Paul Polman must be an ambitious man; not content with the mundane business of attempting to nudge Unilever’s earnings higher, he wants to reduce global poverty and address climate change into the bargain. In addition, according to this piece in the Telegraph, he also takes other business leaders to task for blindly chasing profits – the twits! Polman, a man who once trained as a priest, is no Johnny-come-lately to this sort of thing and gave voice to similar opinions in a Guardian interview a couple of years ago. Highlights from that interview include:
I don’t have a problem crying when I need to cry. There’s nothing wrong with that and showing that you care because it’s the same in any organisation; if you show that you care, others will care for you, 100%.
It’s [diversity] all about the way we value things. If you look at the female brain, it’s differently developed from the male brain; there is a better balance between the left and the right side. So there is more empathy, more purpose, longer-term thinking, more partnership and a sense of equality, a better understanding and listening skills than men.
The role of business has to be firmly understood by the CEO down, that it is there to serve the broader society, the common good and only by doing that very well you will be rewarded, but it has to start there and end there. You need to have an enormous discipline that you are not going to try to solve all the issues that are out there but that you stay focused on the things that you as your business, who you ultimately represent, can make the biggest impact. So, for us, it is issues like food security, sanitation and deforestation.
We focus on issues that also accelerate our business because we provide solutions. If it’s hygiene then we have a Lifebuoy for hand wash, if it’s women’s self-esteem we have Dove, so every brand becomes a cause, a social movement in that sense.
Just how all this slightly pompous and high-minded stuff helps the selling of margarine and ice cream is beyond me, but it certainly does seem to over-complicate what should be a fairly straightforward business. Polman reminds me of one of the ‘bad guys’ in an Ayn Rand novel–prioritising woolly, progressive ideas over simple rational steps that would improve the business. (Not that I am advocating a hardline Ayn Rand outlook either – I am not!)
I don’t have a problem with diversity, sustainability or anything else of that sort and more of it would be a good thing, but what does worry me about this talk is the lack of focus it implies. How can somebody with the responsibilities that PP has possibly focus on the nuts and bolts of selling stock cubes and washing powder if he is spending his time philosophising about global warming?
It also implies considerable complacency–there seems to be an assumption that Unilever will go on forever making profits almost regardless of how the company is led, thereby freeing the leadership to indulge its pet projects. Now, I don’t mean to take issue with the assumption that Unilever will make profits forever (that is why I own a tiny bit of it), but I do know that once a company’s leader starts to take success for granted, then problems will not be far away.
I would rather Paul Polman kept things simple by working towards three goals:
- Keeping his customers happy
- Looking after shareholders’ interests
- Making Unilever as rewarding a place as possible for its employees
Leave global warming to the politicians.