‘Net Positive’ Is The New Rallying Cry For CEO’s: An Interview With Paul Polman & Andrew Winston

Net Positive: how courageous companies thrive by giving more than they take”, recently published October 2021 | IMAGINE

Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take is the remarkable new book from Paul Polman and Andrew Winston. It is a courageous call to arms to corporate leaders around the world to re-frame the purpose of their companies from doing less harm to doing more good.

Winston is the author of the bestsellers ‘Green to Gold’ and ‘The Big Pivot’. Polman is now Co-Chair and Co-Founder of IMAGINE , a for-benefit organisation that mobilises business leaders around tackling runaway climate change and global inequality.

I caught up with them both to find out more about their journey to writing the book and what advice they have for corporate leaders.

Afdhel Aziz: Paul, welcome. Super excited about your new book - what led you to want to write it with Andrew Winston?

Paul Polman: For a long time, I was hesitant about writing a book. CEO books can sometimes seem like attempts to rewrite their history. But many publishers, and especially Harvard Business Press, convinced me that it was important to share Unilever’s transformation and lay out how to build a company that serves the world. Andrew Winston was the perfect partner. He’s written books and many articles for Harvard Press, so they knew him well. But he’s also provided me inspiration through his previous books, The Big Pivot and Green to Gold.

Paul Polman Influencer, business leader, campaigner, Co-Author of “Net Positive: how courageous companies thrive by giving more than they take”, recently published October 2021. | IMAGINE

Our goal with Net Positive is to raise the level of ambition in business. Given the scale of the accelerating crises we face, we need a movement to change the way business is done. The world is demanding that the private sector steps up. Expectations about the role of business in society have changed more in the last 2 years than the previous 20. It’s getting clearer that doing less harm, or incremental change, is not enough. The only way to stay relevant today is to become net positive, which goes beyond doing less harm to having a positive impact on everyone the company touches through its products, services, and influence. In short, this book is about reversing the last 50 years of corporate dogma and norms that prioritized short-termism, self-interest, and shareholder supremacy. 

Aziz: Thanks for sharing that Paul! Andrew, what are some of the key principles and practices you advocate for in the book?

Andrew Winston: Net positive companies profit and thrive by solving the world’s problems, not creating them. We believe that achieving that goal requires following 5 core principles. First, they take ownership and responsibility for all that they do and every impact they have on the world – and that includes their suppliers and customers. Second, it’s critical to focus on creating long-term value for the business and society. Third, a net positive company serves all stakeholders, maximizing benefits for employees, consumers and customers, suppliers, communities, and more. Fourth, doing these things well will then create shareholder value. Fifth, the scale of our challenges demands collective courage and action. Net positive companies have a commitment to transformative partnerships in service of the world. 

Andrew Winston, Co-Author of “Net Positive: how courageous companies thrive by giving more than they take” | IMAGINE

Aziz: Paul, do you believe we are at a tipping point where business leaders are starting to take seriously the idea "about how they can profit by fixing the world's problems instead of creating them?”

Polman: Yes, we are seeing acceleration. More than 20% of the world’s largest companies now have a “science-based target” on carbon, up from just a handful five years ago. It’s not enough but the bar is rising quickly. Companies have also become more vocal and proactive on a range of social issues. The killing of George Floyd in the U.S. spurred a lot of soul searching, and companies set new goals on diversity and inclusion, for example.

You can see these trends coming together in the finance world. On climate, The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) gathered 450 financial institutions across 45 countries. They represent a combined $130 trillion in assets, which they say will help transition the global economy to net zero by 2050. A number of firms, such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Citi have made their own individual commitments to invest trillions in both the clean economy and addressing inequality (e.g., affordable housing). The level of investment is creating a tipping point.

Aziz: When we last spoke, you were doing incredible work in the field of ‘pre-competition’ - bringing together leading industries in the same category to help solve problems together. Have you made much progress in this arena?

Polman: CEOs are held to a very high standard (and should be), but it’s sometimes more than they can deliver, and they can’t handle many issues alone. When I came out of Unilever, I wanted to create a neutral platform to gather CEOs for group action. That became IMAGINE.

We looked at the Sustainable Development Goals and identified the industries causing the most damage in the world. The fossil fuel industry gets a lot of attention, but fashion is actually the second most destructive. That sector and others like food and agriculture put tremendous pressure on planetary boundaries and biodiversity; encourage unsustainable consumption; put plastics in the ocean; and have human rights violations across their value chains. 

In apparel, we helped create the Fashion Pact. More than 80 CEOs and 250 brands agreed to set science-based carbon reduction targets to stay below 1.5°C of global warming, work on regenerative strategies for growing cotton, and eliminate single-use plastics and microfiber pollution. We’ve done similar work with a Food Collective and continue to work with CEOs to create a kind of collective courage to do more.

Aziz: Finally, government is an essential part of the solution - what gives you hope in terms of new models or examples of governments and business partnering together?

Winston: The reaction to the pandemic gives me some hope. There were large-scale collaborations to produce and distribute vaccines in record time. Starbucks, Microsoft, Costco, and others worked with local governments to get shots in arms. 

This was good, but the norm…yet. Business generally uses its influence to reduce regulation or get special tax breaks. Or worse, it says one thing about its own goals on, say, climate, but allows trade associations representing them to fight any government action.

In our book, we propose a new form of collaboration that we call net positive advocacy. We see the potential for companies to lobby not solely for narrow self-interests, but work with governments to design policies to serve shared interests. For example, ride-sharing company Lyft worked with policymakers in Colorado to allow ridesharing fleets and drivers to access a state EV tax incentive, and lobbied nationally to expand the zero-emission tax credit. Of course that helps Lyft, but it serves many companies and the larger goals of the country to cut carbon. In another example, India’s government partnered with tech companies to build a national digital highway, for instance.

It's early going, but we should see more of this. We just need to provide safe space and support for these newer relationships. Then we’ll see net positive action as the norm, not the exception.