakeholders through the operations and products and services of the business – is the north star. It will take hard work and commitment, but the journey will be easier with the right information at hand, and solid commitments to values and purpose throughout the organization.
How Ready is Your Company for the Net Positive Journey? … Take the Readiness Test
Download the Net Positive presentation … Is the world better because your business is in it?
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