Business schools need to teach integrity

One thing that I can say for 100% that I've changed my mind about is the role of regulation. If you tell me no, we should just leave sustainability up to free markets, I'd say absolutely no. Like, that's insane. - Katharina Weghmann

Katharina Weghmann

Alexandra Chesterfield

Welcome to change my mind. The podcast where we ask leaders what they change their mind on and why I'm Alex Chesterfield, behavioural scientist and a called advisor. You've just heard from our guest today, Katharina Weghmann, who is a partner in forensic and integrity services at the global consultancy EY, she changed her mind on the role of regulation, particularly in the context of sustainability. This series of the podcast is sponsored by 1014 and you'll hear more from them in a moment. And if you'd like to listen to previous episodes, just search for openDemocracy and change my mind, and you'll find the whole back catalog right at your fingertips. I'm joined for today's episodes by my two co hosts and co authors of our book poles apart, President of accord, Ali Goldsworthy, hey Ali.

Alison Goldsworthy

Hi, Alex. Lovely to be here again today.

Alexandra Chesterfield

Yeah! and Laura, Managing Director of WPI economics and accord advisor, hello, Laura.

Laura Osborne

Hi, Alex. Funny to be the only one who's still in the UK.

Alexandra Chesterfield

I know, sad days!

Alison Goldsworthy

Alex, you don't sound very sad! Katarina, I think joined us from, I think it might have been from Germany.

Alexandra Chesterfield

Yes, I think she's in Berlin, but I know she travels quite a bit. So yeah, it's really a global conversation. I really enjoyed this one, probably more so as I got the luxury of listening to it in the bath, what struck me throughout the conversation was the influence of business schools on how the world works. I've never really thought about it before, or never really struck me. And what comes across in the conversation, and also in what Katharina changed her mind on, is the level of influence that business schools have on future politicians, business executives and civil society at large. So I'd really personally underestimated their power on the people who have power, and it raised some really interesting questions. Ali, what struck you about our conversation?

Alison Goldsworthy

Well, yeah, I suppose, given that I went to Stanford, I should probably spend a second dwelling on the point that you made, which is also where Rishi Sunak went. And, you know, a number of other pretty senior leaders, or increasing number of senior leaders around the world. And I think you know what Katharina said about the networks and the interwovenness and how, you know, people can develop a sort of group think about how they approach things, or fail to consider challenging views to themselves. That's definitely something that business schools are acutely aware of and trying to work out how they can better prepare leaders, not just to do things around financial planning and really very complicated financial modelling, but actually understand the challenges that societies present. You know, she's really hit the nail on the head. And business schools really know they need to get better at it. But one thing I really wanted to pick up and and dwell on as as well, which, you know, thank god Katharina is doing the work she is, is, you know, she had a really tangible step that business leaders could take to try and help make sure that they rewarded people who spoke out. And I've used it quite a bit since when I spoke to people, which was to ask for your KPIs or OKRs or whatever you use in your organisation to track progress, to include measures about the career progression and feedback and reward of those who had spoken out. So it showed that the chief exec actually valued people who may be zigged when others zagged, or who weren't afraid to challenge. And he wanted to make sure that they weren't being forced out of the company or choosing to leave of their own volition because they felt they didn't, you know, chime with what there was. And to me, that's a really excellent way to take people who are additive rather than just fit with what you've got.

Alexandra Chesterfield

Love it. Laura, what about you? Thanks.

Laura Osborne

Yeah, a little bit connected to your observation, Alex, actually was the tension between what business schools teach about, or how the world should work and how it actually works. You know, the extent to which all of that sort of textbook thinking sometimes actually prepares you for what you will encounter when you go into business, or you make specific decisions, or you act in a certain way. So the thinking specifically, we all think intellectual curiosity and humility are desirable traits, but actually they're often not what we observe in people that get ahead, and they're actually not often how leaders make progress, which can then lead to some of those issues Ali talked about, about not actually recognizing or securing the kind of future growth or promotion for people who walk a slightly different path. And there's such a gap there, I think sometimes, between what's taught and what happens in practice.

So Katharina, thank you for joining us on change my mind.

Thank you so much. It's so wonderful to be here. I'm a huge fan of the podcast, so I can't believe I'm here with you too. Really appreciate the invitation.

Oh that's so kind, and we're delighted to have you. So before we get into the meat of our discussion today, I wonder if you'd just tell me a little bit more about your very interesting background. I know you were in marketing before you made the shift into ethics. Can you tell us about what triggered that?

Yeah, I'd be happy to. I mean, I probably can admit that when I was younger, I was much more naive and maybe also a little bit dumb to believe that by the age of 30, I wanted to become a chief marketing officer of Fortune 500, this was my ambitious goal. And maybe I can also share that the reason maybe why I'm so ambitious, or why I love competition also is because I was an equestrian show jumper for 10 years between the age of 10 and 20. This, I think, influenced who I am today, and also why I had, sometimes maybe some outrageous goals that I'm not incredibly proud to admit. But this led me on this path of, how can I find the best business school, where can I study in the fastest time possible to then get into this career and really, you know, get on this corporate ladder and go into the corporate grind? And, yeah, I mean, this was a different time, let's say, honestly. I was in business school, yeah, 23 years ago. So you can imagine it was a different era, with different topics and very different contexts in which I started in business school. But to be honest, I was very driven to make this happen and also wasn't really limited by, you know, gender topics. Also given that equestrian show jumping is one of the few Olympic disciplines that are a mixed gender competition, so there's no segregation of gender, so for me, it was like, oh, yeah, I compete with guys. Like, that's that's just how I roll. So nobody ever made this a topic, it was the same for becoming a marketing executive at a young age. My first job was at HP. I was in the marketing communications team, and had the massive privilege to be under a female CEO at the time. So HP was led by Carly Fiorina at the time. So you can imagine that also had an influence as to where I want to be. It made it seem possible that I can totally do this. That basically made me start my career in marketing, because I always thought that marketing is a great way to make people, make it supply and demand together, right? I mean, that was a little bit the idea behind it.

I guess I was on a really good path to success and a really good path to get where I wanted to be. But then, in all honesty, this is when the reckoning moment of the financial crisis hit my life. I was lucky enough to not be personally hit by the financial crisis, but at the time I was living in Geneva and obviously being really interested what happens in the world, and being in business and being a marketing executive, I was so shocked on a personal level, how it's possible that seemingly executives make decisions that that basically brought, brought an entire economy to its knees. And that really woke me up to to an extent where I thought, wow, this is not how I understood business. This is not how I would define leadership. This is not how I would define my own core values of how I want to show up at work, and also how I would think that I would make decisions when I'm a leader. And then also I would say, personally, I was always interested in ethics, because what became very quickly clear to everyone is that it wasn't a matter of compliance or adhering to laws that caused financial crisis, but it was a matter of culture and ethics. So that really woke me up and almost started this moment of, okay, how can I now make meaning out of this? What do I do with my personal life and also all the privileges that I had? I don't feel comfortable just going on with my hyper privileged life in this bubble and being okay with it. And then, above all, be in marketing. And at the time, you know, neuroscience also came into the mix of marketing and so, so that's when, when I really realised, ‘wow, you need to change the way you think. You need to way to need to change the way you think about your own career, and probably also need to re-examine where you want to be and how you want to contribute to the world’, which led me then to New York City, to Columbia University, and starting my whole new career in academia first, and the whole topic around organisation and learning, ethical leadership, moral development, because then I had another naive, dumb idea of becoming an executive coach for leaders to make better, more ethical decisions. Because I just had in mind, hey, if we hold them accountable and support them on making more ethical decisions, then this wouldn't happen again, right? I was very naive then, and learned very quickly at Columbia that it's all about the system. It's all about the broader environment in which we live that drives decisions and that drives behaviours. And that led me on this journey, to where I am today. And so for the last 13 years now, I've been on what looks now like a linear path, but has been an absolute, organic journey of following the intuition of, Wow, what am I going to do with this and how can I contribute? Sorry, I know it's a long story.

But I think that's so often the case, isn't it, that when you look back afterwards, it looks like it was a series of really carefully planned, thought out things. When actually it's more that particular moments take you in a certain direction, and obviously you say your job now, I mean, for those who missed the introduction, Katharina works at EY, and it's forensic in integrity Services Division. What does that mean? What is a day at work like for you? You talk to us about the path that's got you there, but what are you actually doing on a kind of day in, day out basis?

There's never a dull moment! It's very hard to say, because I call it structured chaos, but if we break it down to a regular day. I obviously have a lot of structure for meetings that I have to attend, either given my role or given the global clients that we serve. But then there's a lot of space in between where things are incredibly flexible and have to be just ad hoc simply because of demands from clients, simply because of the environment in which we are in, and also the beauty of being in a metrics organisation. So I have two roles. One of my roles is being the global ESG leader for forensics, so making sure that we as a global department, support our clients by getting them ready for their ESG journey, making sure that we support them already today, in not running into risks as like once the assurance processes around ESG reporting become more strict. So really exciting space to be in, but that's just one part of my job. My other job is to globally support clients on their integrity journey. On how do we institutionalise ethics? How do we measure culture? So you can imagine this in itself already is also quite an undertaking. And then the third piece is also all around the governance piece and ESG, how do we set up effective governance to make sure that companies are set up for success, also for their sustainability transformation, which again leads us to ethics and integrity and corporate citizenship.

A lot of juggling balls! You said before, actually, and it struck me then, obviously, what you do now, you will be your own particular type of leader, and your idea of leadership will have changed over that career journey as you, as you mentioned, but I wonder if you might tell us a little bit about what leaders you think best embody that kind of modern human approach to leadership, you know, the sort of opposite of what was perhaps happening during the crash and and who do you see doing the good and the bad side of that today?

So I won't be able to talk about specific leaders. I mean, I have the incredible fortune to meet so many leaders a day from all around the world, really impressive people. I can't go into specifics, but if I would think about it more broadly, I'd be happy to go into maybe two elements that I personally find incredibly powerful and admire a lot about people. The first one is humility about how absolutely unimportant you are, even if you are the richest, most influential, most powerful person. I personally feel always inspired by people who don't take themselves too seriously. Because, let's face it, if we look in the broader scheme of things, our planet and the broader universes, I always admire people who can you can just say, Yes, I am where I am, I am who I am, but it's just based on a lot of luck, definitely a lot of hard work, but also thanks to probably a lot of people around me. So I guess the first element would definitely be humility. And the second one, what I find always inspiring, and I also try to commit to it myself as this intellectual curiosity, and even emotional curiosity. To basically never stop learning and have a passion for it. People who think 'I can find something new or learn something new by absolutely anybody, if I just listen and keep my heart open'. That's something when I see in boardrooms or also in political fields, that's really something that I find incredibly inspiring and powerful, because that's how you can drive change and how you can also support others on that journey. Because at the end of the day, as a leader, you have tremendous responsibility. By my own definition, I'm sure that's not how others sometimes see it, but the degree to which you have to serve and the degree to which you have to take responsibility for others is tremendous, and you have to actively do this by being ready to serve.

What negative leadership behaviours do you see hanging around that should probably have disappeared by now, but haven't?

In leadership - and also in general - I really don't have much patience for people who think in boxes and are binary. Like 'this is good, this is bad. Women do this, men do that. Emotions are for women. ESG is like a feministic perspective of capitalism and men are here to compete'. These types of binary perspectives to life or any challenge we see, I find it incredibly boring and not incredibly inspiring. So that's something I see, unfortunately, quite a lot, because if we think about it, the older we get, the less neuroplasticity we have and the harder it is to engage in this process and give into this process of really needing to make a much harder effort now to to be curious, to lean in to listen to ask questions. I don't have much patience with people who just think they know it all already and are very linear and binary in the way in which they see the world.

You mentioned the financial crisis at the beginning, and I know that you talked to whistleblowers after that happened. How did that shape your view of what leaders and what business should be doing?

Two perspectives come to mind. The first one is when I talk to these whistleblowers in Europe and in the US about their experiences during or leading up to the financial crisis. I was in so much awe of their courage, but more importantly, also their service to the company and also also society, because at the end of the day, if we would have listened to them earlier, the financial crisis might have been prevented. Those were people who are in positions of risk. Compliance officers, whose job it was to raise flags early and prevent risks from happening or unfolding. What I've learned through listening to their journeys and their experiences is really what can happen if we don't listen to marginalised voices, if we don't give space for dissent, and if we don't give space for innovating around seeing risks unfold. By trying to find a good way of mitigating risks and trying to figure out, okay, how can we prevent the wars from happening together, which then ultimately led to the financial crisis?

And you can see a direct link to what that does to or what that did at the time to society. So that would be the first element that we cannot emphasise enough, how a functioning organisation has a direct correlation to how functioning our society is and how fair our society can be, and also how the system in which companies operate can truly influence how we as society get better and progress and become more fair and become more just and more inclusive to people who might have not had have access in the past. It could be any parameter you look at that business can be a tremendous force for good, and the financial crisis being the counter example for that.

The second example is, I like to look at the data. So when you think of the context and whistleblowing, more than 40% of fraud is detected by whistleblowers. And that's by far the most effective mechanism to detect fraud and to fight fraud. If you think about how much money economies are losing because of fraud, and where we could allocate that money instead, to me, that's already the best business case I can think of. And also a direct correlation as to how companies are closely interrelated to society. Those are probably the two aspects that I've learned. It has nothing to do about what you personally think about whistleblowers. It has nothing to do with whether or not you like this or that whistleblower. It's about, do you believe that markets should be efficient and do you believe that fraud should be detected and corruption should be fought? If your answer is yes, then you have to say yes to whistleblowing, because it's by far the most effective mechanism to detect fraud. I don't know how that resonates with you both, but that's probably the two big learnings

It does and it really leads on to the questions that I was going to ask about exploring whistleblowing and trust. But just before I go there, quite often you see people in the media, for example, leaders who I would describe as Grifters, who have not got there in the humble, thoughtful way that you're talking about, but have got there off the backs of claiming credit for other people, not sharing power, faking it till they make it, which in many ways is what's taught in business schools. Long time listeners will remember our podcast with Jeffrey Pfeffer where he said that's highly advised as a way to grow and augment your power. And I'm just wondering, given the passion of your feelings, how do you respond internally when you see those stories about those grifters making it potentially over people who deserve it more?

Well, it's an awesome question. I see it internally, but I also see it on panels or conferences, that type of behaviour, and I kind of chose to pick my battles where I feel like I can make the most impact with my voice, right? Because also through whistleblowers, I learned your voice is probably one of the most powerful mechanisms to make a difference. And sometimes there's just the right time or the right context or the right people to then make a difference. So I try to find ways to evaluate, 'if I say this now or if I bring it up now, what impact is it going to have, and is it going to change?' And if it's not going to change, then I find ways to change it through my own career, or trying to change it through the way in which I can change the system. I'm also telling people in my team, because I want to make sure that I also pass it on to colleagues, peers, younger people, to make sure that they are equipped to bring it up at the right time and also fight against the system also so that this can't happen.

Have you ever called it out?

I did for sure.

Are you able to give us an example?

So, there was a person that was absolutely convinced that men are just super rational, and that the whole debate around DEI is just totally overrated, and purely emotional. He thought women are the only ones that are being emotional. I think I alluded to it earlier, because that's a recurring theme that I hear also in the ESG context, since people think that ESG is just like this feministic view of capitalism. He was going on and on about it, and that was shortly after I left ethical systems, also with Jonathan Haidt. And so I learned so much about behavioural sciences from that awesome community at NYU. So I was so sensitised for this because of behavioural sciences, and so then I basically said, 'I think this is the biggest bullshit I've ever heard'. And funny enough, people were already waking up in the audience. And I could have never expected that this would have this type of reaction.

Did it change the speaker's mind?

No!

And that's the real challenge, isn't it? Because it does come at a personal cost. Calling people out publicly can be immensely gratifying from the dopamine hit it gives, but actually doesn't really help change their mind very often.

Exactly. It was also the only time I did it.

I guess that that really leads on to my next question about whistleblowers. You've talked about the personal cost that many of them encounter, and certainly some listeners will know I whistleblew, and it came with a pretty significant personal cost. People don't tend to talk about that. You like to think that if you whistleblow, procedures will be followed and you'll bring about change. And that's not always the case. I wanted to ask you about how you counsel people who are thinking about speaking out, and what advice do you give to them?

Yeah, that's such a contextual question, and if you allow me, I would like to backpedal just just one step, because we need to acknowledge and I have to look at the latest research, but back in the day, when I was still researching about it, I think we need to be very cognizant of the fact that whistleblowers don't wake up in the morning and choose to become a whistleblower, right? It's more organic, or it's like accidental, and oftentimes it's a process that escalates over time because nobody's listening to what they had to say originally. What usually happens in the first step, because of their role, or because of where they sit in an organisation, or because of access to certain information, they just accidentally think that, 'Oh, hey, I should probably bring this up to someone, because, based on my job description, this isn't in line with our corporate values, or isn't in line with our policies, or isn't in line with laws and regulation'. And only then do they realise over time that, 'holy shit, nobody is listening. How come people are pushing me to stop talking? How come people are telling me to shut up?' So it's only then that they realise a whole other thing is happening, which is the process of whistleblowing. I always like to take into consideration that most of the time, it's not a conscious process.

So it's not that I can counsel people "Should you blow the whistle? Yes or no", since only very few cases it's so blatantly in your face where they think 'now I need to blow the whistle'. That exists, definitely, but most of the time the context doesn't allow you to speak up in a normalised fashion. My advice always would be, regardless of where you are in this process, is to really think about the context, like where geographically are they? Which company do they work for? What are their personal rights, also based on laws and regulation in their country? Whistleblower protection is a quite recent development, we have effective whistleblower protection in Europe, for example and the US has evolved quite a lot. At a time it was leading in some areas, but are they effective? That's still a big question mark. So the advice that I would give is to be 100% sure that you want to go on this path, knowing that the probability can be incredibly high that you will lose your career, you might lose your loved ones on the path, you might lose your financial backup, and just being very conscious about what could happen. I'm obviously supportive of effective ways to speak up so you can always use informal or formal speak up channels, especially in organisations. The professionalisation of normalising processes has become 1000 times better. If I look back over the last 10 years, companies have really understood how important it is to use this also as a way to improve innovation, to be better in realising what risks are ahead. My advice definitely would be to go into this process with open eyes at the same time. Then, of course, find alliance partners and a support system. If you say, 'yes, I'm going to go through with this, because it's bigger than life', it's important that you have a support system, whether that's legally or socially, because the isolation and the marginalisation that goes with it is detrimental and inhumane and out of proportion to the service that many whistleblowers are giving to societies and organisations.

I agree with a lot of that. I do a lot of informal counsel to women speaking out about sexual harassment and assault. There's two, there's two 'golden rules' that I tell them, which is one, make decisions that you can live with yourself in 10 years time, that will in 10 years time down the line make you proud. And also, just imagine what the worst possible outcome could be here, and know there's quite a high likelihood of that. So just find what you can live with yourself and imagine that worst outcome. And if you still want to speak out, then go for it. But I think there is a danger sometimes, if you look at the portrayal of whistleblowers in the media, that everything comes out fairly rosy. And that is, as you've indicated, very often not the case at all.

My final question before we move on to asking you about things you've changed your mind on is, are there any hallmarks you find about who are the sorts of people who speak out as whistleblowers? Are there any general characteristics or anything about them, or environmental factors that make people say no, I've reached my tipping point, and I'm saying something?

So I looked at this back then, and I'm not aware of recent studies if that has changed over the time, but there doesn't seem to be a specific characteristic that we can pinpoint from the tremendous honour I've had of speaking to dozens of whistleblowers in my life. I personally believe when there is a moment where you cannot really match the reality that you're faced with with the value system that you personally have, and that's the moment where there's just a tipping point where you just say that's enough. I found this so powerful, because how courageous you have to be to do this, knowing that you will probably be marginalised, and also knowing of the stories that are quite famous around us, that you will be ostracised and that you will not be celebrated for this. So that's where I think lot has changed already. But let's face it, this is something where I see maybe a characteristic. I don't know how you think about this, but that's something I observe.

I think we both hang around in what I would call the same part of the same ballpark when we're thinking about these things. I'm always really surprised that organisations don't welcome whistleblowers, that they're seen as troublemakers, when actually what you're getting is someone who's really thoughtful, probably quite moral, really dedicated to their job and cares enough about things to actually try and bring about change. And it's always struck me as surprising that organisations don't welcome that. Is that common with your understanding and what do you see as the sort of career trajectories for people who speak out in general or who do whistle blow?

So if I may, may add one perspective, here is I do see a really massive change in how organisations think about this topic. That, in all honesty, makes me hopeful and also makes me grateful to grow older, because time gives me this whole different perspective of how things have changed over the last 10 years. 10 years ago I thought this is crazy, how together as society and as democracies we are dealing with this topic. I never thought that we would be here today, talking about this, and I would have never thought that I would be invited on keynotes for companies to talk about what can we learn from whistleblowers, and what can we learn from people who speak out about injustice or fraud that they see in the organisation? And I must say, the seriousness in which speak up programs are being operationalized and organisations are also being used as a line of defence, to pick up on early warning signals, to pick up on what's going on with employee voices, to take it really seriously and professionalising it in a way that's, to me, incredibly hopeful, because I would have never expected this to happen so quickly. Of course, regulation has helped a lot, but I would definitely add that this is something where we can see huge differences in how it's being perceived and how it's being also perceived as a facilitator for change, a facilitator for innovation and also an incredibly good defence system to stop regulators raiding your place if you aren't listening to your whistleblower.

If I may add one really hopeful story I have seen. So the chances are really high that if you whistle bow, you will either get informally demoted or rotated out, or just fired. But there's one CEO in particular that has now asked his team to, every quarter, give data on where people stand in the organisation, who spoke up about certain topics in the organisation, because you have informal and formal channels to speak up, and this particular company is incredibly good at already creating a culture of listening, and a culture where speaking up is like feedback. And this CEO is now requesting every quarter, 'okay, tell me, where is Ally? She spoke up half a year ago about this topic, where is she? What's her career? Has she been demoted? Has she been promoted?' And so he's keeping everyone in check by saying 'we're not just having a policy that is against retaliation. We don't only have, like, you know, formal procedures to make sure that doesn't happen, but I also hold you accountable'. Of course, it's just one example, but I can definitely show many really good examples of how this can go down. It's far from perfect, but from where I started in 2010 I would have never thought this would happen.

I feel like we could carry on talking about this for ages longer, but we must ask you the core question that we do all of our guests on the podcast, which is to tell us about a substantive issue that you have changed your mind on. So what's yours?

One thing that I can say for 100% that I've changed my mind about ever since my doctoral dissertation, also at Columbia, is the role of regulation in whistleblowing. So now that you know that 23 years ago, I was in business school it was a different era, and I can tell you that 100% I was all for free markets. I probably was a strong believer that markets are efficient. I was probably a strong believer that regulation is bad, simply because the way in which business schools were teaching at the time were very different to what it is today, and wonderfully so. And so with the experiences that whistleblowers shared with me, and also now my job at EY, and you know the clients that we do support around the world, and especially now in the context of ESG or sustainability, I hate to admit it, but without regulation, the moving and the momentum and the pace in which companies would execute put budgets into the places that are needed would just not be the same. And I'm talking about scale. I'm not saying that's absolutely true in every single sector and size of companies, but let's say more broadly, that's one thing I changed my mind about. And if you tell me no, we should just leave sustainability up to free markets, I'd say absolutely no. Like, that's insane.

I was going to ask you how you found it when you've told other people you work with that, that's how your sort of trajectory has gone. Do you come up against much opposition? Do you have to have many difficult conversations in your work or in your personal life about taking that position, or has it been a bit softer, smoother than that?

That's a beautiful question. So sometimes more and sometimes less resistance, or also arguments around us. That goes back to what we talked about earlier, your role in society as business, right? There is a standard, and as social norms are evolving, so do laws and regulations. So I feel like the regulated industries understand that quite well. But then at the same time, I would say that industries who aren't used to regulation probably go like, 'hey, we got this, We'll figure this out', you can probably imagine which industries I'm referring to.

Do you, by any chance, mean some startup ones who are taught 'Hey, go and break the rules. Do it quickly before the regulations kick in. That's your growth trajectory, get the market advantage and go for it'. And they were very, very slow to adapt from that model, because obviously, it had worked so spectacularly well in the Valley for so many people, it had lined their pockets very effectively.

Even now, I'm still struck that regulators are a long way behind where they should be. I was involved in a few conversations earlier this week where they'll be like, oh gosh, how could we have regulated that better? Not like, what is the world going to look like in 2040 or 2050, and what regulation might we need to get into, and actually, how can we have conversations with VCs and people who are doing that investment to try and change it anyway? There are a few VCs I know who think very thoughtfully about this kind of thing, but most of them don't because they're judged on financial return. So why would they?

There is one final question that we ask people, which is, now you've told us what you changed your mind on. Could you nominate somebody else, a celebrity or a political figure, or just someone you know, from work, who you would love to hear about what they changed. Their mind, and why would you want to hear from them?

I would love to hear from Obama and Angela Merkel. I think because both of them were leading at a time where a lot was going on, and

sometimes I'm not sure we acknowledge and also understand the complexity under which they operate. The same is true for C suite executives that I know. I think sometimes we minimise the burden and also the incredible sense of duty that goes with these types of roles. From the outside, it's always like, 'Oh, this should be a piece of cake, right? This should be a walk in the park to make these decisions'. I just would love to hear from those two, because I could imagine they have been in some really wicked situations and had some wicked problems that they had to face, and would love to learn as to how they approached it or changed their minds about certain topics. And I can imagine there are a few topics they change their mind about.

Yeah, and I think they're great calls. Most people find that kind of thinking quite tiring, and they'll get to the end of the day, or an end of a week or a month, where they've had to operate at that level, and they'll be like, gosh, I'm glad to just unwind. And it is unrelenting. And that's always what really impressed me, actually, about Merkel and Obama, even though they're from very different political backgrounds, they managed to keep quite a strong moral compass over eight years in Obama's case, and then I think it was 16 for Merkel. You know, even while other people were going more sour around them, they managed to find routes through quite tricky, wicked problems on the whole. And so far history continues to be pretty kind to them about that.

Yes, absolutely. Just the resilience, I just find this inspiring. And also look at the compensation in comparison to some CEOs, right?

I mean, no one goes into politics to get rich. Well, not in a democracy.

We should finish on that, though. Thank you so much for joining us Katharina. So yeah, thank you so much for joining us. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you. It was such a pleasure to be here, and I look forward to speaking to you both soon.

Laura Osborne

We had such a great conversation with Katharina. We really appreciate her taking part in the podcast. Before Alex, Ali and I digest this interview, we wanted to bring you a brief word from our partners for this new series, 1014. This podcast mini series is presented by 1014. 1014 is a space for ideas, with talks, performances, exhibitions and in the future, a residency program. 1014 encourages debates on today's global topics by offering transatlantic perspectives and using interdisciplinary approaches. 1014 spans continents, fields of knowledge and individual backgrounds, located in a historic townhouse on Fifth Avenue in New York, provided by the German government. 1014 harnesses the entrepreneurial atmosphere of this metropolitan hub and reaches beyond the city boroughs with its online programs. Check out 1014 online at 1014.NYC. So now we've heard the full interview. Was there anything you wanted to reflect on Ali and Alex and I wonder if we'll start with maybe three words each. Yeah.

Alison Goldsworthy

Maybe 'avoid binary thinking'.

Laura Osborne

What about you, Alex? What did you think?

Alexandra Chesterfield

A load of bollocks. Let me put that into context. So actually, that's four words, isn't it? What I was going to say in the context of Katharina's observations on how ESG can be framed as a form of feminist capitalism, as a way of marginalising the whole ESG debate. How frustrating, and actually, what a load of bollocks on behalf of people who who level those criticisms. It reminds me of aspects in the book Poles Apart in terms of strategies that people use to dehumanise and marginalise the out group by using aspects of their identity. So by linking ESG to a form of feminist capitalism, it's kind of like a form of malicious stereotyping. So that was my immediate takeaway. Laura. On a more serious note, what about you? What did you take away from it?

I don't think I have it in three words, but I remember, after doing the interview, thinking really hard about when to speak out and when not to like what a difficult set of decisions that is, and how hard corporate whistleblowing can be in practice, and those costs that Ali pointed to at the beginning about, you know, are you going to pay some kind of career price? What does it mean for you? What does it mean with your team? And it reminded me of some of those themes we talked about in the book, as well, the cost of going against your own group. So yeah, I thought it was really, really interesting. Food for thought. Not sure. I can sum it up in three words, though.

Laura Osborne

Has Katharina inspired you to think of a time you changed your mind and why? If she has do share your thoughts with us at Ali@team-acord.com and tell us about what you've changed your mind on. And as ever, the best responses might just find something tasty. Turns up in the post. Thank you to 1014 for their support of the show. To Eve Streeter, our not so new producer now we're on episode three, and to Kevin McLeod, whose dreams become real is our theme music.