Podcast Episode Details

274: Applying Leadership and the Environment in corporations

Episode 274

This episode describes how I train corporate and institutional leaders in environmental leadership.

Here are the notes I read from:

• Talking with more and more corporations lately, describing how I work with them
• Putting it here for easy reference
• You'll see among podcast guests many corporate and institutional people
• Lorna Davis of Danone C-Suite
• Dominic Barton 3-time Global Managing Director of McKinsey
• Beth Comstock, former CMO of GE (when Fortune 5), on Board of Nike
• Bob Langert, former Head of CSO at McDonalds
• Vincent Stanley, Director of Patagonia, where he's worked since 1973 and professor at Yale School of Management
• Tensie Whelan, Director of NYU-Stern's Center for Sustainability and Business, former President of Rainforest Alliance
• Col. Everett Spain, West Point's Head of Leadership
• Col. Mark Read, West Point's Head of Geologic Engineering
• Marine Corp 3-star General Paul Van Riper
• Michael Werner, Google's Lead for Circular Economy, formerly similar role at Apple
• Gave two talks in 2019 at Google, another at Citi and other banks, IBM, Boston Consulting Group, Coca-Cola, Lululemon
• John Lee Dumas, entrepreneur
• Dov Baron, leadership guru
• Marshall Goldsmith, Dorie Clark, Alisa Cohn, #1 coaches
• Behind the scenes, developed a lot with coaching clients at McKinsey, Exxon-Mobil, Columbia Business School
• Guest on MAGAmedia.org, a staunchly pro-Trump site, which talked about me supportively on 3 consecutive episodes
• Very business friendly because business can benefit from this
• Most common response is: I thought it would cost money or take time but it saves money and time.
• Most of all for the executives I work with, it replaces not knowing what to do when you have to act but fearing being called greenwashing or hypocritical
• for the company, it boosts morale and gives a competitive advantage. Think of how Patagonia can charge a premium.

Context: most companies hear demand from customers, employees, shareholders, and media to be more sustainable.

• Almost necessary for top talent. Patagonia doesn't have to advertise new positions. Exxon has to pay top dollar
• Just today I talked to a guy who runs a business Exxon wanted to hire. He quoted them a high price because he didn't want to work with
• them.
• Action usually comes from junior employees. They're younger and face more of their lives with potential catastrophe and they've invested
• less in old ways
• Easy to think senior decision-makers can just change, after all everything points to acting
• Decision-makers are often most vulnerable
• We've all heard people and organizations called greenwashing and hypocritical
• However well-meaning, accusations make choice for executives easier not to act and risk losing job or company value, even if they want to
• act
• They think they have to be perfect, an impossibly high bar
• They only have to show they are doing their best, a lower bar, but they have to show they are doing it genuinely and authentically.
•  
• I enable this, as you can hear from the conversations with the executives I mentioned
• For example, Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia behaves far from perfectly, but he hides nothing. As a result, people support him for his flaws
• instead of attack, because they see themselves in him
• If you act without sharing yourself, people judge your actions against perfection.
• If you share yourself---that's what leaders do, they allow themselves to be

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  Published on 5 years, 11 months ago