Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take
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A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year
Named one of 10 Best New Management Books for 2022 by Thinkers50
“An advocate of sustainable capitalism explains how it’s done” — The Economist
“Polman’s new book with the sustainable business expert Andrew Winston…argues that it’s profitable to do business with the goal of making the world better.” — The New York Times
Named as recommended reading by Fortune’s CEO Daily
“…Polman has been one of the most significant chief executives of his era and that his approach to business and its role in society has been both valuable and path-breaking.” — Financial Times
The ex-Unilever CEO who increased his shareholders’ returns by 300% while ensuring the company ranked #1 in the world for sustainability for eleven years running has, for the first time, revealed how to do it. Teaming up with Andrew Winston, one of the world’s most authoritative voices on corporate sustainability, Paul Polman shows business leaders how to take on humanity’s greatest and most urgent challenges—climate change and inequality—and build a thriving business as a result.
In this candid and straight-talking handbook, Polman and Winston reveal the secrets of Unilever’s success and pull back the curtain on some of the world’s most powerful c-suites. Net Positive boldly argues that the companies of the future will profit by fixing the world’s problems, not creating them.
Together the authors explode our most prevalent corporate myths: from the idea that business’ only function is to maximise profits, to the naïve hope that Corporate Social Responsibility will save our species from disaster. These approaches, they argue, are destined for the graveyard. Instead, they show corporate leaders how to make their companies “Net Positive”—thriving by giving back more to the world than they take. Net Positive companies unleash innovation, build trust, attract the best people, thrill customers, and secure lasting success, all by helping create stronger, more inclusive societies and a healthier planet. Heal the world first, they argue, and you’ll satisfy your investors as a result.
With ambitious vision and compelling stories, Net Positive will teach you how to find the inner purpose and courage you need to embrace the only business model that will matter in the years ahead. You will learn how to lead others and unlock your company’s soul, while setting and delivering big and aggressive goals, and taking responsibility for all of your company’s impacts. You’ll find out the secrets to partnering with others, including your competition and critics, to drive transformative change from which you will prosper. You’ll build a company that serves your people, your customers, your communities, your shareholders—and your children and grandchildren will thank you for it.
Is this win-win for business and humanity too good to be true? Don’t believe it. The world’s smartest CEOs are already taking their companies on the Net Positive journey and benefitting as a result. Will you be left behind?
Join the movement at netpositive.world
From the Publisher
Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take
Publisher : Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date : October 5, 2021
Language : English
Print length : 352 pages
ISBN-10 : 1647821304
ISBN-13 : 978-1647821302
Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
Dimensions : 6.25 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #152,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #16 in Sustainable Business Development #76 in Environmental Economics (Books) #232 in Systems & Planning
Customer Reviews: 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 433 ratings var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
Customers say
Customers find the book highly valuable, with one noting how purpose and sustainability inspire employees. Moreover, the book receives positive feedback for its readability, with many considering it a must-read for business leaders. Additionally, customers appreciate the book’s insight, with one highlighting its real-life examples, and its pacing, with one describing it as a seminal work in ESG high-performance.
10 reviews for Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take
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Original price was: €30.€14Current price is: €14.
T –
Reframing What Good Looks Like For Company Performance and Broader Collaboration With Society
This superb book redefines what good performance is for companies and provides excellent examples from Unilever and many other companies. It makes clear that a company can, and should, succeed by aiming to give more than it takes. The book explores core principles and how a company can redefine practices, objectives and values, while satisfying stockholder and market demands for success. The chapters on discussing outside collaboration and partnerships, “Make 1+1=11” and “It Takes Three to Tango” are very insightful. The authors offer excellent analysis and advice for taking on some of the biggest criticisms companies face today, urging business leaders to “Embrace the Elephants.” Particularly valuable is the “Culture is the Glue” chapter: it rings so true and is filled with great examples to underscore the ways companies (and other organizations) can foster better culture. I very much hope that the book is widely read and absorbed. We need many more Net Positive companies, and more Net Positive governments too!
James F Boyle –
Best Single Volume Explanation of The Why & How of Corporate Sustainability
Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) conscious investing is reshaping global capital markets. NetPositive is the best single volume explanation of why world leading companies like Uniliver are embracing ESG high-performance and how, exactly, their longer term, multi-stake holder, approach to value creation in an increasingly transparent and uncertain world enables ESG high performers to âgive more than they takeâ but end up out-performing their competition. US based Andrew Winston has joined London based John Elkington as the worldâs leading authority on Corporate Sustainability. Winston wrote NetPositive with Paul Polman the long-time visionary CEO of Uniliver. This has helped make NetPositive both Winstonâs most ambitious and practical book. Because Winston and Polman donât ignore the elephants in the room. Including the facts that: (a) self-accelerating human caused climate breakdown is reshaping our world, (b) it is worsening unprecedented social and racial inequities that make the crisis harder to address and (c) national administrative states and global corporations need to develop and implement new market rules for all to move increasingly fractious societies towards greater sustainability. Consequently, the best of companies will follow Uniliverâs lead, repudiate quarterly capitalism and act courageously to partner with local, state and national governments, labor, suppliers and host communities and give more than they take to invest in partnerships for long-term value creation. As Uniliver did fending off hostile takeover, courting strategic acquisitions their competition could not win and creating whole new markets with public and NGO sector partners. If you want to know how scaling global businesses can confidently serve human aims and purposes – and beat their competition because of it – read this book.
Mary Gorham –
A “Must Read” for any Business Leader
Anyone who wants to know how to transform their business so that it improves the well-being of every one of their companyâs stakeholders- WHILE being highly profitable- needs to read this important book. Brimming with useful principles, frameworks, and examples, this book describes how thatâs achieved. Given the dire state of climate change and its interconnections with many social issues, the moral argument for companies to become ânet positiveâ is decisively made. But few books give such helpful guidance on HOW to create social and environmental benefit while creating long-term profitability. Leading the reader through each level of transformation- from the internal cultural changes to the many systems changes that extend beyond the companyâs doors, Paul Polman and Andrew Winston offer a comprehensive and incredibly useful guide for all of us. And no one is better qualified to write this book than the Polman and Winston team, whose combined experience and knowledge on this topic is unparalleled. Read it, and offer all your employees an opportunity to read and discuss it in small groups together so they can implement its many ideas. Your company and our planet will all benefit.
Bobbie Hennessy –
Overall a good read and I enjoyed most of the book! I highly recommend it!
This book definitely was written by a liberal with a strong distaste or attitude for anyone not seeing issues exactly as he does.However, we both agree on quite a few issues when it comes to how employees are the MOST important asset in any company and how important it is to treat them like the diamonds they are! We also agree in the importance of leadership, sustainability and many other leadership issues which all who are in these roles need to keep as top priorities in a company. He perhaps leans more of government intervention than my perspective as they are way to slow to act, and most often their actions reflect the particular party in power, versus the good of ALL the people regardless of political party!I am glad I read the book and found a lot in good takeaways from a leadership perspective and think anyone running a company in today’s environment, regardless of political parties, would find this book an excellent read! I know I did.Put aside the political issues and focus on the heart of the two men that wrote this book and their overall viewpoint that we need to GIVE more than take! An excellent perspective in any leadership role. I just wished politicians had that same mindset and this would be an even GREAT country vs one party against another!
ZJ36 –
Awesome
Apt
R.C.W. van der Voort –
Relevant and briljant analysis of shortcommings of business. Offering an convincing alternative
Peter Simeonov –
This book is a real wake-up call for all organisational leaders. Paul Polman and Andrew Winston masterfully highlight the future-threatening climate challenges we are facing as a society and what action leaders need to take to help solve them. The recent COP26 was a clear step in the right direction but very few on a global scale are yet to commit and take real action to solve the biggest crisis humanity has ever seen, which threatens our future existence. It’s private sector leaders that can take action fast and make a difference.Paul Polman and Andrew Winston are two of the greatest inspirational leaders, working hard to inspire and drive global change. In this book, amongst other things, Paul shares his story while at the helm of Unilever. His efforts have made a real difference to the planet and a positive legacy for this organisation. He has shown the way for many others to follow. And, critically, he has shown that moving to stakeholder capitalism strategy actually transforms growth and profitability – he delivered 290% total shareholder return at Unilever during his 2009-2019 tenure. A win-win for business and the planet. Here are just a few quotes that caught my attention (early in the book).”Net positive is a business that improves well-being for everyone it impacts and at all scales – every product, every operation, every region and country, and for every stakeholder, including employees, suppliers, communities, customers, and even future generations and the planet itself.””A company giving more than it takes will not focus on profits with a side of philanthropy. Instead, it embraces purpose in the core of the business and creates value from values.””Businesses that pursue a long-term, multistakeholder model create value in many ways. Not every step is automatically win-win, but over time the leaders save money, reduce risk, innovate more, build valuable corporate reputations and brands, attract and retain talent, and have a higher employee engagement.”This is undoubtedly one of the most valuable books that I have read in the last decade, if not longer. As an impact-driven entrepreneur, I have made it part of onboarding for all new members of our team as it illustrates our purpose in the company perfectly. I highly recommend it to all business leaders – from startup founders to large enterprise C-level executives. We all need to take action to solve the climate crisis and Paul Polman and Andrew Winston offer plenty of actionable insights to help people take action. And this book is only the start of the global ‘Net Positive’ movement that Paul and Andrew have started…
Andrew D Bennet –
Important to read. Honest, courageous, practical, tangible and ultimately inspiring advice to give a us sliver of hope to keeping life on this planet recognisable to what it is now. Refreshing to see a leader of business come from a place of such ethics.
Camilla de Nardis –
I LOVED this book! Very inspiring and refreshing, not your usual business book, for sure.A net positive business, is by the authors’ definition, one that âimproves well-being for everyone it impacts and at all scales’. We live at a time when an increasing number of companies are taking a stand on social and environmental issues, but many companies are hardly doing enough. This book urges business leaders to step up and address our âplanetary and moral emergencies’, focusing on climate change and rising inequality.Net positive businesses take ownership of all their impacts, operate for the long-term well-being of all stakeholders, create partnerships with companies (incl. competitors), government and NGOs to drive systemic change. I especially loved the chapter about “embracing the elephants” (all the issues companies do not talk about such as tax avoidance, human rights abuses and money in politics) and net positive advocacy, which means advocating for policies that benefit society instead of undermining it (such as higher taxation and carbon pricing). The book also remarks that companies should contribute to long-term thriving for everyone also by taking up issues that go beyond business, such as defending democracy and science – the pillars of our society.Overall, the book is very bold in talking about rarely touched upon topics in the business world.Even if many concepts presented in the book are not new, the authors put them into perspective with many examples from companies (first and foremost Unilever, I love Paul Polman’s anecdotes!)While business leaders are the main target audience of the book (gift it to your boss!), it is a must-read for everyone who cares about improving the world as we can all contribute to a culture of purpose and service to others with our everyday activities.
Cindy S –
I am fairly new to the ESG world. In my opinion, the book gives great insights about what companies need to start focusing on, if they havenât started yet, to create net positive impact in the world. I wished it had more content for people who are not in managerial or top management positions to action at a smaller scale. I guess part of it will be to invest or support B corporations and companies that truly care about ESG factors.