Paul Polman: Business should be a force for good. And I've always felt that companies should profit from solving the world's problems, not from creating the world's problems, but unfortunately over time, we've lost some of that. We need to work on that currency of trust. Andrew White: Hello, I'm Andrew White. And this is Leadership 2050, a podcast bringing you leadership lessons from business visionaries. In this episode, I'm talking to one of the world's leading advocates of sustainable capitalism, Paul Polman. He's a man who could have been a priest. Instead, he went into business and became one of the standout chief executives of his era. As the CEO at Unilever, he helped revolutionise corporate thinking. He proved that putting purpose and sustainability at the heart of its strategy was the right way to run a business. Unilever's profits went up while simultaneously ranking number one for sustainability. And he's revealing everything he learned in his new book, Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take. I began by asking Paul to take us back to the beginning and how his life and career brought him to where he is now. Paul Polman: Oh, how I got to the place today is probably a lot of serendipity. My life motto has always been it's better to make the dust than eat the dust. So I like to create options and then pick a few of them that are the most appealing at that time and don't look back. But I've never been really a longterm planner, if I may be honest. I'm always afraid that if you are obsessed with getting somewhere, that you might find out that the ladder is against the wrong wall. So I rather go a little bit with the flow and it has worked out well for me. So, that's not a problem. Paul Polman: I grew up in the '60s, in the Netherlands, wonderful parents, six children, and all they cared about was education for us, peace in Europe, making the communities work. They truly were putting themselves to the surface of others. High school was deprived of them because of the Second World War. And they certainly didn't want to have us go through that terrible ordeal as well. In the '70s, when I started to be able to read and write, so to speak, it was the Vietnam War, it was Biafra and Northern Nigeria, flower power movements. It was in fact, the first Earth Day in April 22nd, I think it was in the US. Rachel Carson had just written her book, Silent Spring. So many of these things were increasing our level of awareness. It was also helpful that my parents had met in Boy Scouts and we've always been very active throughout. I have learned that myself at different times in my life, but we were connected with these things probably at a little bit higher sense. Paul Polman: Then by cheer serendipity, I end up in the business world. I wanted to be a priest first. Then I wanted to be a doctor. Unfortunately, the Dutch, where the government pays for the education, which is very good and highly recommended, but they also limit the number of places that they allow for things so that we don't get an oversupply in the market. So unfortunately, I didn't win the lottery, so to speak on medicine. So I had to do something. So I went to study economics. At that time, you either did economics or law. I don't know why, but those were basically the alternatives. Then after three years in the Netherlands, I'd done my bachelors. I wasn't very motivated, to be honest. I still didn't really figure out what I wanted to do. So my dad at that time said, go to the US, improve your English, work in a factory that was at that time, an American company had bought them, and start to like business because you have to make a living. I'm not going to support you for the rest of my life. Paul Polman: So when I came to the US, I ended up going to university, met my wife, found another reason to stay, ended up in P&G. They offered me a job right away to work in Europe. They were sort of enamoured with these MBA programmes. And that's how I started my career. 27 years in P&G, ended up running their international business from Geneva. Then I had enough of corporate life. I was about 50, probably my midlife crisis. We had started a foundation I wanted to grow. That is still going very well, by the way, and wanted to do some other things. But then Nestle called and they kept trying to find opportunities for me to get connected to that company and finally, I ended up being the CFO and running the Americas for three years until the wonderful opportunity came to lead Unilever for 10 years. And that's basically my career in a nutshell. Andrew White: I mean, really interesting threads there. Your parents, not necessarily attracted to business, there was the potential of going into the priesthood, going into medicine, finding business, but also those other influencers that were there or the things that were going on in the '60s and the '70s and the '80s. Andrew White: So from 2009 to 2019, you find yourself leading a very prestigious company that's selling products across the world. And at the same time, were living with the consequences of the financial crisis, which is raising all kinds of questions about the role of business. Can you tell us a little bit more about this time and how you led Unilever through what I think in many ways was a very turbulent time, not just for society, but for business as well? Paul Polman: Well, I was very fortunate to work for three great companies, P&G, Nestle, and Unilever. These are companies that actually all started in the 19th century and are still around and doing well. So these are companies built to last, not built to sell. And the main reason for that is they have incredible values and they're able to attract the talent that obviously collectively makes these values come alive and create enormous cultures. These are companies that are run for the longer term. They want to optimise their multiple stakeholders. You can get the same soundbites, perhaps slightly differently phrased from all of them, how important their employees are and investing in them, the communities in which they work, the stakeholders in their value chain and so forth. Paul Polman: And so these were formative years, different companies from a cultural point of view because obviously different origins or product mixes or different styles that have crept in over the years, but they were all great companies. And then during your development, there are some things that happen to you that form you. I've always believed, by the way, that business should be a force for good and, as we're posing in our new book, Net Positive, How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take. I've always felt that companies should profit from solving the world's problems, not from creating the world's problems, but unfortunately over time, we've lost some of that. Paul Polman: And I found the same when I came in Unilever, the company had become very short term. Their turnover had gone down from the low 50 billions to 38 billion. People were chasing their tail, and it was not a situation that it was very healthy. And I think that's one of the reasons why they asked someone for the first time to come in from the outside. So the first thing we had to do was go back to the core and go back to the history of the company, why it was created. A very strong founder, Lord Lever, end of the 19th century had a mission to make hygiene commonplace in Victorian Britain. One out of two babies at that time, didn't make it either past year one. So he invented Sunlight Bar Soaps or Lifebuoy. And that was the beginning of his company. And he always talked about the concept of shared prosperity, which we now conveniently call multi-stakeholder models. Paul Polman: So these things are often there in the roots of the company, but because of mistakes, because of short-term focus, because of pressures, you're sometimes under, we don't get the right leadership and behaviour to steer a ship during storms from time to time. And that's what we found ourselves in. That was the height of the financial crisis and a good moment to change. We frankly didn't have any choice but to change our strategy. It wasn't working before the financial crisis either. So at a moment that most of the companies were hunkering down on cost cutting and shorter-term focus because of this financial crisis, we actually took a different tack. We created the right framework by abolishing quarterly reporting, by stopping giving guidance, by moving conversation systems to the longterm so that people could get into the right behaviour to start addressing some of these more important issues that cannot be addressed with the myopic focus of quarterly shareholder primacy if you want to. Paul Polman: We put a model out there that, first and foremost, took responsibility of our total impact in the world, all consequences intended or not. Many companies still think they can outsource their value chain and also outsource their responsibility on climate change. You see that with the bulk of the companies that do make a commitment, they will only make basically scope one and two commitments. We did that by putting a model out there that really made clear that shareholder return was a result of what we did, but that we would focus on optimising the return for all of our key stakeholders, our employees obviously being the most important ones. And we increasingly started to look at how we could use the size and scale of a company like Unilever operating in 190 countries, reaching three billion citizens a day, how could we use that size and scale to drive the more transformative changes that the world needed? Paul Polman: So that's really a story of Unilever that ultimately has to go together with discipline, with hiring the right people, having the right strategy, creating the right innovation programmes and all the things we know what to do, but ultimately culminated in a 300% shareholder return, outgrowing our competitive set on top and bottom line every year, and proving that a multi-stakeholder model was purpose at its core with sustainability at the heart of its strategy is actually the right way of running a business. Andrew White: I think what I find most interesting listening to you, and we worked together many times, is how doing good and doing good business are reconciled in your mind. And increasingly they are being reconciled in the world. So doing well commercially and having a positive impact on the world are not separate. Could you just say a bit more about that? Paul Polman: No, totally. In fact, it's the opposite, Andrew. I think one reinforces the other. It is profit through purpose. And we now have the data. When I started 12, 13 years ago, the data weren't there, the financial markets were a little sceptical, shareholder primacy ruled, but now we can see that, especially during COVID that we can't have healthy people on an unhealthy planet. We've also shown during COVID how much this has cost us to the global economy. Just in Europe and the US alone, we've spent $17 trillion to save lives and livelihoods. The IMF estimates we've lost about $27 trillion in this decade alone as a result of COVID in terms of GDP. So we're getting to the point that the cost of inaction is actually higher than the cost of action. Paul Polman: So I see this responsible model, because if you want to be around for the longer term, it automatically leads you to sustainable thinking, it automatically leads you to multiple stakeholders, but I see this responsible model as a prerequisite actually to have longterm shareholder return. And we're increasingly starting to show that with hard data. Interestingly, when COVID came and I was being asked by journalists on the different programmes on television or magazines, "Do you think this is the end of ESG or climate change focus by governments?" And I said, "No, this is going to be the beginning of an acceleration." And people were very sceptical because the behaviour in the financial crisis was actually the opposite. Paul Polman: But what have we seen? Instead of 20% of the global carbon emission-based countries making net zero commitments, we now have 90% of emissions under net zero commitments. We have half of the world's capital that has signed up with the Glasgow Financial Alliance on net zero, $130 trillion of money under management to be net zero and decarbonize their money and portfolios. We have 20% of the corporate sector, actively making commitments. All of the 500 major companies have climate commitments, not enough, but it's a seismic change that we've seen. And part of that reason is because businesses have understood the cost that they get, the signals from the marketplace, the governments that are starting to move, the financial market waking up. And if that wasn't enough yet, listen to the voices of the young, your employees, or may I say, your own children? Paul Polman: I mean, the train has left the station. That's why in the book, we don't talk about why anymore. We entirely concentrate on the how, because that's what people struggle with. This is a seismic change that needs to happen. The scale of the industrial revolution, the speed of the technological revolution, totally reinventing how we grow our economies, we have become carbon junkies, how we reconfigure our broken food chain, et cetera. And that is a challenge. And that's where we need to focus on. Andrew White: And the book is very much about the how, as you describe. Could you give us just a bit of an insight into the steps that you see companies and leaders need to go through? And obviously people can buy the book and they can read it in more detail, but what do you see at the macro level as being the key elements of that process of transformation to the net positive future, that we're all looking for? Paul Polman: For us, why we wrote this book is with World Overshoot Day, July 29th, we are well beyond this concept of living in harmony with planet Earth or future generations if you want to. Most of the companies are in the CSR space, which is less bad, and that's simply not good enough anymore. I'm a murderer. I used to kill 10 people. Now I'm a better murderer because I only kill five people. I don't think that works anymore, but that's what CSR is to an extent. So then people say, I get it. We need to be sustainable. Neither good, nor bad. It's not good enough anymore either. It's like saying, okay, I can build a coal plant here and have the people around it die 12 years earlier than anybody else because I'm planting a few trees somewhere else. And frankly, I don't care if forests get cut down in other places, I've done my job. So being sustainable is not enough anymore either. We need to start to think regenerative, restorative, reparative. And that is really what net positive is all about and why we wrote this book. Paul Polman: Now, as you rightfully alluded to, Andrew, it starts with your personal journey and your leadership transformation. So that's why the book starts about, do you care? It talks about bringing purpose to yourselves, to your leadership team and how you bring that into the business. Much like we've done with Unilever, where our first job actually was to go back to the core, to help our top 500 employees find their purpose and together, develop this Unilever sustainable living plan, this iconic plan as it is now well known. Paul Polman: Then the second step is to work on your own company transformation. We called it getting our own house in order, how do you implement this? How do you set the targets that are truly needed, not the targets you can get away with? How do you work them in the partnership within your value chain to get to the bigger breakthroughs? And once you have your own house in order, then indeed you need to, certainly if you are in a position to do that, work on these broader systems transformations. And all of that has to be done consistently. One of our last chapters in the book talks about elephants in the room. How do you deal with tax or tax avoidance, corruption, CEO salaries, money in politics, trade associations saying things differently than what you are advocating for with your company, human rights issues. Paul Polman: So these are all the salient issues that I think business struggles with. And in order to gain that trust, which is absolutely needed to form these broader partnerships that are absolutely required to drive these broader systems changes, we need to work on that currency of trust, and that comes from our own leadership and our own courage. And that's why it's so important that we, first and foremost, take care of our own personal journey. You can't have a sustainable company if you're not sustainable yourself. You can't have a purpose driven company if you're not purposeful yourself. And that's why leadership is probably the most important thing. And the profession that you do is probably one of the most noble professions for that reason, creating future leaders. Andrew White: It strikes me that it's an incredibly important process that we all go through, asking ourselves the question, who am I and what am I here to serve? Paul Polman: Absolutely. And I could not stress that more. Colin Mayer wrote his book, Prosperity, and he defines purpose as to profitably address the issues of people and planet, but people want to belong to something bigger. JUST Capital looked at all the companies in the US, the Russell 1000, and it found that companies that really had a strong purpose had a 56% higher shareholder return over the last four years that didn't. It also found out that companies that really were mission driven, also had a higher employee engagement and higher innovation rate. And all that gets retranslated into results. People want to belong to something bigger. Paul Polman: Now, your purpose changes. It depends what happens over life. I mean, I learned a lot when I was in Newcastle, where I saw for the first time, second-generation unemployment, where ship building, steel, and coal had gone belly up. And it changed my total perspective of the role in business. We happened to be the biggest employer there, and I got pulled into the community. You wouldn't believe it. And it made me from what I call a half person, a whole person. Paul Polman: Then shortly after that, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with eight of my officially impaired friends and climbing a mountain with blind people made me think differently about dignity and respect for everybody, equity and inclusion. And that became a very important awareness that all these people, although they were officially impaired, all they saw was possibilities. Then I was stuck in the Taj Mahal during this terrible terrorist attack. And we didn't know if we would come out alive. And people around us unfortunately, were not that fortunate. And it made me realise what the price is of poverty, of exclusion and how people are left behind. So you have all these crucial during your life that continue to form you. Paul Polman: Then I had the pleasure to be asked by Ban Ki-moon to help develop the sustainable development goals. I proudly wear the pin. And that was for me a life-changing experience. We worked two and a half years on these 17 goals, and I put it in the middle of the Unilever business model. And it just resonated enormously with everybody to have all of our brands be so purpose driven and not try to just make money, but try to address these bigger global issues like open defecation or women's self esteem, or simply helping a child reach the age of five. And you see the power, you can unlock by doing this. I compare profits a little bit with white blood cells in your body. You need white blood cells to live, but I haven't met anybody yet that lives for white blood cells. So getting this purpose level up and into everybody is so liberating and so powerful. Andrew White: And I'm struck today, there are so many good examples of leaders who've been incredibly creative. They've gone through the awakening that we're talking about. They look out and they see the world, and then they don't just transform their business and the KPIs, but they also create things. Are there people that you see that you'd point to as almost embodying the net positive message? Paul Polman: Well, let me just be clear on the macro picture, which I think we need to keep in mind. We can only afford one and a half degrees warming, which means that we need to cut our carbon emission by 45% between now and 2030. And we need to be net zero by 2050. In fact, a 2050 target is useless. You need to have a 2030 target and clear plans. And that's just taking one aspect, climate. Or, you can take a diversity aspect like gender or racial inclusion. And what you see is that there is about 10, 15% of companies that do move, that make science-based targets, but they might be only scope one and two. They might be out for 2050. You have to read the small print. So there's a lot of talk. Paul Polman: But the CEO salaries in the US during COVID have gone up, they haven't come down. Many of the commitments that were made after the tragic death of George Floyd, we're still waiting for that. Few companies acting, but not that many. 80% of CEOs say they don't have transparency on their value chain. So why should they take responsibility? So whilst there is a group of companies like Arçelik in Turkey or the Salesforces or the PayPals, or the Walmarts or the Nestles, or even my former company that are leading, it doesn't make any sense if we don't do it at the scale that the world needs. I've always said in Unilever, we can scoop up all the prices and all the recognitions, but if we don't detect the major issues still, then I still can't come home and look my children in the eye. So we have a job to do. And that is why it's important now, as we discuss in our book, Net Positive as well, why the bigger companies go together and make more of these issues pre-competitive. We should not compete on the future of humanity. Paul Polman: I think a lot of the areas that we now need to change and help governments to change, because ultimately we don't get there if we don't work together with governments and civil society together, that we need to help de-risk that political process to change these boundaries. That's probably the most urgent task. And the good thing is, if you come from Glasgow where I was two weeks, that indeed the responsible part of business is running ahead of governments. In many of the sectors, we see now 10, 15% of the companies making amazing commitments, be it in shipping or in airlines or in steel or in aluminium, or in some of the other high abatement or high emission sectors. But we simply need more. And that can only come from this working together and ultimately governments putting in the right frameworks and rules and regulations, if you want to. And that is really what we're advocating for now is the CEOs. Paul Polman: So there are good companies, there are some elements of net positive, but I don't think every company has really achieved that yet. You see some companies in the US that make enormous commitments on climate change. Some of them even recuperating carbon from when they started, 1975 in the case of Microsoft, or some of them going to protect one million square miles of oceans or restoring 50 million hectares of land like Walmart, or companies like Nestle moving to regenerative agriculture, or a company like Interface with Ray Anderson that we always herald. And he's been certainly a role model for me, making carpets, actually that absorb CO2. So there are elements of restorative, reparative, regenerative that are creeping in. Paul Polman: But then at the same time, you see that some companies that individually make carbon commitments start to use their trade associations to lobby heavily against the US reconciliation bill that is meant to attack this because there's a tax increase. So how do CEOs behave when the pressure is there? What choices do they make? Are they consistent in all they do? There, we still have a lot of work because anytime that consistency isn't there, that courage isn't shown, you will undermine that trust that you need to build, first and foremost, with your employees, but also with broader society. And that is what this book is all about. That's why we use the word courage. It's probably the most important leadership skill that we need to develop. And also an education, moving from a competitive leadership style that is being taught in most of the MBA programmes into a more collaborative, moral leadership style, if you want to. Andrew White: And then also, as you're talking, Paul, what I see is that, in a sense, you've got one leg in the business you're running, and you have to run that. You've got another leg in the world. And you have to think equally about that as you do about the leg that's in the business. And that's the leadership of systems and that's about collaboration and bringing multiple people together. Most people were never taught these things in business schools. It's only now starting to come into the curriculum, but most of us were brought up thinking about, how do I run the firm that I'm in? Paul Polman: Yeah. No, you need to be the systems leaders. I think what we've clearly shown during COVID is that the leaders that have done extremely well are leaders that have a high level of empathy, compassion, operate with a high level of humanity, humility, purpose driven, thinking multi-generational, understand the power of partnership, and indeed are these systems thinkers that can look at these complexities and distil them down to some simple, but concrete action. And those are the leaders that give you trust. And those are the leaders that people want to work for. And those are the companies actually that have in general done better during COVID. And we saw the same at political levels. Often these skills that I'm talking about are more present in the female race than in the male race, if I may say. Not surprisingly with COVID, the countries that were run by women, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway, Denmark have done better. And it reflects that higher level of trust where society is willing to work on a bigger overall goal, if you want to, or objective than each of our own self interests. Andrew White: So looking forward, how do you feel about the future? Are you hopeful? Are you anxious? Are you concerned? What do you see as being the potential for business, the potential for society? Paul Polman: Oh, I actually like to quote Desmond Tutu who was on the panel with me in the UN not long ago. And he was asked that same question and he said, "I'm a prisoner of hope." An optimist and a pessimist have the same life and an optimist has a happier life. So I would always pick the optimist side. But I think a prisoner of hope is a good description of it. We have technology that we always underestimate how fast technology is going. The International Energy Agency was saying in 2014, that wind and solar would get five cents per kilowatt hour by 2050. We achieved it in 2020, and it's now one and a half cents. I just came from the United Emirates last week. So technology gives you hope. Paul Polman: The second reason that it gives us hope is really the cost of inaction and the cost of action. It is now cheaper and better also for your shareholders to do something. Like in Unilever, we're immediately well ahead of when people thought it was urgent, decarbonized our value chain. We have totally green electricity in our own operations and rapidly decarbonizing our whole value chain, which obviously takes a little bit longer. But we're saving hundreds of millions of euros, if not a billion euros already now in doing so. Anything that we worked, where we took the lead on sustainability, be it running our factories with zero waste, be it moving to sustainable sourcing, be it greening our electricity systems, I never found a bill. I always found a benefit. So that gives me a hope, the cost of action, inaction. The fact that the financial market is waking up and moving rapidly from treating it like a risk mitigation to seizing it as an opportunity, will be an incremental impetus for business to accelerate. Paul Polman: And then what gives me hope is frankly, the young people. Regretfully, in Glasgow, the average age in the halls of the negotiations was 60 and outside, it was well below 30. So we have a gap to overcome still. But the young people, including the employees in companies now are driving the changes. They're more purpose driven. They understand better what type of partnership, also, what type of future they want. They know how to leverage technology. So I'm actually very encouraged by what we see there. And it's time that we don't only give the young people a seat at the table. In many cases, it's actually time that we give them the table. Andrew White: Paul, thank you so much for your time today. We are going to close now with some quick-fire questions. So the first one, which leader from history inspires you the most? Paul Polman: Oh, I don't have one. I think it's accumulation of traits and they probably have the same traits, but people like Helen Keller or Rosa Park, where you look at individuals that really changed the course of history and they didn't have to. It's easy to say here's a big politician or we can all quote Mandela and Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa, if you want to. And they are great people because they are really living their lives, what I call in the ultimate sign of leadership, is to put yourself to the surface of others, knowing that by doing so, you're better off yourselves as well. But I go to these individuals that found themselves in situations and made a choice that was tough for which they got probably attacked and pressure, but its galvanised a multiplying change effect well beyond themselves. Andrew White: Thank you. And today? Paul Polman: I get the most energy actually from the people that are out there in the field, making things happen. When we saw with COVID governments failing, when we saw companies moving, but let's not celebrate that too much, we saw heroic efforts happening in the communities. I went out to West Africa at the time of Ebola and doctors were flying in there at the risk of their own lives. I was in Japan during the tsunami as the first foreign CEO coming in there. And I saw people just working day and night to rescue whatever was being rescued. I worked with our own blind foundation in Africa where we have 26,000 officially impaired or blind-deaf people in schools and the people that work with them, often for a pittance of salary day and night to give them humanity, dignity, respect, and to make their lives hopeful, just like we have these hopes, those are to me, the real heroes that should be celebrated. Andrew White: And is there a book that's had a real impact on you and the way you lead? Paul Polman: Well, I don't know. I just read many things, but I have to say, I read fast because especially the business books of the 500 pages, you can get it in about 50. The idea is to hit the right 50. But Stephen Covey, 7 Habits had a good influence on me, on effective leaders. And I think I still apply many of these tools. Good to Great from Jim Collins has been a very helpful book. I'm just reading the book, Hope that my friend Jane Goodall sent me. There's an interesting book I'm reading right now from Ping Fu, which is called Bend, Not Break about an incredible story of her life and how she applies that to her life lessons. So I enjoy the different types of books and the occasional Netflix movie. Andrew White: And what qualities do you look for in the people you work with and promote? Because with every promotion you make, you see the promise of certain characteristics, but also the reality of where they are at the moment in the current post that they're in. Paul Polman: Well, that is absolutely true. Especially when you get higher in the organisation, the skillsets that are needed to be a CEO, it's like being a headmaster in a school, instead of being a teacher. It's very difficult to see if it's going to be successful or not once you play at those levels. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn't work out. But I look at the basic skills for leadership. Some of them we talked already, what is that sense of purpose? What is humanity? What is humility? The ability to listen is very important. We have two ears and only one mouth. So often that listening creates that sense of awareness of what is happening out there, often the silent voices of the people you need to serve. And then curiosity. If you don't have a certain level of curiosity, there are people that never ask a question or never read a book, I'd be overly worried. The world is changing so fast. So you need to have that ability to learn, unlearn, find some fresh oxygen, and that comes from curiosity. Andrew White: And you've spoken about the younger generation. Is there something there that really stands out as impressing you, as giving you hope? Paul Polman: They're holding us to a higher level of accountability and we have this final moment now to show them that we don't fail. Otherwise, they'll take over anyway. They're already in the streets. They're walking out of our companies. I mean, we must be tone deaf or blind deaf if we don't get the signals. So include to use, make them part of it, and open the doors for them, enable them to be part of this big movement. Half the world's population is below 30 years old. They're going to be 100% tomorrow. And they certainly know what they're talking about. In Unilever, we deliberately participated in organisations like One Young World or WE Day or Nexus or ChocoVelas to create these tribes of young people. Despite our, what some people might call forward thinking models, they were quite, even for us, an engine of change in many respects. So it's important to start to turn some of these pyramids upside down, if I may call it that way. Andrew White: And then finally, for me, where do you go for inspiration and renewal? To be in a senior position can be draining. It demands a lot from you. Where do you go to be recharged, to be reinspired, to be re-energised? Paul Polman: Well, having a strong purpose makes you more resilient to deal with some of the cynics and sceptics undoubtedly, you come across along the way or the obstructions to any big change effort. That is a very important thing. I also feel that counting your blessings is very important. When I sometimes feel a little bit down or start to feel sorry for myself, I think of all these kids that are blind or blind-deaf, and want to be a minister of education to improve the education for people with disabilities, want to become a doctor because they want to be sure that other people don't find themselves in a preventable situation that made them blind. So the strengths for me comes actually from the real heroes that we talked about. Paul Polman: If I need a little bit of time for myself to reach out to the family, I'm very blessed with my own family. I'm very blessed with the opportunities to spend time in nature and reflect. We go for a week to the Amazon and sit in hammocks, listening to howling monkeys. And that might not feel like a restful night, but it certainly brings a different perspective to life of what's important. Andrew White: My thanks to Paul Polman. My name is Andrew White, and you've been listening to Leadership 2050, a podcast from Said Business School at the University of Oxford. Don't forget to check out our library of past episodes, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you'd like to hear more from Said Business School, exploring leadership, please visit oxfordanswers.org. Leadership 2050 is produced by Eve Streeter. Original music is by [Sibeg 00:36:42]. Our executive producer is David McGuire for Stabl Productions. In the next episode, I'll be talking to Circular Economy pioneer Jessica Long. Until the next time, thanks for listening.