What happened with Paul Polman is not the result of a blow in the shower or an epiphany in the middle of the board of directors. The former CEO of Unilever between 2009 and 2019 attributes his environmental and egalitarian awareness to education and, specifically, to that given to him by his parents, who met in the boy scouts after the Second World War and who taught him to remember who lives in society.
“We always worked for the community, with the idea of peace in mind,” says Polman during a break at the Audi Summit for Progress, held this week in Madrid. This Dutch manager, born in 1956, grew up with his five siblings in the town of Enschede, in an environment far from the demand for economic results to which life would lead.
“You have to invest in other people to be successful. It's the mentality I've grown up with. And I have applied it in business. For me, business is not only about making money, but also about attacking the world's problems effectively,” she says in a low tone of voice, accustomed to expressing herself without interruptions. After all, he was until recently the CEO of one of the largest consumer groups in the world.
His vocation was to be a doctor, but in those years the Dutch university system was peculiar. The number of places was limited and he was drawn among the best records in high school, including his own. He was not lucky in this lottery, so he studied Economics. "It was like that. People started studying Law or Economics waiting for the Medicine position, and I was left out for two years, so I resigned.”
The next thing was to do an MBA in Cincinnati, in the United States, and start working at Procter
“The benefit is like white blood cells. You need it to live, but you don't live from it. The objective has to be to motivate people, to have the talent and energy to make the organization work,” says this frustrated doctor.
Polman, who has collaborated in the elaboration of the United Nations sustainable development goals, remembers the day when he brought together the top executives of competing corporations to change all the ice cream machines on the planet for more efficient consumption ones. . He also took advantage of the potential of Unilever, the largest soap manufacturer in the world, to spread this product throughout the poorest countries and prevent many deaths from infection.
His management at Unilever, he says, was a success because it put the company ahead in environmental aspects that many governments would later take on as their own. The company not only emerged stronger compared to rivals, but also demonstrated, as he says, that profit and sustainability cannot be separated. “At first the plan was not understood, but today Unilever is fifteen years ahead of the rest,” he says.
Polman defends long-term business plans and strives to debunk myths, not only that of the incompatibility between profit and the environment. Contrary to what he thinks, he assures that change in organizations comes from below because workers in unsustainable companies end up leaving. He also attacks the myth that the fight against climate change neglects the needs of the poorest and that a CEO his age cannot share references with youth. He declares himself an admirer of Greta Thunberg.
