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Green Fix
Welcome to the Green Fix, the climate & sustainability podcast for Australian corporations and their ESG practitioners. We explore the top challenges and opportunities in the industry, how they are impacting your business and your work, so that you can keep your sanity.
Green Fix
S1 E7: Reimagining Business with Kindness with Dr. David Cooke
Dr. David Cooke's journey from transcendental meditation teacher to corporate leader offers a masterclass in values-based business leadership that delivers both purpose and profit. He shares how his "save the world gene" found expression in the corporate environment, culminating in his groundbreaking work as the first non-Japanese Managing Director of Konica Minolta Australia and New Zealand.
A simple but powerful declaration: "I want us all to work together to build a company that cares" became the foundation for remarkable business growth during a decade when the printing industry faced digital disruption and market contraction.
We tackle the hard questions around modern slavery in supply chains, navigating cross-cultural leadership challenges, and maintaining ethical standards during geopolitical turbulence
Whether you're a sustainability professional seeking greater influence, a leader navigating uncertain times, or simply someone who believes business can be a force for good, Cook's experiences offer both inspiration and practical guidance for creating value through values.
Topics:
Kind Business, Corporate Responsibility, Sustainability, Ethical Leadership, Modern Slavery, ESG, Business Ethics, Leadership, Profit and Purpose, Employee Engagement
Your Hosts:
Dan Leverington
Loreto Gutierrez
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The one thing a company needs to come back to is its values. If you say you stand for this, stand for it. Whether the sun's shining, you're in the middle of the biggest storm you've ever experienced in your corporate history. You're this fragile little rowing boat out in the harbour with all these geopolitical storms circling, but if you're anchored to the bottom of the ocean, you'll be buffeted, but the storm ultimately will pass over and you'll be absolutely fine.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Green Fix, the climate and sustainability podcast for Australian corporations and their ESG practitioners. We explore the top challenges and opportunities in the industry and how it impacts your business and your work, so that you can keep your sanity. I'm your host, loretta Buteris.
Speaker 3:And I'm Dan Leverington, and today we're joined by Dr David Cook. David is the Executive Director of ESG Advisory and is an adjunct professor at UTS Business School in Sydney. He is also the author of the book Kind Business how Values Create Value. Having held senior executive roles at Xerox and Canon, he then became the first non-Japanese managing director for ANZ for global technology firm Konica Minolta, where he also created the roles of chief sustainability officer, corporate social responsibility manager and ethical Sourcing Manager, with a female leader in each position.
Speaker 3:David has previously been the Chair at the United Nations Global Compact Network Australia, which is the world's largest corporate sustainability network, and Chair for the Australian Human Rights Institute Advisory Committee. David was awarded a doctorate for his research entitled Building Social Capital Through Corporate Social Investment and an honorary doctorate for his work in promoting sustainability within the corporate sector. I think it's pretty clear why we have asked him to join us today, as we navigate a pretty turbulent 25th birthday for the 21st century. David, can you tell us about your background and why you decided to dedicate your time to sharing the message on value-based business management?
Speaker 1:Thank you very much, dan, and thanks, loretto. I did spend 35 years in the corporate world, most of that at fairly senior management levels, but I wasn't always in the corporate world. When I was 17, I learned a meditation technique called TM. This is early 70s transcendental meditation popularized by the Beatles in the 60s and pretty much straight away I decided this is what I want to do with my life. I want to become a teacher of TM and went overseas and trained and, when I was 19, came back and then taught TM full time for eight years.
Speaker 1:Financial circumstances did force me out to get a job job and I did find myself moving into the corporate world, firstly as a salesperson for Xerox in the 80s.
Speaker 1:When I entered that corporate world, I joked with people that I still had my save the world gene deep inside me and I was always looking for ways to have some sort of a positive impact.
Speaker 1:When I did ultimately become the managing director of Konica Minolta, that really gave me the opportunity to do some good things in conjunction with all of the people that I worked with and on the very first day when it was announced that I would be the managing director the first non-Japanese managing director in the company's 40-year history in Australia. I walked up on stage and I didn't have a prepared speech, but I turned to the audience of about 300 people and I said, look, I want us all to work together to build a company that cares. It cares about the people who work here, that cares about our customers and that cares about our community. And pretty much having laid out that vision statement or put a stake in the ground that we would then, for the next eight years, measure ourselves against, it was really incumbent on me to make sure that our company had as positive an impact as possible on the environment and on the community.
Speaker 2:That's incredible, and here in July 2024, you published a book called Kind Business with the tagline Reimagining a Corporate World when People and Planet Are Placed at the Heart of Leadership Decisions. Can you tell us a little kind business with the tagline reimagining a corporate world where people and planet are placed at the heart of leadership decisions? Can you tell us a little bit more about your book and why the timing made sense for publishing that book?
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you for the question. What I felt at the end of my corporate career I wanted to distill into a book what I'd learned about responsible business and how there is not only compatibility between profit and purpose, but they're part of a virtuous circle that completely nourish each other. If you make more profit, you can do more purposeful things inside and outside your organization. If you're doing more purposeful things, you'll make more profit. The book provides examples of that. It's full of lots of case studies, both of companies that, I would argue, engage in practices that have been damaging to the environment and that's the first part of the book and we get over that into more light at the end of the tunnel and most of the book is focused on the good things that companies have done case studies and leaders.
Speaker 1:I talk about leadership attributes as a section on courageous leadership, a section on compassionate leadership, a section on self-awareness. I talk about leadership attributes as a section on courageous leadership, a section on compassionate leadership, a section on self-awareness. I wrote the book because I believe that if you distill down whether a company is a good, positive, responsible business, you'll tend to find the differentiator is leadership. I like to highlight some of those people who, for me, have been exemplars over the years. Towards the back end of the book, I use Conicum and Alta, the company that I ran, as a case study on what can occur, because the performance of that company did shift markedly over the time that we took a greater focus on sustainability and contributing to our community.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, and where can people find your book?
Speaker 1:It's available on virtually every online book retailer's platform. The audio book is available and also the e-book.
Speaker 2:Speaking of your leadership at Konica Minolta, which is the second half of your book. You had a longstanding career at Konica Minolta over 15 years, culminating in almost eight years as the chair managing director. I'd love to hear how you demonstrated the link between doing the right thing and positive business and impact at Konica Minolta.
Speaker 1:It's an important point because when you're running a profit-making business, there needs to be a link. I mean, if you're the owner of Patagonia, then I guess you can just go. I truly believe that the company that I run and manage is going to at all times stay the course and have a positive impact on the environment and on society. You have that flexibility. But when you're working in a global corporation, principally owned by shareholders who've bought shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, you kind of have many masters to serve, in a way, and you can't just do whatever your personal conviction is. But I was very fortunate, and that is that we started to go down this path, firstly because of that statement I want us all to work together to build a company that cares. I then went to everybody in Conicom and Alta and I said there's only one problem I don't know how to do that and I need your help. Said there's only one problem I don't know how to do that and I need your help. So all these ideas came flooding in. We sent an email to about 400 people at the time and we got 800 ideas. Now you can't reach out for those ideas and then ignore them. So what people wanted was? They wanted more purpose. They wanted us to be a better corporate citizen. They wanted us to stand up for values. It was a groundswell from the bottom up after simply a suggestion from the person at the top. It wasn't pushed down necessarily.
Speaker 1:And once we started to do these things to honor the contribution and the request of our people, then what happened is we never used any of the good things that we did in any marketing sense or collateral whatsoever, but we would continue to go about tendering for large technology contracts printing, scanning, document management, etc. Our competitors were people like Xerox and Canon and HP and what have you better known brands. Typically, we just didn't get to be the top two or three being considered for very, very large national tenders. Now we were. We were getting on the short list and we were winning, and sometimes I'd be involved in the bid up front. I'd be quite active as the managing director, because when you bring that title, which you know, to a bid or a presentation to a prospective client, you're also bringing the message that the busy senior person right at the top is actually interested in you as a client or a new client. Sometimes I would be, sometimes I wouldn't be, but I would always go when we won that tender and were awarded the contract and I would sit in front of the decision maker and I would say thank you, thank you for awarding us the contract and making us your technology partner.
Speaker 1:May I please ask a question? We think we're a great company and we think you've made a great choice, but can you tell me why did you choose us? And the answer kept coming back nothing to do with product, nothing to do with service levels, nothing to do with price. In fact, most people would say you're kind of all about the same. What people would say is one guy put it beautifully.
Speaker 1:He said we used to just look at the bright, shiny car you were trying to sell us car translating to multifunction network devices, and then we'd make a decision and we'd usually stick with our incumbent. No real reason to change, he said. But our own internal governance processes now require us to look under the hood, under the bonnet. Don't just look at the shiny car, lift up the hood and look inside the company and see who they are. Once we did that, we saw differences.
Speaker 1:Now, all those competitors, they're all good companies. I'm not saying they're not, but Konica Minolta had taken a really strong stand on some important sustainability issues and human rights issues regarding, you know, eliminating modern slavery and things of that nature, and so what people would say to me is, once we did that, everything changed and what we saw was that your values and our values align, and we realized we're a really good fit for each other, and that's why we awarded you the contract. Now, for me, somebody who had a personal conviction that our company should do good things in society and make a positive difference, that was absolute gold. It was manna from heaven, because during the 10 years between the global financial crisis and COVID, in an industry think about it largely based on hard copy printers, when people aren't printing much anymore, everything's gone digital. Our business grew every year for 10 years in a declining market against competitors who were much more household names than we were, and it was because of our values and sticking to our values, and so I didn't need any more proof statement than that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you think of the tightest of closed loops. When it comes to business, you need great customers and great employees, and they both compliment each other, and you can't have a successful business with just one. What was the impact of showing the actions to the employees when it came to embodying those values?
Speaker 1:It's a great question, because if they're just values on a frame on the wall of the boardroom, they don't really mean much at all, in fact, possibly have a negative impact on employee engagement, whereas I would like to think that my reputation in the company was such that, when I said those words, people said this guy really means it. Something's going to shift here, something's going to change. Probably the best example I can give to demonstrate just how significant it was with our people and I just need to background this slightly by saying one of the things that people asked for was that we had charity partnerships. We're talking 2013, I think, and the thing was that almost all companies had charity partnerships. We didn't. It just wasn't something that Japanese had chosen to do in Australia, and so we went back to our people and said this is what you're asking for. Number one was better communication top down, between departments, et cetera. Number two was purpose, and I said but it's a broad term, what does it look like to you? And then more nuanced feedback would come back and the charity partnership came up, and then I said we're all going to vote on who we want our charity partners to be, and it was literally a democratic process. We just picked the categories health, environment.
Speaker 1:But shortly after that we had an overseas trip for our highest achieving performers and regional dealers, and it was in Cambodia. We always had a keynote speaker on our gala awards night wherever we were on these annual trips. But we're in Cambodia. Like you know, I'd never been there, I there, nobody knew who a good keynote speaker in Cambodia might be, but we had a lady called Somali Ma'am recommended to us and we were told that she had been trafficked as a teenager into the world of sexual exploitation. But she had got out of that world and she'd formed a charity to rescue other young people and was doing great work.
Speaker 1:And at first I thought, yeah, it's a tough subject, it needs to be aired. But I don't know a gala corporate pumped-up awards night is the time or the place. But I was assured that there was very positive news at the end of her story that she used to tell her keynote. She brought five young women with her who'd been trafficked, had gone through a process of rehabilitation and now, showing unbelievable, unbelievable resilience, had actually got into their first year of university On the spot. We decided we'll add them in. We'll have a fourth category humanitarian. This is who we'll support. I came back and I said to everybody you know how I said we're going to vote on everything.
Speaker 1:I'm really, really sorry, but I've just added a fourth category with no votes at all, and it was in the spirit of what we were doing, though Everybody was delighted. Now, that's the background I need to tell you, because one thing I did, also within my first month of being MD, was I invited everybody who'd been in the organization for 25 years or more to come to Sydney and I took them out to dinner to say thank you. Just cheap and cheerful. They're actually all service engineers. If you've ever worked in an office environment and that pesky photocopier you kick it and it still doesn't work, you know. And you ring up the 13 number those guys.
Speaker 1:So there were about a dozen people, and at the end of the meal, one man who hadn't spoken all evening, very quiet man. He said could I please say something before we leave? I said, of course you can. He stood up in this public restaurant and he made what I'm sure would have been the first speech of his life. Other diners turned around to see what was happening. He said I've worked in this company for more than 25 years. It's why you invited me here tonight. He said I've worked in this company for more than 25 years, it's why you invited me here tonight.
Speaker 1:But for that entire period I never told anybody where I worked, I just couldn't see the point. It was just a place I went to to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay and that's how I fed my family. Now I tell every single person I meet that I worked at Coddick, at Minolta, so powerful. And he said and why would I do that? No-transcript. I get quite emotional when I tell this story.
Speaker 1:To work for an organization that would care about young women on the other side of the world who'd been trafficked into a life of sexual slavery, that man would probably meet four customers a day and he told everyone. I just want to let you know what a great company I work for. All my years in the corporate world I've seen companies search for the holy grail of how do you get everybody on the same page, how do you get maximum employee engagement, how do you get buy-in to the vision of the managing director? You have companies investing in people's learning and development, which people feel really good about. You have employee of the month programs. You have annual salary increases. Maybe I've never seen anything that moves the employee engagement dial as much as when a company simply authentically sets out to do good in the world along with their commercial aims of generating good shareholder returns.
Speaker 2:That is so beautiful, David, and really resonates with the way that I view corporates and the role of corporates as well in the world. One thing that comes up frequently with our interviews and between Dan and I we speak to a lot of sustainability leaders is the tension between prioritizing ethical practices and the work that you can do in non-for-profit space, in particular, with the demand for commercial results and building shareholder value. So did you face any pushback or did you have any challenges when it came to what might be perceived as prioritizing ethical practices versus commercial results?
Speaker 1:Yes, and also I'd say what might be perceived as a conflict between the two. You raise a very good point. The very short answer is yes, I did, because in Australia, conic and Minolta was kind of ahead of its time. I didn't realize it, but we're even a bit ahead of our time compared to a lot of companies in Australia, certainly in terms of the attitude in Japan. Our organization globally was a good company. They complied with the law, they were kind of on par with their competitors, the big global tech firms and all of that, but I wouldn't say that they actually drove a sustainability agenda.
Speaker 1:Interestingly, I had a major review at the end of my first 12 months in Tokyo. I'd been every quarter for financial result reviews, but this was more a review of me and I walked into my boss's office. He sits it down and he said David, I'm really, really disappointed in your first year. I've always found questions very valuable when you're under pressure like that. I say to my kids it's like a tennis match. Somebody hits a screamer of a serve at you. Just get it back over the net, then it's their problem. Give yourself a few seconds to think.
Speaker 1:I said to my boss could you please elaborate on your feelings that you've just expressed. Then he said I just think you could have done so much more. I thought well, that's interesting. I said to him you see the figures every day. We used to lose money. Now we actually make money. It's a very low margin industry, but we're in the black. Our market share has gone up, you know, revenues gone up. More units are being purchased out of the factory by Conicum and Ultra Australia where profit is made. A lot of positive indicators. You said you could have done so much more. I said it's interesting you should say that because in a way it's kind of a compliment to me. I think we did pretty well. The numbers suggest that. But you felt I could have even better than that.
Speaker 1:What do you think got in the way of me reaching the performance levels that you wanted? He said oh, that's really simple. You just got distracted. I said what do you think the main things that distracted me were? He said all that sustainability, csr, charity, partnerships, all that sort of stuff that you're doing. We hadn't quite moved strongly into ethical sourcing and anti-slavery at that stage. And I said you're a global business leader. He was number two in the company, very senior man, and I said and I have immense respect for you, I really really do. But no matter how deeply I think about your words, I'm going to come back to the same conclusion and that is that the reason we improved the company's financial performance was because of all of the things you just mentioned. They didn't get in the way. They were the reason we achieved those results. I can't think of anything particularly differently that we did.
Speaker 1:He got quite upset by that and because I crossed the line in a Japanese hierarchical system where you honor every word that your boss speaks, he had never been confronted with that before, probably didn't really know how to engage in that conversation. So he waved his arm and sent me out of his office and he didn't speak to me for another year. All my meetings in Tokyo were through his lieutenants carrying his messages. I learned a lesson about the nuances of working with different cultures there. I had three bosses and it came up again and again. One thing I tried to get a little bit clever's the wrong word. But in one conversation, I must admit, I did say to one of my bosses in Australia as the chair of the board of Konica Minolta, I'm governed by the Australian Corporations Act.
Speaker 1:One of the important points in that act is a director of a company in Australia must at all times act in the interests of the company.
Speaker 1:Some people interpret that to mean they should only have a laser-like focus on the bottom line, shareholder dividend and shareholder returns in the short term.
Speaker 1:I don't hold that interpretation.
Speaker 1:My view is I must produce shareholder returns over the long term and build a truly sustainable company, and the way we will do that is by contributing to the community and to the planet. Therefore, when you say to me, stop doing the things that you're doing the sustainability agenda and so on I cannot stop doing those things because I will be in breach of Australian law If I find myself in front of a regulator and the regulator says your company used to be known for its really good sustainability and human rights agenda. You don't do that anymore. Do you truly believe that this new path you've taken is acting in the best interest of your company? I would have to say no, I don't Instantly. I've broken the law and there are very heavy penalties for directors. There can be fines, you can be barred from being a director. You can even be jailed in certain instances. I'm really, really sorry, but I have to comply with Australian law first, and with your directive in Tokyo second, and it got me through because it sounded pretty convincing and actually it's true.
Speaker 3:I think it's something that a lot of Australian businesses are going to have to wrestle with in the short term, particularly with the mandatory climate reporting laws that are now in effect. I'm fascinated by not only your experience working for a multinational with a head office from a different culture to the one that you grew up in, but also as you're bringing in the cultural change at Konica Minolta. As we said in the intro, you created the positions of Chief Sustainability Officer, corporate Social Responsibility Manager, ethical Sourcing Manager. One of the things that Loretto and I consistently see are just the amount of silos that exist within organizations, and I'm wondering how, in your role as managing director, you are able to bring each of those subject matter experts into the room in order to have a whole of business approach to the solutions that clearly had a very positive impact on the growth of the business.
Speaker 1:It's a very fair observation about silos, dan. I didn't have as much success as I wanted. I had an executive team, the classic roles of chief marketing officer and information officer and finance officer and so on. Each of those people it's been decades building their careers in one silo. They're subject matter experts and are uncomfortable when they were outside of their silo and probably felt a bit vulnerable. And are uncomfortable when they were outside of their silo and probably felt a bit vulnerable. Like I can be an expert here, but I know very little here and sometimes lack the courage possibly to think more broadly about the whole company. I was the only person as CEO that had the actual job of thinking about the whole company. But I'd say to people, when we come in for our exec meetings, leave your finance hat at the door or your IT hat at the door. We're going to work together to build this company and I did create the role of chief sustainability officer, but I felt that she had a hard job because it just wasn't natural for the others to be thinking about a sustainability agenda.
Speaker 1:What I say to sustainability professionals is if that's a situation you're in or that's the world that you might be entering, it's incumbent on you not just to be a deep dive subject matter expert, like each of those other people are. It's also incumbent on you to learn how to get them engaged and to sell your message. I say this also to the not-for-profit sector. When you go in and you sit opposite a desk of somebody who possibly knows little about your world or what you're trying to achieve, or the people that you're trying to help, or about the devastating imperative of taking action on climate change, then what you have to do is put yourself in their shoes. The last thing you should do is talk all about the stuff that interests you. What you have to do is ask them what's most important to them, and if it's a one-on-one, like a not-for-profit, it can be the CEO. Look, can you please tell me what's keeping you awake at night? What are some of the biggest challenges you're facing in running the company? Getting right through to the end question, which could be. And may I ask? You'll be in the corporate world for quite a while yet, I imagine, but when you do leave, what sort of legacy would you like to leave behind? What do you want to be known for as a leader If you don't talk? Ask questions. Listen to the answers. Respond according to the answers. What you will find when you start to dig into what's important to them, there'll be overlap with what's important to you Now. You've listened for a period of time and now you've earned the right to then say thank you for sharing all of those insights with me.
Speaker 1:May I please talk a little bit about what our organization does? And you've got a receptive listener. It's no different if you're a chief sustainability officer going into an exec meeting, you do need to talk about some of the broader company issues. The marketing person's main agenda is how do we differentiate ourselves from our competitors? The finance person's looking how do we make more profit in this business. Everybody's got their own agendas. You can't just go in and talk about your world for your 20 minutes that you've got and then full stop. You need to learn how to help others to understand where your part of the business fits into their part of the business and into the whole business, and the most powerful tool generally you can have are questions and the ability to listen and show respect to the answers.
Speaker 2:David, I want to pivot the conversation to talk about business in 2025. We are experiencing what is a very interesting time, both from a geopolitical perspective, the swing of tariff policy, market volatility in Australia, the upcoming elections we are recording about two weeks before a federal election in Australia and many businesses are hesitant at the moment to take action in case it ends up being the wrong decision. Why do you believe that retreating to the business as usual mentality is not the right solution?
Speaker 1:Yes, we live in interesting times. The first thing I would ask when I see a company backing off, let's say, it's diversity, equity and inclusion agenda or its commitment to utilizing green energy or whatever the specific point might be, that retreat, when I see that, the first thing I ask myself is why did you go down that path in the first place? And if the answer was well, we kind of sniffed the breeze and we got a sense that our people really wanted this and our customers wanted it and the regulators wanted it and shareholders were bringing it up at AGMs, we kind of saw that it was a good thing for us to do. Well, okay, why isn't it still a good thing for you to do? It is, but it's only those organizations and I'm going to be critical here led by people who lack courage, that then go scampering off and go back to the old ways of doing things.
Speaker 1:It's completely wrong and again I would argue in an Australian context, it's in breach of the legislation which says you must always act in the best interests of your company, because there are so many positives when you build an organization the people there are proud of, build an organization that people want to do business with they want to spend their money with you, an organization where the regulators give you a big tick, an organization where people want to buy your shares for reasons other than just a dividend.
Speaker 1:It makes zero sense to me, no matter how turbulent the times might be, to suddenly completely change direction, and I would say the one thing a company needs to come back to is its values. If you say you stand for this, stand for it. Whether the sun's shining, you're in the middle of the biggest storm you've ever experienced in your corporate history. You're this fragile little rowing boat out in the harbour with all these geopolitical storms circling, but if you're anchored to the bottom of the ocean, you'll be buffeted, but the storm ultimately will pass over and you'll be absolutely fine and you will come out at the end of these turbulent times and you will have earned the pride of all of your stakeholders and you'll be positioned commercially far better than take off after the storm has passed.
Speaker 2:And coming back to one comment you made around people, meaning the employees. What role do you believe that businesses can play in providing a sense of agency to their employees during what is a very volatile time?
Speaker 1:Another very, very good point and timely discussion. I was doing some work moderating an ethics workshop for Monash Uni through their Cranlander Centre for Ethical Leadership in Melbourne Cranlander Centre for Ethical Leadership in Melbourne and we were talking about leadership qualities and what have you and interestingly, as part of that I put into ChatGPT what are the main qualities of a leader? And I got all the stock standard stuff you might expect They've got to be strong and all that kind of stuff. So then I put into ChatGPT They've got to be strong and all that kind of stuff. So then I put into chat GPT what about empathy, humility, kindness, vulnerability, sensitivity and immediately? Well, yes, they're really important too, but they're generally overlooked In this workshop.
Speaker 1:I brought that up as a bit of a funny story. But then we started talking about leadership qualities, and one that didn't come up was which is, I think it's very important it's consistency, and that's what people who work in organizations need, particularly during turbulent times. They need to know that when the senior people in the company said this is what we stand for, that you consistently stand for that and you don't retreat. I mean, how demoralizing to work for a company that's just come out and said I think honoring diversity has been the wrong thing for us to do, or whatever I mean how crushing the people might've actually gone to work there because the company said it was important. I think consistency, staying the course, having the courage and the conviction of your beliefs is probably the best way to give agency to your people, because then the people will keep coming to you.
Speaker 3:You give people agency by continuing to listen to them, to honor them, to respect them and to implement what they're asking you to do there is so much opportunity for companies that do that over the next few years because it's becoming very obvious very quickly which companies were saying it, like you said, because they sniffed the breeze versus the ones that genuinely believe that their company is better off by having those practices at their core. In your book, um, you've got a really powerful line that actually stopped me dead while I was reading it, that I'd like to share with our listener, and it says whereas in the environmental sphere there is the option albeit perhaps questionable of buying carbon credits to erase negative environmental impacts, there are simply no carbon offsets in the world of human rights. You mentioned that finding slavery in Konica's supply chain was a road to Damascus moment for you, especially as you believed that the organization was already an ethical business. Can you elaborate on that experience and how it changed your perspective on business ethics?
Speaker 1:The road to Damascus. Moment occurred during a conference that we were having one of these annual trips and it was in Thailand and we were on an old clipper ship four-masted old sailing ship for dinner that night off the coast of Thailand, way out in the middle of the ocean, and there was a discussion by the cruise director about a whole range of things Thai culture, thai cuisine and what have you and then Q&A and the first question from somebody was we're out here in the middle of the ocean. It's pitch black, except all around. We can see lights dotted throughout the ocean. What are the lights? And the person said wherever you see a light, it's a Thai fishing vessel. They shine the light into the water. The fish are attracted to the light. That's how they catch them. But it's interesting. You should ask that because just last week during the day, we jumped in one of the little dinghies and we went over to one of the vessels and we explained who we were and we have tourists on board every week and could we come on board and talk to them about life at sea and what do they catch? The Thai fishing captain said sure, come on board.
Speaker 1:This woman stepped on board and the first thing she saw was an emaciated man, very poor health, sitting on the deck of the boat with a collar around his neck. A chain was attached to the collar and he was chained to the deck of the boat and it was some disbelief. She said who's that? And the Thai fishing captain looked down and he said oh, it's a slave. So notice the dehumanizing language. Not, he's a slave, it's a slave, so it's a commodity to him. And she said but you can't have slaves. And with a sweep of his arm indicating all the other boats out there, he said most of us have got slaves. And she said but why do you have him chained up? And the captain looked back down at him and he said oh, this one's a troublemaker, but not for much longer. It'll be fish food soon. So they were going to murder him by throwing him overboard in the middle of the ocean. No big deal. And then the captain said but look, if you're so worried about it, you can buy it off me if you want to. They negotiated a price of 500 US. She went back to the ship, spoke to the captain of this cruise ship, came back with the money and they bought that human being to set them free. They diverted from their normal course. They went to a police station and explained what had happened and handed this person over. It turned out they were from Myanmar. They'd been tricked into thinking they were coming to Thailand for a good job in an air-conditioned factory or something like that, assembling electronics, and of course it was a complete trap and their passport was taken off them and they were essentially kidnapped, sold and had been living on this ship.
Speaker 1:I spoke at a UN conference in Geneva telling that story. One of the people on the panel was the Indonesian fisheries minister. She said they have boarded fishing vessels at sea who stray out of international waters by mistake Indonesian waters. They swoop on them. She said we've found people who've been on board those boats for up to 25 years, never having touched land. The Damascus moment for me was thinking if this seafood is going into the supply chains of the biggest food companies in the world all the global brands that we know and love and into our supermarkets and our restaurants and our homes, then surely similar slavery is occurring in the industry that I'm in, in tech manufacturing. There's no reason to think that it's not going on there.
Speaker 1:We came back to Australia and we started to research very deeply supply chains and ethical sourcing and what can be done, and we did realize that our understanding and perception of ourselves went from we're a good company doing good things to yeah, we might be, but there's a massive piece missing.
Speaker 1:That is that the goods that we sell to our clients probably have components in them made by slaves. There's no slavery in Connick Manolis factory, but there's thousands of parts that go into every laptop and every iPhone. And what have you all made by other little companies? That's where the problem lies. It's two or three tiers down and we just knew that we had to do something about it. We genuinely took on that as a mission for our company, and also the products we bought, the uniforms we had for our technicians we didn't know where they were made. Turns out they were possibly made in Bangladesh, where women were paid next to nothing, mistreated in the factories, maybe in sexual harassment, going on. All these things were occurring on my watch as a CEO. That was a big turning point for us.
Speaker 2:The concept and the term modern slavery. It's used quite widely but a lot of people don't realize that when we talk about modern slavery we're talking about actual human slavery.
Speaker 1:Correct.
Speaker 2:And not some abstract corporate concept. One thing that I'd like to talk about in how we bring practical action to this work is how does effective collaboration look like in the context of modern slavery and sustainability?
Speaker 1:I would say every sustainability professional has chosen a life path that's extremely important and that is contributing to the lives of others, particularly vulnerable people, and that could be with an environmental focus because of rising sea levels around the world, where it's generally the most vulnerable people that will be most affected will lose their homes, will lose their island countries, but also those that are more focused on the specific human rights areas, like modern slavery. Back to an earlier point I made. What I would ask is don't just focus on becoming more and more knowledgeable about your discipline. You've probably got more than enough knowledge. You've got a hundred times more knowledge than your peers sitting around the executive table. I would say go looking for the keys to unlocking buy-in, to get these people collaborating with you.
Speaker 1:I find one of the most powerful tools is questioning. This is a bit blunt and this is probably easier for a consultant to do coming in to address a board than an employee addressing their board or an employee addressing an exec team. But sometimes you've got to get a little confronting to wake people up. If I was standing in front of a board today and I was given 30 minutes, I would lead with questions and the first question would be is are you comfortable that a lot of the products that you're selling or a lot of the products you use in your business are made by slaves? The key when asking, confronting questions like that is at that point you do not speak, you will have made the room very uncomfortable. As a good person, you'll want to alleviate the discomfort of your audience and say something like what I'm referring to is. Research shows us that there are more than 50 million people in the world today in modern slavery, and that's now you're starting to bring your subject matter expertise in.
Speaker 1:Resist the temptation to do that. Do not speak and wait for the answer. Silence is your greatest friend in that situation. Don't let people off the hook. Make them answer the question. Are you comfortable? May I ask do we have a time frame for eliminating slavery from any aspect of our company? Do not speak.
Speaker 1:Collaboration by withholding your expertise Sounds counterintuitive. But engage people by asking them questions. You do not want to walk out of a meeting where everybody politely listened, nodded, thanked you for your 50 slide PowerPoint, deck said have a good day. You closed the boardroom door, you walked out and somebody says to you what did you achieve? And you go. I don't know if I achieved anything. You don't want to do that. You want to have impact If you have to reach into the bottom drawer for the tough questions right at the end, but hopefully you'll get buy-in along the way and collectively with these people, let's build a bit of a plan here together. Can I book more time to come back in? You'll want to take them on the journey more than just confront their inaction. That's a last resort.
Speaker 2:Fantastic piece of advice. David, we are winding down the podcast, we're going to end on a high note and we're going to ask you two questions that we ask all of our guests. The first one is here at the Green Fix, we've got this fantastic piece of technology called the Green Fix Magic Wand, and with this magic wand you can do anything you'd like. We're now handing over the magic wand to you. What would you do with it?
Speaker 1:Okay, I'd wave it vigorously and I would create an understanding amongst all business leaders that if they choose to channel their vast amounts of capital, resources, brilliant minds and influence in society into furthering the broad range of sustainability agendas that will make the world a better place, then that will be also a wonderful thing to do for their business in achieving their commercial aims, and their shareholders will thank them for it Absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 3:Final question can you please take us out by telling us a piece of positive climate news that you've heard recently?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, interestingly, I was doing a little bit of research for a panel on resilience amongst sustainability professionals, because it's kind of a hard gig. Firstly, you come in with your eyes wide open and you know wanting to do great stuff, and then what a lot of people find is progress isn't as fast as they'd like, they're not quite getting that traction of that buy-in from other parts of the business that they need, and so on, and it can be daunting, and the turnover in sustainability is quite high, and I thought the important thing, though, is to remember you are making progress. The stats are there. A global one was in 2024, clean energy sources provided over 40% of global electricity, driven largely by the uptake of solar, which has doubled in the last three years. That really buoyed my spirits. When I read that, I thought, wow, there's kind of more progress than I was prepared to admit to myself.
Speaker 1:In an Australian context, in a similar vein, emissions have decreased by nearly 30% from 2005 levels, albeit we need faster progress to meet our 2030 target. The positive news is that we are making progress and we just need everybody to find that strength and resilience to keep going, to keep going. And, you know, let me finish off by thanking every single person working in the sustainability area that might be listening to this podcast for the work that you do, and also those that aren't necessarily specifically sustainability professionals, but are people who, in their own lives, have been prepared to make personal changes and sacrifices to their own purchasing patterns, to their own lifestyle patterns, to ensure that they, as an individual, also contribute to a more positive footprint, because every individual is important on this journey as well.
Speaker 3:Couldn't agree more, david. Thank you so much for today. Every time I walk away from one of our times speaking, I feel smarter and a little bit more optimistic, so thank you for your long-term leadership. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:And thank you, Loretta.
Speaker 2:This was Green Fix with your hosts Loretta Gutierrez and Dan Levington. You can get your Green Fix every two weeks on Apple Podcasts, spotify or Pocket Casts.
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