 we need businesses now to be net positive. And what that means is that the impact of the business kind of in every sphere of its existence on all stakeholders is positive. That's the ultimate goal. Almost impossible to do today perfectly and there's no perfect solutions or when you ever make a choice there's gonna be some pros and cons and you kind of are keeping, you keep working towards this goal but we're defining that positive as being serving all stakeholders and shareholders kind of come last. You're serving the world, you're serving stakeholders and that in every kind of phase and every scale, every product, every service, every community, every employee, the world, you have a positive impact. And that doesn't mean, oh, I admit over here and I buy some offsets over here. The goal is again at every scale you're having a positive impact. Andru Winston is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas. Brought to you by Innovators Magazine and 1.5 Media. Andrew is the founder of Winston Eco Strategies which is a globally recognized expert on how companies can profit from solving the world's biggest challenges. His views on strategy have been sought after by many of the world's leading companies including 3M, DuPont, HP, Ingersoll Rand, J&J, Kimberly Clark, Marriott, PepsiCo, Pricewaterhouse, Cooper's and Unilever. Andrew's book, The Big Pivot was selected as one of the best business books by strategy and business. I've got it right here. It's a fabulous read and we're gonna talk about it today as well. Andrew's first book, Green to Gold was the top selling green business title of the last decade. There it is, Green to Gold. Selling more than 100,000 copies in seven languages, Ink Magazine included Green to Gold on its all time list of 30 books that every manager could own. Andrew is also a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review and other media outlets. He has been quoted or appeared in major media such as Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Business Week, New York Times and CNBC. Andrew's speeches around the globe include a TED Talk, provide a practical and optimistic roadmap to help leaders build thriving resilient companies in a volatile world. He received degrees in economics, business and environmental management from Princeton, Columbia and Yale. Andrew, thanks for being on the show. I'm so glad that you're here. Thanks so much. Well, that was the long bio. I don't think we have any more time left. We probably have to- No, we got plenty. We've got plenty. And thanks for showing the books. You have the original hardcover of Green to Gold that's gone way back. I do. And I also have the green recovery here. It's kind of the tickles, tickles even other beginnings. I just love them all. And I'm really excited about what's on the road. We're going to talk about some of your other books. I actually chose your shortest bio because in reality, you've been doing this for a long time. You go way back. You're very knowledgeable. And I could probably spend an hour just on your bio because you've done this, but that leads nicely to my first question. We've just had a hell of a 12 months, crazy times, inauguration, Black Lives Matters, GOP, Brexit, now just what happened in Atlanta with the craziness with the Asians, racist violence and all sorts of other crazinesses with the pandemic and COVID mutations. Because you've been talking about the bigger picture, sustainability, resilience, biodiversity, integrating things and into business models, changing the way we do and operate. Has any of that given you some resilience to weather this crazy time? And how have you been? Yeah, I mean, so you mean personal resilience? Well, both. I hope you have personal resilience that you're practicing what you preach. I'm sure you do. Well, look, I mean, I'll be honest, it's, these have been a hard, this was a hard four years. I've, you know, here we are in 2021. I've noticed the last few weeks, I've actually been sleeping a lot better. I didn't sleep very well for years. And my wife turned to me this morning and just said, maybe it really was the orange guy that was just keeping you up at night. I was like, well, it didn't help. I mean, like there was this constant assault on my values, right? Every day as we were going in pretty much the wrong direction on almost every topic imaginable. And so it's been a relief the last, you know, couple of months to see an administration I agree with in the US, right? Not just agree with, but I think they're following science. They're doing the things they need to and their focus on climate is unparalleled. We've never seen anything quite like this. So personally, I am doing better, I think. But look, we have serious problems, right? I mean, it is a strange existence as you know, being a sustainability person, because we could talk about all the things that have gotten so much better in the last 10, 20 years, from actual huge reductions in poverty to real shifts in the way business is thinking about this and the financial community finally, like business is doing more and more, absolutely. So the stuff I focus on the private sector more than ever. But as you know, and probably your listeners know, we're also losing at the same time the science is getting worse. And on climate in particular, but inequality has been, it's a topic I didn't spend a lot of time on earlier in my sustainability career, but now it's just so compelling and so ridiculous what happened to wealth during the pandemic, right? Was that the world's billionaires gained another trillion. So we're at this time where we actually have the capital like there's money out there to do most of what we need to do. It's just in so few hands. And this just can't, it just doesn't seem like it can continue. So we have a lot of work to do. I mean, the US is, I think still on a knife's edge as a democracy, I think we're fighting, frankly people who want to overturn democracy and block huge portions of people from voting and they're riling up, as you mentioned, kind of racist violence. It's a dangerous time, but I will say that I feel like throughout history everyone always thinks they're living in the craziest time, the one where the world's about to end. It does feel like this is different. I know we probably always think that every generation, but the things we're talking about are now at the global scale, right? I mean, there were always threats to society at the city-state scale or whatever, back at Sparta, you know, whatever it is, but now it really is global. And we better come together or we could make the planet pretty much uninhabitable. So it does feel like this is it, right? We've got 10, 20, 30 years to really set the next few centuries and whether we thrive or not. So it's an exciting time, I guess, but it is incredibly stressful. I mean, if you follow this stuff and you're in the climate world, it's tough. Then the data is not good. So that's a long way of saying, like I'm managing my mood as best I can and try to focus on the upside, but we got to take in what needs work and what's a problem. I want to go even deeper. So I love, thanks for the personal insights and I expect to know less. I'm also right there with you of what a horrific time with the orange guy, exactly. I couldn't believe it. In some respects, not only with the pandemic and the great pause, the great reset now that the world economic form is discussing, I want to ask all those people for the years, decades that you spoke to them about sustainability, environmental, social governance, corporate, social responsibility, telling them not only in your books, but in your lectures and your reviews, it's a better business model. People wake up, this is a better business model. It's better for your company. It's better for your triple bottom line. It's on and on. Were they knocking down your door? Were they like, holy hell, we didn't listen to you, Andrew, can you help us get out of this trouble? Can you get us back up to speed? Did you experience any of that? And can you tell us maybe in that respect on those where you were preaching to the choir or did some people say, no, we didn't listen even though you told us and now we need your help? Yeah, well, I'd like to take credit. Like people are coming to me like I was the one telling them. I think I've been able, at least there's certainly been plenty. Look, I think, as I said before, the business community is moving now in a way we've never seen. I think you can't deny that in the last, especially kind of five years, the idea of something like science-based targets, goals to cut carbon at the pace we need to. I wrote about that in Big Pivot in 2014 and everyone, I got a lot of pushback. Like why would a company do this? It's not necessarily to their advantage. And it became the norm over the last few years and now it's like table stakes. So there's been movement. Obviously, I think the battle's over to get this on the agenda everywhere, right? I mean, that's true. I don't know people have been knocking down my door but I do think we, like I said, we've won the battle. You now have pretty much every large company getting, they got to do something. There's still a surprising number that are pretty far back that haven't done much. I talk to companies regularly that they don't even really have a carbon footprint of their business yet. I mean, there's fewer and fewer of those but there's some surprising gaps. And so I think, like I said, I think we all won the first battle like whatever you want to call it the first inning is over or whatever. And now we've kind of got to accelerate at a real pace. I don't know if you ever gonna get a, like we told you so or you were right. I'm not sure we get that from the business community. They kind of, they come along when they're like, when they see it as a good business case, they're like, oh, we get it. It's a good business case. Like now we get it, you know, like, but I had a, on this point, I had a conversation with a CEO a number of years ago now and he had, I had spoken at their company a few times and he said, you know, the first time I heard you, I thought he doesn't know, he doesn't know what our business is. He doesn't understand. Then the second time I was like, now he's saying something. I guess there's something there. And then the third time he's like, oh, this guy's probably right. Like it was like, he talked about that transition. And I think we see that in this field. Everyone who's done this, that you kind of have to like all change. How many times does someone need to hear a message, right? How many times do we all need to read something about our health before we kind of take it on, you know? How many years did I talk about doing meditation before I finally did it? You know, it's, I think the companies, they need to hear it repeatedly. But what's changed lately that gives me a lot of hope is the financial community's finally, they really are finally there. And that's made a huge difference because companies are hearing it from their investors. That's, let's face it, for some of these CEOs, that's all they really care about. And that's a change. It's the profit, it's the investments, it's the board. Absolutely. And I'm right there with you. I've had people who've actually physically sat in five of my lectures or presentations and it wasn't until the fifth time they're like, at first they're like, oh, Mark's just repeating the same stuff he's been repeating before. And then after I'm done, they're like, God, that's the first time I've heard that. I finally get it. I understand it. It takes a few times. And I think it's because people are in a different mindset there. You have to pick them up where they're at. And sometimes it takes four or five times until they hear it, until they understand it. The thing I totally agree with you on is ESG sustainable index funds per second, third and fourth quarter of 2020 just blew conventional funds out of the water. 25 out of 28 Morningstar reviews, Niki NASDAQ, any index you can think of, sustainable index funds outperform their conventional counterpart. So the proof is in the money and the returns and how they perform in a crisis, in a pandemic. But I really wanna go even deeper now a little bit with what I tickled on on the GOP. So not only craziness and all this stuff, I wanna know you, I'm from the US, I live in Germany, I've kind of, I've got an arms length distance, but my heart is in the USA. And so the whole time the green guy or the orange guy was there, I was like, I couldn't believe the craziness, call them my family saying, what's going on? And now it really hasn't stopped. I see Biden doubling down quickly, right after his inauguration, signing back into the Paris agreement, signing a lot of positive things for electrification, for transitions, which is perfect, and a huge step in the right direction and really gives hope. I was really hoping that there would be something and tied to fix the political system, governments, voting, how can we fix a thing that should have been taken care of decades ago? We're talking about putting people to Mars in space and emerging technologies who can't even figure out a vote and if it's been rigged or not, or whatever the issues are. So maybe you can answer me some of those thoughts and feelings that you have. I know you probably have a few. Well, I mean, it's been impossible. Look, I'm interested in politics or whatever you wanna call it. I think politics is always the wrong word. A lot of what we've been focused on for years, it's really about values. What do we value? And we can call it politics, but at first you can say, like, why are these two guys talking about politics sustainability? Well, what I learned, I guess, when Trump was elected was, I thought, I've been working on climate for years to me that was the fundamental existential threat if we didn't solve that, we were in trouble. And then all of a sudden there was another threat that was a precursor, which was a threat to democracy. Like if we don't have a functioning democracy, we're not gonna tackle climate very well, right? I mean, we're not gonna handle our biggest issue. So all of a sudden to me, the most pressing thing was, how do we get a working democracy? So I actually think when I said, we're still facing some serious challenges. Look, we have, there's 240 or something, laws being proposed in states around the US and 40 plus states to restrict voting, to basically block black and brown people from voting. I mean, that's the fundamental thing. And we keep pretending like the news tries to pretend there's two sides to everything. Look, this is a GOP effort. This isn't a partisan statement, this is just fact. There's a GOP effort to try to restrict voting. So the most important thing for sustainability for the future is this bill, HR1 in the US, that that will protect voting, will really slow down gerrymandering, will make it independent commissions for the kind of districts, allow people early voting, all of that. And then you get into all this like detailed about the politics in our country, which is, well, then there's the filibuster. So the Senate blocks everything. And so you have to stop the filibuster. There's all these like, these kind of steps that get you back to this very basic set of things that need to happen. If we don't stop the filibuster on the voting thing, then frankly minority rule could be locked in, in the US for a long time because the electoral college is structured so that small states have a lot of power and there's been tremendous gerrymandering. So you have right now a party in the GOP that has not won the popular vote. They've won one popular vote in 30 years, I think in the presidency, and they haven't won by more votes in the Senator House in years. And the Democrats actually get the most votes, but they can still lose the House because where the seats are. So it's a really wonky thing. And yet it's the most important conversation right now in the US. We can do a lot on climate through executive order, through this cabinet, and it's all great. But we need some serious action, right? We need to get to prices on carbon around the world. We need global negotiations on prices across borders. We're not gonna do that with frankly one party that's against democracy and against any action on climate, but almost to a person. We keep waiting for GOP kind of climate related thinking to happen and it just, it keeps not happening. We keep waiting and waiting. And so I've kind of hit this point where I feel like the only thing I know will work is that the party that does vote for climate action is in control. Like we keep waiting for some bipartisan version, but I don't see it coming. And I know people working on this for years and really believe we're about to get there, like that there's a bunch of senators and congressmen in the Republican party who are ready to bolt from climate denial. But I've heard that for years and I'm just, I'm ready to be wrong. I'm happy to be wrong, but right now we don't have time. I don't think we have time to convince a bunch of people. We just have to have people in power who wanna do something about it. That's the fundamental reality. And it gets you into a whole bunch of stuff in the US that is, I never thought I'd think about the filibuster, you know, but we have to. Yeah, it's crazy. Do you believe that some of these things are just straying us from our eye on the real prize around the future where we really need to go? Are these just the virgins to hold us back to something because I mean, you honestly, in the whole time you've been doing this, the message that we don't have time, my message, we don't have time. I just had Ingmar Rendholtz from We Don't Have Time app and sustainability on my show are released on Tuesday. We don't have time. Sorry, screws my French and I know this might not, we don't fucking have time. What's the deal? Why are we still messing around? When we're in, where we should be in the digital age, we should really be applying these emerging technologies. We're going to Mars, we're going to the moon, we're doing all these amazing things, but we can't figure out some basic fundamental core things that should be fixed. What are your thoughts on that? Is it the delay tactic? Is it, what's the point? Well, look, I mean, there's best of interests, right? There's, if you're in the fossil fuel business, either value your company, if you admit publicly or if you help in any way to move away from fossil fuels, the value your company plummets, which has happened in the last few years, right? I mean, there was all the divestment movement and universities and organizations said, no, we're not going to divest. And they would have been so much better off if they had, you know, coal companies went bankrupt, oil and gas companies lost value. You know, I was just looking at the valuation of like Orsted, you know, as a energy company in Europe, they're the biggest offshore wind company in the world. And they were all oil and gas 10, 15 years ago and they made this big pivot. They're like 10 billion in revenue, US dollars. And they have a market cap of like 60 billion. BP has a market cap of 90 billion, only like, you know, 30 billion more and has like 30 times the revenue. So like the market is clearly starting to value the future technologies in a very real way and recognize that oil and gas has a tough future. But look, everything they've done to try to block action makes sense from their profit maximization perspective. It's our fault, I guess, as a society, as a political body that we've let them, right? That of course they're going to do this if they think in very short run, you know, if you're a CEO, you're going to be there five years, you want your stock to go up, you're going to protect oil and gas. But that's what, you know, the rest of us, other companies should be pushing on. I think there's been a huge gap. And so one of the big things I think companies really need to think about in their sustainability efforts is their advocacy. And everybody who's not fossil fuels needs to be pushing pretty hard for there to be prices on carbon, higher fuel efficiency standards, all the things we need, because this is life and death, right? This is their businesses will not thrive. You know, it's incompatible to have fossil fuels thrive and basically everybody else thrive. So the question is, will everybody else get off the sidelines and they're starting to? You're seeing more of it, but companies have been pretty quiet, you know, on climate action. They've worried about it being political football, right? It's turned into this politicization of something that's scientific, right? I mean, the fossil fuel companies and some voices, you know, on the right, convince people that a science issue with political ramifications was a political issue with some science. And that's kind of nuts, right? And we saw the same thing with the pandemic. Even I was surprised by that. I didn't think people would debate whether masks work. I just didn't think that was a thing that could happen. And they're still doing it. They're still saying masks don't work. I'm like, really? Then why have they been wearing them in operating rooms for, you know, a hundred years? I mean, there's just, there's an anti-science, you know, kind of holding on to the past in some weird way that is really dangerous. It's to me, it's almost more dangerous than even the democracy stuff. Anti-fact, anti-science, then nothing matters, right? How do you decide anything? The wonderful thing I like about The Big Pivot, your book, came out in 2014 as a real pivotal, is you make no bones to say, you know, there's Paul Hawkin, there's Herman Daley, there's William McDonough, there's Paul Pullman. There's many greats that you kind of discuss or mention. So old wisdoms, old writings. John Elkington, you know, on and on, that you touch on these great books, these great people who have been speaking about it also for a long time, but also connecting the dots. One of the very first points, science-based targets, that you actually use the words, and because the book's a little older, science-based goals, same thing, science-based targets. And you have this format, so a unique structure, not only the vision, the valuation, the partnering, the different course models, not only of your chapters, but just how businesses are missing, they're leaving money at the table, they're missing total big opportunities of where they can go. And the book is from, it's not only a page term, but from beginning to end, it's full of frameworks and value for, especially, and that's so fitting that it's a Harvard Business Review book and that you've talked about it forever, that it's such a wonderful tool to get people to finally pull their head out and realize that there is a better model, a better operating system. And you touched on it so well. So around the world, our humanity is filling this dis-ease, humanity is filling this dis-ease, this unrest that the current civilization frameworks, the models, whether we're in the U.S. or Brexit or the Amazon bull scenarios, or wherever these frameworks, these models of what we thought were democracy are just not working for us anymore. They're not at a global level. These organizations that we are talking about are all global, pretty much all global companies already operating on a global model, but finding their cherry picking or meandering or they're, okay, I'm gonna do this or let's do it in the U.S. or let's do it in Jersey or let's find a tax oasis here or however they do their structures, but they're getting away from the bigger picture that we need a global unified new model for our world, a better operating system. And I see those tools that you're talking about in the book, but I also really love, you talk about Kimberly Clark, you talk about the Unilever, talk about companies and organizations that really you've worked with or that have firm examples of positive results where they've made the changes. And that's why I'd actually hope that since it is a Harvard business review that more people would have reached out to you and said, hey, we've read your book in the pandemic, we've just been at home office for 12 months, now we'd like to get back to business, but we'd like to do one that's gonna be around for a couple of decades into the future and we want your help in applying some of this stuff in your book. What do you have to say to people who haven't read this, who are still operating on an old business model? Look, yeah, certainly people reach out, I do a lot of speaking, I do consulting, I'm on advisory board. So I talked to a lot of companies and there's peers and colleagues that do what I do that are working with lots of companies as well. I mean, one of the, I think pleasant surprises in the last year was in the past, whenever there's been, especially a financial challenge or there's been kind of real issues in the world, sustainability takes a backseat, right? Companies lay off people or they stop focusing on it and that didn't happen this time. Companies were maybe most of them too far along, Unilever, Walmart, all the typical guys, but they didn't just try to water, they accelerated, the goals got bigger, Google, all these guys like increased their goals. There was a lot of momentum already towards net zero and the number of goals in the last, just this year in 2021 every day, literally there's another company saying, we're going to be net zero by 2040 or 2050. So the acceleration of action has been kind of amazing in a time where people could have hunkered down and just focused on survival. And certainly some sectors did, if you're in hospitality, if nobody's expecting Marriott to put out a bunch of sustainability goals, like there's some companies that just are, they're 90% of the business has appeared in a week a year ago. But I've been amazed at how much there's still been activity. And I hear from peers, people in sustainability consulting, their business is doing really well. And I'm on the board of a NGO that advises companies and they're doing much better than they thought. They had this plan for like, revenue is going to shrink this much. And it's been a pleasant surprise that we're continuing. And I think it's because the mega trends, the forces I always talk about and work on, they're real. I mean, it's not just like some theory, companies are seeing climate change. They're feeling it. Companies are feeling the pressure for millennials and Gen Z. They're dealing with new levels of transparency. The clean economy has gotten so much cheaper that they're frankly dumb not to be pursuing it. It's just cheaper. So all the forces are kind of actually moving us in the right direction, except for the one you mentioned, which is the decline of democracy and the movement in the last five, 10 years towards kind of an every person for themselves view of the world, right? So much more nationalism, right when we need like true global thinking and collective action in some sense that we are all connected. I think the pandemic, I think increased a sense of that. Like we kind of started to get that we all share an immune system, like quite literally. And maybe that's helped see people, but it's also made some people put up their walls, right? Like if we just block everyone out, we won't get sick or something which just doesn't work. I mean, so I'm hoping that what comes out of this is a much greater sense of partnership and collaboration that we need. The problems are just way too big for any company or any country or anybody to do alone. So we're gonna need collaboration. And I'm hoping that that's one of the things that comes out of all this period of incredible volatility. On my podcast, Inside Ideas, I had Shalanda Baker. She became the deputy director of the Department of Energy right after the podcast for Biden Harris administration. It was really interesting because she, in her book, Revolution to Power, she actually writes about this racial inequality and the problems in democracy or energy. We're just getting out simple basic utilities and energy for people in how a lot of indigenous and it's a big racial thing. You're thinking electricity, power, utilities. How could that be? And so I have strong hope when the right leadership is in place that sees that, addresses that. Biden's a big person on mobile transportation, trains, mobility and things as well. So I like those steps in the right direction, but there's something fundamentally wrong at the core values of the US democracy and the political system that I think needs to be fixed. Otherwise we're gonna, we could face replaying this in the future sometime or when the next vote comes that we're dealing with some of these same issues. The part of the craziness is, the US is, this isn't the first Atlanta shootings that just occurred of the Asian ladies. That's not new. We've had other racial problems already and within the last 12 months. So how do we, I hate to make your book and your work and what you work on in that, but I think that's something that maybe even I've missed over the past, how do we fix that so that we don't run into another time where we're, we have this great pause or this great reset again, because we're waiting for our leaders to catch up and get us to where we need to be. So you and I are gonna fix racism now, right? We're gonna, we're gonna talk about that. Look, I, you know, look, we're two white guys talking about this, but I will say that I considered myself pretty aware, pretty empathetic, but, you know, even for those of us who were aware of the data and the level of racism, I'm Jewish. I've certainly seen anti-Semitism pretty consistent. It's always the Jews fault apparently. It's George Soros, you know, this stuff is always there. I've been surprised, you know, at the level that came out in the US, but it's not just the US, right? There's Hindu, Muslim violence in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil could not care less about indigenous people and how many are dying of COVID. You know, there's a decline in kind of caring for subsets of people in countries in a lot of places, you know, but the awareness level that came from George Floyd's murder, there are these pivot points, these times in life where there's a tipping point and there had been other people who had died, there have been other videos of people dying, something clicked, right, with this. And it was so awful and so compelling and horrendous that all of a sudden you saw every organization, every large company put out statements about racial equity and had been following it up with a lot of goals, a lot of, you know, efforts to improve, you know, increase the representation. And I think that's what this all ends up coming down to is we call it diversity and inclusion, but increasing representation across leadership, I mean, look at Biden's cabinet, right? It looks like America after what was literally all old white guys, you know, under Orange Man. And we now have much more representation and you're seeing the goal of that at least. And there's a long way to go in business. I mean, I just was writing this in my new book, but there are four, in the Fortune 500, there are four black CEOs. You know, that's absurd, right? I mean, that's, so there's this at least target now in many companies to increase greatly the representation. I think once you have a more inclusive, you know, set of organizations in the world institutions, they naturally become more democratic, right? They represent people better inside and outside. And I think that's the next big goal, I think for companies and that increases, I believe the more small D democratic we are as a country, as a world, if we look like the world, if a company looks like the world outside and if the people in power look like the world, how can it not be better for everybody, you know? And I mean everybody, even the people that think they're losing ground, you know, they're in it together more than they realize. So I'm hoping that this awareness from Black Lives Matter, me too, that it isn't going away. It doesn't seem to be. It seems like there's real efforts now. And I think that's gonna, and look, that's why there's a backlash, right? There's a old white male feeling like they're losing something. And it's hard to make them feel better about it, but the world is just not, is not gonna be very productive or it's not gonna thrive without making these changes happen. So I'm optimistic. Yeah, I'm glad because we need lots of optimism. We need to make it happen. In your book, you give numerous great examples, but there is one that can kind of be applicable the way I see it, the way I read it out. And I don't wanna be the interpreter, but I think you move in this direction as well. And it's with Tiger Woods, how someone on, he does a drop or he does a shot that's against the rules, but the judges on the ground in the game didn't see it, but someone at home in the armchair of their TV who was knowledgeable enough about golf or something or maybe even been in the thing, sends an email or text message in about it and the next thing you know, he's behind the lead and could have faced total disqualification and it lost him the lead. So now you've got these people at home that are thrice removed almost from the game, but have an influence and it's just telling that it's not only with your sustainability issues. I mean, we've seen it with the production facilities in India, you also mentioned that in your book and some other things, how quickly it can go if you're not prepared, if you don't apply some of these things to act quickly and kind of do some self-monitoring and preparation in that frame of that, are there some principles, some models that you would recommend people kind of step up to the plate and apply now, whether it's in the whole democracy or whether it's just this other real-time virtual space that we've come about to, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's a fun story about Tiger Woods because it was to me just a story of transparency and how it was fairly early in the realm of real-time reaction to something and changing, like a tournament's happening on TV, real-time, it ends up changing the game because someone sees something. That's, we take a lot of that for granted now that you can almost real-time have a reaction to something or rile up people or the fact that the biggest band in the world, BTS, played around with getting their fans to screw up some of Trump's rallies. I mean, the weirdest stuff has happened that show that you can drive huge numbers of people. I think the Parkland teens were kind of a pivot point where they came out of this tragedy, they gathered millions of Twitter followers in a week or two and called for people to take to the streets. And like in three weeks, it was one of the biggest global rallies for peace. And then Greta Thunberg took that, watched them and said, I can do this with climate. There's an ability to mobilize now that I think companies need to get their heads around. How fast it can happen. You've seen Amazon in the last few years got pressured by their own employees who kind of went very public about their feelings about climate change and it changed Amazon. So I think, I don't know. I mean, there's principles of just understanding how transparent the world is. And I guess the principle I'd say is be proactive and be, there's the kind of famous line I've used and the few things I use in big pivot about if we're all gonna be naked, you better be buff. It's this, a lot of people said that, if we're gonna be very transparent, then you better be ready for that. And the principle is, it sounds kind of obvious, don't do anything you'd be embarrassed about or that's wrong. I mean, it's that logic of, if something you said or wrote, we're on the front page of the New York Times, would you feel comfortable? Like companies have to think like that and understand the pace that things get out. We've seen so many examples in the last few years, Starbucks has a bad situation with two African-American that get kicked out and it's viral like within minutes. Like this stuff goes, can go around the world so quickly. I think companies need to, they need to understand that and understand that every person, including their employees is carrying around a phone. They're, they have an ability to film anything. They're kind of auditing you in real time. So I think just understanding that and being ready for that is something companies can struggle with. That there's really no, there's not that level of privacy that they think they had. It's just everything's gonna be out in the open. I think that's generally a good thing. You know, I think it will help for the most part but just be ready for that. I love that level of transparency and to be ready and almost think companies and organizations are in some respects, held to a little bit our standard or that there's a difference there because honestly, and I don't know if you wanna comment to this or if we even should, I was blown away. It was unimaginable. Some of the shit that Donald Trump tweeted and open in transparency of what a freaking idiot he was that he posted and why twice he wouldn't get impeached or why none of those tweets or actions that he did openly transparent that made him look like an idiot, made others just right out racist would not have that same effect which tells me at the core that there's some kind of issue with democracy, with the GOP, there's some influence there that I just don't understand but that's hampering humanity. I don't know if you wanna make comment probably is better, better not to be hit. Look, we could pretend that we should avoid talking about politics. Like I said before, we can't. We're not gonna solve inequality and climate change whatever without more functioning democracy and politics. And look, look, we gotta be honest in the US 147 members of the GOP, just one party voted to overturn a free and fair election. They've been telling the big lie. They still are regularly Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin keeps saying and they keep saying things like the coup attempt. I mean, again, I have to use the phrase the coup attempt in the US and it still feels surreal. We're gonna look back at this time as a pretty scary time in the US but they're still saying, oh, it was Antifa, it was Black Lives Matter. There is not only zero evidence, it's ridiculous, right? I mean, it's like all the people there were proud Trump supporters and believe that it was stolen from them because they've been told that. So I, you know, there's, again, I think we gotta be talking honestly and not pretend that there's like both sides to this stuff. And look, this isn't just me saying this sounding like some partisan or some sustainability advocate, dozens of large companies hold their funding from politicians and in particular from those 147 members of the Congress, I had never seen anything like that. And I think, you know, in the last few months we've seen, again, a continued shift in what's expected of companies, what they expected of themselves, their role in society that they got involved enough to say we're not gonna fund these people that tried to overthrow the government. You know, that's a good sign because if we can't police ourselves because the checks and balances are kind of broken or the voting system is gamed, the business community has a role, right? They can push back and say, we're not gonna fund you. We're not gonna support your candidacy. You know, the question is, will they stick to it? Will they, you know, just have done it while it was, you know, kind of public and will they continue to not fund the people that didn't want democracy to function? So we'll see, but that was new. I've never seen companies kind of, they've always say, we're not political, we can give to both sides and a bunch of them came right out and said, we're not funding these guys. That was a good sign. And I think, I think the next step from there is will they pull back money from climate deniers? Will they pull back money from those that are, you know, supporting racist policies and voter suppression? I'm hoping. And I think just in the last few days, Coca-Cola, UPS, a bunch of Atlanta based companies came out publicly and said, the voter suppression rules that they're trying to put in place in Georgia we don't agree with because companies have a huge portion of black and Latino employees and customers and like they can't suppress and, you know, don't want to. They're actually on some level, multinationals are more progressive if you want to call it than the government, you know? They have, they've been further ahead on LGBT for years, right? You know, recognizing domestic partnerships because they have gay employees and gay customers and like they just, it's because it's the money, right? I mean, it's just good for business to like serve everybody. So, you know, we'll see. I think business can be a huge force for good here. Well, I'm excited about what's coming down the line and I'm hoping you'll tease us a little bit with a net positive. I can see just this glimmering of your book behind you. That's the manuscript that you've submitted. But I was wondering if you could, you could tease it a little bit for us. Tell us what we can look forward to and that. Yeah. So the new book that's coming out in September of 2021, I've been co-authoring writing for the last year and a half with Paul Pullman who ran Unilever for a decade. And, you know, Unilever's been ranked the globe scan survey every year of kind of asking people who are knowledgeable who's the most sustainable. Unilever's been ranked number one for 10 years. So there's some validity to it. It's not a perfect company, right? I mean, nobody is, they're not sustainable. Nobody is, but there's a lot to learn from them from Paul's approach. So we've been, you know, writing this book together, the manuscript's in, it'll be out. You know, the idea is it's not radically different from big pivot, but it's kind of pushing it even further. The idea is that we need businesses now to be net positive. And what that means is that the impact of the business kind of in every sphere of its existence on all stakeholders is positive. That's the ultimate goal. Almost impossible to do today perfectly. And there's no perfect solutions or when you ever make a choice, there's gonna be some pros and cons. And you kind of are keeping, you keep working towards this goal, but we're defining that positive as being serving, you know, all stakeholders and shareholders kind of come last. You're serving the world, you're serving stakeholders and that in every kind of phase in every scale, every product, every service, every community, every employee, the world, you have a positive impact. And that doesn't mean, oh, I admit over here and I buy some offsets over here. The goal is again, at every scale you're having a positive impact. That's a big goal, right? And so the book lays out a lot of kind of strategies and principles about how do we get there? What does it look like? What does a company look like that really thinks long-term serves stakeholders and grows over time? Isn't afraid to say, we should grow. We should profit and grows because of this by serving the world. And shareholders will do just fine, right? That's kind of the fundamental principle. There's a lot in the book about goal setting like I have in my previous books about kind of thinking really big. And then the core of the book is really about partnerships and collaboration, which I think Paul and Unilever have been world leaders on. I mean, they're involved in pretty much every partnership you see out there and how challenging it is to do partnerships and how the scale of our kind of vision on this has to grow so that partnerships move more and more into the full systems change realm where you're working with government, with peers, with NGOs, academics, everyone at the table saying, how do we change the system? What's the rules we need? What's the regulations we need? How do we work together as a value chain to really solve the problems together? We're not gonna, no one's gonna do it alone. So we go through a lot of different kinds of partnerships from you and your suppliers, just your value chain up to the whole system. And we also tackle some things that nobody likes to talk about that we say we call the elephants in the room, taxes, corruption, human rights, diversity, inclusion, these things that companies have done lots wrong on and still like to think they're being a positive influence, but we say in there like, how can you be net positive if you don't pay taxes? Which dozens of companies avoid taxes. It's just not acceptable. So we're trying to push the boundaries of what companies think are in their sphere of focus to be a sustainable company and push it to the full, the full world, your impact on the entire world. It's big thinking, we'll see if it goes over well. I hope it does. I hope it helps companies think bigger. I'm excited about it when it finally comes out. Writing a book is a horrible process, but having a book is great once it's out, and I'm past most of the pain. So I'm in a good mood about it. That's so great. Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to that. It's really wonderful that you're working with such a wonderful guy and giant in the industry. What most people really don't know is that he's original SDG advocate, still an SDG advocate. He was also the CFO from Nestle. Most people don't even know that. So in most people's view, Nestle's kind of the evil company, Unilever's, because of Paul, I think had a little bit better rap, but CFO, I think there was a lot of learnings that can be taken away from that, that I guess he's had ingrained with him to say, okay, we're gonna do it different. We're gonna do it better. We're gonna try to talk about corruption. And that comes from a lot of his other affiliations with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Global Compact. There are some really anti-money laundering, Know Your Customer, all these CYK things around those organizations where they're looking at the bigger picture. They're looking out for humanity. And I really love that with Paul, but I don't know if he touched upon this in the book and I don't wanna tease it too much before it's out, but he's moved on from Unilever and now has his own organization, Imagine, which I'm hearing wonderful things as well from, so I definitely wanna talk to you again when that comes out after I've read it and we'll have a discussion about that as well. So that's fabulous. I wanna get into probably five more big questions, some kind of existential, we'll move away from politics and all the other craziness that we had. The first one is, do you feel like a global citizen and how would you feel about a world without divisions, nations, borders, humanity, one from another? What are your thoughts, your feelings, your views on that? Yeah, I mean, look, like I said, we're in this pendulum swing towards every man for themselves, nationalism. Look, I don't know if fully global citizen what that would look like or whether it makes sense. I can be proud of many things about America, but also think there's some serious problems here. Yeah, I mean, generally I do think I'm a global citizen because I get that we're all connected. Like I said, we have one immune system, we're breathing the same air, a microgram of carbon over here, warms the planet everywhere. So I just, to me, it's just been always practical. I got into this whole field coming from regular business jobs from a practical perspective, just looking at like, resource use and going, wow, we can't keep doing what we're doing, right? I mean, it goes back to silent spring. I'm like, we just can't keep doing what we're doing and have the planet function well. So it's always been very practical to me. So yeah, we're just to say like we're all connected because we are, I mean, it's just, it's lunacy to pretend that we can do this in like little pockets, country by country. And I do think we are, people obviously are inherently tribal. It's one of our kind of things. It's why we have these kinds of USA, USA or your state, your town, whatever unit, your school, you know, like we find tribes, right? We always do. And I think, I think there's a little bit more of some global tribes, especially younger generations. I think Gen Z might see themselves as global citizens more. And there's global entertainment like BTS, this Korean pop band is the world's biggest band. You know, like there's more global kind of, because everything's online now and almost everyone now has a cell phone, 6. something billion of the 7 billion, 7.8 billion have a cell phone. We are kind of one big system now. So yeah, I do think we are global citizens whether we admit it or not and whether we believe we are or not. And so, and towards that end, I think we gotta think about this, you know, stopping this pandemic. It's great that the US now, I think has enough vaccinations for everyone but we better get to vaccinating everybody. I mean, I would have been in favor of trying to vaccinate the really vulnerable globally first because frankly, it's also selfish. Like we can't stop a pandemic if there's places that aren't getting vaccinated because then there's more variants. Like it just keeps bubbling, you know? So I think very quickly we better show from the wealthier countries that we're willing to donate a lot of doses around the world. We have to, I mean, we have to. It's just, it's ridiculous. We can't just lock ourselves in and go, we're all vaccinated, great. Just doesn't work that way, you know? And same thing with climate, with everything. It's just, you know, this is why this system's question, how do you think in systems like everything is connected which can be daunting. But, you know, you break down a problem, you work the problem, you know? And you get the right people at the table and you think as big as you can. And then you divide it up into the problem sets that you can handle. So yeah, we are connected and I find it kind of absurd to pretend we're not. It just seems silly. Have you found that there's a way, I mean, you said systems thinking or thinking in this complexity can be daunting. But have you found some tools that are helpful over the years that make it easy? I have, I could tell you a couple as well, but I was wondering what have you found that's work? Is it a paradigm shift in thinking? Is it a different way of viewing the world or what tools are out there that kind of make it easy because some of those systems are running autonomously. We don't even know what that we're doing with every single day. And so if we can, you know, I just maybe would like to get your thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot of people working on systems thinking I, you know, I'm on the board of form for the future. They're one of the good systems and scenarios thinking organizations. There's a lot of those, you know, a few kind of really great organizations that really do map systems very well and kind of show how everything's connected. I don't know if there's anyone, look, there's great frameworks out there like the donut economic stuff from Kate Rower. You know, there's always kind of evolution of new ways of thinking about it that help people kind of think in bigger picture. I don't know, it's a funny way to say it, but I don't know if there's a systematic way to think and to get people thinking in systems. There's, one of the things that I've, you know, read many times now is that a lot of this comes from empathy, right? We need more empathy and compassion. It is fundamentally what's the biggest lack. And in the U.S. in particular, we've moved away from empathy and compassion and this whole idea that, oh, if someone's on food stamps, it's them, it's other, it's not, there's no sense of there, but for the grace of God, go I, you know, and I'm not a religious guy, but like a line like that is pretty powerful. You know, like, like we all could be in a bad situation at some point in our lives. So we, you know, it's hard to say how you bring about systems thinking. I think part of it is empathy. And one of the things I've read many times is that reading widely, reading fiction is actually been tied to empathy. Seeing other people's views, reading from authors that are from different, you know, backgrounds than you. I just think, I think that's part of it. Honestly, sharing stories is reading books by authors of very varying backgrounds and countries. And it just helps people kind of put themselves in other people's shoes. And I think this, you know, this global connectivity that especially the younger generation is comfortable with, I think it helps, you know, you get to see you're sharing likes and dislikes with people around the world and you don't really care. You know, my sons both play games online. They're often online playing with someone from Germany or Australia. I mean, like there's no border, right? It's just who likes Fortnite right now or who likes, you know, magic, the gathering or whatever the games they're playing, playing people everywhere. There's some kind of amazing about that, you know? And I think if we can lean into that and I think listen to Gen Z a lot more, they get something. There's something there that they get, right? I mean, they're pissed off and they should be and they're making their voices heard. And I feel like let's listen to them. Let's listen to how they think about the world. You know, they're just so much more. My kids, no sense of gender stuff doesn't, they don't get why there's an issue around it. Like it just transgender, they meet, they know kids. Like it's just not, none of that is weird to them. And they don't doubt climate change. Like nobody, like they know it's coming. They're mad and they should be, right? But there's something there that they get that, you know, I don't think we do. Out of all your wisdom, learnings, schooling, books, and knowledge, would you put your finger on one of them that you say is the most influential or the aha moment for you? Or just change, give a change in your life and said, I can never look back or go back to that way of thinking again. Yeah, well, look, I think, and I'd love to hear your list too. And look, I think there's, you can say there's two kinds of people in the world but I definitely find there's people who, they read something and they can't forget it. Or they, you know, and then there's people who are very good at partitioning and going, I read that thing about what's going on in the world or this climate book and I'll just put it over here until I feel like thinking about it. I've never been that ladder. I've always been one once I read it, it kind of just changes who I am. So the early, when I got into this field in 2000, 2001 I was kind of transitioning, changing from regular business jobs. I didn't do anything in sustainability the first kind of 10 years of my work life. I read, you know, the canon, right? Ecology of commerce, natural capitalism was out right around then. Ishmael, which I'm sure you, you know, people, yep, yeah, natural capitalism. And I've gotten to know, you know, the authors and Ishmael is an amazing kind of parable of just seeing the world differently. And for me, once I started reading about sustainability like I couldn't go back, I couldn't go back to like I'll just do a strategy job at a company. Cause it was just so radically clear that the system we were in was broken and was never going to get healthy. And thus we figured out a way for business to be part of the solution. So I think those early, you know, those early things were influences on me. And frankly, one of the most rewarding things in my career has been when people come up to me and they read Green to Gold and grad school and they say, this got me into this career. This made me, that's what I hope to do. Like that's the point of writing these things is like you get people thinking differently. And once they see it, it's hard to, it's hard to avoid. But again, I think there's also philosophy, you know, like, you know, I read Victor Frankl's man search for meaning a couple of years ago after going to Auschwitz, you know, there's these books that just, they just speak to your soul in a way that that's kind of hard to, how do you read that and not come out of it about humanity and hope in the face of horror, you know, in a different way. So I think there's just some of the philosophers that we need. And we mentioned this briefly in the new book, but I, you know, there's just the, there's a couple of key principles out there like Rawls, Vail of Ignorance, this idea of like, what kind of system would you design if you didn't know where you were gonna be born? And are you gonna be born a white guy in a fairly wealthy country or a Syrian girl in a refugee camp? You know, like what, if you don't know where you're gonna be born, what system would you build? I think that's more like this powerful thought experiment I maybe have ever seen and it is the classic empathy experiment. So those are the kinds of things that keep coming, I keep coming back to in my head and the surrender daily, I have to kind of come back to, which is let's remember what I can change because I get pretty, you get pretty angry, you get pretty frustrated looking at the world and what's not changing and all that. So those are the things I, those are my touchstones I guess, what are the ones that you, you turn to? Well, I have so many, I'm a book addict. So I'm addicted to all, all different types of books but I'm a really big fan of Carl Sagan, Lynn Margolis, Donnella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Yorg Randers, obviously Paul Hawkins work as well. Herman Daly, I have pretty much all his books and stuff that more academic reads. I have tons of academic reads that don't, you know, kind of right now that cost you 120, 300 euros to buy one of these books because I wanna get into the understanding and a little bit deeper view behind the systems and things but there are so many, you know, even Carl Jung, the red book I have, the book Libra and old one is that I really liked from a young age that I got from my, from my parents as a Fritz Hof Capra. I'm actually a graduate from the Capra courses and it was a book, the, the, yeah, I think it was the Dow of Physics is what it was called by Fritz Hof Capra was on my dad's bookshelf and I read it back when I was younger and then later I took his course, the systems view of life and just different books like that but the real one from a long time ago was Richard Bach allusions and Jonathan Livingston Segal started out with those and then obviously a lot of the business books and Paulie and Hale, Thinking Grow Rich and Jim Rohn, kind of the business motivation type of things as well. But yeah, there are so many and I'm an avid reader. I probably read three books a week if not have some. I mean, I haven't made books more of a part of my life because there's so much information through email and newsletters like you can fill your day with all that. I've been trying to make for a long time make books more part of the day. You must not watch a lot of Netflix and, and. I don't watch TV and very, very little kind of very selective watches like I try to watch in documentaries from people that I'll have on the show and the other reason why I read the books not only I want to kind of stand the pulse but there are a lot of people who come on the podcast and I just, you know, they put years and months of effort and dedication into a book I want to understand and not, not just be critical but I want to kind of understand what they're thinking and the process is and be able to speak with them and ask them the right questions. So that's another reason why I read a lot but I just got the bug probably about 15 years ago and I can't stop and it's getting, it's getting worse. I have a book addiction I must say for sure. I have the hardest question for you today. It's the one I ask all my guests and it's probably it'll get you off the hook when you're done with it and that's the burning question WTF what's the future as the burning question? It's not the other one that we've all been swearing and asking this year but it's really the one, what's a roadmap? What's the plan? What's the future? It's funny, you know cause a lot of my work is speaking and writing and, you know, every now and then a speaker's bureau someone will book me as like a futurist. I don't really think that's what I do. I call myself a presentist. I don't know if I can coin it or something but it's more about, I'm talking about trends we can already see like the clean economy trends just look at the last 10 years and it's like pretty clear what's happening to the price of, you know, renewables. So I think some of the things I can predict are mostly just pretty clear connections to what we're already seeing with hopefully I hope I'm a little better than average at getting out of linear thinking and understanding cause we as a species are bad at exponential thinking, right? It's really hard to, you know the famous Lily pad pond thing like you don't realize like you're at some huge scale until like a day or two before if it's doubling every day it happens so fast at the end. So I think, you know I will say with some confidence that the speed of change the volatility isn't going away I don't see how it can that the speed of technology continues the speed of the clean economy continues. So I'm pretty confident that at some point, you know whether it's 10 years or 20 there's almost no combustion cars on the road. There's a grid that's almost entirely renewables with batteries, et cetera. I think that's all gonna happen. I mean, it's already on its way. You can try to protect fossil fuels but the economics are just it's over, right? The economics are done. We're at a point where the renewables are basically cheaper to build and the, you know using the economic term the variable cost of renewables is zero. It takes, you know you spend zero on sun and wind. That's hard to beat. So I'm confident about that. I'm also confident that the expectations of kind of business and organizations about what's in their sphere and this is what the book's about. So I guess I hope this is true but I believe that the sphere of what companies are expected to be about is just growing and they are diving into things like democracy because I think increasingly it's expected that they will do that. I also am unfortunately I'm pretty confident just cause the science is there that we've locked in some bad stuff that we can't get away from. I say this, you know it's a personal kind of tragedy for me. I was born in South Florida. You know, I'm not down there very often but I have a kind of feeling for the place, you know and I think a lot of that area in South Florida will be underwater. I don't think Miami's functional in 30, 40 years. It's hard to see how. I mean, I guess we could be surprised and maybe there'll be some massive sequestration effort but I think we've locked in some things that we better get a handle on. I think unfortunately there will also be a lot more refugees. I mean, you've seen the numbers that could be one to three billion people living in places that maybe not functional. I don't see any indication we're gonna get close to 1.5 degrees. We're just, we're not even close. I hope we hold to two. So I think the world's gonna be tough. I can't see any other way. We waited too long but I have to believe that, you know like Churchill said about Americans, you know humans will do the right thing once we've tried everything else. Like we will, I do believe we will get there. We will have this clean economy, a clean grid. The world will generally get more equal. Well, the arc of justice, you know, all of that but there's a lot of two steps forward, three steps back, two steps, you know like we're in some backlash moments now. So I think, you know again, I'm confident about some things less confident about others but then there's wildcards, you know like the pandemic was predictable but boy did it change some things. Like I was totally confident urbanization statistics were gonna go in one direction. Now I'm not anymore because people are like, oh I can work remotely and people are leaving cities, right and moving to remote places. You don't know, something can happen. It's the unknown unknowns I guess. But like I said, the world's gonna be cleaner. It's gonna be greener. It's gonna be healthier but the major challenges we're gonna face are what do we do when a lot of people gotta move and we have to kind of help each other and really help parts of the world that become unlivable and I honestly do not know what's gonna happen. We don't have a great track record with refugees or welcoming in people and I don't know, you know I don't know what's gonna happen there. So again, I have this kind of range of what I feel confident saying and what I don't but we will always be a mix of selfishness and love and care, that's us. I mean, we are all of that. It's not one or the other, you know I hope we can start to see that selfishness actually it is selfish to be giving. It is selfish to give yourself to others because you're happier, you do better and that's the whole net positive philosophy, right? You serve everybody, you do better. That's the logic. It's also back to Paul's wife, Kim Pullman wrote the imaginal cell with many greats and the golden rule, you know treat people on planet how you would like to be treated I think that's great. You shocked me a little bit. I'm glad you gave me that honest answer and there's that underpinning as well but with the big pivot I'm hoping that not only because what we've experienced with the pandemic and so many other things that have all been on the exponential function the exponential curve that will realize that that's not just a doom and gloom negative curve there's also the complete flip side if we figure it out quick enough apply the things that are in your book in your coming book and even just go back to the basics you know, the golden rule which you summed up your answer to my question that we can hit that exponential curve and no, we might not make it we might fall short and experience some things but I think that would get us into a better spot in the future and it will also give us hope to grasp and brace that I mean, we've seen it with world wars where we've pivoted but there were also some pretty quick pivots during the pandemic and maybe we also realized how quickly the exponential function works so I don't have too much more to say about that I appreciate your answer we could get off on another whole tangent on that as well the last three questions I have are really for my listeners if there was one message that you could depart to my listeners as a sustainable takeaway that had the power to change their life what would it be, your message? Well, I mean, this sounds really trite but I think, you know when you start talking about these huge systems and democracy and changing carbon around the world can sound like, oh, what can I possibly do? And I guess, you know this is so trite in the kind of thousand things you can do to save the planet but just that everybody you don't have to be a CEO you don't have to be the president like everybody has a role to play meaning the pressure you can put on your employer you know, the companies you buy from and work for is real and it adds up like again, Amazon employees got together and took one of the biggest companies in the world and brought it into the world brought it into the climate world after they did nothing. So there's just this incredible power I think people don't realize they have that it doesn't actually take that many voices making noise about something to change behavior there's lots of studies showing that that, you know, be going to a store and say, why don't you carry this? It doesn't take that many people asking actually before it changes. So I think we have to realize that we can all expect more of each other of our politicians of our leaders of our CEO. So that's, I just think you have more power than you realize like, you know we're one of eight billion people, right? I mean, nobody matters if you look at it that way but like you do, you do have an influence and that's kind of and I think, you know you gotta think, you know carefully about how you vote and the kinds of people you put in place. So that's, you know to me, again it's been used in sustainability or green thinking forever but your, you know your vote, your work matters that's kind of the I guess the simple take away. What should young innovators in your field be thinking about if they're looking for ways to make real impacts? Well, I think I mean, I talked to a lot of grad students that contact me how do I get into this or what do I do with companies and sustainability and there's lots of different paths I think one thing is to realize that given how vast that the work is there's a million paths you don't have to be in the sustainability department of company or at a sustainability consulting firm to be doing sustainability the companies that get it they need people everywhere in the business banks need people who get it like you can go into many things and do it but I think the thing to focus on if I were training now in school would be systems thinking thinking about how things connect I don't think our schools or we don't teach it really well I think there's more of it now maybe than there used to be but it's not, we teach linearly I think there's systems thinking and the other real skill set is partnerships is thinking about things as collaborations not as every man for themselves and developing those skills of partnering of the kind of humility and openness and transparency that's needed to have a good partnership just like a good marriage I guess like you need to be open and say I don't know, I don't know how to do this can you help? Here's what we need to help with that's hard for a lot of people they don't want to look dumb or something so I think those skills and I actually have a lot of hope that again Gen Z because they're growing up so connected that the idea of using a network to solve something will just be natural I mean like I said they're playing games with people all over the world they're being taught from the beginning in school now to do group projects the kind of stuff I didn't get to like business school they do it from like second grade now and learn all the things about like oh this person's not doing their share that sucks like they're learning all the things about working together and I think they're just more naturally connected they'll just think to reach out to someone and post something so I think I have hope that they will have that kind of skill so again it's partnerships it's being able to collaborate and to think in systems those are the two massive skill sets that we need and it sounds like definitely the right your book is going to touch on those things as well so I'm excited in September when that comes out the last question is really what have you experienced or learned in your professional journey your long journey so far that you would have loved to know from the beginning, from the start? It's a good question I guess when I look back now there's this sense especially like when I made this right turn I had been working in I worked at Boston Consulting Group I worked in media companies I had kind of this kind of path of working on strategy and marketing and I decided during the dot-com crash I was at a small dot-com and we crashed to take a right turn go back to school, learn environmental studies and I really didn't know if there'd be a career out of it and I think the major lesson I learned was that even if you take a right turn whatever you've done you will use it is part of your skill set and what you know and so when I think about people like oh I can't change because I've gotten this many years and something like when I came to write Green to Gold I think part of what helped make it successful was I came from consulting and marketing and didn't come from Greenpeace like I think that's part of I used the things that I had been working on strategy and marketing and brand development in the writing and so I kind of always tell people like you don't need to have it all figured out and have the exact right path there is no one right path you're gonna use everything you've learned down the road and so just get moving just go do something that was a huge lesson for me that you don't lose it just because you change paths you will still use it and it will make you unique and have kind of this combination of skills that are only yours and there's kind of that little hidden message in there as well because that ties into that systems thinking so in your journey you've connected the dots, the system and how can you apply it which is really how it needs to do and how it needs to function Andrew, it's been a sheer pleasure thank you so much for your time and I hope that we in September can talk about your new book Net Positive It'll be great well thank you so much thanks for having me Thank you, have a wonderful day bye bye