The Provocateurs:

Announcer:

Please welcome to the stage Geoff Tuff, Des Dearlove, and Anke Hampel.

Geoff Tuff:

So, hi everyone, I am  Geoff Tuff. I lead sustainability globally and in the US for Deloitte for all our energy resources and industrials clients. I am co-host of this podcast along with Steve Goldbach, who many of you have probably seen up here over time, and Kulleni Gebreyes from Deloitte. And we lead this podcast with Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer from Thinkers50. Our aim is to provoke you to think and act differently through conversations with insightful leaders like Anke who offer new perspectives on traditional business thinking. And today we’re coming to you live from our stage at Climate Week in New York City 2025. And it’s really live, as you can tell.

So this is a collaboration, as I said before, between Thinkers50 and Deloitte. My co-host today is Des Dearlove. He is co-founder of Thinkers50, which is best known for its global Ranking of management thinkers and its Distinguished Achievement Awards, celebrating bold ideas that are shaping the future of business and that can make a positive impact on the world. Des is also a former columnist to The Times of London and co-editor of the best-selling Financial Times Handbook of Management. He’s an associate fellow at Oxford University and a visiting professor at IE Business School in Madrid. So Des, great to see you again.

Des Dearlove:

Geoff, great to see you too. And it’s great to be here in New York for Climate Week and I’m super excited about our special guest today. Anke Hampel is chief sustainability officer at ABB and a member of the board of directors of ABB Germany. ABB is a global technology leader in electrification and automation based in Zurich, Switzerland. ABB helps industries to outrun. This means running at high performance while becoming more efficient, productive, and sustainable, enabling industries to outperform. The company has been around for a while. The company has over 140 years of history and around 110,000 employees worldwide. Anke has a background in finance, procurement, supply chain and innovation management in the consumer goods and packaging industry. She’s married and the proud mom of two sons. Anke, welcome.

Anke Hampel:

Thank you.

Geoff Tuff:

I’m worried we’re going to give Anke a whiplash as she looks at me and now looks at you, but hopefully that’s going to be okay. So let’s start by just talking a little bit about you, your journey, how you came to be where you are today. I know we were talking before we came up here about how some of it has felt a little bit random, but tell us your story.

Anke Hampel:

Thank you. Thank you first of all for having me for this special edition of Climate Week New York. Very exciting to be here with you. And yeah, being part of this podcast which had people on in the previous episodes that I really admire, Paul Polman, Andrew Winston, who actually happened to be here today, yesterday in this audience.

How did I get here? Actually being back in New York is a full circle moment. I’ve been here first in ’99 doing an internship and got offered a job in consulting and in parallel there was a job offer, a longstanding job offer from Procter & Gamble because I’d done a case study week there and this was the time of the dot-com bubble and people were just looking for talent and I was like, okay, I have no idea about finance, let me do finance, because in my international business studies I focused on a bit more general management.

So I started at P&G, made the decision for P&G because I really was inspired by the purpose, improving the lives of consumers. So what you will see here is a bit of a theme. I’ve been on this continuous quest for how to combine profit and purpose. It’s not an easy one, it’s a long one to talk about. And a bit of this we will do today. In 2017 actually I was back here in New York working on M&A with the beauty giant Coty for the ones who know. And this is when I actually got a call from Tetra Pak, the packaging company, who’s selling on an annual basis 160 billion packages that actually have the potential to be the most sustainable packaging in the world. It’s a family-owned company. And I decided to actually go for this opportunity because I wanted to see how it is if you’re running a business without the quarterly analyst pressure.

And what I found was actually some of the pressure’s good. It gets you to do things that actually are expected. Sustainability, one of them, ABB is actually one of these companies having the quarterly pressure and going with a very strong purpose. In a family-owned business, you really have to see how the long-term projects are still brought to life. And when I joined Tetra Pak, I gave an interview and I said, “My job is to eliminate my job.” Why did I say this? Tetra Paks, I hope everyone is familiar with them, it’s the milk packages, juice packages, they contain aluminium, which is the most efficient barrier we have in the world. It’s just six micron, but it makes it hard to recycle. And so after six years I was done, the first paper-based barrier was launched into the market, and that’s when I got the call from ABB and was offered the job to lead sustainability globally.

And that’s also when imposter syndrome kicked in. I have to be honest because first I was very excited talking to the CEO and he talked about the art of influencing. I was like, “Okay, I can do this.” But then having the expertise for sustainability I obviously don’t have or had at that time. And I was asked to come with my business understanding, and I think that’s super important of what we are trying to do in sustainability today. We have to speak the business language, otherwise it’s not going to work what we are trying to deliver. And I decided to take a course in Cambridge and then another one in Yale, and with this started fully prepared. 10 days into the job, this was in December ’22, I was asked for my first presentation in the EC. That went fairly quick.

Two months into it, first board meeting and there I remember an interesting debate with a seasoned sustainability professional, Geraldine Matchett. She is at the board of ABB but also at the board of Nestle and Swiss Re, and she had been in the business for more than 20 years. And we were discussing about emissions. And just because I had just studied the whole thing and things are evolving super fast in sustainability, I was actually able to have a strong argument and was able to convince her of this is the way to go. And so I’m sharing this because it’s the right time to encourage more and more people to really feel, okay, I can do this. Sustainability is not something that someone else does who’s an expert who has been in it for 20 years. No, everyone can and should do it. That’s the best way that we are going to combine purpose and profit and that’s why I’m here and very proud to be.

Geoff Tuff:

It doesn’t sound like all that random a journey, I have to say, Anke.

Des Dearlove:

Let’s talk about ABB. What are the company’s sustainability goals and how are you working towards them? I mean, it’s the company obviously … in Europe it’s a very famous company, but it may not be so well known in the States.

Anke Hampel:

I’m aware of this. We had a few questions, but what we are driving now is our mission, which is helping industries to outrun. It’s a bit of a stopper, but it’s “outperform leaner and cleaner”, and that’s how we’re defining it. The purpose of the company is to make progress for a more sustainable and resource-efficient future by providing technology leadership in electrification automation. So we are an electrification automation company, as you said before, with a very long history. And when I came in I found a reasonably good sustainability agenda, but the targets were there but not everyone was working against it. It was the time when lots of commitments were made. And so one of the first things, it was like okay, we have made a net-zero commitment, let’s get to this. And so one year into the job, we got the approval to go for net-zero targets, got them validated by SPTI, which these days is not any longer as obvious, but we still have a lot of companies doing this because they want to show this is credible, what we are doing.

And then this is really something we are making strong progress against. We just published our climate transition plan, which is a new requirement, but we are also proud to do this to show that we actually know how to get there last Monday. So you can all find it online. It explains in detail and a lot of people also internally came up and said, “Wow, finally, I’m really clear what we are doing.” And so we are set out to, we have these commitments and we are following through with them and that’s super important. When it comes to resource efficiency, we have already since 2020 a target to deliver 80% circularity for our products. And circularity is not yet defined. So what did we do? We came up with our own framework. It takes all the life cycle phases of products and then puts KPIs against them and that’s how we are measuring.

The NGOs that are working on this, one of them being the World Business Council of Sustainable Development, are planning to actually publish the global circularity protocol at COP30 very soon. And then we have been able to obviously inspire with the work we have been doing and how we are measuring. So we look forward to many more companies adopting this and obviously bringing this to our suppliers, to our customers, to our value chain. So that’s a very important one. Included in there is zero waste to landfill by 2030. And then we are also measuring senior female leadership, employee engagement, health and safety. So we have a very complete set.

And by now we have integrated this really into how we are running the business. So everyone is talking about integrate and strategy. We actually have now for the second year run the long-term performance planning process, five-year forecast, financial targets, sustainability targets next to it at division level. So we have in total 18 divisions, all of them have to make their five-year focus on all these KPIs on a quarterly basis. These are reviewed with the board as well. So we have really gone the next step and the expectation is whenever you commit on sustainability, anything you will have to deliver, there are investments required, which means they need to be included in the financial targets and commitments you’re making. So that’s really full circle strategy inclusion.

Geoff Tuff:

And I know we’ll be getting a lot more into the business of sustainability and the economic gains you can get from it. But let’s actually talk about the stuff ABB makes. So you’re at the heart of the power sector in many ways. There’s a lot of conversation, there has been a lot of conversation this week at Climate Week about the importance of meeting growing demand in the power sector, finding ways to decarbonize heavy industry, etc. Tell us a little bit about how ABB plays in that space and the role that you’re playing with your customers as they think about having the same sort of decarbonization goals.

Anke Hampel:

Good question. So I already talked about enabling a more efficient future. So the industries that we are touching the most is power, transport, buildings, and mobility. And together these account for 95% of total global energy-related emissions. So a significant impact with everything we are touching when it comes also to sustainability, but of course helping these industries also, as we talked about before, to grow and to be successful. And we are in this sweet spot of electrification automation. One of the topics of climate week is power on, electrification of everything. So we have so many industries that are benefiting from electrification.

We talked just before coming up here on stage about this insight that is not very well known. Not all forms of energy are transformed into a hundred percent usable energy. A lot of energy gets lost. We’re talking about some more old-fashioned energy sources, 30% down to 20% is actually useful energy. And so this is not what is clear to everyone. When you are moving to more current ways of generating your energy, electricity, you’re actually making sure it’s usable a hundred percent. And that’s an important piece-

Geoff Tuff:

Which is a really important point because we talk a lot about meeting the demand and being able to generate more energy and actually it sounds like we’re wasting a lot along the way and that’s something that ABB helps with.

Anke Hampel:

That’s why ABB actually has created something called The Energy Efficiency Movement because we want to make sure people understand there’s a big opportunity there. Energy efficiency will help us with this current demand increase. We are not just in an energy transition, we are in an energy expansion or transformation process that leads to expansion. We’re talking about the AI part, I think 300 terawatt hours were required in 2020, and we’re expecting 1000 terawatt hours for AI use by 2030. So we really have to make sure that any energy that’s produced is used in the most efficient way. And that’s one of the things we are really doing with our products.

ABB is also the biggest provider of electrical motors and drives, smart variable drives. For the ones who don’t know, if a motor is running full, flat out, I’m sure you have seen motors all around, they are existing in the smallest form and huge large motors. I’ve never seen as many large motors as ABB is producing, going obviously to our sites, which is very exciting. And all of these motors benefit if you actually are regulating them. If they run full out, whether there is a load on there or not, we are wasting energy. So variable speed drives can be just installed on existing motors and they then reduce the energy consumption depending on when actually the activity is needed. So you will not shut down the motor but you will actually modulate what’s happened.

And that’s an important insight that many companies have not really gone after. The energy efficiency audits that we are offering to our customers and that we are promoting via this movement that already has now 550 companies who joined are just one way to actually understand what is driving inefficiencies in how I’m using energy. And there is this insight I learned coming into this industry. Engineers love to have big CapEx projects. Coming from the airport on Sunday here, I talked to the CEO of a big multinational and he was saying, “You’re right, it’s not sexy to invest into CapEx projects, but energy efficiency is about all these little smart motors that you have everywhere in the operation, in your air conditioning, everywhere. Check if they’re efficient.”

We actually are currently innovating to provide the highest efficiency class for our motors. It’s called IE6, especially for smaller motors. And it’s an innovation we are very proud of because as a leader in this industry, we of course have to drive innovation forward. Efficiency is key here. And the investments are not that big. They payout, the ROI for these investments, very often now is three months, six months, one year. And people are not aware of it. We are not sufficiently driving this opportunity and it actually could provide energy abundance in many areas. And that’s something very close to my heart, to our heart. When we are talking about electrifying everything, we also need to combine it with the highest opportunities on energy efficiency and, of course, then automation, going into the most efficient processes, making sure there is no waste in how you’re operating, allowing digitization to really find the sweet spots, ensuring there are smart solutions that take the energy at the moment when it has the highest renewable content, for example, in the grid. So there’s so many offerings that can help us to do the right thing and not all of them are being picked up.

Geoff Tuff:

Des, I think Anke is making us redundant. We could have just come up here and said, “Anke, tell us about sustainability.”

Des Dearlove:

What I was really interested in though is one of the things that we’ve seen happen in the last 18 months, is you get much more of this making the business case. Some of the things you were just talking about, I mean, why has it taken so long for us to be having this kind of level of conversation and how important is the narrative and the logic? Because, I mean, obviously sustainability can be painted as a bit fluffy, but in actual fact, once you start looking at the data, it’s very compelling. In fact, it’s an overwhelmingly strong case.

Anke Hampel:

Yep. I think we have been for too long looking at sustainability as a nice add-on, I would say. 

And what we are doing, and that is exactly where my business background is coming in, talking the language of the customers, making sure we talk about resilience. We have been discussing a lot around sustainability leaders. What’s the new word? If we shouldn’t use sustainability any longer, okay, let’s go for resilience, competitiveness, all of these things are actually what we are doing. If you drive process improvements, if you are driving continuous improvement, if you’re making smart investments that actually help you to be more efficient, productive in what you’re doing, using smart solutions, predictive maintenance, all of this, AI of course, is helping you to make much better business decisions and your business more efficient, lowering cost and carbon. That’s the other the two Cs.

And for too long we haven’t done this. We looked at sustainability, okay, there is this add-on. An example for us is circularity, actually, because we had this 2020 target, it was established, and when I came in I was like, “Where are people working on this?” Also, the customer demand is there. And once you show what it means to have a take back option, bringing your products back and making sure they’re being either refurbished, reused, all the good things that circularity bring, we are able to offer this, we are offering this today. But to tell the story in a compelling way we haven’t done. We talked about, “And this is a circular product.” We didn’t talk about, “This helps you to bring your costs down. This makes sure there is security of supply.” When we talk about scarce materials, copper will be a scarce material. Are we sufficiently introducing copper, recycled copper in all we are doing? No.

I myself going to copper suppliers and trying to really have a, “What is it? What does it take in your process to introduce the recycled content?” Connecting them with the recyclers, it’s a lot of hands-on, it’s rolling up the sleeves because it’s not easy. It would have been done if it would have been easy, but the opportunities are tremendous and they are all business opportunities. There are opportunities to make your business more resilient and competitive. So if we use this language, I think there’s a bigger chance to actually drive the success that we didn’t see so far.

Des Dearlove:

And language is so important at the end of the day. I mean, it’s amazing. And the narrative, that’s what I’m feeling, is the narrative is getting stronger, it’s more assertive.

Geoff Tuff:

So Anke, part of what I think I hear you telling a story about is a shift in your business model. And I don’t know how dramatic a shift it is, but a lot of the time when we’re speaking with chief sustainability officers and out in the sustainability space, the core challenge, the same core challenge is innovation, and any other time. And so I’d love to hear a little bit about your thoughts or your experience at ABB. Has the innovation and the business model shift been something that has been gradual that you’ve just kind of done with your customers over time or did you make some big, bold moves along the way, or was it a mix of both?

Anke Hampel:

I would say it’s a mix of both. If I just picked the example of AI, ABB has been working with early forms of AI for the last 40 years. So predictive maintenance-

Geoff Tuff:

And I thought AI was just invented last year. I’m kidding.

Anke Hampel:

That’s when it came to your home. No. So that’s an example where ABB has been on the forefront of doing this, have been innovating. We talked about the 140-year history. There’s plenty of IP you wouldn’t think about that actually goes back to the roots of ABB. For the ones who don’t know, there is ASEA, which is a Swedish company, and then there’s Brown Boveri, which was a Swedish, sorry, a Swiss company, easily mixed with Swedish. And it was really born out of innovations in the space of electrification. And so if I think about switchgear, the switches in your home, the ones when the power goes off, this is an invention by an early part of what ABB  acquired. It was an acquisition from more than 175 years ago. So it’s a pattern of acquisitions, in-house innovation, and then continuously looking at the portfolio.

What happened over the last year is that the portfolio has been a hundred percent aligned to the purpose. I described the purpose before: driving technology leadership and electrification automation. Our portfolio, the 18 divisions, are all aligned to this. They’re continuously scrutinized to check they are operating “on purpose”. And I have to say it makes it extremely easy. There are these requirements for reporting where you have to go into what percentage of your products are sustainable solutions. And for us, it’s everything. I’m not forcing anyone in the organization to say, “Please tell me which of your products are sustainable.” All of them deliver against this purpose and hence against the sustainability agenda that we have.

And so I think this scrutiny in making sure if you’re purpose-led, all your business elements should actually go along with it, has led to this innovation powerhouse, I would say. And I’m still learning, I’m a bit more than two and a half years on the job. I love going to our sites, to our R&D centers. Each time I’m learning something. One of the things that I’m happy to share in terms of innovation, is that we should be going for many more DC microgrids. What is this? So direct current. The original form of how electricity was invented. We are today, because the way grids were constructed, the legacy of it, we are converting DC to AC and when, after the energy generation and then when it comes to applications, we very often go back from AC to DC. Alternating current, direct current. Each time we do this, we lose 7% of energy, and this also means that emissions  are lost.

The minimum we could do is wherever renewable energy is generated on-site, keep them in a DC microgrid and use it directly without forcing back-conversion. And we’re not good at doing this. This knowledge has been there for some time, but the adoption is very slow. It’s maybe another story like the energy efficiency. We know these things for a long time and we are very slow in adopting. Some resistance, some we have always done it this way, but a lot can- 

Geoff Tuff:

But it does seem and sound consistent with the movement generally in the power generation and the need for more on-site generation and microgrids and what have you. So it’s the right time to make that shift.

Anke Hampel:

Exactly.

Des Dearlove:

Another term that we are hearing increasingly is regeneration, which seems like it’s the sort of next thing from sustainability. So if sustainability is typically seen as doing less harm, then environment regeneration goes further, it’s about doing more good. I mean, Paul Polman was here yesterday, and a year ago he was sitting in the seat you’re sitting in actually doing the podcast with us.

Geoff Tuff:

It might’ve been a different seat but roughly the same area.

Des Dearlove:

Obviously, his terminology is to be net positive. That was the name of the book with Andrew Winston. Do you feel that movement is coming, that we’re going to go beyond sustainability, or do you think that’s a pipe dream?

Anke Hampel:

Very good question. I wouldn’t think it’s a pipe dream because of how interconnected our systems are. So when we talk about doing no harm, which is what sustainability is, net-zero impact, this is what we can support with the business agenda. But if we think a little bit ahead, which businesses should do, which our board should be doing, that’s what our board of directors are being paid for, they have to make sure that it is a long-term vision that takes future risks into account when you are working on your current business model.

So the things that are coming our way are quite challenging to deal with. We can expect stranded assets. We will have a physical impact of climate change. It was also at Climate Week last year, the statement of in the next, there were 200 CEOs in the room and the statement pretty much from the European Bank, from Swiss Re, the insurer, and the business leader was in five to 10 years, all of your businesses here in the room will have been hit in some kind of form by the impact of physical risk coming from climate change. Today, this was last year, but I don’t think this has changed, or gone down, 25% of these risks are insured. The outlook is that in about five years we can expect 1% to be insured.

Geoff Tuff:

Not insurable anymore.

Anke Hampel:

What cannot be insured cannot be financed. And I really saw the wake-up call of CEOs in the room. So taking not only this, okay, I’m doing no harm, I’m here doing the right thing, is this question that Paul and Andrew Winston have been asking, is the world better off with my company in it? I love this concept because this really makes you scrutinize, what am I doing here? Am I taking all the impacts into consideration? A typical example is water. You can easily say our company, okay, doesn’t have a major water impact. We had our sites in India actually working on water-positive. Sounds very good. It’s in line with this bit, the net positive movement.

But what it does is it only looks at your own site and it doesn’t take into consideration what happens to the water basin. So you might end up in a few years not being able to actually have water to run your operation, and not have water for the community where your employees are coming from. And so if you don’t take the wider ecosystem into consideration, you will be running into challenges. And so that’s really about business continuity, about smart business. Think about the impacts that are there outside of your own operations, because eventually they will impact you.

The same applies to biodiversity. It’s very easy to say biodiversity doesn’t have any impact or we are not impacting. It’s always this mentality assessment, correct? Inside out, outside in. What are we doing about it? Eventually, if food supply is breaking down, which is one of the predictions, we have reduced our biodiversity over 70% over the last 50 years. If this is going to happen, we will have a problem running our business if our people, the most important resource, are not able to be fed. So thinking about this is extremely important. An analogy we are using also is when we look at M&A, we’re actually looking at, are we the best owner for this? Would it be in any better place if we owned it? And it’s a similar concept of really making sure this is the right solution and this is really helping us to do the right thing moving forward.

Geoff Tuff:

So, Anke, I’m reasonably sure that many of our listeners and everyone in the audience here would find everything that you’re saying quite motivating and hard to argue with. But for the leaders that are responsible for actually delivering that, and, I mean, let’s be clear, leaders are compensated not in long-term outcomes most of the time, it’s in short-term delivery of profit today and tomorrow and in the next quarter. When we think forward to the types of leaders we need to get to those types of outcomes, first of all, what types of characteristics would you be looking for as you think about the next generation and what advice would you have to those leaders as they step into both sustainability roles but also broader C-suite type roles in the future?

Anke Hampel:

I’m extremely fortunate. As I said, I joined ABB because I got this call and it was a great opportunity. What I found were four company values that actually are perfectly aligned with mine, and I would like to share them here because I think thinking about your values and your purpose is extremely important for any young leader. If you haven’t figured out your purpose and your values, it’s very hard to know where you’re going. So for ABB, these are care, curiosity, collaboration, and creativity.

Geoff Tuff:

I was going to guess it was a C. So-

Anke Hampel:

There’s another C. And it’s actually something that I love to do in my work. There is maybe one more which doesn’t come of course in a company, which is family for me. But these are the five values. And if you’re clear on these and are really living them, bringing them to life in your private life, in your business life, you actually have a good chance to know what your compass is, where you’re going, and stay true to yourself and deliver what is required. And so look for this purpose in the companies you’re joining, make sure the values that are there are something you can align with, and stay the course. That would be my advice.

Geoff Tuff:

That’s great advice.

Des Dearlove:

Someone yesterday said, I’m just picking up on some of the things we’ve been talking about, somebody yesterday, I wish I could remember who, said, “Sustainability without a profit has no impact and profit without sustainability has no future.” And that seemed to me to go right to the heart of this stuff. But you’re absolutely right. If our leaders can’t look beyond not just the next quarter but the next couple of years to see that this is all systemic, and that word, one of your Cs, that word, collaboration, seems so integral. How is ABB sort of encouraging collaboration? Because you can control what goes on inside your own company, but a lot of the benefits that we need require us to work together.

Anke Hampel:

Yes. No, and thank you for bringing this forward. Actually, the person who said this remarkable statement yesterday was Cecile, a fascinating woman, CEO of Bel Corporation.

Des Dearlove:

You’re right.

Anke Hampel:

And I think she really made the point on collaboration being one of these elements that will take us from where we are today, sometimes maybe stuck and not able to see what’s ahead, but just to get started, collaboration is an easy one. You reach out, you find what’s your common ground, and then move forward, which… maybe I want to use another statement that was used yesterday. Paul brought forward the ABC rule: adapting, bridging, and collaborating. And I loved this one, I will be adopting this, another one.

Des Dearlove:

He also said collaboration is not illegal.

Anke Hampel:

Exactly. No, but adapting, as he described it, was really something where you should listen without judging. Correct? It’s not easy for all of us at this time. It’s very easy to go with polarization as it’s happening. So active listening to find the common ground, and that’s something I’ve been doing over my career is really bringing different partners together. It aligns very well with my personal purpose, which is connecting passion to create something bigger, to have a positive impact that you wouldn’t have been able to do on your own. And for this you really have to find these smart points. Even if there’s someone you don’t feel very comfortable with, there’s definitely something you will find. So challenge yourself to reach out to people that you don’t feel comfortable with and try to make this an experiment: okay, can I find something where we have common ground? And that’s an important exercise in business, of course, because the low-hanging fruits for innovation and for supply chain optimization, ecosystems thinking, are all gone.

We can only succeed in this challenging transformation that’s ahead by finding these sweet spots between different partners. I’ve done this especially in my innovation management period. I was negotiating very complex IP agreements and this was only possible because we really found, okay, what is in it for this company? What exclusivity could you get here? And it’s hard work. It’s something you have to really invest in, sit together, understand each other, and then bridge – the B in the ABC. If you resist on your opinion, on your position, you will not find this common spot, the sweet spot. And I assure you it’s always there. You have to look for it. But bridging is the only way. You have to move. You have to find smart solutions, creativity, another of these values, and care, of course. This gets you then to collaboration.

So active collaboration, being something where you keep looking out for what the partner’s needs are. They might be changing. If a business relationship gets stuck, very often it’s because somehow the needs have shifted and you cannot assume that things are still where they are when you agreed on something. So continuously actively engaging, working with partners. Also, the word partnership comes in, of course. I’m very choiceful when I use partner versus, for example, suppliers. But in an ecosystem you have to think that your suppliers, depending on where you operate, which industries, they had better become your partners because some of the resources in the future will become extremely scarce. So if you don’t build these long-term relationships, not having these partners might make you the second or last choice, and then there will be some other consequences that you would like to avoid. And for this collaboration, it’s very helpful.

Geoff Tuff:

So, Anke, I know it sounds like you had a fascinating dinner last night. You’ve spent a lot of Climate Week meeting other chief sustainability officers and other senior executives. What is the number one barrier to achieving the types of successes that ABB has under your leadership? What are some of the key barriers that you’re hearing out there today that you think we need to be focusing on?

Anke Hampel:

There is a statement that actually it’s the most strategic time to be in sustainability because this is the moment you have to decide, you have to decide on one of three Fs: flee, freeze, or fast-forward. And I love this because it really will make the difference for you if you decide to move forward right now, and that’s how I would describe what we’re doing at ABB, so we are forward-looking, proactive in what we are doing. There are other companies who are freezing. We see this very heavily right now. The other term you’ve heard for this is green-hushing. Or even fleeing. We have seen lots of companies staying away or giving up on the commitments they have made.

So I really believe that with what we are seeing right now, the ones who decide to go fast-forward will have a competitive advantage. The things that are happening in the world right now, they’re not going away. And so if you engage actively, you have a chance to actually drive the profit out of it. And for this, yeah, there are leaders, CSOs that I’m talking with, who are seeing exactly this. There is this discussion that we will be moving from molecules to electrons. Or the other statement I heard is that this political fragmentation will be resolved by nature and economies, because these forces are there and if you actively work on them, deal with them, create proactive solutions out of it, competitive advantage, you actually will be on a very interesting site for your business.

The challenges, of course, are are our boards really taking the long-term perspective? That’s something we’re not seeing everywhere. Sometimes boards need to be reminded of what their responsibility is, especially when it comes to sustainability. And that’s something some of my peers are struggling with as we speak. But it helps to, it’s a moment of resilience, personal resilience, supporting each other, sharing. I’m actually now on a mission to engage with CSOs of our customers to really understand where their needs are. And I’m sure we’re going to find business opportunities out of it.

Geoff Tuff:

That’s more of the collaboration point.

Anke Hampel:

Exactly. So this will help them, will help us, but also it will help to have this connection and really understand what is making our customers drive and industries drive moving forward.

Geoff Tuff:

Yeah, that’s great. Des, I’m going to give you the last question but I’m going to do a warm call to our live audience here. If anyone does have any questions for Anke, we’ll open it up after Des’s last question and please do speak up if you’ve got them.

Des Dearlove:

Well, it’s something we always ask on the podcast: what is your provocation? What would you like people to take away from listening to the podcast? What would you like them to think about as they go about their business?

Anke Hampel:

I’m a strong believer in innovation and continuous improvement. And so the question I would encourage all of you to ask is when you start a new job, a new role, or take on new responsibility, what would it take to eliminate my job? And I told you I did this at Tetra Pak and I delivered. So this is for me a source of innovation, inspiration, continuously challenging the status quo. And that’s what gets us to drive change, to make an impact, to be courageous. Not always easy, but ask this courageous question even if you’re ready for some time in your role, and, of course, you can challenge, is this really applying to CEO, CFO, CHO, let me exclude these, but I think for any other role you can ask this question and actually you will find some great insights if you really challenge yourself with this.

Des Dearlove:

And it’s interesting, too, that that fits with the regeneration, the topic we’re talking about. We all need to regenerate, we all need to replenish, we all need to reinvent ourselves. Fantastic.

Geoff Tuff:

Great answer.

Anke Hampel:

Thank you.

Geoff Tuff:

All right, so I think we do have time for a few questions. Who would like to go first? We have a mic in the back or mic in both aisles here, coming down your way here.

Des Dearlove:

Gentleman here.

Speaker 9:

Thank you very much. Super inspiring to hear you talk and I’m going to leave here with a renewed sense of excitement about the future. So thank you for that. ABB is deeply involved in sport, so I come from the world of sport, and I’m just interested to understand why you decided to go down that path and what role sport plays in driving innovation at your company with things like Formula E and-

Anke Hampel:

Sport, correct? Okay. Driving sport. So for me, sport is an important part. We talked about resilience, regeneration. So I think for all of us it’s important to understand that if you don’t use your muscles, you’re not regenerating and using the muscles. So this is your thinking, your brain muscles, your body muscles. So for me, sport is an example of regeneration that any of us should be using and understand that there’s a moment in life when you’re not any longer drawing from unlimited resources. And we were talking about how you’re building in your sports, even in a busy Climate Week, it’s an imperative to do this, to stay healthy, because otherwise you’re not resilient. Sleep and sport, the two S, I think are really what will help us moving forward. These are tough times. It’s not all an easy walk in the park. And so sport actually helps you to get new ideas, step back, think, and then move forward.

Speaker 9:

Okay, I wasn’t expecting that response. I was thinking more of your sponsorships that the company does with things like Formula E and NASCAR and-

Anke Hampel:

Okay.

Des Dearlove:

But really interesting-

Speaker 1:

It was a good, personal response.

Des Dearlove:

Fantastic answer.

Anke Hampel:

Yes, you’re right. So for the ones who are not familiar, I’m sure many of you know Formula One, but actually ABB is working as a key sponsor for Formula E. So that’s the electrical version and obviously it stands with what we stand for, which is electrifying everything. We are a very proud sponsor. And what it drives is innovation. So we have been able to advance the charging system, fast charging, which you can all imagine is a super important deliverable for the electrification of mobility. And so the innovation we see and continue coming out of Formula E is indispensable for our innovation program. So it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s also showing the world, especially people who are maybe very skeptical, of which we have a few, we really hope to inspire with the Formula E concept. And we see Formula One somehow trying to move in the same area now, but here we are. We have been first, we’re driving Formula E, and we will continue doing so very proudly.

Geoff Tuff:

Do we have another question out there? Yep. In the back. Sorry, we’ve got one-

Anke Hampel:

Maybe I can share. There’s a Formula E car, I think, 12th Avenue.

Geoff Tuff:

Oh, is there? Go check it out.

Anke Hampel:

Yeah, we have it here at Climate Week. So check it out.

Geoff Tuff:

In the back middle, and then we’ll come up closer here. You’ve got a mic already? Yep.

Speaker 6:

Hi, thank you so much for your time. As you may know, the United Nations General Assembly is occurring right now, right? And I think it’s a really powerful reminder of how global of a challenge and how global of an issue sustainability is. So I wanted to take the time to ask you how do business leaders engage with global markets and really tackle this for the global challenge that it is?

Anke Hampel:

Beautiful question. Thank you very much. I think we are already at 99% of emissions, so it’s a huge part, is outside of the US. So we have to keep going. And I think many business leaders understand this. Things are evolving extremely fast when it comes to renewable energy, electricity, to adoption, the exponential growth we have been talking about, it’s there, it’s happening. And as I talked about before, resilience is a new opportunity, energy security. What you are enabling is many, many countries can reduce, eliminate their dependence on fossil, which means you actually are in control of your own energy security. And on top comes all the opportunities we talked about that electrification brings. So these are things we are definitely engaging with with the leaders of the world.

We have our CEO here this week. He had an important meeting last night with leaders linked to the UNGA, to the Atlantic Council. So we are definitely engaged. We are taking our leadership role extremely seriously. We are a part of and enabling this energy transition and expansion. And with this, we cannot do it on our own. We need to collaborate with civil society, with governments, with our partners in the industry, setting standards, moving the needle. So it’s definitely a topic that’s very close to our heart. I hope this answers your question.

Speaker 6:

Thank you.

Geoff Tuff:

I think we have time for one more, Des. One more? Okay. Yes. We’re going to hand up here if we could just get a mic.

Nelson:

I had one over here.

Geoff Tuff:

Oh, sorry.

Nelson:

Geoff.

Geoff Tuff:

Oh, there we are. Nelson, go for it.

Nelson:

I’m hearing a tremendous amount of optimism, refreshing amount of optimism, in who you are as a leader and how you think. This is a tricky one, but how do you make sure that that optimism isn’t just seen as a wish that you’re putting into the universe, but it’s actually something that’s translating down into the culture and a culture that takes action against that optimism?

Anke Hampel:

Beautiful question. Thank you. Actually, it’s about engaging with all the people who know better than me. I’m not the expert. So I’m a business leader with a function expertise, but this can go in all different areas and I’m only as good as the teams around me, or they are better, I would say. So there is humility in what I do. I hope my teams actually see this, they can confirm this. I love going to the teams and to the sites around the globe understanding their ideas. One of the examples we have, we have a Mission to Zero initiative for our sites. So sites can qualify and it’s really employee engagement, is grassroots ideas, is all the ideas they want to bring forward, they put it in the Mission to Zero program and they get validated. We have now 26 sites globally. I think next one is going to be announced in November.

And the employees take extreme pride. In all interviews that we have around the globe, our CHO told me, sustainability comes up as a reason for why people want to join ABB. But unprompted, people just say, “I want to, that’s what I want to work for.” And so this helps me to keep going because this is the pride. You want to work for a company that has pride. I’m showing this. It’s real. And so I’m working really to inspire this in people and I see this coming back and this gives me a lot of energy and positive hope.

Geoff Tuff:

It comes across loud and clear, I will say. Now we’ll do the final question.

Speaker 8:

Okay, final question. Thanks for your leadership and really inspiring career. The question is something you said earlier about not having a definition of circularity. I wonder if you could dig into that a little bit more. Maybe the other guys on the stage here could talk about that from the Deloitte perspective. I’m really curious about the state of that definition and where do you think it’ll end up?

Anke Hampel:

I can take it.

Geoff Tuff:

Yeah, go for it.

Anke Hampel:

I am not concerned about the definition because we know what it takes. The definition is more about are we measuring it? Are we really driving the progress? Are we creating the business case? That part we can definitely do better, but we know what needs to be done. So you go into designing your product for disassembly. Last night, I was very fortunate. I was at a dinner where I met an entrepreneur who was part of our startup competition. We are investing heavily into startups to get the outside innovation. And he had set up a platform. I always wondered how you can make sure you deal with all the local legislation on recycling and waste management and so I was struggling, okay, do you go per country? And then you go across the whole product portfolio that we have, which is very, very different, from very small, very big equipment pieces. And he actually gave me the confidence that both is possible. He has a platform, he receives our bill of material, finds local partners, and then enables them to do the disassembly.

And the next step now that I will be working on, and we agreed last night, to really make sure this knowledge he has from the disassembly goes into our product design. So that’s the eco-design in the face. So these two things, obviously, as always, roll up your sleeves, bring people together, link and leverage. And that’s an important part across this whole value chain.

When you think about designing or using recycled content, very often we talk about downcycling. Is it really possible to use this recycled material to deliver the same technical properties that you need? There are solutions. There’s innovation needed. Sometimes you have to think around, put all the different players of the value chain together and do it. So again, it’s about getting started, doing the obvious things, and the definition will follow.

Geoff Tuff:

And I will say I had been eavesdropping, excuse me, the same conversation, and I have to admit, I’ve always thought about circularity as recycling, trying to get as much material back from the world into the recycling process so it can be reused and reused. But there was a large part of our conversation last night which was actually about refurbishing and reuse as opposed to recycling. And that really did expand the way that I think broadly about circularity and the opportunities, especially for industrial companies that make machines that could last a lot longer than they have historically if you just think about that part of the circularity process too.

Anke Hampel:

Maybe I can add, 70% of the scrap metal just from the US is exported to Southeast Asia. This metal is used, it’s needed here. You really don’t need to make any effort. We’re working on this with Apple right now to really find the sweet spot of how to keep this recycled scrap here. And the other important part is transparency. We have a QR code on our products and this QR code gives everyone who’s scanning it the opportunity to see what this product delivers when it’s taken against our circularity framework. We have third-party verified environmental product declarations on there. So transparency is extremely important so that there is no risk of greenwashing if you’re claiming there are circular elements in your product life cycle. I hope this answers.

Geoff Tuff:

Des, I think we’re almost there. Any final thoughts from you?

Des Dearlove:

My final thought was that you haven’t mentioned your book.

Geoff Tuff:

One of the few times that I haven’t mentioned our book! So I do actually think, we may have a slide that can go up to talk about it before we close things out here, Steve Goldbach and I do have our third book coming out on October 21st. It is the third book in our so-called Accidental Trilogy. It’s called Hone. And it was interesting, Anke, you were talking about staying true to your desired course of direction when you were talking about purpose. And actually a lot of the book is about trying to help leaders be purposeful to defy drift. So for those of you that are here in the audience, please feel free to go and get your free copy of the book. For those that are watching this afterwards, please do hit the same QR code and you’ll find an easy way to go and buy the book for yourself. And the good news is we’ve gotten some good feedback from the book. So thank you for letting me use some of your podcast to plug our book.

But with that, sadly, we are out of time. Huge thanks to our guest, Anke Hampel. And thanks to all of you for listening. This is the Provocateurs podcast coming to you from Climate Week in New York. We’ve been Geoff Tuff, Des Dearlove. And if you’ve enjoyed our chat, please check out our other episodes of the podcast. You can find them anywhere where you look for your podcast. We’ve had some great guests in the past. It comes out roughly monthly, but you can find episodes from Paul Polman, Amy Chang, Chip Bergh, Shelley Zalis, Katie McGinty, Karthik Ramanna, Eileen Collins, a whole bunch more. So with that, thank you all very much and we appreciate the time.