1966 – Embracing Steward Leadership for a Better Future with Rajeev Peshawaria

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1:05With us right now, Rajiv Peshavaria. Rajiv, it's great to have you. You are the president and founder of both Leadership Energy Consulting, and you are the CEO of Stewardship Asia Center. Now, your websites are Rajiv Peshavaria, and that's at, again, we've got the spelling of that to our friend that's listening to our podcast right now, so you can go because we're going to be talking about your website. You're also found on the web. Your company is stewardshipasia.com.sg. And you're the author of the book, Sustainable Sustainability, which we're going to be talking about. And I want to point this out, too.

1:45I want to celebrate you for doing this. But you have an accompanying podcast for the book. And again, it's called Sustainable Sustainability. So to our friend that's listening to a podcast right now, go ahead and search for those two terms, conversations with experts on sustainable strategies and business practices. is guided by steward leadership. Rajiv, thank you so much for the work you're doing, and thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Well, listen, I would love to maybe just kind of talk about, you know, who you are and the work and the impact that you have in the world today.

2:19Well, you know, I used to be a banker. I used to be a trader. And somewhere down the line, I got pretty disillusioned with the fact that when it came to leadership development, when it It came to management development. $80 billion a year I spent every year around the world on trying to create better leaders. And yet you look at any company around you and you can count good leaders in the hands of two fingers of two hands. And then more recently, I got disillusioned with the idea that, you know, the whole world is talking about sustainability, environmental sustainability, social sustainability.

2:55Yet lots of talk, but very little action. We are going towards 2.7 degrees rather than 1.5 degrees. Inequality is increasing, not decreasing. And cybercrime is now more profitable than the drug trade. So I decided to figure out what is missing in the action on sustainability. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, what is missing? So you see, before I tell you that, it's interesting. The world is throwing three or four things at the problem of both climate change and social inequality. A lot of money, so sustainable finance, green finance, whatever you call it, there's$43 trillion in ESG funds. But very little of that is actually going towards climate or social action.

3:42Country after country is passing regulation on reporting requirements on environmental or other activities. So there's a lot of the sustainability reports are getting thicker and glossier every year. And then there's incentives, green incentives, tax incentives. And the latest fad is to link CEO compensation with the ESG markers. What are we seeing? A whole lot of greenwashing. So to answer your question, what's missing? In a nutshell, what I would say is that we are trying to solve a leadership issue with money, incentives and regulation. That's the problem. Yeah. You mentioned greenwashing. Tell me more about what that is for someone who doesn't understand why this is problematic.

4:25So, you know, everybody's talking about sustainability these days, right? Companies want to show that they're very, very conscious towards the environment. They're doing all the right things, or rather, they're not doing all the wrong things. Now, there are companies that are genuinely doing that. They're solving environmental or social issues genuinely. And there are those who are actually profiting from today's challenges, are not doing anything to address either environment or social, but are deceiving people to say that, yes, we are doing this, we are doing that, but actually they're not. They're adding to the problem.

4:55That's called greenwashing. Yeah, it is. It's very tempting because I think that, you know, I think in our hearts, many of us want to do the right thing. Maybe sometimes that feels It's complicated. And yet we feel a lot of pressures, you know, pulling from, you know, well, look, we need to be doing this for PR reasons. We need to be doing this, you know, for many different reasons. But again, I think most of us in our hearts want to do it for the right reasons. It's just there's a lot of compelling reasons or maybe difficult challenges to doing the hard work, you know, that maybe have us feel like just kind of checking boxes and, you know, let's try to make hay of it or, you know, qualify for some incentive.

5:48And, you know, and maybe there's not enough oversight. I don't know. It does. It feels like a very confounding world to me, unfortunately. Well, you know, here's the thing. if we don't address issues related to climate change with great urgency, there will be no planet left in 20 years. And those who say that, you know, sustainability is a cost or a regulatory compliance problem, well, and that it eats into your profits, well, if you don't have markets left, who are you going to sell to and what profits are you going to make? We see sort of a spectrum of response. So on the one hand, you have the greenwashers who are willfully deceiving and profiting from today's challenges.

6:29Then you have the window dressers who say, whoa, everybody's talking about sustainability. Let me also do something, dress up the window, put up a nice mannequin, look good. It's all form, no substance. Then you have the deniers. What climate change? What inequality? And even if these things do exist, it's not my problem. Then you have the box checkers, what you just mentioned, right? Let me do what the law says and no more. And there's a huge problem with that, which we can come back to if you want to talk about it. And then there is the real steward leaders who see themselves as stewards of planet Earth and humanity, they are finding profitable solutions to today's problems.

7:03So on the right-hand side are people who are finding profitable solutions to today's challenges. On the left-hand side, people who are profiting from today's challenges. Yeah. So let's talk specifically about your book, Sustainable Sustainability. It's available everywhere. But, and I should point out like Rajiv, you've written several very well-respected books in the kind of the business leader community. It's published by Penguin. Tell me about Sustainable Sustainability, why ESG is not enough. What is your hope for transformation with this book? Who should read it? And what would you hope that the impact would have on the reader?

7:48Well, the bigger reason for writing the book was that we all, for our own sakes, need to save Mother Earth. It's the only home we have. And if inequality continues to widen, it's not going to be safe for anybody. And, you know, with AI, we don't even know yet, net-net, is it going to make life better or is it going to make life worse? So we need to address these issues for our own sake, for humanity's sake. The reason I wrote this book is because, as I mentioned earlier, the world is throwing money, regulation and incentives as solutions to these problems. And it's not working. You look at any of those things, it's not working.

8:22Right. So what is the real solution is what we wanted to find. We said, let's talk to companies that are actually doing well by doing good. What that means is they're actually making, you know, superior shareholder returns by addressing the very challenges that are threatening us today. So we spoke to and researched 100 such companies around the world. You know, the Patagonias of the world, the Tatas in India, the Ayala's in the Philippines, the Faber-Castell's in Germany. These companies have existed for long, long periods of time. And their ethos is, let's make money by addressing the very challenges, a social challenge or an environmental challenge.

9:00So we asked 100 such companies in detail, why do you do it and how do you do it? And from there, we developed that these companies have something in common. and it's called the steward leadership. They not only see themselves as stewards of planet Earth and humanity, they lead with something called steward leadership. So if you want, I can give you more detail about what steward leadership is, but that's the playbook that sustainable sustainability is. If you want to make money, if you want to do well by doing good in your business, then that's the playbook. Who are some leaders that you think are embodying steward leadership well today?

9:40Plenty. Today, yesterday, day before yesterday, lots of leaders. I'll give you two examples of long-lasting companies. The Tata Group in India, for example. They're a 155-year-old conglomerate about touching almost$400 billion in value today. They're into every kind of business you can think of, from steel to software to hospitality to airlines. You know, back in the 1850s or 1860s, when the founder, Jamshed Jitata, was putting up his first steel plant in rural India, before the factory was completed, he built hospitals, he built schools, he built community parks, he built temples, masts and churches.

10:21Why? Not because he was a philanthropist, but because he realized that the more he builds a township around the steel plant, the more families would come and live there. More engineers would want to move their kids here. Without schools, without hospitals, why would anybody come? In other words, sustainability was not an afterthought. It was an integral part of his business plan. And the Tata Group for the last 155 years, every single business of theirs, they think society first, they think environment first. Now let's go over to the West. Faber-Castell, you know, the pencil makers? They've been around in Germany.

10:55Oh, yeah. They've been around for 270 years. And by the way, over 200 plus years ago, they started providing employee benefits like housing, health insurance, etc. to their employees a full 40 years before such things became the law in Germany. In fact, what they did paved the way to becoming the law in Germany. And for 270 years, they've been doing this. Patagonia is another example in the US. Now, I could go on with many examples, but when you ask these people, how have you been so successful for so long? They all give the same answer. Because we think society first, because we think environment first.

11:37Yeah. So let's share just a bit. Obviously, we talked about your book, Sustainable Sustainability. You have an accompanying podcast. Tell me who you're having conversations with on. And again, it's a brand new podcast. So, you know, I imagine there's a lot yet to come. But what's the purpose of your podcast? Again, it's called Sustainability. Yeah, so we talk to leaders like the ones I just described, people who are doing well by doing good, who are making superior shareholder returns by addressing the very challenges that are threatening us today. They're not looking at sustainability as a cost problem or a regulatory compliance problem.

12:16They're looking at it as an opportunity. So we've recorded about 15 episodes already. We've just released the first one. And so we'll be doing this on an ongoing basis going forward. Why are we doing it? We're doing it to bring these stories to people so others can get inspired. We cannot neglect environment or society. We need to change the narrative away from it being a cost problem or a reporting problem to an opportunity. Get this. The World Economic Forum says that climate change alone provides$10.1 trillion of annual new business opportunities for the next three decades. and 395 million new jobs.

12:55So if you can think about sustainability as an opportunity rather than as a risk or a cost problem, you've changed the entire narrative. And now not only will we save the planet and ourselves with it, but we will also make decent profits. You're absolutely right. And not only are there financial incentives, obviously, not only are we making the world a better place And, you know, when we think about the world that we leave behind for our children, consumers want this. They're looking for this. They want to know that you are being a steward of the planet. Right. Consumers demand this. Yeah, it's not optional today.

13:39And in fact, if you're not participating with your heart and not demonstrating, you know, that leadership and that example to others, then, you know, there's a percentage of the population that's just going to, they're going to look elsewhere because they vote with their dollars. And their feet. You're absolutely right. If there is a choice, the consumer will go somewhere else. Now, you know, these sorts of steward leaders who are making money by doing the right thing, doing well by doing good, we found that they had a few things in common. They believe in four very specific values. They believe in the value of interdependence, which means that the more I help you succeed, the more I am going to succeed.

14:21My success is intertwined with yours. They believe in long-term view. In the short term, there may be some pain, but in the long term, I'm going to be around forever if I do this. They believe in taking ownership. Environmental and social sustainability is my problem, and I am going to take ownership for it. And most importantly, they believe in creative resilience, which means we're going to have to solve these problems with innovation. And innovation means we fail it out of 10 times, but I'm not going to give up. Creative resilience. So those four things they had in common. And then they actually declare a purpose for their organization or for themselves.

14:56We're going to create a better future, but not just for me or my shareholder. We're going to create a collective better future. That's at the essence of what steward leadership is. I love it. Rajiv Peshavriya, again, you're the author of four books, including your latest, which again is called Sustainable Sustainability. It's available on Kindle. It's available on paperback. You are also, again, the CEO of Stewardship Asia Center, and you're the president of Leadership Energy Consulting, which I wish we would have had more time to talk more about the work that you do in the world. But your website is Rajiv Peshavriya, and also it's stewardshipasia.com.sg, which to our friend that's listening, please go support the work that Rajiv and folks within this network are doing.

15:48Rajiv, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for the work you're doing, and thank you so much for the conversation. My pleasure. Thank you.

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