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It was a fantastic new pink suit

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with big buttons and shoulder pads.

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It was 1997,

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and I was the new boss of Griffin's Foods,

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an iconic cookie and snacks
company in New Zealand.

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It was my first time
as the leader of a company,

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and I was on the stage
to give a big speech

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about our ambitious new goals.

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I knew exactly what my call to action was,

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which was, one in every four times
a Kiwi eats snack,

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it will be one of ours.

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I emphasized that we knew
how to measure our results,

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and that our future was in our control.

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Embarrassingly enough,

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I finished up with "If not this, what?

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If not us, who?

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And if not now, when?"

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I got this huge round of applause

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and I was really,
really pleased with myself.

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I wanted so much to be a good leader.

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I wanted to be followed by a devoted team,

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I wanted to be right.

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In short, I wanted to be a hero.

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A hero selling chips
and biscuits in a pink suit.

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(Laughter)

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What happened after that speech?

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Nothing.

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All of that applause
did not lead to action.

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Nothing changed.

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Not because they didn't like
me or the message.

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The problem was that no one knew
what they were expected to do.

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And most importantly,

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they didn't know that I needed them.

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Now, you may think
that this is a classic hero speech,

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where I'm going to tell you that
I overcame that obstacle and triumphed.

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Actually, I'm going to tell you

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that in a world as complex
and interconnected

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as the one we live in,

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the idea that one person
has the answer is ludicrous.

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It's not only ineffective, it's dangerous.

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Because it leads us to believe

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that it's been solved by that hero,

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and we have no role.

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We don't need heroes.

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We need radical interdependence.

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Which is just another way
of saying we need each other.

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Even though other people
can be really difficult sometimes.

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I spent decades trying to work out
how to be a good leader.

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I've lived in seven countries
in five continents.

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And in recent years,

51
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I've spent a lot of time
with the B Corp community,

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originally as a corporate participant,

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and more recently as an ambassador.

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Now, B Corps are a group of companies

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who believe in business
as a force for good.

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There's a tough certification
with about 250 questions

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about your social
and environmental performance.

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You must legally declare your intention

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to serve the community
as well as your shareholders,

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and you must sign the declaration
of interdependence.

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Now, one of the things
that inspires me the most

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about the companies in this movement

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is that they see themselves
as part of a whole system.

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It's sort of as if they imagine themselves

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on a big, flowing river of activity,

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where, if they are, for example,
soft drinks manufacturers,

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they understand that upstream from them

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there's water and sugar

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and farmers that grow that sugar.

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And plastic and metal and glass.

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All of which flows into this thing

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that we call a company
which has financial results.

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And the flowing continues
with consequences.

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Some of them intended.

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Like, refreshment and hydration.

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And some unintended,

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like garbage and obesity.

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Spending time with leaders in this space

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has led me to see that
true collaboration is possible,

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but it's subtle and it's complex.

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And the leaders in this space
are doing a few things very differently

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from traditional heroic leaders.

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They set goals differently,

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they announce those goals differently,

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and they have a very different
relationship with other people.

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Let's begin with the first difference.

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A hero sets a goal

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that can be individually delivered

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and neatly measured.

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You can recognize a heroic goal.

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They use terms like
revenue and market share,

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and are often competitive.

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Remember pink-suit day?

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Interdependent leaders on the other hand

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start with a goal that's really important

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but is actually impossible to achieve

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by one company or one person alone.

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I want to give you an example
from the clothing industry

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which produces 92 million tons
of waste a year.

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Patagonia and Eileen Fisher
are clothing manufacturers,

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both of them B Corps,

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both of them deeply committed
to reducing waste.

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They don't see that
their responsibility ends

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when a customer buys their clothes.

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Patagonia encourages you
not to buy new clothes from them

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and will repair your old clothes for free.

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Eileen Fisher will pay you
when you bring back your clothes,

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and either sell them on,

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or turn them into other clothes.

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While these two companies
are competitive in some ways,

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they work together
and with others in the industry

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to solve shared problems.

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They take responsibility for things
that happen upstream as well.

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Around the world,

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there are around 300 million people
who work from home in this industry,

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most of them women,

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many of them in very
difficult circumstances

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with poor lighting,

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sewing on buttons
and doing detailed stitching.

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Until 2014, there was no protection
for these workers.

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A group of companies got together

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with a not for profit called Nest

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to create a set of standards

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that's now been adopted
by the whole industry.

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Once you've seen problems like this,

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you can't unsee them.

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So you have to ask others
to help you to solve them.

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These folks take
interdependence as a given,

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and said to me,

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"We don't compete on human rights."

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The second big difference
for collaborators

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is their willingness to declare
their goals before they have a plan.

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Now, the hero only reveals
their carefully crafted goal

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when the path to achieve it is clear.

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In fact, the role of the hero announcement

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is to set the stage for the big win.

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Hero announcements are full of triumph.

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Interdependent leaders, on the other hand,

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want other people to help them,

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so their announcements are often
an invitation for cocreation,

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and sometimes, they're a call for help.

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At the North American division
of the French food company Danone

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I announced that we wanted
to become a B Corp.

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And unlike pink-suit day,

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I had no plan to get there.

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I remember the day really clearly.

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Everybody in the room gasped,

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because they knew we didn't have a plan.

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But they also knew
that we had seen our role

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in the river that is the food system

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and we wanted to make a change.

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Making that declaration without a plan

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meant that so many
young people in our company

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stepped up to help us

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and B Corps around us all rallied around.

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And the day we became a B Corp

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wasn't just a self-congratulatory
moment of a hero company.

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It was more like a community celebration.

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Now, when you gave goals
that you can't achieve alone,

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and you've told everyone about them,

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inevitably you'll end up
at the third big difference,

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which is how you see other people,

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inside your company and outside.

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Heroes see everyone
as a competitor or a follower.

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Heroes don't want input,

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because they want to control everything
because they want the credit.

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And you can see this
in a typical hero meeting.

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Heroes like making speeches.

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People lean back in their chairs,

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maybe impressed, but not engaged.

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Interdependent leaders, on the other hand,

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understand that they need other people.

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They know that meetings
are not just mindless calendar fillers.

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These are the most precious
things you have.

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It's where people collaborate
and communicate

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and share ideas.

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People lean forward in meetings like this,

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wondering where they might fit in.

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When I was in Shanghai in China,

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where I lived for six years,
running the Kraft Foods business,

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selling, amongst
other things, Oreo cookies,

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we had a problem with hero culture.

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We kept on launching
new products that failed.

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And we would find out afterwards

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that everyone in the company
knew they were going to fail,

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they just didn't feel free to tell us.

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So we changed the way we ran our
innovation and planning meetings

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in two important ways.

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First of all, language
went back to Chinese.

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Because even though
everyone spoke great English,

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when I was in the room
and the meeting was in English,

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they focused on me.

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And I was the foreigner
and I was the boss,

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and I apparently had
that intimidating hero look.

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The second thing

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is we asked every single person
in the meeting their opinion.

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And our understanding
of the subtleties of the differences

198
00:09:54,110 --> 00:09:57,863
between American taste
and Chinese taste in this case

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really improved.

200
00:09:59,490 --> 00:10:02,424
And our new product success rate
radically turned around

201
00:10:02,448 --> 00:10:04,353
and we launched a lot of winners,

202
00:10:04,377 --> 00:10:08,224
including the now famous
green tea-flavored Oreos.

203
00:10:10,070 --> 00:10:12,337
Hero culture sneaks in everywhere.

204
00:10:12,943 --> 00:10:16,006
At Danone, we had a lot
of great stuff happening

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00:10:16,030 --> 00:10:17,854
in one part of the world,

206
00:10:17,878 --> 00:10:20,768
and we wanted it to spread
to another part of the world.

207
00:10:21,482 --> 00:10:24,058
But when you put a person in business gear

208
00:10:24,082 --> 00:10:26,986
up in front of a group of people
with Power Point,

209
00:10:27,010 --> 00:10:30,200
they have the urge
to become sort of heroic.

210
00:10:30,549 --> 00:10:32,527
And they make everything
look super shiny

211
00:10:32,551 --> 00:10:34,224
and they don't tell the truth.

212
00:10:34,248 --> 00:10:37,629
And it's not compelling
and it's not even interesting.

213
00:10:38,110 --> 00:10:39,896
So we changed it

214
00:10:39,920 --> 00:10:43,141
and we created these
full-day market places,

215
00:10:43,165 --> 00:10:44,899
kind of like a big bazaar.

216
00:10:45,292 --> 00:10:47,316
And everybody was dressed up in costume,

217
00:10:47,340 --> 00:10:49,659
some people a little, some people a lot.

218
00:10:49,683 --> 00:10:51,977
And sellers had to man their stalls

219
00:10:52,001 --> 00:10:55,048
and sell their ideas
as persuasively as possible,

220
00:10:55,072 --> 00:10:58,855
and people who were convinced
bought them with fake check books.

221
00:10:58,879 --> 00:11:01,367
Creating just a bit of silliness
with the environment

222
00:11:01,391 --> 00:11:02,752
and a hat or a scarf

223
00:11:02,776 --> 00:11:07,719
drops people's guard and causes
ideas to spread like wildfire.

224
00:11:08,243 --> 00:11:09,777
There's no recipe here.

225
00:11:10,299 --> 00:11:15,931
But time together has to be
carefully curated and created,

226
00:11:15,955 --> 00:11:20,514
so that people know that
their time is valuable and important,

227
00:11:20,538 --> 00:11:22,950
and they can bring
their best selves to the table.

228
00:11:25,071 --> 00:11:27,871
Hero culture is present right here at TED.

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00:11:28,705 --> 00:11:33,210
This whole process makes it look like
I think I'm a hero.

230
00:11:34,157 --> 00:11:36,188
So just in case there's any doubt

231
00:11:36,212 --> 00:11:38,852
about the point that I'm trying to make,

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00:11:38,876 --> 00:11:41,185
I want to apply these ideas

233
00:11:41,209 --> 00:11:44,056
in an area in which
I have zero credibility

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00:11:44,080 --> 00:11:45,796
and zero experience.

235
00:11:46,225 --> 00:11:48,249
I'm originally South African,

236
00:11:48,273 --> 00:11:51,323
and I'm deeply passionate
about wildlife conservation,

237
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most particularly rhinos.

238
00:11:53,648 --> 00:11:56,327
Those majestic creatures with big horns.

239
00:11:57,624 --> 00:12:00,569
Every day, three rhinos are killed,

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00:12:00,593 --> 00:12:04,324
because there are people
who think that those horns are valuable.

241
00:12:04,680 --> 00:12:06,884
Even though they're just made
of the same stuff

242
00:12:06,908 --> 00:12:08,575
as hair and finger nails.

243
00:12:09,891 --> 00:12:11,157
It breaks my heart.

244
00:12:13,106 --> 00:12:15,915
Like all good, recovering heroes,

245
00:12:15,939 --> 00:12:19,680
I did everything I could
to reduce this goal

246
00:12:19,704 --> 00:12:22,304
to something that I could do by myself.

247
00:12:23,085 --> 00:12:26,057
But clearly, stopping rhino poaching

248
00:12:26,081 --> 00:12:28,015
is a goal way too big for me.

249
00:12:28,530 --> 00:12:31,585
So I'm immediately
in interdependence land.

250
00:12:32,760 --> 00:12:35,656
I'm declaring my goal on this stage.

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00:12:36,252 --> 00:12:38,863
I found other people
as passionate as I am

252
00:12:38,887 --> 00:12:40,895
and I've asked if I could join them.

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00:12:40,919 --> 00:12:43,307
And after today, there may be more.

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00:12:43,331 --> 00:12:46,741
And we're now in the complex
but inspiring process

255
00:12:46,765 --> 00:12:48,704
of learning how to work together.

256
00:12:49,046 --> 00:12:52,268
My dream is that one day
someone will stand on this stage

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00:12:52,292 --> 00:12:57,053
and tell you how radical interdependence
saved my beloved rhinos.

258
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Why does hero culture persist

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and why don't we work together more?

260
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Well, I don't know
why everyone else does it,

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but I can tell you why I did it.

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Interdependence is a lot harder
than being a hero.

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It requires us to be open

264
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and transparent and vulnerable

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and that's not what traditional leaders
have been trained to do.

266
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I thought being a hero would keep me safe.

267
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I thought that in the elevation

268
00:13:27,143 --> 00:13:30,315
and separation that comes
from heroic leadership,

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that I would be untouchable.

270
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This is an illusion.

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The joy and success that comes
from interdependence and vulnerability

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is worth the effort and the risk.

273
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And if we're going to solve the challenges

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that the world is facing today,

275
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we have no alternative,

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so we had better start getting good at it.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)