When it comes to reaching every household across the globe, hardly any company comes close to Unilever. With over 400 brands, from Dove soap to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Unilever seems to be a ship too big to sink. But what happens to a ship when its sailors are misguided?

Leading up to the year 2009, Unilever had spent a decade in darkness, with its turnover declining from $55 billion to $38 billion. And the culprit was the same as we saw with Enron: short-term focus on money. But thankfully instead of lying about its income, which led to Enron’s demise, Unilever decided to hire Paul Polman as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Before hiring Polman, Unilever, like every other publicly traded company, had fallen into the rut of reporting high quarterly targets to its shareholders and then chasing them blindly to win the public’s trust, and raise company value. This was putting enormous pressure on its employees as well as raising the public’s expectations to unrealistic levels. And this was the first thing Polman changed. He stopped reporting these figures to break this unsustainable myopic vision and chase long-term value creation.

In an interview with The New York Times, Polman tells, “We need to reinvent capitalism, to move financial markets to the longer term. CEOs are basically good people. There are no CEOs who want more unemployment, or more people going to bed hungry, or more air pollution. But then why collectively do we behave so miserably? It’s because we spend too much time on dealing with the impacts and not with the underlying causes.”

As Polman steered Unilever with this mindset, he rebuilt its image as a sustainable company by spending on goals like uplifting the local communities they operated with and making both products and processes more eco-friendly. This did increase the expenses in the short term, but ultimately Polman’s vision led the unprecedented growth for the next 8 years. By the time Polman retired in 2018, Unilever had delivered a total return of 290% to its shareholders.

Today, Unilever’s revival is a success story so great that every other CEO wants to follow Polman’s lead. Conscious Capitalism, sustainability, and human rights are on the agenda of board room meetings and shape the long-term strategy of many other companies. It took one man to go against the grain, and now the future seems better than it did 10 years ago.

The effort is still far from over, with companies like Amazon, despite pouring billions into research, having failed to fix issues with the working conditions and human rights. But the Unilever story gives hope. If one Paul Polman could have such a huge impact on the industry, can another wave of change be far away?

As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see.”

The choice is yours 🕊️