The Triple Bottom Line Blog

This week, I hosted a panel at the Ceres Conference at which Jeff Swartz, the CEO of Timberland, the boot company, and Gary Hirshberg, the CEO of Stonyfield Farms, the organic yogurt company, answered questions about the role of business in society. Prior to the panel, I spoke with them about sustainable consumption.

I was very pleasantly surprised.

Rather than the usual canned answers one often gets from CEOs at these events, both these Red Sox fans proved to be deeply committed, not to selling less shoes or yogurt, but to sustainable consumption and enlightened consumerism as a potential way out of the ecological and societal quicksand in which we find ourselves.

Gary explained that only about half of what we eat is real food, in terms of its nutritional value. For him, sustainable consumption starts with optimizing the food value chain, which will reduce waste and create value simultaneously. The resources we now waste to make Twinkies can actually feed lots of people.

Gary believes that we need enlightened consumers, i.e. a critical mass of organic yogurt eaters to really change the equation. Twenty years ago, when Gary realized this, he started Stonyfield.

Jeff represents the third generation of Swartzes to run Timberland, and has a harder case to make with boots. But he and Gary are on the same program. Timberland's mission is "to equip people to make a difference in their world," which includes showing consumers, employees, other companies, and his children how commerce and justice can go hand in hand.

Timberland works hard to sell boots on the basis of its environmental and social actions. This is "cause marketing," yes, but also a deeper attempt to change consumer preferences by helping people "to be the change they want to see in the world." And, yes, quoting Gandhi is apropos here--Jeff is deeply motivated by spiritual and inter-generational concerns.

I know when I am being sold a bill of goods, and this time I was not. Both of these guys have thought deeply about their actions, and they're not just walking the talk, they're running it. When we finished the panel later that morning, they deserved the prolonged standing ovation they received.

As for me, like some other unenlightened "experts" in sustainability, I had wrongly assumed that smaller companies like Timberland and Stonyfield were sideshows to the main event—that the GEs and GMs of the world would move us forward, not the little guyes. Now I see the role that deeply committed CEOs like Gary and Jeff are playing and I would not be surprised if they had more of an impact, in the long run, than companies that are hundred of times as big.

And that size gap may not last forever. Under Jeff, Timberland has grown from annual revenues of $159 million to $1.6 billion, and the company now competes directly with Nike and Adidas. And while organic foods represent only three percent of the food consumed in the United States, Stonyfield sells six times the amount of yogurt as Kraft foods and is growing every day.

Maybe the answer lies in one of my favorite lines from The West Wing: "They'll like us when we win."

Labels: C-Suite, Gary Hirshberg, Jeff Swartz, Stonyfield Farms, Sustainable Consumption, Timberland

Jeffrey Swartz, chief executive of Timberland, makes some intriguing comments in this interview, which unfortunately got somewhat buried in the Saturday edition of the New York Times (the least-read edition of the week).

Swartz expresses frustration with the slowness of the athletic footwear industry to adapt well-documented green manufacturing techniques for shoe production. Whereas companies like Nike, Patagonia, and his own firm have done a reasonable job of working together to improve practices in areas like child labor, progress has been much slower when it comes to, for example, encouraging suppliers to use wind or solar power.

What's most interesting is the reason Swartz cites. It has nothing to do with consumer awareness and motivation, which he says is equally low on all social indicators:

We ask people who just bought a pair of shoes how they made their choice, and the immediate answer is that the price was right, or they liked the look or the color.

Ask people what they know about the human rights or environmental track record of the brand they just bought, and they walk away. People buy on the basis of product attributes, not brand attributes.

Instead, the problem (as so often) relates to decision-making processes. Labor rights, he says, can get dealt with effectively at the middle levels of organizations, where like-minded individuals often have strong networks across the industry: "It's not Timberland and Patagonia collaborating, it's Betsy from Timberland networking with Casey from Patagonia. It's activist to activist, not company to company." But reforming manufacturing methods along eco-friendly lines calls for commitment and coordination at higher levels of the corporation, which is much harder to arrenge.

Of course, Swartz himself occupies that "higher level," so he is in a position to do something about it. The interview ends with an unusually self-reflective, even self-judgmental comment about why he hasn't:

Our competitors are so much bigger than we are, and that makes me reluctant to place the call. But maybe I really should do less lamenting that C.E.O.'s aren’t getting together, and pick up a phone. Maybe that's the answer: I should lament less and dial more.

Yes, we all should. But maybe one of Swartz's fellow CEOs will read the interview and save him a dime by picking up the phone himself.

Meanwhile, the story offers an interesting mini-case-study of how corporate change and the obstacles to such change are both embedded in the nuts-and-bolts of organizational life . . . right down to such petty personal details as whose number is on speed dial in the phones of which competing companies. It's why business leaders who aspire to be change agents can't be satisfied with crafted inspiring mission statements or making powerful speeches. They also have to get deep down into the weeds of what it actually takes to make change happen, which may sometimes mean figuring out who needs to pick up the phone and make the first call.

Labels: Jeffrey Swartz, Management and Organization, Timberland