September 2, 2024 • 56 mins
In this episode 115 of “Meaningful Work, Meaningful Life,” we kick off our season 10 “Leaders on a Mission” series with Christopher Marquis, Sinyi Professor at the University of Cambridge Judge School of Business and author of the book “The Profiteers: How Business Privatises Profits and Socialises Costs.”
Chris exposes the strategies companies use to shift environmental and societal costs while maximising profits for shareholders. He also highlights pioneering companies that are actively creating positive impacts, offering a roadmap for transformation.
Chris shares his personal journey, his inspiration from students, and insights into corporate sustainable responsibility.
If you're passionate about corporate sustainability, curious about how businesses can be a force for good or seeking inspiration to align your work with your values, this episode is a must-listen.
Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a 5-star review of the podcast if you liked this episode.
More info about the podcast • Website: https://www.francinebeleyi.com/podcast/ • Watch on Youtube https://bit.ly/3LKwUT1
Connect with Francine Beleyi, the host • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francinebeleyi/ • Website: https://www.francinebeleyi.com/
Connect with Chris Marquis, the guest • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-marquis/ • Website: https://chrismarquis.com/
Related resources • Book: The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs by Christopher Marquis
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:16):
What is leader on a mission? A leader on a mission is someone who exposes how
business shifts costs to society while maximizing profit.
Welcome to the Meaningful Work, Meaningful Life podcast, the show that empowers
you to redefine the life you want and live your best life right now.
(00:39):
I'm your host, Francine Belli, and in this season 10, we are delving into the
theme of Leaders on a Mission, where we explore the personal journeys,
impactful work of visionary leaders who are making a difference in the world.
Today, I'd like to bring you the incredible conversation I had with Chris Marquis,
(01:04):
Senior Professor at the University of Cambridge Church School of Business and
author of the book The Profiteers, How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Costs.
So Chris is also a prolific writer with contributions to Forbes,
The Boston Globe, Washington Post, Fortune Times, and Harvard Business Review. view.
(01:27):
In our chart, Chris exposes the strategies that companies use to shift the environmental
and societal costs whilst maximizing the profits for their shareholders.
So it's eye-opening to say the least. And what makes Chris a leader on a mission
(01:48):
is an unwavering commitment to redefining what responsible business looks like.
He doesn't just critique the system.
He offers a roadmap for transformation.
So he highlights pioneering companies that are not just doing less harm,
(02:10):
but are actively creating positive impact.
So Chris also shared his personal journey and how he was inspired by his students
to writing groundbreaking books like The Profiteers.
So his insights are not only thought-provoking, but also incredibly actionable.
(02:30):
And if you are passionate about corporate sustainable responsibility,
curious about businesses, how they can be forced for good, or just looking for
inspiration to align your work with your value, you, you don't want to miss this episode.
So sit down, relax, and get ready to be inspired. Welcome, Chris.
(02:55):
Francine, thanks so much for having me. Great to be here. Yes,
thank you so, so much, Chris.
As I told you offline, I'm so excited about this conversation.
And then before we get into it, tell us what's your background? ground.
Sure. Yeah. So I'm at Cambridge, as you mentioned, although people probably
already realized from hearing me talk, I'm not English.
(03:17):
I am American and grew up, spent most of my life and career in the United States.
Two years ago, I moved to Cambridge and I've really been enjoying the UK.
That's awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And now you're joining us today from the US, right?
Yeah. So it's the summertime. And given most of my family is still here in the
(03:39):
US, During breaks, I spend a lot of time in the U.S. During term time, I'm at Cambridge.
But frequently, either in the winter holidays or in summer, I do come back to the U.S.
That's fantastic. So tell me, what did you want to do when you grow up?
(04:00):
Sure, yeah. Good question.
Or an astronaut? What did you want to do?
Yeah, good question. I don't know if I had any sort of really firm, firm beliefs.
I mean, the thing that comes to mind is, is, you know, this is sort of a funny, funny thing.
When I was growing up, you know, I was very young and we lived in a sort of a standalone house.
(04:24):
Most of, you know, in the US, most people have sort of standalone homes and
next door people were having a cement porch put in and there was a cement truck that has, you know,
sort of, they have this rotating back to keep mixing the cement.
And this was, I was just fascinated with this.
And for a long time, I thought I wanted to be a cement truck driver,
which I know is sort of not exactly where you were going with that.
(04:49):
But I think, yeah, that's sort of immediately what came to mind.
I've been in academia for now about 25 years.
I started getting my PhD in 2020. Before that, I worked in the financial services industry.
I think in general, I was interested in business, wasn't exactly sure about
(05:09):
mission-oriented businesses or academic research that I ended up doing.
But over time, I came to realize that actually being a professor,
an educator, communicator and researcher was where I wanted to spend my time and energy.
That's very fantastic. So what is one thing that people don't know about you?
(05:32):
One thing people don't know about me?
That's funny so thinking about it it's uh again sort
of going back and you know i guess all these things are going back into
my my past around that same age
is when i wanted to be a a a cement
truck driver i actually was i was a child model
actually believe it or not so i i have
(05:55):
a few like i was on the
box of a few products and in various sort of catalogs
and made very much or made my parents very much money i don't know where any
of that money money went but one of my relatives had
a friend who was somehow involved in the in
the modeling industry and i sort of got had these these various
(06:17):
little jobs and so it's sort of a funny funny thing that i don't think many
people know about me but but is one well you have made a career in the modeling
thank you again that's really really great thanks uh chris so your book The book, for 50 years,
really exposed how cooperation transferred hidden costs onto society.
(06:39):
And this is really a fascinating read. But before we go into the book itself,
I'd like to know what was that personal journey or pivotal moment that led you
to focus on this really critical issue? Yeah, good question.
It's hard to boil down sort of one, so I'll give you two, if you don't mind.
(07:01):
And I think they represent a lot of what generally sort of inspires and motivates
me. So one is from my students.
Actually, about 15 years ago, I was teaching a class on corporate social responsibility.
This is back in the day, things like sustainability or social entrepreneurship,
you know, these more refined terms didn't exist.
And people, you know, I've said corporate social responsibility sort of sounds
(07:24):
like an old term now, but that was, you know, really where we focus.
This was, I guess, in 2009.
And, you know, we were studying these large companies that had,
you know, you know, probably really great philanthropy or employee volunteering
programs or work with NGOs.
And the student said, you know, all these companies are doing this work,
(07:45):
nothing against it, but really it's only a side aspect of their business.
It's not about the core of their business.
And they said, you know, we should be studying companies that have a social mission at their core.
And this was something that I never really thought that much of.
They mentioned the B corporations, which are companies that are certified for
(08:06):
their social and environmental impact.
And I ended up doing a bunch of studies in an earlier book on the B B Corp movement.
And so certainly that had an influence. But I think the idea that companies
could have a mission at their core is something that really inspired my students.
And over a number of years, actually, I transitioned that class I was teaching
into a class that was really about social entrepreneurship and how companies
(08:29):
can actually really have a deep mission at their.
Core. One of the companies, and I've studied hundreds of companies now,
that really was inspiring to, you know, really the trajectory of this book that
I ended up doing, The Profiteers.
You know, interestingly, and maybe counterintuitively, was a company that's doing the right thing.
(08:51):
So, you know, The Profiteers, How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes
Cost, it sounds like a critique of business.
And it is. It's just very much a critique of the system and the policies and
the investment markets and many of the ideas and large corporate corporate leaders
as to what responsible business should be.
But there's a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs with mission
(09:13):
at their core that are really, you know, trying to do the right things.
And so this entrepreneur was the co-founder of a company called Grove Collaborative.
And what he described to me is that, so Grove Collaborative is a company that produces.
Sort of, you know, you know, produces market cells, a variety of home and,
(09:35):
you know, health, health and beauty type products and home cleaning products.
Many of these products are traditionally packaged in plastic because they're
liquids and they need some sort of, you know, vessel that, you know,
isn't, isn't porous and plastic is usually the cheapest way to do that.
And he said, you know, the core of my business is focused on eliminating plastic.
(09:56):
And, you know, I'd never really thought that much about sort of plastic.
I mean, I knew plastic was a problem, but I hadn't thought about an entrepreneur
sort of seeing that, you know, his mission isn't about selling more products
or, you know, doing something great for his stakeholders,
but actually the core mission is about really, you know, orienting the business around,
(10:19):
you know, creating positive good as opposed to just mitigating negatives.
And he talked to me about how actually having this core mission really influenced
a lot of the innovation of the company.
So they came up with new formulations for their products.
So like shampoos traditionally are in liquids and bottles.
(10:39):
They came up with some new bar shampoos, which actually won a bunch of awards.
They created new innovative ways of doing cost benefits inside their companies.
So the P&L of many of their sort of business lines actually costed out carbon.
There's costs on carbon, but also costs on plastic. So they created ways to
(11:01):
sort of financially incentivize their managers and also created a badging system
so consumers could understand.
The plastic content. So this idea of really trying to be deeply sustainable
in the business model create a lot of innovation for good.
And so, you know, I'm glad I got to mention those two examples because,
(11:21):
you know, so much of what has inspired me is my students and actually the entrepreneurs that I study.
And I think, you know, I'm learning a lot from them and it's sort of really
an honor in many cases to try to, you know, connect the dots between many of
those stories and bring those stories to public light.
Yeah, this is really fascinating, actually, understanding how those social enterprises,
(11:45):
actually put the core of their mission to actually, as you say,
not mitigating all the negative effects that have been out there,
but actually positively influencing the society.
What do you think, actually, is the incentive that many other companies
(12:05):
don't think that way obviously we we know that there is like a lot of you know
very convenience because when you think of this example soap or shampoo is so
convenient for the consumer themselves to have like a liquid shampoo rather
than a bottle way to put on your hair etc.
(12:26):
So actually the the i now use bar shampoo it actually works pretty much as good
as easy as liquid shampoo,
you know, actually just lather it up in your hand a little bit.
It's very lathering. And then, you know, you can sort of, you know,
do your, so, so, but your question I know was about like, you know,
why, why aren't more companies doing this?
I think in general, and I think, and one of the reasons I wrote this new book
(12:49):
and I, and I, and I focus on this critique of how business privatizes profit
and socializes costs is that the way the systems in our world, policy systems.
Investment markets are set up, really encourage companies to focus on short-term
profits as opposed to thinking about how they can innovate more broadly.
(13:14):
And so I think one issue is that it's not even that there aren't incentives.
It's just that there are so many barriers and so many constraints just to how
business is normally done, that companies,
you know, they're, you know, understandably, you know, there's all I mean,
it's it's a challenging marketplace now nowadays.
(13:34):
And there's all kinds of, you know, sort of fires that, you know,
so to speak that, you know, they have to deal with the CEOs that deal with on a day to day basis.
So it's a really very hard. So I think a lot of the work I do is to try to help
some of those innovations gain a wider sort of knowledge.
And so they can influence policy, influence investors to try to help shift some
(13:57):
of those systems because, you know, innovators and entrepreneurs like Growth Collaborative,
are amazing examples and they're they're proving that that this can be done in an in an effective.
Way but voluntary action from
entrepreneurs is only going to get us so far we need to actually have broader
(14:18):
systems support this if we're going to be more sustainable as a world because
you know we there's a lot of issues with climate change a lot of issues with
inequality that we need to be very seriously addressing?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And, you know, as you say, and I read the book and I
know that a lot of these, you know, problems come from companies.
(14:44):
However, going back to what I was kind of alluding to earlier and what I'm thinking
myself is, are we consumers also part of the problem?
Because if we always look for convenience, Like all those single-use items.
I really don't understand why, you know, they are actually, they'll tell you,
(15:07):
business, I come from business or some kind of background.
They'll say that they're kind of looking at the market. They want to satisfy
customers' markets and customer needs, and they want single-use, et cetera.
The only thing they're doing is to satisfy customer's strengths.
What would you say about that? Yeah, I think I mean, I think so we as consumers
need to be doing everything we can, no doubt about that.
(15:30):
So I, you know, and I, you know, I try as much as possible to be a sustainable,
you know, consumer, I don't buy a ton, I try to buy things,
you know, in, you know, from from brands that I know are sustainable and ethical.
I'm not perfect, you know, I mean, I do buy things through Amazon,
(15:50):
I will sometimes, you know, get a single use.
A single use, you know, sort of drink.
I mean, so no one is perfect. It's really very challenging. But I think,
though, that where I have problems with companies always saying that is because.
They are in many ways the most active shapers of policy and consumer behavior.
(16:18):
And so they're sort of talking out of, you know, both sides of their mouth in
some ways, So a real extreme example, for instance,
is around greenhouse gas emissions and carbon emissions and how that influences climate change.
So now, as known through a variety of court cases and investigative media work,
(16:42):
the fossil fuel industry has, for decades, been hiding the evidence they have
that there is a link between carbon emissions and climate change.
They also do things like...
You know, sort of come up with this idea of individual carbon footprint so that
people think it's their own responsibility.
(17:03):
So, you know, it's very convenient for me to say like, oh, well,
people want to, you know, they want to drive, they want to, you know, fly.
But then also they're very actively hiding and shaping things so that we all
do think about, think that it's our responsibility.
So I think the companies, and that's, you know, they want to do that for bottom line.
(17:26):
So I think the companies, we need to actually look much more,
you know, in a much more sort of forceful way at their behavior and,
you know, their production as a root of some of these issues we have.
Yes. In the book, there are so many interesting concepts, actually,
(17:46):
that I'd like us to, you know, uncover.
Some of them, like, you know, you talk about externalities,
which are gaslighting and so
i'm going to come back to those great but actually
one of the thing also is that you know they say you know for example if we take
(18:06):
before we get to that first of all the even the term profiteers can you explain
that what actually is within this concept Sure,
sure. Profiteers. So basically.
It's the idea of having excess profits at the detriment of some other entity,
(18:30):
which you mentioned externalities.
That's a key concept in the book, which is, you know, these costs,
social environmental costs that business production puts on the broader society
and as a result ends up getting higher, higher profits.
So, you know, the canonical example nowadays is carbon emissions.
(18:56):
And there's discussion of, you know, things like carbon taxes,
carbon markets, et cetera, because for a long time, when manufacturers were
producing, you know, their products, you know, the smoke,
the pollutants that came out of their smokestacks, I mean, basically those went
into the air and that was free for them.
However, there's a lot of respiratory
(19:19):
issues, health issues that people in the surrounding area have.
There's climate change is another issue. So this idea of sort of excessive profits
at the cost of someone else is really what I'm trying to get at with the profiteer idea.
In terms of those externalities, before I even come to that,
(19:40):
what you just said about carbon emission, I was even reading,
like, today, a lot of big companies, especially tech companies,
are actually buying carbon credits.
So instead of reducing your carbon footprint, you just go and externalize even
your emissions to say, oh, let's be polluted.
(20:04):
Go and buy some credits from these kind of companies. This is weird. So what is this concept?
Yeah. So, I mean, I think the way you put that is put very, very well.
I do think that does get to the root of some of the critiques.
I mean, there's a couple of very, I think, very important critiques of sort
of the carbon offset in carbon markets where you can buy these offsets.
(20:29):
So one is exactly what you're saying, that businesses should be focusing on
reducing their own carbon footprint, not sort of looking for other ways to do it.
So I totally agree with you.
And some of the standards around carbon offsets, like there is a science-based
(20:51):
targets initiative, SBTI, which is seen usually as sort of the gold standard
of how companies should be accounting for their carbon.
So they, in order to qualify under their program, the offsets can't be more
than 10% of the overall emissions.
I think it is important to recognize that, you know, as companies are transitioning,
(21:12):
you know, maybe offsets might be a good thing, you know, in a solution until they get something.
However, I think a really
important point is that those offsets frequently are not rigorously documented
(21:34):
so that there's been a lot of exposés about how many of the carbon emission or carbon offsets,
actually, the projects that are underlying them actually are not offsetting carbon.
So I think another issue that we need is that, you know.
Even if they need to be used a little bit, we need to actually really ensure
(21:56):
that any offsets that are claimed are actually real offsets.
And it's actually very complicated to actually determine whether something is an offset or not.
And there is a lot of, there is, you know, there's, yeah, these exposés have
been published and there's a lot of attention now on trying to rigorously account for those.
(22:16):
So I think that, you know, at least in the near term,
there will will be a need for a little bit of that but
we just need to really make sure that it's done in a
authentic and rigorous way yeah yeah
yeah definitely another externality that i'm
looking to uh you know explore actually two others is one poverty actually also
(22:38):
oh that was fascinating to say actually you know yeah ask more about that actually
how sure so so this there's a couple So there's many different sort of threads here.
I'll just sort of go with one of the sort of most sort of obvious.
So, you know, income inequality in the world has been increasing for the past,
(22:59):
you know, 50, 60 years, maybe even longer.
Longer and you know what this does i mean the rich are getting richer basically
and the poor getting poorer and
this creates all kinds you know poverty in general creates all kinds of.
Costs to a society be it sort of health care costs other you know just sort
(23:22):
of degradation of environment you know sort of has spillover effects as well
and there's studies that show So that as the level of income inequality increases in a society,
actually the GDP of a country decreases.
So this is an example of where the costs of poverty to the overall society really
(23:47):
are very significant. However –.
You know, you know, implicit in the income inequality is that the rich are getting richer.
So, you know, even though the overall GDP may be going lower,
the rich are getting more and more percentages of that.
And sometimes they, you know, can lobby or other ways in which they can influence the government.
(24:11):
So, so this, I think is really important that, you know, at a macro level,
that we need to sort of understand that actually closing that income inequality gap,
helping raise people out of poverty is hugely important for economic viability
of societies and not letting the rich sort of really take advantage of these
(24:36):
negative effects on the poor.
A little bit more micro example I'll give you, that's sort of at a macro society level.
If you look at supply chains of companies, frequently, many times,
the materials that are being gathered, where things are being put together,
(24:57):
there is not living wages.
People are living in tremendous poverty, huge issues of environmental degradation,
which also has negative health effects and
this results in cheaper products
and over consumerism in you know
this in in you know you're in the uk i'm in in the
us where you know people are just able to sort of buy and it's it's very much
(25:21):
geographically distributed so mostly you know the global south where a lot of
this sort of poverty and production exists and then you know in more developed
countries like the us and the uk you know we're sort of the ones that benefit and so So, yeah,
it has both a within-country dimension because of sort of supply chains has
(25:41):
also a, you know, global dimension to it as well.
Yeah, no, that is really like a very, when you understand that, you really understand.
So, you know, the scale of the problem and how it has spread,
you know, and the place that we are today,
(26:02):
you know, The circumstance that, and then you start to think,
okay, we're going to come later to the solution that, of course,
we'll tell about in the book.
But for now, let's dig the problems and see what else is going on.
Recycling as well. How do they externalize also, you know, make us externalize the... Sure, yeah.
(26:28):
So I think that, you know, and
I'm glad I mentioned the Grow Collaborative example earlier later because.
You know, that's something where the company is trying to avoid using plastic.
So recycling is easier for, in many ways, the public can grasp.
You know, we sort of, you know, we think we are being responsible,
(26:50):
putting things in the right bin.
But actually, you know, for a long time, it's been known that a very small percentage
of what actually gets put in the bins actually gets recycled.
Recycled even so a couple ways this ends up being i think you know filled with
misinformation and gaslighting from companies so one many of the large packaging and beverage companies.
(27:17):
Continue to promote recycling when they know that it doesn't work this includes
even things like and that some of this actually came out in court you know sort
of investigative or you know sort
of lawsuits companies had in, in, in trade associations had to disclose a bunch of information,
which really, you know, you know, really showed how they were trying to mislead the public.
(27:39):
So, you know, on the bottom of so many plastic objects is this chasing arrow
symbol suggesting it's recyclable and frequently numbers are in the middle of that.
So the number one and number two are the, are the types of plastics that are
more easily easily recyclable.
And, you know, things like, you know, makeup, you know, sort of single use plastic bottles, et cetera.
(28:02):
However, many of the other numbers are not recyclable.
The industry knows this, but they think like, okay, if we're putting the numbers
on there, people will think they're recyclable and then they won't actually come,
you know, come talk to us about why aren't you actually changing your product
packaging or coming up with new systems to really avoid this recycling.
(28:23):
So I think that, you know, it's a lot cheaper for the industry to promote.
Okay, we're just going to run some PR campaigns around recycling and actually
have consumers think that it's their responsibility as opposed to actually doing
something deeper and reforming the actual production process.
Wow. Yeah. So we have to open our eyes in many things, really,
(28:47):
that we actually think that people are doing, you know, those producers are
doing things in good faith, but actually sometimes it's totally misleading.
Because if you don't really, if you're not educated consumer,
you can really actually be fooled by so many different things if you don't pay attention to them.
So one of the other things that I like to explore is the win-win logic,
(29:11):
actually, because you don't hear that business should do good because it will help them to do well.
But actually, you argue against that win-win logic. Tell us why.
Yeah, I think there's a couple things about the win-win.
And I think that it's a very seductive logic because, you know,
there are examples of, you know, where maybe a company eliminated a variety
(29:35):
of types of trash and they saved money.
Maybe they installed some more environmentally friendly light bulbs and they saved money.
So there are examples where actually doing the right thing can lead to profitability. ability.
However, those are the exceptions, not necessarily the rule.
(29:58):
And there's been a variety of evidence that has come out more recently that this is the case.
There were some studies that's purported to show this connection between ESG,
you know, environmental, social and governance activities and corporate performance.
However, those have now been debunked. So there's not this sort of link.
(30:19):
And in many cases, you know, there's hundreds, there's thousands of studies
that have shown that have attempted to show this.
And it really, I think, you know, acts to question the logic of that research,
because if you keep trying to show something thousands and thousands of times,
it really suggests there's more of an ideological commitment to it,
as opposed to actually the fact that there might be some, you know,
(30:43):
sort of research or underlying, you know, sort of set of findings.
If there actually were strong findings about this, there wouldn't need to be
thousands of studies. It would be sort of settled.
And I think that one of the reasons why it's dangerous to use this is that it suggests that.
If there is this win-win, then there doesn't need to be policy interventions
(31:07):
or government scrutiny on companies because they'll do it of their own voluntary behavior.
And I think that in the US, where I'm, even though I'm in the UK now,
the US is what I'm most familiar with, there's a variety of organizations like
the Business Roundtable, which is a trade group of the largest US companies.
They have really very forcefully advocated for this win-win stakeholder capitalism
(31:30):
model. model, and a variety of evidence has shown that they're not actually
following through on that, but that's a side point.
I think the problem is that when they're doing that, it's because they're acting
to evade government regulation and government scrutiny.
And it's like, oh, this is good for us, good for our bottom line,
so you don't need to watch over us because we'll just do it in our own accord.
(31:52):
And I think that's a very dangerous logic to follow.
Yeah that's really
really interesting actually to understand and also
uh you just mentioned the esg earlier there is a lot of backlash right now especially
in the u.s against yes and dni and all those things so you know what's going
(32:15):
on in there what what what what why do you think that In the middle of pandemic,
everybody was talking about DNA, et cetera, et cetera.
And then now, suddenly, it started to become like, in French we say, la bête à la bête.
That means what we really don't want to do. So what's going on? What's happening?
(32:39):
Yeah, I mean, it is very, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I think part of it is...
I think that these groups, like the Business Roundtable, like the fossil fuel
industry, you know, they are really threatened.
I think the fact that actually a lot of these issues are being talked about in a much more,
(33:00):
you know, sort of forward way, you know, during the pandemic,
and there was, you know, George Floyd was murdered, which brought a huge amount
of attention to systemic issues in our society around discrimination,
racism, climate change.
There's all kinds of, you know, examples of that. And so many people,
I think, were coming out sort of powerfully and saying this was important.
(33:23):
Investors like Larry Fink, who's the CEO of BlackRock, was saying companies
should be really focused on their climate issues.
I think this has been the pendulum is really pushing back in the opposite direction.
And the climate example, I think, really shows this very clearly.
Many of the anti-climate change legislation that has been passed in the U.S.
(33:51):
Around investment markets in places like Texas and Florida, in the U.S.
And other places, actually, that language that actually ends up being in those
bills and many of the text that's used by politicians actually can be traced
back to fossil fuel interest funded think tanks.
(34:13):
Like the Heritage Foundation, these other right-wing think tanks that are funded
by people like the Koch brothers who make their money through fossil fuels.
So I think a lot of it is it's a backlash, and it's a backlash funded by self-interested.
Industry people in the fossil fuel industry, particularly on the climate topic.
(34:35):
And so I think this is something where we need to
be vigorously fighting back
against because one of the you know and
i think the companies know this and so
you know one of the phenomena that has come about a
sort of a new term is green hushing i don't think i talk about green hushing
in in my book because i don't think it was washing so yeah hunching now green
(35:00):
green hushing is where companies are still continuing to do their environmental
their dei activities but But they're quiet about it.
They're hushed. They're not
saying it because they worry that many of them do not want to be attacked.
Exactly. So that's something that is happening.
(35:21):
But I think, yeah, I mean, all around the world, there's all these elections happening.
The U.S. is one of the next big ones. And let's just hope that the election
turns out in a positive way.
And continues to support these topics because I think if, if Donald Trump gets
(35:42):
elected, that's going to be four years of,
of, of wrong directions on these topics of climate on diversity, et cetera.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's pick a cross. Let's pray. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So another thing that I like to explore,
which was a bigger, a hard moment also for me
(36:03):
in the book is that you know and
also we learn a lot in management school about Jack
Welch way of managing but actually it turned out that this was one of the big
casualties can you elaborate a little bit especially for people who are business
minded who have sure yeah business management when Jack Welch of GE was you
(36:27):
know and his method of management has
been, you know, we have learned this as one of the greatest things. So tell me more about it.
Sure, sure. So Jack Welch, you know, he was named, I think, by Fortune magazine
as the manager of the century for the 20th century.
However, his very sort of short-term finance-focused model has really come under
(36:54):
pretty tremendous attack more recently.
I have a few sort of discussion points and anecdotes in the book,
but really draw a lot on there was a book just a couple years ago by a New York
Times journalist named David Gellies,
who wrote, I think it's titled, you know, Jack Welch, The Man Who Broke Capitalism.
(37:14):
And he goes through this in much deeper detail about how this very,
very short-term finance-focused logic has really undermined sort of the key
pillars of a healthful society.
On labor, by laying off so many people, cutting all their various benefits,
(37:40):
and also on the environment.
There's a variety of pollution cases that have come up. So one of the things
I think is very important is.
To understand why I do talk a bit about that in the book,
is that what is legitimate business leadership and management is not something
that is encoded in stone and in the world, but actually changes over time.
(38:07):
And how we, as a society and a global community, assess leaders can change.
And I think, you know, whereas in the 1980s and 90s, you know,
this short-termism was valorized and then sort of more recently has come under attack.
(38:27):
And I think we need to keep pushing on this and keep expecting that leaders
actually need to be thinking about the environment and society,
need to be thinking about the purpose of their company.
More leaders like you know i mentioned the co-founder of growth collaborative
about how their businesses can be run in a truly sustainable and ethical way.
(38:50):
So tell me your your work has uncovered so many uncomfortable truths and about
this corporate behavior so i'm curious did you get a lot of you know pushback
especially those who haven't read the book,
but perhaps just so you get the title of the book,
what kind of pushback or critiques or did you get some negative feedback?
(39:14):
Yeah. So I have, which I take that as a positive thing, actually.
So the previous book in this topic that I wrote about was called Better better business,
which really talked a lot about, you know, was much more about how businesses
can positively affect system change.
(39:37):
And yeah, and I think, you know, those positive cases are essential,
but maybe, you know, maybe they're not provocative enough to get the discussion going.
So, so this book, I really hope that I would get, you know, some,
some critique and some, You know, engagement.
And so certainly have gotten some of that. I mean, some of that is actually
(40:01):
even from people that I think are generally doing good.
And maybe it's in the green hushing sort of vein where they say,
oh, you know, our company is a publicly traded company.
You know, we're worried if we actually are supportive of this,
that people think we're profiteers, actually. So there is a little worry,
even from people that I would generally think are doing good.
(40:21):
But other people, I think, have labeled it sort of woke.
I don't care about all this woke garbage.
I've heard that similar sentiment a number of times. And I think...
Yeah, I do believe that business has a responsibility to engage in socially
(40:45):
responsible, ethical, sustainable behavior.
But what I'm trying to do is not just critique business, but actually try to
unpack some roadmaps to how they can actually be better.
So I think in that case, you know, I hope that even if people may think it's
sort of woke, that they don't necessarily just turn off, that they actually
(41:08):
see that I'm trying to be positive and constructive,
not just be a critic.
Oh, that's not actually, let's talk about some solutions.
Because you highlighted something that you call regenerative model.
Yes. And I'd like to learn more. So because usually we only think about sustainability
and then, you know, that's not enough anymore, right?
(41:31):
So can you share some examples of business that have successfully adopted that and how they are doing?
So I think, you know, one of the themes in the sort of end of the book where
I focus more on solutions is that, you know, there's not one sort of silver
bullet that's going to solve everything.
I think, you know, we need policy change. We need change in investment markets.
(41:55):
We need businesses, I think, to play a very important leadership role in this
because they, in many cases, are where the rubber meets the road in,
you know, producing things and actually creating innovations that could be possibly for good.
So in many cases, a lot of the examples I give are where a small number of businesses
(42:18):
actually takes on some responsible action,
show that this can work, show that it's something consumers care about,
show that it actually can work in a business, and then actually ends up being
taken on by policymakers,
which then can sort of diffuse that more broadly.
(42:39):
I think an example of that is many of the frameworks that existed for so long on ESG accountability.
So since really the late 1990s, there has been a lot of work,
mostly from the NGO community, on corporate accountability.
This is the Global Reporting Initiative, Sustainable Accounting Standards Board,
(43:03):
the ISSB, many other of these sort of acronyms, TCFD, Task Force on Climate-Related
Financial Disclosures.
And what's happened is that these organizations have innovated and really dug
into how companies can be measured, transparent, and accountable.
(43:23):
Small numbers of companies have taken this. I mean, thousands of companies have.
So it's actually a lot of companies.
But in the overall scheme of corporations, I mean, there's millions of companies in the world.
So many of these ideas now have been enacted in the EU with there's this CSRD,
(43:44):
the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which actually takes this,
you know, decades of innovation and rigorous work from NGOs,
from companies, and actually, you know, creates governmental standards about it.
So I think that, in many ways, is we can't do things voluntarily.
(44:05):
Things have to end up being done through a much more systematic way.
On the question of regenerative, this is something where I really learned a
lot from many of the entrepreneurs that I interviewed around how to actually
move beyond sustainability.
Because sustainability, in many ways, is something we all know about.
(44:27):
The UN has its sustainability development goals. We accompany sustainability reports.
But sustainability, in many cases, is about doing less harm.
And, you know, maybe for a long time that was okay, but we're in a situation
with climate and inequality where I think we need to hold companies to a stronger accountability,
(44:50):
not just doing less harm, but actually doing sort of positively good for the world and for society.
And this is what regenerative approaches are about. So this really came about through agriculture.
And the idea being that, you know, if, you know, for a long time,
(45:10):
we had this sort of monoculture factory farming model where,
you know, large companies would,
you know, would, you know, both on the sort of the growing side,
but then also on things like the seed and other side would really promote very
efficiency based, but also very environmentally destructive types of planting
(45:35):
and growing behaviors however.
Actually if you go back before that time
and you know it's actually there's a much more sort of natural and regenerative
and i use the word regenerative to mean that actually what happens if you if
you if you grow crops in a way that is thoughtful and takes biodiversity into
(45:58):
account and it's not in a monocrop way,
actually by doing agriculture thoughtfully, you can actually give back to the soil.
So the soil becomes more fertile, more rich. You can get back to ecosystems
and they become sort of more diverse, more sustainable.
(46:18):
And I mentioned this because a company that I studied a lot in the book,
Patagonia, which is well-known for its sustainable performance.
When I interviewed one of the leaders there, he said to me, the light bulb really
went off for us on this topic when we started doing food business.
They have a business called Patagonia Provisions, which is a small part of their business,
(46:42):
but actually has had a big impact on the thinking of their firm because they
learned that actually through many of the thoughtful ways that food can be grown,
that actually a business can give back in a positive way.
And they said this actually spread to many of the different businesses they had.
So in the past, Patagonia is.
(47:04):
Mission statement had the clause and do less harm.
And they said, the person I interviewed said to me, he said,
boy, we realized we were admitting in our mission statement that we were doing
harm, which they said is sort of crazy.
So they changed their mission statement to we're in business to save our own planet.
And they actually innovated a lot in their value chain, be it sort of the upstream
(47:29):
way they get materials, way they produce things all the way through downstream to consumer effects.
And so this is an area where I think companies being much more thoughtful about
their business model and their value chains, not just taking,
but actually being able to positively give back.
(47:50):
And I think this is something where there's a lot of attention and discussion
around regenerative practices.
And I think this is something where leading businesses can be focusing their attention. Thank you.
Patagonia seems to be doing well in, you know, all around everything, really.
Even charging PT when you are looking for a sustainable business.
(48:13):
And the first thing that comes all the time is Patagonia. Okay.
Another idea, or another, you know, question is that, you know,
outside, let's say, you know, Patagonia or agricultural model,
for example, For example, those unhealthy food chains that produce unhealthy
food, how can they become also regenerative or adopt this generative model, actually?
(48:38):
Yeah, it's very complex because it's, you know, there's, I mean,
I think that, again, over time, I think with policy, hopefully,
you know, this is where, or investment markets.
So one example, a very small example, is a big, huge, destructive issue with
many of these companies is around their supply chains.
(49:02):
And if you look at a company like McDonald's or Taco Bell, you know,
a lot of the sort of meat that they end up purchasing ends up getting produced
in these factory farm conditions where the animals are fed a lot of antibiotics.
And so they can be crammed close together and they don't get diseases.
And it turns out if you feed animals antibiotics, they grow faster so they can
(49:24):
be killed sooner, basically.
And these antibiotics have a huge negative effect on our world because they're
leading to antibiotic resistance, which is a huge public health issue and danger.
And so, actually, investors have been really strongly petitioning,
(49:46):
advocating, withholding investment,
you know, voting, you know, shareholder votes, supporting, you know, the….
These companies, these large fast food chains actually moving away from this
antibiotic type of food production chain.
As I mentioned, there's no one silver bullet. This is one example of an action
(50:09):
that needs to be taken on these companies.
Many more need to be done. Part of the issue is they're so big.
The system is very supportive of them. And so I think we need to be working
on many different fronts to try to combat this.
What about that documentary, Netflix documentary, Phil, showing all these supply
(50:33):
chain process and showing people what they are seeing?
Yeah, no, I think there are some of them. I don't know. I've seen some of them.
I think that's another area.
People are watching them or they are ignoring them. Yeah, yeah.
More people need to watch them. Definitely. Yeah.
Okay, cool. That's one of very, very good ones.
So, and then there is one thing also you say in, actually, for example, individually.
(50:58):
So I also want to see how individuals, you know, working, for example,
you know, in those large corporations can also foster this culture of responsibility
and purpose, especially if that organization doesn't embrace this value.
You, how can, how can we make sure that we actually do, you know,
(51:21):
give that, you know, that support?
Yeah, I think that's really important. I mean, you know, so I think a couple of things.
So one, you know, and this is where I really learned a lot from my students
who are on the front lines of going to work for companies, you know,
actually, and there's some sort of research around this as well,
you know, just on that on that entry side, actually.
(51:44):
You know, businesses that have purpose are actually it's much easier from the
higher people nowadays,
you know, people in the cohort of folks that are, you know, going to the workforce
now don't want to work for fossil fuel companies, don't want to work for other companies.
So I think one is that people are actually not going to work for companies that
(52:04):
have sort of some of these problems.
The second is that actually inside companies, there is frequently groups that
you can be involved in, in order to help elevate the voice around important issues.
There are some examples from the US. This is a little bit ago where domestic partner benefits,
(52:27):
where in the past, maybe companies would only give benefits to a man and a woman
who were married, husband and wife.
However, this is something that companies within the company,
there were groups that got together that actually worked and lobbied the company
(52:50):
to actually expand those benefits to same-sex couples or other various groups.
And so I think that there is an opportunity within the company.
It's hard to do it unless you're part of a collective. So, you know,
I think, you know, working within your company is a really important lever for change.
(53:10):
Okay, good. So now, finally, you know, what would you say, you know,
your parting advice for people who are looking to do meaningful work and meaningful
life? Because this is the name of the podcast.
Yeah, I think a couple things. I mean, I think meaning is important.
I think we can't forget that. And that extends, you know, I mean,
(53:34):
obviously our own personal lives and the choices we make, but also, you know, companies.
And I think that, you know, we need to be very conscious in thinking about supporting
companies that actually are engaging in sort of meaningful work and behavior.
And I think that, you know, buying locally or engaging with your local community,
(53:56):
I think, is one way to actually help foster that.
I think, you know, there's a variety of sort of certifications,
a company that you can look to.
Those aren't perfect, but just sort of one quick way, like, you know,
could be Fairtrade or B Corporation or whatever.
But I do think that we need to be thinking very deeply about that.
(54:17):
You know, who we're engaging with on a daily basis in the commercial realm in
order to keep fostering meaningfulness.
Yeah, that is wonderful. Thank you so much. So how can people reach you and
learn more about you and your work?
It's the best way. Sure. Thank you. Thank you so much for asking,
Francine. So, you know, I have a website, my name, chrismarquis.com.
(54:40):
People can certainly, you know, sort of take a look there.
Also at Cambridge, I have a website, you know, at the university,
at the Judge Business School.
I'm very easy to find, you know, via Google, and they should certainly connect to me on LinkedIn.
And please feel very free to be in touch. I'm very happy to hear from people
who are interested in these topics and would love to, you know,
(55:03):
continue to build this important movement around businesses doing good.
Yeah. Thank you so much, Chris, for this insightful conversation and your work,
you know, for all the other listeners.
If you haven't done so grab a copy of the book actually
the property is how business privatized profit
and socialized costs by christopher marcus and
(55:23):
you'll learn much more of what we just discussed it's
only tiny tiny bit that we've discussed today did you
like this conversation what was your key takeaway about this episode so let
me know in the comment below and make sure you subscribe to this podcast on
your favorite podcast platform and YouTube so you don't miss any episodes.
(55:47):
And to hear more incredible stories and get the show notes and other free resources,
visit francinebellini.com slash podcast.
That's F-R-A-N-C-I-N-E-B-E-L-E-Y-I.com slash podcast. And I'll see you next
week for another episode of Meaningful Work, Meaningful Life podcast.
(56:09):
Until then, dream, act, and make an impact. Lots of love.
Music.
(00:16):
What is leader on a mission? A leader on a mission is someone who exposes how
business shifts costs to society while maximizing profit.
Welcome to the Meaningful Work, Meaningful Life podcast, the show that empowers
you to redefine the life you want and live your best life right now.
(00:39):
I'm your host, Francine Belli, and in this season 10, we are delving into the
theme of Leaders on a Mission, where we explore the personal journeys,
impactful work of visionary leaders who are making a difference in the world.
Today, I'd like to bring you the incredible conversation I had with Chris Marquis,
(01:04):
Senior Professor at the University of Cambridge Church School of Business and
author of the book The Profiteers, How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Costs.
So Chris is also a prolific writer with contributions to Forbes,
The Boston Globe, Washington Post, Fortune Times, and Harvard Business Review. view.
(01:27):
In our chart, Chris exposes the strategies that companies use to shift the environmental
and societal costs whilst maximizing the profits for their shareholders.
So it's eye-opening to say the least. And what makes Chris a leader on a mission
(01:48):
is an unwavering commitment to redefining what responsible business looks like.
He doesn't just critique the system.
He offers a roadmap for transformation.
So he highlights pioneering companies that are not just doing less harm,
(02:10):
but are actively creating positive impact.
So Chris also shared his personal journey and how he was inspired by his students
to writing groundbreaking books like The Profiteers.
So his insights are not only thought-provoking, but also incredibly actionable.
(02:30):
And if you are passionate about corporate sustainable responsibility,
curious about businesses, how they can be forced for good, or just looking for
inspiration to align your work with your value, you, you don't want to miss this episode.
So sit down, relax, and get ready to be inspired. Welcome, Chris.
(02:55):
Francine, thanks so much for having me. Great to be here. Yes,
thank you so, so much, Chris.
As I told you offline, I'm so excited about this conversation.
And then before we get into it, tell us what's your background? ground.
Sure. Yeah. So I'm at Cambridge, as you mentioned, although people probably
already realized from hearing me talk, I'm not English.
(03:17):
I am American and grew up, spent most of my life and career in the United States.
Two years ago, I moved to Cambridge and I've really been enjoying the UK.
That's awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And now you're joining us today from the US, right?
Yeah. So it's the summertime. And given most of my family is still here in the
(03:39):
US, During breaks, I spend a lot of time in the U.S. During term time, I'm at Cambridge.
But frequently, either in the winter holidays or in summer, I do come back to the U.S.
That's fantastic. So tell me, what did you want to do when you grow up?
(04:00):
Sure, yeah. Good question.
Or an astronaut? What did you want to do?
Yeah, good question. I don't know if I had any sort of really firm, firm beliefs.
I mean, the thing that comes to mind is, is, you know, this is sort of a funny, funny thing.
When I was growing up, you know, I was very young and we lived in a sort of a standalone house.
(04:24):
Most of, you know, in the US, most people have sort of standalone homes and
next door people were having a cement porch put in and there was a cement truck that has, you know,
sort of, they have this rotating back to keep mixing the cement.
And this was, I was just fascinated with this.
And for a long time, I thought I wanted to be a cement truck driver,
which I know is sort of not exactly where you were going with that.
(04:49):
But I think, yeah, that's sort of immediately what came to mind.
I've been in academia for now about 25 years.
I started getting my PhD in 2020. Before that, I worked in the financial services industry.
I think in general, I was interested in business, wasn't exactly sure about
(05:09):
mission-oriented businesses or academic research that I ended up doing.
But over time, I came to realize that actually being a professor,
an educator, communicator and researcher was where I wanted to spend my time and energy.
That's very fantastic. So what is one thing that people don't know about you?
(05:32):
One thing people don't know about me?
That's funny so thinking about it it's uh again sort
of going back and you know i guess all these things are going back into
my my past around that same age
is when i wanted to be a a a cement
truck driver i actually was i was a child model
actually believe it or not so i i have
(05:55):
a few like i was on the
box of a few products and in various sort of catalogs
and made very much or made my parents very much money i don't know where any
of that money money went but one of my relatives had
a friend who was somehow involved in the in
the modeling industry and i sort of got had these these various
(06:17):
little jobs and so it's sort of a funny funny thing that i don't think many
people know about me but but is one well you have made a career in the modeling
thank you again that's really really great thanks uh chris so your book The book, for 50 years,
really exposed how cooperation transferred hidden costs onto society.
(06:39):
And this is really a fascinating read. But before we go into the book itself,
I'd like to know what was that personal journey or pivotal moment that led you
to focus on this really critical issue? Yeah, good question.
It's hard to boil down sort of one, so I'll give you two, if you don't mind.
(07:01):
And I think they represent a lot of what generally sort of inspires and motivates
me. So one is from my students.
Actually, about 15 years ago, I was teaching a class on corporate social responsibility.
This is back in the day, things like sustainability or social entrepreneurship,
you know, these more refined terms didn't exist.
And people, you know, I've said corporate social responsibility sort of sounds
(07:24):
like an old term now, but that was, you know, really where we focus.
This was, I guess, in 2009.
And, you know, we were studying these large companies that had,
you know, you know, probably really great philanthropy or employee volunteering
programs or work with NGOs.
And the student said, you know, all these companies are doing this work,
(07:45):
nothing against it, but really it's only a side aspect of their business.
It's not about the core of their business.
And they said, you know, we should be studying companies that have a social mission at their core.
And this was something that I never really thought that much of.
They mentioned the B corporations, which are companies that are certified for
(08:06):
their social and environmental impact.
And I ended up doing a bunch of studies in an earlier book on the B B Corp movement.
And so certainly that had an influence. But I think the idea that companies
could have a mission at their core is something that really inspired my students.
And over a number of years, actually, I transitioned that class I was teaching
into a class that was really about social entrepreneurship and how companies
(08:29):
can actually really have a deep mission at their.
Core. One of the companies, and I've studied hundreds of companies now,
that really was inspiring to, you know, really the trajectory of this book that
I ended up doing, The Profiteers.
You know, interestingly, and maybe counterintuitively, was a company that's doing the right thing.
(08:51):
So, you know, The Profiteers, How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes
Cost, it sounds like a critique of business.
And it is. It's just very much a critique of the system and the policies and
the investment markets and many of the ideas and large corporate corporate leaders
as to what responsible business should be.
But there's a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs with mission
(09:13):
at their core that are really, you know, trying to do the right things.
And so this entrepreneur was the co-founder of a company called Grove Collaborative.
And what he described to me is that, so Grove Collaborative is a company that produces.
Sort of, you know, you know, produces market cells, a variety of home and,
(09:35):
you know, health, health and beauty type products and home cleaning products.
Many of these products are traditionally packaged in plastic because they're
liquids and they need some sort of, you know, vessel that, you know,
isn't, isn't porous and plastic is usually the cheapest way to do that.
And he said, you know, the core of my business is focused on eliminating plastic.
(09:56):
And, you know, I'd never really thought that much about sort of plastic.
I mean, I knew plastic was a problem, but I hadn't thought about an entrepreneur
sort of seeing that, you know, his mission isn't about selling more products
or, you know, doing something great for his stakeholders,
but actually the core mission is about really, you know, orienting the business around,
(10:19):
you know, creating positive good as opposed to just mitigating negatives.
And he talked to me about how actually having this core mission really influenced
a lot of the innovation of the company.
So they came up with new formulations for their products.
So like shampoos traditionally are in liquids and bottles.
(10:39):
They came up with some new bar shampoos, which actually won a bunch of awards.
They created new innovative ways of doing cost benefits inside their companies.
So the P&L of many of their sort of business lines actually costed out carbon.
There's costs on carbon, but also costs on plastic. So they created ways to
(11:01):
sort of financially incentivize their managers and also created a badging system
so consumers could understand.
The plastic content. So this idea of really trying to be deeply sustainable
in the business model create a lot of innovation for good.
And so, you know, I'm glad I got to mention those two examples because,
(11:21):
you know, so much of what has inspired me is my students and actually the entrepreneurs that I study.
And I think, you know, I'm learning a lot from them and it's sort of really
an honor in many cases to try to, you know, connect the dots between many of
those stories and bring those stories to public light.
Yeah, this is really fascinating, actually, understanding how those social enterprises,
(11:45):
actually put the core of their mission to actually, as you say,
not mitigating all the negative effects that have been out there,
but actually positively influencing the society.
What do you think, actually, is the incentive that many other companies
(12:05):
don't think that way obviously we we know that there is like a lot of you know
very convenience because when you think of this example soap or shampoo is so
convenient for the consumer themselves to have like a liquid shampoo rather
than a bottle way to put on your hair etc.
(12:26):
So actually the the i now use bar shampoo it actually works pretty much as good
as easy as liquid shampoo,
you know, actually just lather it up in your hand a little bit.
It's very lathering. And then, you know, you can sort of, you know,
do your, so, so, but your question I know was about like, you know,
why, why aren't more companies doing this?
I think in general, and I think, and one of the reasons I wrote this new book
(12:49):
and I, and I, and I focus on this critique of how business privatizes profit
and socializes costs is that the way the systems in our world, policy systems.
Investment markets are set up, really encourage companies to focus on short-term
profits as opposed to thinking about how they can innovate more broadly.
(13:14):
And so I think one issue is that it's not even that there aren't incentives.
It's just that there are so many barriers and so many constraints just to how
business is normally done, that companies,
you know, they're, you know, understandably, you know, there's all I mean,
it's it's a challenging marketplace now nowadays.
(13:34):
And there's all kinds of, you know, sort of fires that, you know,
so to speak that, you know, they have to deal with the CEOs that deal with on a day to day basis.
So it's a really very hard. So I think a lot of the work I do is to try to help
some of those innovations gain a wider sort of knowledge.
And so they can influence policy, influence investors to try to help shift some
(13:57):
of those systems because, you know, innovators and entrepreneurs like Growth Collaborative,
are amazing examples and they're they're proving that that this can be done in an in an effective.
Way but voluntary action from
entrepreneurs is only going to get us so far we need to actually have broader
(14:18):
systems support this if we're going to be more sustainable as a world because
you know we there's a lot of issues with climate change a lot of issues with
inequality that we need to be very seriously addressing?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And, you know, as you say, and I read the book and I
know that a lot of these, you know, problems come from companies.
(14:44):
However, going back to what I was kind of alluding to earlier and what I'm thinking
myself is, are we consumers also part of the problem?
Because if we always look for convenience, Like all those single-use items.
I really don't understand why, you know, they are actually, they'll tell you,
(15:07):
business, I come from business or some kind of background.
They'll say that they're kind of looking at the market. They want to satisfy
customers' markets and customer needs, and they want single-use, et cetera.
The only thing they're doing is to satisfy customer's strengths.
What would you say about that? Yeah, I think I mean, I think so we as consumers
need to be doing everything we can, no doubt about that.
(15:30):
So I, you know, and I, you know, I try as much as possible to be a sustainable,
you know, consumer, I don't buy a ton, I try to buy things,
you know, in, you know, from from brands that I know are sustainable and ethical.
I'm not perfect, you know, I mean, I do buy things through Amazon,
(15:50):
I will sometimes, you know, get a single use.
A single use, you know, sort of drink.
I mean, so no one is perfect. It's really very challenging. But I think,
though, that where I have problems with companies always saying that is because.
They are in many ways the most active shapers of policy and consumer behavior.
(16:18):
And so they're sort of talking out of, you know, both sides of their mouth in
some ways, So a real extreme example, for instance,
is around greenhouse gas emissions and carbon emissions and how that influences climate change.
So now, as known through a variety of court cases and investigative media work,
(16:42):
the fossil fuel industry has, for decades, been hiding the evidence they have
that there is a link between carbon emissions and climate change.
They also do things like...
You know, sort of come up with this idea of individual carbon footprint so that
people think it's their own responsibility.
(17:03):
So, you know, it's very convenient for me to say like, oh, well,
people want to, you know, they want to drive, they want to, you know, fly.
But then also they're very actively hiding and shaping things so that we all
do think about, think that it's our responsibility.
So I think the companies, and that's, you know, they want to do that for bottom line.
(17:26):
So I think the companies, we need to actually look much more,
you know, in a much more sort of forceful way at their behavior and,
you know, their production as a root of some of these issues we have.
Yes. In the book, there are so many interesting concepts, actually,
(17:46):
that I'd like us to, you know, uncover.
Some of them, like, you know, you talk about externalities,
which are gaslighting and so
i'm going to come back to those great but actually
one of the thing also is that you know they say you know for example if we take
(18:06):
before we get to that first of all the even the term profiteers can you explain
that what actually is within this concept Sure,
sure. Profiteers. So basically.
It's the idea of having excess profits at the detriment of some other entity,
(18:30):
which you mentioned externalities.
That's a key concept in the book, which is, you know, these costs,
social environmental costs that business production puts on the broader society
and as a result ends up getting higher, higher profits.
So, you know, the canonical example nowadays is carbon emissions.
(18:56):
And there's discussion of, you know, things like carbon taxes,
carbon markets, et cetera, because for a long time, when manufacturers were
producing, you know, their products, you know, the smoke,
the pollutants that came out of their smokestacks, I mean, basically those went
into the air and that was free for them.
However, there's a lot of respiratory
(19:19):
issues, health issues that people in the surrounding area have.
There's climate change is another issue. So this idea of sort of excessive profits
at the cost of someone else is really what I'm trying to get at with the profiteer idea.
In terms of those externalities, before I even come to that,
(19:40):
what you just said about carbon emission, I was even reading,
like, today, a lot of big companies, especially tech companies,
are actually buying carbon credits.
So instead of reducing your carbon footprint, you just go and externalize even
your emissions to say, oh, let's be polluted.
(20:04):
Go and buy some credits from these kind of companies. This is weird. So what is this concept?
Yeah. So, I mean, I think the way you put that is put very, very well.
I do think that does get to the root of some of the critiques.
I mean, there's a couple of very, I think, very important critiques of sort
of the carbon offset in carbon markets where you can buy these offsets.
(20:29):
So one is exactly what you're saying, that businesses should be focusing on
reducing their own carbon footprint, not sort of looking for other ways to do it.
So I totally agree with you.
And some of the standards around carbon offsets, like there is a science-based
(20:51):
targets initiative, SBTI, which is seen usually as sort of the gold standard
of how companies should be accounting for their carbon.
So they, in order to qualify under their program, the offsets can't be more
than 10% of the overall emissions.
I think it is important to recognize that, you know, as companies are transitioning,
(21:12):
you know, maybe offsets might be a good thing, you know, in a solution until they get something.
However, I think a really
important point is that those offsets frequently are not rigorously documented
(21:34):
so that there's been a lot of exposés about how many of the carbon emission or carbon offsets,
actually, the projects that are underlying them actually are not offsetting carbon.
So I think another issue that we need is that, you know.
Even if they need to be used a little bit, we need to actually really ensure
(21:56):
that any offsets that are claimed are actually real offsets.
And it's actually very complicated to actually determine whether something is an offset or not.
And there is a lot of, there is, you know, there's, yeah, these exposés have
been published and there's a lot of attention now on trying to rigorously account for those.
(22:16):
So I think that, you know, at least in the near term,
there will will be a need for a little bit of that but
we just need to really make sure that it's done in a
authentic and rigorous way yeah yeah
yeah definitely another externality that i'm
looking to uh you know explore actually two others is one poverty actually also
(22:38):
oh that was fascinating to say actually you know yeah ask more about that actually
how sure so so this there's a couple So there's many different sort of threads here.
I'll just sort of go with one of the sort of most sort of obvious.
So, you know, income inequality in the world has been increasing for the past,
(22:59):
you know, 50, 60 years, maybe even longer.
Longer and you know what this does i mean the rich are getting richer basically
and the poor getting poorer and
this creates all kinds you know poverty in general creates all kinds of.
Costs to a society be it sort of health care costs other you know just sort
(23:22):
of degradation of environment you know sort of has spillover effects as well
and there's studies that show So that as the level of income inequality increases in a society,
actually the GDP of a country decreases.
So this is an example of where the costs of poverty to the overall society really
(23:47):
are very significant. However –.
You know, you know, implicit in the income inequality is that the rich are getting richer.
So, you know, even though the overall GDP may be going lower,
the rich are getting more and more percentages of that.
And sometimes they, you know, can lobby or other ways in which they can influence the government.
(24:11):
So, so this, I think is really important that, you know, at a macro level,
that we need to sort of understand that actually closing that income inequality gap,
helping raise people out of poverty is hugely important for economic viability
of societies and not letting the rich sort of really take advantage of these
(24:36):
negative effects on the poor.
A little bit more micro example I'll give you, that's sort of at a macro society level.
If you look at supply chains of companies, frequently, many times,
the materials that are being gathered, where things are being put together,
(24:57):
there is not living wages.
People are living in tremendous poverty, huge issues of environmental degradation,
which also has negative health effects and
this results in cheaper products
and over consumerism in you know
this in in you know you're in the uk i'm in in the
us where you know people are just able to sort of buy and it's it's very much
(25:21):
geographically distributed so mostly you know the global south where a lot of
this sort of poverty and production exists and then you know in more developed
countries like the us and the uk you know we're sort of the ones that benefit and so So, yeah,
it has both a within-country dimension because of sort of supply chains has
(25:41):
also a, you know, global dimension to it as well.
Yeah, no, that is really like a very, when you understand that, you really understand.
So, you know, the scale of the problem and how it has spread,
you know, and the place that we are today,
(26:02):
you know, The circumstance that, and then you start to think,
okay, we're going to come later to the solution that, of course,
we'll tell about in the book.
But for now, let's dig the problems and see what else is going on.
Recycling as well. How do they externalize also, you know, make us externalize the... Sure, yeah.
(26:28):
So I think that, you know, and
I'm glad I mentioned the Grow Collaborative example earlier later because.
You know, that's something where the company is trying to avoid using plastic.
So recycling is easier for, in many ways, the public can grasp.
You know, we sort of, you know, we think we are being responsible,
(26:50):
putting things in the right bin.
But actually, you know, for a long time, it's been known that a very small percentage
of what actually gets put in the bins actually gets recycled.
Recycled even so a couple ways this ends up being i think you know filled with
misinformation and gaslighting from companies so one many of the large packaging and beverage companies.
(27:17):
Continue to promote recycling when they know that it doesn't work this includes
even things like and that some of this actually came out in court you know sort
of investigative or you know sort
of lawsuits companies had in, in, in trade associations had to disclose a bunch of information,
which really, you know, you know, really showed how they were trying to mislead the public.
(27:39):
So, you know, on the bottom of so many plastic objects is this chasing arrow
symbol suggesting it's recyclable and frequently numbers are in the middle of that.
So the number one and number two are the, are the types of plastics that are
more easily easily recyclable.
And, you know, things like, you know, makeup, you know, sort of single use plastic bottles, et cetera.
(28:02):
However, many of the other numbers are not recyclable.
The industry knows this, but they think like, okay, if we're putting the numbers
on there, people will think they're recyclable and then they won't actually come,
you know, come talk to us about why aren't you actually changing your product
packaging or coming up with new systems to really avoid this recycling.
(28:23):
So I think that, you know, it's a lot cheaper for the industry to promote.
Okay, we're just going to run some PR campaigns around recycling and actually
have consumers think that it's their responsibility as opposed to actually doing
something deeper and reforming the actual production process.
Wow. Yeah. So we have to open our eyes in many things, really,
(28:47):
that we actually think that people are doing, you know, those producers are
doing things in good faith, but actually sometimes it's totally misleading.
Because if you don't really, if you're not educated consumer,
you can really actually be fooled by so many different things if you don't pay attention to them.
So one of the other things that I like to explore is the win-win logic,
(29:11):
actually, because you don't hear that business should do good because it will help them to do well.
But actually, you argue against that win-win logic. Tell us why.
Yeah, I think there's a couple things about the win-win.
And I think that it's a very seductive logic because, you know,
there are examples of, you know, where maybe a company eliminated a variety
(29:35):
of types of trash and they saved money.
Maybe they installed some more environmentally friendly light bulbs and they saved money.
So there are examples where actually doing the right thing can lead to profitability. ability.
However, those are the exceptions, not necessarily the rule.
(29:58):
And there's been a variety of evidence that has come out more recently that this is the case.
There were some studies that's purported to show this connection between ESG,
you know, environmental, social and governance activities and corporate performance.
However, those have now been debunked. So there's not this sort of link.
(30:19):
And in many cases, you know, there's hundreds, there's thousands of studies
that have shown that have attempted to show this.
And it really, I think, you know, acts to question the logic of that research,
because if you keep trying to show something thousands and thousands of times,
it really suggests there's more of an ideological commitment to it,
as opposed to actually the fact that there might be some, you know,
(30:43):
sort of research or underlying, you know, sort of set of findings.
If there actually were strong findings about this, there wouldn't need to be
thousands of studies. It would be sort of settled.
And I think that one of the reasons why it's dangerous to use this is that it suggests that.
If there is this win-win, then there doesn't need to be policy interventions
(31:07):
or government scrutiny on companies because they'll do it of their own voluntary behavior.
And I think that in the US, where I'm, even though I'm in the UK now,
the US is what I'm most familiar with, there's a variety of organizations like
the Business Roundtable, which is a trade group of the largest US companies.
They have really very forcefully advocated for this win-win stakeholder capitalism
(31:30):
model. model, and a variety of evidence has shown that they're not actually
following through on that, but that's a side point.
I think the problem is that when they're doing that, it's because they're acting
to evade government regulation and government scrutiny.
And it's like, oh, this is good for us, good for our bottom line,
so you don't need to watch over us because we'll just do it in our own accord.
(31:52):
And I think that's a very dangerous logic to follow.
Yeah that's really
really interesting actually to understand and also
uh you just mentioned the esg earlier there is a lot of backlash right now especially
in the u.s against yes and dni and all those things so you know what's going
(32:15):
on in there what what what what why do you think that In the middle of pandemic,
everybody was talking about DNA, et cetera, et cetera.
And then now, suddenly, it started to become like, in French we say, la bête à la bête.
That means what we really don't want to do. So what's going on? What's happening?
(32:39):
Yeah, I mean, it is very, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I think part of it is...
I think that these groups, like the Business Roundtable, like the fossil fuel
industry, you know, they are really threatened.
I think the fact that actually a lot of these issues are being talked about in a much more,
(33:00):
you know, sort of forward way, you know, during the pandemic,
and there was, you know, George Floyd was murdered, which brought a huge amount
of attention to systemic issues in our society around discrimination,
racism, climate change.
There's all kinds of, you know, examples of that. And so many people,
I think, were coming out sort of powerfully and saying this was important.
(33:23):
Investors like Larry Fink, who's the CEO of BlackRock, was saying companies
should be really focused on their climate issues.
I think this has been the pendulum is really pushing back in the opposite direction.
And the climate example, I think, really shows this very clearly.
Many of the anti-climate change legislation that has been passed in the U.S.
(33:51):
Around investment markets in places like Texas and Florida, in the U.S.
And other places, actually, that language that actually ends up being in those
bills and many of the text that's used by politicians actually can be traced
back to fossil fuel interest funded think tanks.
(34:13):
Like the Heritage Foundation, these other right-wing think tanks that are funded
by people like the Koch brothers who make their money through fossil fuels.
So I think a lot of it is it's a backlash, and it's a backlash funded by self-interested.
Industry people in the fossil fuel industry, particularly on the climate topic.
(34:35):
And so I think this is something where we need to
be vigorously fighting back
against because one of the you know and
i think the companies know this and so
you know one of the phenomena that has come about a
sort of a new term is green hushing i don't think i talk about green hushing
in in my book because i don't think it was washing so yeah hunching now green
(35:00):
green hushing is where companies are still continuing to do their environmental
their dei activities but But they're quiet about it.
They're hushed. They're not
saying it because they worry that many of them do not want to be attacked.
Exactly. So that's something that is happening.
(35:21):
But I think, yeah, I mean, all around the world, there's all these elections happening.
The U.S. is one of the next big ones. And let's just hope that the election
turns out in a positive way.
And continues to support these topics because I think if, if Donald Trump gets
(35:42):
elected, that's going to be four years of,
of, of wrong directions on these topics of climate on diversity, et cetera.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's pick a cross. Let's pray. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So another thing that I like to explore,
which was a bigger, a hard moment also for me
(36:03):
in the book is that you know and
also we learn a lot in management school about Jack
Welch way of managing but actually it turned out that this was one of the big
casualties can you elaborate a little bit especially for people who are business
minded who have sure yeah business management when Jack Welch of GE was you
(36:27):
know and his method of management has
been, you know, we have learned this as one of the greatest things. So tell me more about it.
Sure, sure. So Jack Welch, you know, he was named, I think, by Fortune magazine
as the manager of the century for the 20th century.
However, his very sort of short-term finance-focused model has really come under
(36:54):
pretty tremendous attack more recently.
I have a few sort of discussion points and anecdotes in the book,
but really draw a lot on there was a book just a couple years ago by a New York
Times journalist named David Gellies,
who wrote, I think it's titled, you know, Jack Welch, The Man Who Broke Capitalism.
(37:14):
And he goes through this in much deeper detail about how this very,
very short-term finance-focused logic has really undermined sort of the key
pillars of a healthful society.
On labor, by laying off so many people, cutting all their various benefits,
(37:40):
and also on the environment.
There's a variety of pollution cases that have come up. So one of the things
I think is very important is.
To understand why I do talk a bit about that in the book,
is that what is legitimate business leadership and management is not something
that is encoded in stone and in the world, but actually changes over time.
(38:07):
And how we, as a society and a global community, assess leaders can change.
And I think, you know, whereas in the 1980s and 90s, you know,
this short-termism was valorized and then sort of more recently has come under attack.
(38:27):
And I think we need to keep pushing on this and keep expecting that leaders
actually need to be thinking about the environment and society,
need to be thinking about the purpose of their company.
More leaders like you know i mentioned the co-founder of growth collaborative
about how their businesses can be run in a truly sustainable and ethical way.
(38:50):
So tell me your your work has uncovered so many uncomfortable truths and about
this corporate behavior so i'm curious did you get a lot of you know pushback
especially those who haven't read the book,
but perhaps just so you get the title of the book,
what kind of pushback or critiques or did you get some negative feedback?
(39:14):
Yeah. So I have, which I take that as a positive thing, actually.
So the previous book in this topic that I wrote about was called Better better business,
which really talked a lot about, you know, was much more about how businesses
can positively affect system change.
(39:37):
And yeah, and I think, you know, those positive cases are essential,
but maybe, you know, maybe they're not provocative enough to get the discussion going.
So, so this book, I really hope that I would get, you know, some,
some critique and some, You know, engagement.
And so certainly have gotten some of that. I mean, some of that is actually
(40:01):
even from people that I think are generally doing good.
And maybe it's in the green hushing sort of vein where they say,
oh, you know, our company is a publicly traded company.
You know, we're worried if we actually are supportive of this,
that people think we're profiteers, actually. So there is a little worry,
even from people that I would generally think are doing good.
(40:21):
But other people, I think, have labeled it sort of woke.
I don't care about all this woke garbage.
I've heard that similar sentiment a number of times. And I think...
Yeah, I do believe that business has a responsibility to engage in socially
(40:45):
responsible, ethical, sustainable behavior.
But what I'm trying to do is not just critique business, but actually try to
unpack some roadmaps to how they can actually be better.
So I think in that case, you know, I hope that even if people may think it's
sort of woke, that they don't necessarily just turn off, that they actually
(41:08):
see that I'm trying to be positive and constructive,
not just be a critic.
Oh, that's not actually, let's talk about some solutions.
Because you highlighted something that you call regenerative model.
Yes. And I'd like to learn more. So because usually we only think about sustainability
and then, you know, that's not enough anymore, right?
(41:31):
So can you share some examples of business that have successfully adopted that and how they are doing?
So I think, you know, one of the themes in the sort of end of the book where
I focus more on solutions is that, you know, there's not one sort of silver
bullet that's going to solve everything.
I think, you know, we need policy change. We need change in investment markets.
(41:55):
We need businesses, I think, to play a very important leadership role in this
because they, in many cases, are where the rubber meets the road in,
you know, producing things and actually creating innovations that could be possibly for good.
So in many cases, a lot of the examples I give are where a small number of businesses
(42:18):
actually takes on some responsible action,
show that this can work, show that it's something consumers care about,
show that it actually can work in a business, and then actually ends up being
taken on by policymakers,
which then can sort of diffuse that more broadly.
(42:39):
I think an example of that is many of the frameworks that existed for so long on ESG accountability.
So since really the late 1990s, there has been a lot of work,
mostly from the NGO community, on corporate accountability.
This is the Global Reporting Initiative, Sustainable Accounting Standards Board,
(43:03):
the ISSB, many other of these sort of acronyms, TCFD, Task Force on Climate-Related
Financial Disclosures.
And what's happened is that these organizations have innovated and really dug
into how companies can be measured, transparent, and accountable.
(43:23):
Small numbers of companies have taken this. I mean, thousands of companies have.
So it's actually a lot of companies.
But in the overall scheme of corporations, I mean, there's millions of companies in the world.
So many of these ideas now have been enacted in the EU with there's this CSRD,
(43:44):
the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which actually takes this,
you know, decades of innovation and rigorous work from NGOs,
from companies, and actually, you know, creates governmental standards about it.
So I think that, in many ways, is we can't do things voluntarily.
(44:05):
Things have to end up being done through a much more systematic way.
On the question of regenerative, this is something where I really learned a
lot from many of the entrepreneurs that I interviewed around how to actually
move beyond sustainability.
Because sustainability, in many ways, is something we all know about.
(44:27):
The UN has its sustainability development goals. We accompany sustainability reports.
But sustainability, in many cases, is about doing less harm.
And, you know, maybe for a long time that was okay, but we're in a situation
with climate and inequality where I think we need to hold companies to a stronger accountability,
(44:50):
not just doing less harm, but actually doing sort of positively good for the world and for society.
And this is what regenerative approaches are about. So this really came about through agriculture.
And the idea being that, you know, if, you know, for a long time,
(45:10):
we had this sort of monoculture factory farming model where,
you know, large companies would,
you know, would, you know, both on the sort of the growing side,
but then also on things like the seed and other side would really promote very
efficiency based, but also very environmentally destructive types of planting
(45:35):
and growing behaviors however.
Actually if you go back before that time
and you know it's actually there's a much more sort of natural and regenerative
and i use the word regenerative to mean that actually what happens if you if
you if you grow crops in a way that is thoughtful and takes biodiversity into
(45:58):
account and it's not in a monocrop way,
actually by doing agriculture thoughtfully, you can actually give back to the soil.
So the soil becomes more fertile, more rich. You can get back to ecosystems
and they become sort of more diverse, more sustainable.
(46:18):
And I mentioned this because a company that I studied a lot in the book,
Patagonia, which is well-known for its sustainable performance.
When I interviewed one of the leaders there, he said to me, the light bulb really
went off for us on this topic when we started doing food business.
They have a business called Patagonia Provisions, which is a small part of their business,
(46:42):
but actually has had a big impact on the thinking of their firm because they
learned that actually through many of the thoughtful ways that food can be grown,
that actually a business can give back in a positive way.
And they said this actually spread to many of the different businesses they had.
So in the past, Patagonia is.
(47:04):
Mission statement had the clause and do less harm.
And they said, the person I interviewed said to me, he said,
boy, we realized we were admitting in our mission statement that we were doing
harm, which they said is sort of crazy.
So they changed their mission statement to we're in business to save our own planet.
And they actually innovated a lot in their value chain, be it sort of the upstream
(47:29):
way they get materials, way they produce things all the way through downstream to consumer effects.
And so this is an area where I think companies being much more thoughtful about
their business model and their value chains, not just taking,
but actually being able to positively give back.
(47:50):
And I think this is something where there's a lot of attention and discussion
around regenerative practices.
And I think this is something where leading businesses can be focusing their attention. Thank you.
Patagonia seems to be doing well in, you know, all around everything, really.
Even charging PT when you are looking for a sustainable business.
(48:13):
And the first thing that comes all the time is Patagonia. Okay.
Another idea, or another, you know, question is that, you know,
outside, let's say, you know, Patagonia or agricultural model,
for example, For example, those unhealthy food chains that produce unhealthy
food, how can they become also regenerative or adopt this generative model, actually?
(48:38):
Yeah, it's very complex because it's, you know, there's, I mean,
I think that, again, over time, I think with policy, hopefully,
you know, this is where, or investment markets.
So one example, a very small example, is a big, huge, destructive issue with
many of these companies is around their supply chains.
(49:02):
And if you look at a company like McDonald's or Taco Bell, you know,
a lot of the sort of meat that they end up purchasing ends up getting produced
in these factory farm conditions where the animals are fed a lot of antibiotics.
And so they can be crammed close together and they don't get diseases.
And it turns out if you feed animals antibiotics, they grow faster so they can
(49:24):
be killed sooner, basically.
And these antibiotics have a huge negative effect on our world because they're
leading to antibiotic resistance, which is a huge public health issue and danger.
And so, actually, investors have been really strongly petitioning,
(49:46):
advocating, withholding investment,
you know, voting, you know, shareholder votes, supporting, you know, the….
These companies, these large fast food chains actually moving away from this
antibiotic type of food production chain.
As I mentioned, there's no one silver bullet. This is one example of an action
(50:09):
that needs to be taken on these companies.
Many more need to be done. Part of the issue is they're so big.
The system is very supportive of them. And so I think we need to be working
on many different fronts to try to combat this.
What about that documentary, Netflix documentary, Phil, showing all these supply
(50:33):
chain process and showing people what they are seeing?
Yeah, no, I think there are some of them. I don't know. I've seen some of them.
I think that's another area.
People are watching them or they are ignoring them. Yeah, yeah.
More people need to watch them. Definitely. Yeah.
Okay, cool. That's one of very, very good ones.
So, and then there is one thing also you say in, actually, for example, individually.
(50:58):
So I also want to see how individuals, you know, working, for example,
you know, in those large corporations can also foster this culture of responsibility
and purpose, especially if that organization doesn't embrace this value.
You, how can, how can we make sure that we actually do, you know,
(51:21):
give that, you know, that support?
Yeah, I think that's really important. I mean, you know, so I think a couple of things.
So one, you know, and this is where I really learned a lot from my students
who are on the front lines of going to work for companies, you know,
actually, and there's some sort of research around this as well,
you know, just on that on that entry side, actually.
(51:44):
You know, businesses that have purpose are actually it's much easier from the
higher people nowadays,
you know, people in the cohort of folks that are, you know, going to the workforce
now don't want to work for fossil fuel companies, don't want to work for other companies.
So I think one is that people are actually not going to work for companies that
(52:04):
have sort of some of these problems.
The second is that actually inside companies, there is frequently groups that
you can be involved in, in order to help elevate the voice around important issues.
There are some examples from the US. This is a little bit ago where domestic partner benefits,
(52:27):
where in the past, maybe companies would only give benefits to a man and a woman
who were married, husband and wife.
However, this is something that companies within the company,
there were groups that got together that actually worked and lobbied the company
(52:50):
to actually expand those benefits to same-sex couples or other various groups.
And so I think that there is an opportunity within the company.
It's hard to do it unless you're part of a collective. So, you know,
I think, you know, working within your company is a really important lever for change.
(53:10):
Okay, good. So now, finally, you know, what would you say, you know,
your parting advice for people who are looking to do meaningful work and meaningful
life? Because this is the name of the podcast.
Yeah, I think a couple things. I mean, I think meaning is important.
I think we can't forget that. And that extends, you know, I mean,
(53:34):
obviously our own personal lives and the choices we make, but also, you know, companies.
And I think that, you know, we need to be very conscious in thinking about supporting
companies that actually are engaging in sort of meaningful work and behavior.
And I think that, you know, buying locally or engaging with your local community,
(53:56):
I think, is one way to actually help foster that.
I think, you know, there's a variety of sort of certifications,
a company that you can look to.
Those aren't perfect, but just sort of one quick way, like, you know,
could be Fairtrade or B Corporation or whatever.
But I do think that we need to be thinking very deeply about that.
(54:17):
You know, who we're engaging with on a daily basis in the commercial realm in
order to keep fostering meaningfulness.
Yeah, that is wonderful. Thank you so much. So how can people reach you and
learn more about you and your work?
It's the best way. Sure. Thank you. Thank you so much for asking,
Francine. So, you know, I have a website, my name, chrismarquis.com.
(54:40):
People can certainly, you know, sort of take a look there.
Also at Cambridge, I have a website, you know, at the university,
at the Judge Business School.
I'm very easy to find, you know, via Google, and they should certainly connect to me on LinkedIn.
And please feel very free to be in touch. I'm very happy to hear from people
who are interested in these topics and would love to, you know,
(55:03):
continue to build this important movement around businesses doing good.
Yeah. Thank you so much, Chris, for this insightful conversation and your work,
you know, for all the other listeners.
If you haven't done so grab a copy of the book actually
the property is how business privatized profit
and socialized costs by christopher marcus and
(55:23):
you'll learn much more of what we just discussed it's
only tiny tiny bit that we've discussed today did you
like this conversation what was your key takeaway about this episode so let
me know in the comment below and make sure you subscribe to this podcast on
your favorite podcast platform and YouTube so you don't miss any episodes.
(55:47):
And to hear more incredible stories and get the show notes and other free resources,
visit francinebellini.com slash podcast.
That's F-R-A-N-C-I-N-E-B-E-L-E-Y-I.com slash podcast. And I'll see you next
week for another episode of Meaningful Work, Meaningful Life podcast.
(56:09):
Until then, dream, act, and make an impact. Lots of love.
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