Net Positive Leaders: Finding the Willpower

Countless books, classes, and business school cases have explored leadership. We’ve long tried to distill what makes someone worthy of being followed. And that applies to all people, not just CEOs. Many people sit atop some kind of pyramid in an organization, managing or influencing others to work toward a goal. People can lead and inspire from many places.

No matter the level, there are evergreen leadership skills that were important fifty years ago, and will be fifty years from now. Effective leaders share traits, such as discipline, toughness and holding people to high standards, strategic thinking, intelligence, curiosity, and a desire to understand key drivers of a business like technology. In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world, other traits, in particular adaptability and resilience, become critical as well.

But leading a net positive business takes more than the basics. The best leaders, the ones people will want to follow into this new territory, are first and foremost good human beings. They are at ease with themselves, have integrity, and what they say and what they do are in sync. Net positive leadership is also about putting others’ interests ahead of your own. It helps to know your own strengths and passions as well. The sweet spot is leading in the overlap of what you’re good at, what you like, and what the world needs. Getting there might require developing new skills and leaving your comfort zone.

We see five critical traits that help create a net positive leader, which we’ll explore in this chapter:

• A sense of purpose, duty, and service
• Empathy: a high level of compassion, humility, and humanity
• More courage
• The ability to inspire and show moral leadership
• Seeking transformative partnerships

The world needs leaders who are the opposite of the old “company man” who coldly maximizes profits, and who instead embrace being more vulnerable, open, caring, empathetic, and human. Organizations should strive for those traits as well. The obsession with shareholder value has turned businesses into soulless money machines. It’s all numbers, statistics, and profits. Companies have become robotic, valuing only contractual relationships instead of open, trusting partnerships (neither of us are big fans of contracts—we’re writing this book together on a handshake).

Businesses rejected the balance of ethics that Adam Smith talked about in favor of pure efficiency. As Oxford business professor Colin Mayer says in his book Prosperity, the humans in the equation have been replaced with “anonymous markets and shareholders over whom we have no control.”⁵ We’ve all done a good job of divorcing our personal selves from work life, but at a high cost. We believe that a business is and should be human, with real people serving the needs of other real people. If we start with people as the core of business—not with the pursuit of short-term profits—then the first step in building a more human business is to look inward to find the strength to change how business works.

A company can only head toward net positive if it has leaders courageous enough to challenge business as usual—leaders who understand that profit should come not from creating the world’s problems, but from solving them. How can we keep earning when the world is burning? The solutions to many of our challenges are available, and there’s plenty of capital to invest. What’s stopping us? Part of the answer is that resistance is high, from both inertia and vested interests. So, finally, leaders need determination to fight through the roadblocks. Willpower comes from cultivating net positive leadership principles, such as purpose, humility, and courage. Underlying those traits, basic human values can be our guide and foundation of a new kind of leadership: justice, compassion, dignity, and respect—it’s the Golden Rule again. When you know what the right thing to do is, you’ll find the courage to take a stand.

1. A Sense of Purpose, Duty, and Service

In the early 2000s, John Replogle was flying high in business and life. He was president of the Guinness brand for Diageo and living in a lovely house in a nice town with his young family. But one day, after he spoke with a mentor about his personal mission statement, he got into the car with his two young girls, looked at them, and broke down. He realized he wasn’t doing something that he felt had real purpose.

There was nothing wrong with selling beer, and Diageo has generally been a good actor in the industry, but Replogle wanted more. He decided to work only for sustainability-minded companies from then on. “I went from living in black and white to living in color,” he says. He had great success in this phase of his career, becoming the CEO of two well-known purpose-driven companies, Burt’s Bees and Seventh Generation, which he sold to Unilever.

As many have noted, passion is about finding yourself, but purpose is about losing yourself in something bigger than you. We can follow our interests into hobbies or do work that we love. Many of us find passion and build successful careers that we enjoy. But not everyone finds purpose at work. True fulfillment comes not only from doing what you enjoy, but also serving a bigger mission and touching the lives of others in meaningful ways (see the box “Personal Purpose”). It’s about wanting to make a difference—to help, to give, to serve. A sense of personal duty is the path to unlocking more potential and being bigger than yourself. It lays the foundation for building purposeful brands and net positive companies.

For those who understand their purpose, it’s easy to feel cognitive dissonance in a workplace focused only on profit. It’s an empty shell of a mission—if all you care about is profits and your salary, literally anything that makes money would be fine to sell. But most of us have deeper aspirations for ourselves and our families. Those who have done the work to identify their purpose have an inner lighthouse guiding them to the right path, helping them become moral leaders. Bringing your values to work and living your purpose will make you feel alive, and you’ll bring out the best in everyone around you.

There’s no better example of building a company successfully around meaning than the story and life of Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard. Chouinard grew up in Maine with a love of the outdoors. He became one of the world’s preeminent mountain climbers, and he launched Patagonia to sell equipment. The company evolved into a beloved brand, offering high quality clothing for the outdoors and, for the last decade, healthy and ethically sourced food for active people. The company’s values are simply stated: build the best products, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to protect nature.

But Chouinard was never comfortable being a business leader. As he says in his book, Let My People Go Surfing, it’s as hard for him to admit being in business for sixty years “as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer.” Yet Chouinard understands the power of business, which “can produce food, cure disease, employ people, and generally enrich our lives … and do these good things and make a profit without losing its soul.”¹¹

The company exists both to help people enjoy the outdoors and also to protect the environment—for thirty-five years, Patagonia has donated 1 percent of revenue to grassroots environmental groups. The company has performed incredibly well. It never sought growth but has still expanded quickly, passing $1 billion in sales (and it easily could’ve been much larger). Patagonia grew by exciting customers and demonstrating better ways of operating—lower resource use, recycled content, a lifetime guarantee to repair products to reduce material use, and incredible benefits and quality of life for employees. Patagonia has inspired many much larger organizations, such as Walmart, that have asked Chouinard to advise them.

Chouinard and the company’s CEOs, including Rose Marcario, who led Patagonia through a rapid growth phase from 2014 to 2020, have stayed true to the core purpose and duty to the planet. When the United States passed tax cuts for corporations in 2018, Marcario donated the $10 million they saved directly to environmental causes. They’re also not afraid to take a hit in sales to do what they know is right. The company has consistently challenged how people think about consumption, promoting the idea that you shouldn’t buy stuff if you don’t need it. When the US government reduced the size of some national monuments and parks, Patagonia converted its entire home page from selling its products to just blare, “The president stole your land.”

Chouinard has always aligned his personal and business values. He nurtured the core mission while adapting. “In every long-lasting business,” he writes, “the methods of conducting business may constantly change, but the values, culture, and philosophies remain constant.” A core of purpose and values will give you the courage to convert caring into action, to build net positive companies that give more than they take.

Purpose-driven companies run by purpose-driven leaders are better for society, outperform their peers, and attract the best people like moths to a flame—both Patagonia and Unilever are among the most in-demand employers in the world. Work is not always fun, but it’s much easier when you feel that you have meaning. John Replogle said that ever since he made the switch, “even when I have a tough day, I know there’s a reason why it’s worth struggling.” And there will be many struggles. Fighting against climate change, or for justice and equality while doing business well, is not easy.

Purpose can lead you through even the worst that life can throw at you. Victor Frankl was a psychiatrist who spent 1942 to 1945 in the concentration camps in Auschwitz and Dachau. He lost his parents, wife, and brother in the Holocaust, and yet miraculously maintained hope. In Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, one of the twentieth century’s most important books, he explains: “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”¹² If he could use meaning to survive the worst imaginable, there is hope for all of us to fight the hard battles against our existential threats, together.

2. Empathy: A High Level of Compassion, Humility, and Humanity

“There but for the grace of God go I.” Like many proverbs, it’s an idea that has percolated through society and religions for centuries. It recognizes that there’s a lot of luck in life. We don’t diminish the hard work that gets any CEO or leader to the top. But many people start with a tremendous advantage. The two of us are white males, born in wealthy countries, who had supportive parents committed to helping us thrive. We were handed a winning lottery ticket in life.

Acknowledging the luck and putting yourself in others’ shoes to be more empathetic is hard work for many. It’s also not as common in business as it should be; just 45 percent of employees believe their CEOs have empathy.¹³ Sadly, men in particular have been taught that being compassionate is a weakness.

Leaders today need to see others as human beings, not “human doings,” and value what everyone brings to the table. They should cultivate empathy and compassion, even if it’s uncomfortable. As the former CEO of Ben & Jerry’s, Jostein Solheim, says, “If you don’t feel the pain that we’re inflicting on Mother Nature, or empathize with the deep anxiety and fear that a Black person feels in America … you can’t run a sustainable business.”¹⁴

One tool that can help develop empathy is the “veil of ignorance” thought exercise, popularized by twentieth-century philosopher John Rawls. Imagine you are setting up a political and economic system, but you don’t know your “place in society, class position or social status … [or] fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, intelligence and strength …” What kind of system would you design if you didn’t know whether you would be born a white male in a wealthy country, or a Syrian girl in a refugee camp? What kind of policies would you want in place, and how would you want companies to behave?

The answer is obvious. Respect, equity, compassion, humanity, and justice would be at the core. The system would provide a basic foundation of well-being and dignity for all, with people at the center, not money. Executives should work toward that vision proactively—we can’t wait for the world to magically get healthier and more just.

Ajay Banga, chairman and former CEO of Mastercard, says what makes you stand out now is not just older measures like intelligence (IQ) or emotional skills (EQ). “I say you need DQ—decency quotient—when you come to work every day,” he says, “and care about the people who work with you, for you, above you, around you.”¹⁵

There are many executives who are leading with their humanity. The chairman of Indian software giant Wipro, Azim Premji, has made humanity core to his life. He put large portions of his company shares into his $21 billion foundation, which focuses on transforming the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable. Premji has said that “to live with integrity … becomes easier if we retain the core quality of humility.”¹⁶

In 2021, Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was named director-general of the World Trade Organization—the first woman and the first African to lead the global organization.¹⁷ She also chaired the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), and sat on the boards of Standard Charter Bank and Twitter. In short, she’s impressive. Yet she puts the mission of her work ahead of herself, saying, “when it comes to doing my job, I keep my ego in my handbag.”¹⁸ Similarly, IKEA’s CEO Jesper Brodin, runs a thriving business, but remains unpretentious. He has been one of the most active and effective leaders in driving business and society toward sustainability, but he maintains a low-key, Swedish style and shows respect for others. “Believe in yourself and your strengths,” he says, “but don’t forget to rely on other people’s strengths, too. Because we’re truly stronger together.”¹⁹

Humility does not, however, rule out doing big things. Jacqueline Novogratz, chief executive of Acumen Fund, talks about paired values, working in tension. “You’ve got to have the humility to see the world as it is,” she says, “but have the audacity … to imagine the way it could be.”²⁰

We face many challenges with no easy answers: How do you shift Indonesia’s approach to producing palm oil? How can we ensure that all workers in the apparel or electronic supply chains make a living wage? What needs to happen for renewable energy and storage to fully power a factory or datacenter? The only way to solve tough questions like these is to say, humbly, to the world, “I don’t have all the answers and I need help.” As Wipro’s Premji says, “Leadership is the self-confidence of working with people smarter than you.”

3. More Courage

All five attributes of net positive leaders are important and reinforce one another, but courage rules them all. Poet Maya Angelou captured it best: “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”²¹

The word courage comes from Latin and an Old French word corage, meaning “heart.” Taking a hard stand requires both the head—the logic and the “why”—and the heart. Empathy and a sense of purpose give you courage to make decisions you wouldn’t otherwise, to go the extra mile, and to push through the discomfort. If you’re not uneasy, you’re not going far enough. Jeff Hollender, Seventh Generation cofounder and chair of the American Sustainable Business Council, told us that sustainability goals and public statements should be aggressive enough to make everyone nervous: “When you publish your sustainability report, if you don’t give your lawyer a heart attack, you’re not doing it right.”

It takes courage to go out of your comfort zone and think ten times bigger than you or your peers normally would—to set absurd goals that nobody could possibly do alone. Executives often want to have things under control and predictable, so they shrink the scale of goals—they play not to lose instead of playing to win. That inherently reduces the potential for the business, and for the world.

Net positive leaders go after the biggest challenges. The cement sector, for example, is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases, producing around eight percent of global carbon emissions.²² India’s Dalmia Cement is putting a stake in the ground and shooting for carbon negative by 2040. There are some more aggressive corporate carbon goals in the world, but for this sector, which makes something so energy intensive, it’s a sizeable leap. CEO Mahendra Singh is investing in a big experiment, building the largest carbon capture and sequestration facility in the industry. It’s an attempt to make carbon neutral cement by capturing CO₂ in the production process and repurposing it for fuels, chemicals, or materials.²³ Dalmia’s 2040 goal, he says, “is difficult to understand, difficult to visualize, but easy to dream.”²⁴ It takes fortitude to dream big.

All of our biggest challenges are daunting and need courageous people to tackle them. Christiana Figueres was the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010 to 2016. She is largely credited with making the historic 2015 Paris Agreement a reality. A New Yorker article about Figueres described how hard her assignment was: “Of all the jobs in the world, Figueres’s may possess the very highest ratio of responsibility (preventing global collapse) to authority (practically none).”²⁵ Somehow, Figueres managed to herd the leaders of some 190 countries toward an acceptable climate agreement. Speaking about how business needs to approach the climate challenge, she has said, “It takes leadership, it takes a cold cost-benefit analysis [in the long term], and frankly, it takes moral courage.”²⁶ She has demonstrated all of those skills.

With courage and a moral compass, leaders can do what they know is right, even at risk of great cost … or of angering people who are armed. When Ed Stack made his decision to get off the sidelines on guns, it was a highly contentious issue in the United States (and still is). He watched high school students who had survived a Florida massacre start a global movement on gun safety (which inspired Sweden’s Greta Thunberg to launch her school climate strike). Stack thought, “If those kids could muster up the courage to take their fight to the country, we have to be brave enough to make this move.”²⁷

Stack was running the business his father started, but he had expanded it greatly to more than $8 billion in sales, with 850 stores and thirty thousand employees. The hunting segment—guns, equipment, and gear—delivered about $1 billion in revenues. One of its store brands, Field & Stream, sold the kinds of assault weapons being used to slaughter kids in schools. After he told the leadership team he wanted to get out of the gun business, they estimated they would lose many longtime customers and at least $250 million in sales.²⁸ Stack said he didn’t care about the impact on the bottom line. His decision got national attention and he received hundreds of invitations for interviews. Stack took just two on major networks and then decided he had said enough, which showed a great level of humility as well.

The aftermath was worse—and better—than expected. Dozens of employees quit, and sales did take a big hit, at first. Stack got death threats and needed security. But then a wave of positive responses and “buycotts” gave Dick’s more business, and competitive pressure diminished as Walmart, Kroger, REI, and others restricted gun sales as well.²⁹ The company found ways to innovate around its offerings in the stores that had lost hunting business.³⁰ Dick’s quickly rebounded financially.³¹

Stack’s efforts demonstrated one key aspect of courage, speaking truth to power—in his case it was powerful gun lobbyists, politicians, and passionate customers. Similarly, when Paul told Unilever investors that the company would not provide quarterly earnings guidance anymore, it took chutzpah to rebuff the all-powerful investors. It wasn’t as if other CEOs felt differently. A CEO of a $15 billion industrial company once told Andrew, “Nobody wants to run their company the way a twenty-eight-year-old stock analyst would want you to.” But that CEO wouldn’t go public. GE’s famous leader from the 1980s and ’90s, the late Jack Welch, also admitted, “Shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.”³² Unfortunately he said it after retiring. It seems many CEOs and political leaders are more courageous once they leave office.

Perhaps if a CEO can’t face investors who don’t care about the company’s future, they may not be the right person to lead. Bill George, the leadership expert, author of True North, and former CEO of Medtronic, says that some leaders lack courage because they “focus too much on managing to hit their numbers … they avoid making risky decisions and fear failure.”³³ He cites the example of Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo, sticking to her guns after developing a strategy, Performance with Purpose, to diversify the company’s offerings away from just sugar water. Activist investors almost ran her out of the company, but she balanced short-term wins with investments in transformation. That’s courage.

Far too many companies sit back and wait on critical issues, saying, “We’re a fast follower.” Or executives will say something to us like, “We want to do more, but we’re not Unilever.” We’ve heard similar things about innovation and not being like Apple, one of the most creative and impactful companies in history. How sad. Why wouldn’t you want to build a vibrant, exciting business that outperforms peers and attracts talent? Great companies don’t follow, they lead.

Taking on investors is hard, but imagine publicly rebuking a powerful world leader. Ken Frazier, the CEO of Merck, showed tremendous moral fortitude when he resigned his position on the president of the United States’ American Manufacturing Council. His decision came on the heels of the infamous neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Speaking about the clash of white supremacists with counter protestors, Trump said that there were “very fine people on both sides.”³⁴ Frazier could not in good conscience work with the president after that. He left the council, saying, “America’s leaders must … clearly reject expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal.”³⁵ After the George Floyd murder, Frazier spoke out again, saying that Floyd “could be me or any other African American man.”³⁶ He called out the business community, saying it should “take leadership when it comes to … police reform and access to capital. The business community can unilaterally make an impact on joblessness and issues of opportunity.”³⁷

Frazier’s story should not be news. That it sticks out as rare is a tragedy. Why do leaders find it hard to advocate for the world we want? Why should it feel risky to fight for human rights and the end of slave labor; or for a diverse organization that gives people with different sexual orientations, skin colors, or abilities the same chance; or to actively avoid the destruction of the planet? It may not be easy to figure out how to get there, but let’s make it easier for people to say what they know is right. Be courageous and others will follow.

4. The Ability to Inspire and Show Moral Leadership

A leader’s responsibility is ultimately about inspiring and uniting people behind a common purpose. It’s not just about giving energy, but unleashing it. It’s the ability to motivate and mentor others to higher levels of performance, and helping them both find their own clear sense of direction and figure out how to express that purpose. Or as Bill George (one of Paul’s mentors) said, help people find their true north so they can become “genuine and authentic” leaders. George also worked to show employees the good their work did in the world. When he was CEO of Medtronic, he would regularly invite in people to talk to employees about how a Medtronic pacemaker saved their life.

Leaders in business (or life) will be more trustworthy, inspirational, and follow-worthy if their words and actions match. Employees sniff out hypocrisy. Every executive shows their level of commitment through a mix of what they say, do, and prioritize. They create the “shadow of a leader,” which helps define the culture of the organization. With today’s level of transparency, it’s not just about how people act at work, but also what they do in their private lives. With the exponential rise of telework and video meetings, our colleagues now literally see into our homes. Social media puts all our actions on display—we’re always in public, especially senior leaders with high profiles.

Why hide your values, or assume they don’t apply at work? We know people who sit on boards of conservation organizations, but do less than nothing to help preserve the environment through their companies. There’s no acting in the dark anymore, or being passive. Inaction is action. In 2020, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not take down posts that inflamed violence, workers staged a walkout.³⁸

Demonstrating your values matters. Employees see when their leaders do not live up to the stated values, and that disengages them. Leaders should find ways to show what they prioritize at work and at home. For example, you can demonstrate life balance and a commitment to well-being through your actions. Inspire people to be healthy and find balance. Exhausted people don’t serve anyone well. We end up with burned out people on a burned-out planet. Be a mentor to others and help them bring their full selves to work. That’s how we get a multiplier effect.

Paul made personal connections central to his style of leadership. When he traveled the world to experience different markets, before going to the local office, he visited homes to talk to real people and understand their lives. At Unilever’s annual leadership conference, he gave every one of the hundreds of executives a book to drive new thinking, and took the time to write a personal note to each one. He also tried to connect with people in Unilever’s ecosystem, even when it was difficult—like a visit to the widow of a man who died on the job while working at a Unilever facility. Taking personal responsibility for safety, even for people outside of the company’s direct control, shows caring and commitment, and people notice. It’s also the right thing to do.

Big events and stressors bring out the best and worst in leaders. As Covid-19 hit the world, some companies canceled contracts on customers and diverted business to the highest bidder when markets got tight. Or they kept no promises to employees and furloughed or laid them off with no help. Others honored their commitments and handled the hard choices with humanity. AirBnB’s CEO Brian Chesky won praise during the crisis for his “empathetic, transparent messaging about layoffs.”³⁹ Some leaders walked the talk. Dr. Ed Kuffner, the chief medical officer of Johnson & Johnson’s Consumer Companies, volunteered in New York City hospitals during the worst days of the early pandemic.⁴⁰ He called it “a relatively easy decision,” but it was dangerous, and we’re sure employees knew it.

The insurrection in the United States in January 2021 was also a profound test of corporate values. Many companies stayed quiet, which was a moral failing. But a number of courageous CEOs, such as Marriott’s Arne Sorenson—a good man and leader who recently lost his battle with cancer too young—quickly came forward and took a stand, pausing all donations to the politicians who supported an attempted coup. It was risky—many employees and potential customers could be offended. But it was the right thing to do.

Inspiration comes from actions matching values, showing you care, and connecting to purpose.

5. Seeking Transformative Partnerships

We’ve been talking about the inner traits that make for net positive leadership. For a long time, corporate strategy has also focused on the inside of companies—what capabilities you have, and how to build strategies and tactics out from there. But that inside-out view of a business is only one part of the equation. The most critical element of the net positive mindset is understanding the world’s needs—that is, an outside-in perspective. Don’t ask only what you’re good at and what you can offer the world. Ask instead, What are the world’s limits and constraints? Where are we failing humanity?

We will move beyond incremental solutions to our big problems only if we bring all of these outside needs and perspectives into the business. That starts with leaders who are open to listening (humility) and seek to work with stakeholders toward a larger goal. It’s a new mindset to see that learning from NGOs or critics, trying to influence consumer behavior, supporting pro-sustainability government policies, and embracing the latest science should all be part of the normal operation of the business.

The early stages of building a more sustainable company are filled with lower-hanging fruit that are mostly internal. The easy efficiencies can come swiftly, and you may continue finding them for years to help pay for more ambitious measures. But you will quickly discover how many things you cannot do alone. Transformative change requires broad partnerships. Leaders have to demonstrate that they’re open to working with others, not just commanding from behind a desk. And not just open to others, but seeking them out and hungering to solve bigger challenges with them. The regular bias for action that any good leader has needs to become a bias for transformative, collaborative action.

A net positive company treats everyone as worthy of respect and partnership. Shifting entire value chains means not just pressuring suppliers to do better, but innovating with suppliers to rethink how products and services are delivered. Finally, the system won’t shift without the right policy changes, which means creating open, productive partnerships with governments.

Working well with these diverse groups is a new leadership skill. Nobody in this chain of stakeholders works for you or the company. Putting yourself on par with all partners, or even being in service to them, requires humility, and being acutely aware of and shedding any disdain you might have (such as assuming NGOs have no business acumen). For NGO leaders, it’s also unhelpful to think business people have no soul. Don’t judge or put people in boxes.

Coalitions will only be transformative if everyone at the table is open to working in true, equal partnership. The partners also need to see the benefits of the work. It sounds trite, but finding the quick win-win-wins, where there is value shared by all, is how you build common ground, bridge the gaps between everyone, and build trust.

Many companies and CEOs are deeply committed to transformative work. François-Henri Pinault leads Kering, the $19 billion luxury conglomerate with high-end brands such as Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and Balenciaga. For years, Pinault has been vocal and innovative about how to value and protect nature. Kering’s Puma brand was the first major company to estimate the financial value of what nature provides the business. Its “environmental P&L” was groundbreaking and raised awareness about how much value companies extract from natural systems without paying for it.

Pinault and his company work with stakeholders to shift the fashion industry, which has an enormous land, water, and carbon footprint. Kering has partnered with the University of Cambridge to study how fashion companies can transform biodiversity strategies, and is working with Conservation International to convert one million hectares of farmland to regenerative agriculture by 2025. It’s all part of its commitment to heal six times the land area used by its entire supply chain.⁴¹ That’s net positive work.

After French president Emmanuel Macron gave Pinault a mission to lead his sector on environmental protection, he launched the Fashion Pact, with the help of Paul’s organization IMAGINE. The Pact brings together dozens of the biggest fashion brands to address climate change, biodiversity, and protecting the oceans.

How much impact can a group of two dozen big players in the sector have? How many hectares of regenerative agriculture can they create? How many people can they inspire through their brands? The answers are unknown, yet, but it’s exciting to explore the potential for real change when everyone is working together.

Talking to the Grandkids

This Bible verse is telling: “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37). There’s so much need in the world, and much good work to do, but there are not enough people on board.

We need more leaders who are decent, empathetic, kind, and feel an obligation to improve society for everybody. A net positive company thrives by caring and putting people first. Companies may seem like unlikely leaders of a movement to bring more humanity to the world, but why not? We can shift from faceless and robotic organizations and economies and recognize each other’s humanity.

The first step is caring about what’s going on in the world. Do you care that hundreds of millions of people go to bed hungry, not knowing if they’ll wake up the next day? Or that two and a half billion people still do not have access to clean drinking water and sanitation? Or that in most countries women still do not have the same rights as men? And on and on.

Without getting overwhelmed, we can work toward solutions and feed our own souls. As Adam Smith said, putting yourself in service of others will make you better off also. So, the answer to the question “Do you care?” is actually another question: Who do you serve? (How rewarding is it if the answer is “my shareholders”?)

Paul gave a radio interview years ago in the United States. The host asked why he was doing all this sustainability work—was it because it was good for the business, or was it for his grandchildren? Without taking a beat, he said, “My grandkids, of course.” Andrew was listening to that interview and, at first, thought it was a missed opportunity to say how good sustainability is for business. But when you get down to it, “For my loved ones” is the right answer. Why else are we working if not to serve others, even if it’s just for our inner circles.

How do we heal the world? The solution, perhaps, is as simple as love. In the end, finding our humanity at work is about knowing who we work for, and what we’d want our loved ones to say about the way we’ve spent our lives. The CEO of a large European automaker recently gave her board homework for a strategy session—write a letter to your grandkids about what you did on this board.

What would your letter say?

What Net Positive Companies Do to Foster Courageous, Caring Leadership