Seeking A Net Positive Career and Life
“Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don’t have enough of it, you’re out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you’re really missing something.”
I boarded my 6pm flight back to Houston and couldn’t wait to nestle into my window seat and crack open a book that had just been gifted to me at a conference. The book “Net Positive” was co-authored by Paul Polman, the former CEO of Unilever, which is widely recognized as a corporation leading the corporate sustainability movement, and Andrew Winston, a global expert on sustainability. I had just attended an inspiring five-day sustainability conference in Seattle where we discussed innovative solutions to the environmental issues we create including carbon emissions, water usage, packaging, and waste.
What is ESG?
To share a bit of background, I work in the field of “ESG,” or environmental, social, and governance, which is a term that broadly summarizes the set of non-financial standards, including corporate sustainability practices, that many investors use to decide whether to invest and lenders use to determine whether to extend credit. If a company cannot secure investments, through the trading of stock and securing of credit, it will go out of business. In short, a company’s ESG practices, or lack thereof, threaten its “license to operate.” It’s undeniable that corporate activity puts a strain on our world and the people within it. Customers, employees, and investors are calling for accountability.
Human Capital Management
To illustrate a point, I’ll take the risk of sharing a bit more corporate speak. Within today’s world of corporate ESG initiatives, the treatment and deployment of workers specifically is called human capital management. Human capital management is the set of practices that companies use to recruit, manage, and develop employees to increase their value to the company. Poor human capital management includes factors such as ignoring employee dissatisfaction surveys, failing to provide opportunities and training, or engaging in discrimination. As you might imagine, many companies fail dismally at human capital management, and many careers have been thwarted in the process.
Even before the rise of ESG, I’ve been a voice for managing ones own life and career and not allowing your job, to manage you. Nearly every post I write on HH, or on social media, involves sustainability. I don’t write about sustainability in business from the corporate perspective, but I write about sustainability from the vantage point of the individual: what makes a sustainable career and life for each of us. Through the choices we make, or avoid making, we become our own greatest asset or liability. We become the first line in our own human capital management. Every stroke of my pen has a purpose: to encourage us to manage our lives and our careers so that we expend our precious time in ways that allow us to grow and contribute. We must make time for family and friends, hobbies and dreams. We must be balanced to be whole. If you’re waiting for your company to do for you what only you can do, you’re at risk of being too late. A better life, with meaningful work, fulfillment, rest, peace, and happiness - your own human capital management - is first and foremost up to you. Your life has tremendous value.
In the book, Polman and Winston write about what it means for a company to be “net positive” by sharing five core principles:
Ownership of all impacts and consequences, intended or not
Operating for the long-term benefits of business and society
Creating positive returns for all stakeholders
Driving shareholder value as a result, not a goal
Partnering to drive systemic change
“In practice, it’s about innovating and offering new products and services that improve lives and heal the planet… about helping employees find their purpose and improve their life and well-being, while building a diverse and inclusive company…”
I absolutely love the quote up top from Peter Drucker:“Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don't have enough of it, you're out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you're really missing something.” Our life, and our work, is not just about breathing. This idea of taking full accountability - being net positive - through our choices and our impact - is achievable, not only by corporations, but by us as individuals. We can decide what we value and elect to perform work only for companies that align with our values. We can decide that our aspirations have meaning and that our dreams are important enough to live.
