Dieter Schultz  
Sustainability is meeting the needs of today without compromising the demands or needs of the future.

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to love as a business strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business. But we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from. We believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. Hello, I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And as always, I'm here to have conversations and hear stories from real people, real businesses real life. And I'm joined today by a face that probably hasn't been here in a voice as a mere sometime but always a pleasure to have with me here. Chris Petrie, vice president here at Softway Culture+. Chris, how are you doing?

Chris Pitre  
I'm doing well. All is good in the hood.

Jeff Ma  
And, Chris, I know you and I are both very excited because our guest today is Dieter Schultz and Dieter is an environmental strategy and business planning advisor for Entergy with a career that spans across oil and gas, environmental solutions, and many others. But we've invited Dieter here today to actually speak to us about not only his work has created all these things, but also his passion around coaching, relationship building, learning through people strategy, technical aspects, I mean, all the things. We're very, very excited to pick theater's brain through this, I'd like to welcome to the show. Dieter Schultz, how are you doing?

Dieter Schultz  
Thank you for the introduction. It's great to be here. Really excited to be here.

Jeff Ma  
Awesome, awesome. And I'm gonna have you kick us off Dieter, I want to know, first and foremost, what is your passion? And what brings you to that? And what part of your life or what kind of story kind of brought you to that passion?

Dieter Schultz  
For me, relationships are fundamental to all of the work that I want to pursue. I think team building is foundational in the relationships that you have with people. And to me, that drives me, how can I work together with people to solve really challenging problems together, and I interweave the relationship, the teamwork together, because I love learning what other people can teach me. And vice versa, as we work through that space. That doesn't say it doesn't come with adversity, it doesn't neglect that there can be some really challenging conversations that you have to work through styles, preferences. But I think that all builds the team and that some of that shared adversity really gets you to a better solution. And that is my passion is working in that space.

Jeff Ma  
Awesome, awesome, awesome. And kind of set the framework here, because I know today, I really wanted to have a conversation around sustainability. But I guess to set the stage for that. Two things. And I guess maybe two completely different questions, but I'll pose them both. You can take them in any order. But we're talking about love as a sustainability strategy. So I need to know Dieter, what does love mean to you in any context like that? And what is sustainability? Because these are both broad words that can be made different things. So before we depart, can you please set the stage for us in that front?

Dieter Schultz  
Yeah. I appreciate the both of those questions. And I'm not sure that it matters, in what order. So I'm going to take love first, just because I think my answer is a little bit more succinct, and then it'll open the platform to talk about sustainability. So for me if I really have to narrow down love it's a passion that perseveres. And I really hone in on perseverance. Because your passion is going to be challenged. You're going to work through adversity, but you continually persevere. And to me, that is something that I love, if I can continually be challenged. That means I love that. And it doesn't necessarily matter that domain, whether it's a relationship with someone that's you're working through, or if it's a hobby, or a sport, or your career. If you really love that you're gonna persevere. And I know there's a lot that you can unpack on other other words that really resonate with the word love and I have many others. But if I want to keep it short, perseverance, passion that perseveres. That's what love means to me.

Jeff Ma  
I love that. That's awesome. All right, well, sustainability.

Chris Pitre  
Yeah. Three words for sustainability. Let's keep it going.

Dieter Schultz  
If you want to talk three words, if I was gonna do it, we can just be really simple and say, what are the three, three disciplines that people use to try to assess sustainability, and that's environmental, social, and financial. But what I want to actually go to is more of a definition of sustainability opposed to how we might try to evaluate sustainability. And we'll talk about the definition. And to me, the desk definition that dating myself back to college that really resonated with me is sustainability is meeting the needs of today, without compromising the demands or needs of the future. You're probably going to hear me say that definition many times through this, this podcast, because I'm going to interweave some of my thoughts back into that definition. But it's meeting the needs of today without compromising the demands of the future. And so what that is not, that means we're not in debt in the future. And I didn't provide a domain to sustainability. Jeff, you hit on it earlier, it's brought what is the definition of sustainability, sustainable relationships, a sustainable environment, a sustainable culture, want to go are in the business world sustainable business, this is sustainable finance, sustainable investing, you hear the term sustainability thrown out. But I want to always come back to that definition of meeting the needs of today without compromising the demands of the future. And so that means you have to give some perspective to time, you have to give perspective to time. And that's relative, because 100 years, 50 years, 20 years, tomorrow, today, you start looking through that, and you go, the pace at which I want to move might be faster, in different than the pace you want to move. So how do we as a society continue to understand what sustainability is? And so I think that part and I asked myself, that question is really, really important. Because I think society is on this pursuit, for understanding sustainability. We're trying to, we're trying to understand that we're on this quest for knowledge, it's a pursuit for wisdom, how do we understand what sustainability is. And that's what makes it so challenging, is that it is broad, that it is rather philosophical, at least in my opinion. And then you're constantly dealing with competing priorities.

Chris Pitre  
But, that that makes sense. And when we've had conversations with those who are like in the sustainability function inside of a business, we hear all the stories, we hear some crazy stories, we hear interesting stories. And one common thread is the intersection between sustainability and behavior, and how oftentimes, it's not just a sustainability conversation, but it's a behavior conversation that has to sort of precede the sort of kinematics or the details and sort of business plans around sustainability. So I'm curious, if you find that to be true as well. Or if you see a different sort of initial rub, or friction when it comes to introducing a sustainability conversation inside of the workplace or even in your personal life.

Dieter Schultz  
Chris, I'm first I'm I love this question. Because if you're gonna ask me where to where did we land the plane in this conversation? Where do we go from the kind of the technical and philosophical thought of sustainability? How is it applied to science? In the business world? I think the most, one of the most important aspects is now you get into the leadership component of sustainability. And if you want to go back to that definition of today and tomorrow, who's going to help us get there, and it's the leaders that we have in our society, whether that is leadership in academics or teachers at school, in the workplace, government officials, the leadership aspects, and I'm actually trying to set aside the opinions of what those leaders have, but actually now focus on the behaviors of what they have. Because what sustainability is not is it's not intended to create conflict. It might create challenging conversations because people have different criteria that is more important to them your your trade offs, there's this trade off battle that you're working through, but sustainability isn't trying to create conflict. If you is trying to create collaboration. And that, to me fundamentally comes back to the leadership behaviors that we have, and that we choose to exhibit. And that actually might become more important on how we understand sustainability, how we pursue this quest for knowledge. And I'm better understand the philosophy opposed to some of the science part that's 100%. Me not saying that the science isn't important. It's just recognizing also how important leadership is in the space. So I really love that question.

Jeff Ma  
Dieter, can you give some maybe just examples of leadership behaviors that maybe on both sides, like maybe ones that do successfully help meet the needs of today without compromising the demands of the future? And also behaviors that that make that harder or, or worse?

Dieter Schultz  
I'm actually going to reference your book here a little bit,  

Jeff Ma  
by all means,

Dieter Schultz  
because while we're here might as well talk about Yeah. First off, vulnerability is important. Because I actually heard this just the other day, coincidentally, before being able to talk to you about this. But within the context of leadership vulnerability. Vulnerability is for the sake of others. So if you're a leader, and you're not willing to be vulnerable, what what are you teaching? The people that are you're working with right now? What are you teaching them? You're not You're not teaching them? How to solve a problem, kind of covering it, you're not now being inclusive to what they may say, because you're not willing to be vulnerable? And if you're not vulnerable for the sake of others, how can you actually understand how to meet the demands of the future? Because you're, you're actually hiding what? What are putting a facade up to what you're trying to manage today? And so that that level of vulnerability is really important. I think that builds personal growth, some reflection that you have, as a leader to understand Wow, how can I learn from that? How can I collaborate in that space? Those are actions now, those are physical actions. How do I engage in that space? What's my attitude? What's my mindset? So important, so soulful, important. So fundamentally, the example I'm trying to provide routes back and vulnerability. But I think that vulnerability then kind of has some arms and legs that work over into smaller spaces.

Chris Pitre  
And on the opposite side of that, what, what can leaders sort of do to diminish sustainability efforts and conversations,

Dieter Schultz  
a lack of transparency, which may be the ultimate, kind of the opposite of vulnerability, if you're willing to be vulnerable, you're willing to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation. But if you're not willing to be transparent, why?

Chris Pitre  
Yep, that makes sense. Um, actually, last night, I went to see a preview, a sneak preview of the new Transformers movie, and beforehand, they have sort of the cast are talking about stuff. And the guy who voices Optimus Prime said that when he was about to go audition for the role, he told his brother who was in the military that, hey, I'm about to go play a robot. This is like, before transformers was a thing, right? And so his brother who was in the military said, oh, so if you're going to be a leader, be strong enough to be gentle. And he said, he took that into the voice recording for Optimus Prime. So when you listen to Optimus Prime, you hear this sort of strong, deep voice, but you also hear this warmth and this care that he infuses into every line that he says because of that sort of command from his military, military brother. But as you were talking about being vulnerable, and also, you know, being transparent, you know, that's a gentleness that many leaders unfortunately, don't nurse or understand how to build inside of their communication, and their relationship building with their teams. And it's so true that like, you know, if you really, if you really want to think about sustainability, in that context that you gave, how do you get your team to then live that out, because as a leader, you're just one person serving a team, who's carrying out so many things away from you. And so if you're not modeling and demonstrating those two key things, vulnerability and transparency, you're probably not being gentle, and therefore there probably is a limited impact you're gonna have for that sort of generational lookout from the decisions that you make today.

Dieter Schultz  
Yeah, and I love that, Chris, because when we start talking about sustainability and making generational impact act? How do we look forward to meeting the demands of the future? And when you start looking at different generations in the workplace, today's leaders picked out knowledge from yesterday. They learned from yesterday. And that that's going to continue forward. So how do you continue to understand that and share? Look at the steps we've made, the steps we've made may not always been right. Some of them have been really choppy. Some of them may have put us in situations that while pain plus reflection equals progress, so that was tough, that was tough. Let me share a little of my wisdom with you as a leader, but at the same time, don't let my wisdom or attempt at being wise, Notch add light to what you have to offer, what perspective you have to offer. And I think that is where I want to really where I focus on that vulnerability, gap communication, making sure you're, you're able to work through that space.

Jeff Ma  
So in an attempt to kind of connect this full circle, right, I think earlier you said, love for you is a passion that perseveres. So now that we kind of have under our belt, what sustainability is then kind of what it's meant to look like in terms of behavior? Can you connect the final dots here on like, when we talk about a passion that perseveres? What kind of passion? What is it persevering through? Like, what is that? What does love that definition look like as a leadership behavior, how it connects?

Dieter Schultz  
So I'm not going to use an example about me, I'm going to actually use an example that I think is easier for people to understand, because I can illustrate it better. If I had more time to prepare, I can tell. You probably get an answer from me, but it's hard to probably land that succinctly right now. But I'm going to use a sports example. love sports, I grew up playing soccer played in college competitive by nature. And when you see a professional athlete, land a championship. And there, they've been a professional for just say, 10-15 years. So they they're veteran, they have experience. And they win. And they're, they're emotional, on the court or on the field, you resonate with that emotion. Like, I might not understand what your adversity was. But I certainly am resonating that you're passionate about what you just accomplished in the road and the journey that you had. I don't know it, but I can feel it. So I can feel that you are passionate about getting to where you are right now because I can see it and I can feel it, even though I don't know it. And that, to me kind of lands back in the passion that persevered. Because there was injuries. There's blood, sweat and tears. There was some really difficult, maybe traits. You bounced around from teams coaching change, he got benched. There were things that you had to prove you had to re identify yourself. And here you are. Emotional crying, holding up this trophy with your team. And everyone is resonating with that success.

Jeff Ma  
How, as leaders, do we find or harness that in order to achieve achieve what we're talking about if we want to be sustained, you know, achieve conversations around sustainability if we want to actually be able to lead in that way that helps move us in that direction. As a leader, how do you coach them? Through that?

Dieter Schultz  
I think there's two parts to that job. I think there's the personal passion. I don't I don't know how much a leader can create someone else's passion, they might be able to cultivate the passion that they have. But I don't think you can go and create someone else's passion for them. And so if if you are going to say this person is passionate about this, and I know they're passionate about it, how do I unlock that? How do I help cultivate that passion with someone who is you you have to you have to want to work with them. You have to want to listen to them. You have to have good communication, you really have to dig in. You have to lean into what what motivates them. And that's going to take listening that's going to take caring that's going to have to take understanding. And if you can't get to that level, that personal connection, that relationship with that person. I don't know how you can coach them. And I'm going to underlying underlying coaching and the aspect of leadership, but how are you going to? How are you going to coach them if you can't actually communicate with their passion? I think that was really hard question.

Chris Pitre  
Jeff goes hard. I guess I'm curious to know Dieter, when it comes to sort of what we've been talking about between sort of marrying the passion marrying sustainability, but also the right leadership behaviors, have you seen a success in terms of a business impact or business outcome? When you see those things come together nicely, just so our audience can understand, like, what, when you have all these place pieces in place? What can be sort of a tangible business impact or business outcome that perhaps was even surprising to see? It wasn't? Maybe it wasn't even the direct or the intentional outcome that we were planning for?

Dieter Schultz  
Yeah, I mean, when you when you look at kind of the underdog mindset, just what is a company, or a business or a sports team that just proved me wrong, that you completely didn't think was capable of accomplishing that? And what did they do? How did they do it? What? What allowed someone that didn't look as good on on paper to win? And my answer is broad, because trying to, I don't know if I have like the best case study just off the top of my head. And I don't want that to undermine my answer. But at the exact same time, what is that differentiating behavior? That allowed someone that or a team or a business to just outperform their competition? How did they do it? And everyone's sitting around going, wow. And to me, that's on the behavior side, then all comes back to the culture, the team building the relationship aspects that some of that intangible illness?

Chris Pitre  
As you've been talking and answering that question, there actually is a case study that I just thought of, it's, I saw a movie, it was a documentary about this company called interface, and they make carpet tiles. And so the movie is called beyond zero. But the CEO, unfortunately, who has passed away, but his legacy continues inside of the organization, he in the late 90s, realized how much damage they were doing to the environment. And he stood up in front of the company, one big sort of annual meeting that they had, and said, we are going to get to zero carbon emissions and zero footprint on this planet from our organization by 2020, or some year that he named in the 2020s. And he started the organization on this journey, and nobody understood it, everybody thought that he had lost his mind that he had become this tree hugger like all like just crazy stuff. And he didn't give up, he didn't stop, he didn't sort of sort of pivot back to business as usual. He actually got everybody connected, because in the next annual meeting, what they did was they planned this major off site at this resort in Hawaii that wasted water and food like nobody's business. And his team, he hired sort of this eco team that went in and consulted with the hotel and the resort, and showed everybody what the footprint was of their experience every single day and reported numbers and data and told them what this meant in terms of who was like, the amount of food that we wasted could have fit this many people yesterday, let's try and get that down today. And every day, everybody got involved in reducing the numbers from the amount of towels that are being washed every day, the amount of food that was being served, the amount of water they got, all of that was being tracked and measured throughout this annual convention. And it was after that where he got on the stage and sort of told us stories of all the things that could have been done with the money or the resources that were used. And he had people on his team crying and sort of realizing how wasteful The organization had been just in that one week. And then after that people sprung into action. And they were able to get beyond zero. So right now they're operating factory mindset that you know, factory has a forest. So their factories should be putting more energy back onto the earth just like it's a forest. And so cool story. I just it just came to mind while you were talking and I was like oh, there's that cool company that that. But they're headquartered in Atlanta. But yeah, they they have a documentary about that story. And it's like a great story. Because it all came back to the behaviors and getting everybody bought in around the same mindset, the same outcomes, but intentionally collaborating, trying new ideas because they had to re engineer their products. They had to re engineer their factories, they had to like reengineer everything to get to this outcome and this mission, that their CEO just woke up one day literally, and decided he wanted to do

Dieter Schultz  
that, that is fascinating. And what comes to my mind is transitioning a little bit from sustainability and over to a broader ESG environmental, social governance, and how are we measuring our impact? How are we measuring and disclosing our impact. And you see the targets that are being set by companies across the entire globe. And there's a variety of frameworks that are out there and different disclosures that companies choose to make. And there's more policy being developed, there's, I'm gonna say market pressure to be too transparent and make your disclosures of well, in order to do that you have to be measured, measuring something you have to actually be able to measure in order to make an improvement. And what I think is really important there is sure there are several different frameworks. Whether one is better than the other, or the others, I think, is somewhat irrelevant, opposed to the bigger picture of that can't create conflict, the idea is to collaborate, and how do we understand what we can measure how we can measure it, and the company's continued to perform better. In order to know how to perform better you, the leaders need to be driving the right behaviors. And then at the same time, you're going to learn from one another and what we can measure. And as more companies begin to disclose information, and to give the good intent, some might or might not be able to disclose yet, because they don't have the capability of measuring. And so the world is on that pursuit, still, that kind of goes way back to the beginning to what I was saying here. So in that pursuit, you can't disclose what you don't measure. And so people are still trying to understand what to measure. And that's helping shape what some of these disclosure frameworks are. And that I think it's so important that at that part, at the policy level, at the framework level, at the principal level, that doesn't start becoming a conflict, that is really important that there's collaboration, because that collaboration is going to transcend into how individual companies behave. And so, Chris, that was me trying to answer your question, not as specific. As you may or may have asked, and I know I keep trying to take it into a little bit higher level. But that's just because of the philosophical approach that I'm trying to take on sustainability.

Chris Pitre  
Yeah. But I completely get it. And I'd say like, every organization sort of sustainability conversation looks different. Every leader that I've talked to inside of sustainability is just depending on the industry, depending on the success markers, depending on the future, as well as the past, like every it's just, it's different. It's hard to take one's one company or one groups or one industry sustainability goals and sort of approach and take it into a copy paste that elsewhere, it just doesn't fit. Well.

Jeff Ma  
What I find interesting, Chris, is that like, even though every industry and business and CEOs, idea of sustainability is different. I feel like there's an element of the type of team that is sustainable, that is always the same. You know, we talk a lot about resilience, and a sense of belonging, and these types of things. And when you see those in teams, like the team itself is sustainable. Because that culture can persevere. With passion, right? Yep. The through through adversity through pandemics through ups and downs. And that is the type of team you need to then tackle, you know, the more specific sustainable financial, environmental, social things that you want to get done. And I think, and I guess the question here is like, like, a, is that degree with that, but also, more importantly, kind of like, if so, like, how, you know, how do you foster that? Or how do you get people to see that that's the first step, right, because there's a lot of targets out there that are like, we just have to hit this level of environmental, but are they are they looking first at the team's sustainability? And mindset, and if not how?

Dieter Schultz  
So Jeff? First off, yes, I agree. Because I think the team part is so important. I think you can if you create a hybrid forming team, a team built on trust, a team that can become adaptable, they're going to solve problems. And they're going to, they're going to work through the majority of problems that you tossed their way, regardless of what it may be, they're going to be up for the challenge, they're gonna work together, and they're gonna pull off each other's strengths to figure out how to accomplish that. And so to me, that that is really, really, really, really important. Where I see people learning to solve those problems comes from shoot, this is costing a lot of money. The business performance isn't where we want it to be. And I'm going to call this broadly environmental liability, and environmental cost and operating cost, you start recognizing the bad performance on the balance sheet, and then you go up, I want to go solve that problem. I absolutely need to perform better that way. Do you have the high performing team to solve that problem, though? Or are you now starting? Are you chasing the target before you had the team? That that's a really dynamic conversation. That's an interesting one to have. Because I would, I would think, and I would, I would put more of my bet on you, you create the high performing team, they're going to exceed the target. But at the same time, you still need the target, to know how to chase that goal, and also how to be accountable as a leader. Because if you don't have any, any accountability to where you're going, you're not you're not going to get there. So that's also a really important aspect. And we haven't spoken about accountability all but you have the governance component. And the governance is accountability. How, how are we managing our policies? How are we adapting our policies? How are we measuring what we are disclosing, and all of that as an accountability partner? So I may have just navigated a little bit from your initial question, but no, team is gonna get you there.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah, yes, I couldn't agree more, I agree to and you kind of breached into a new area that I would love to tackle. And so it's almost like I need a part two of this conversation. But but for now, I think you've already given me and in all of us is just a lot to think about. I love the way the dots have connected here in this conversation today between love behaviors, leadership, sustainability, and really business in general. So Dieter, time flies, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and your knowledge and your perspective today. I really appreciate you joining us today.

Dieter Schultz  
Thank you for letting me join. It was a pleasure. Always great to talk with you. Thank you.

Chris Pitre  
It's good to see you again.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah, and to our listeners. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your your consistent viewership and let's what is it called? Listen.

Chris Pitre  
listenership listenership

Jeff Ma  
we really appreciate it. Check out our book if you haven't love as a business strategy still out there. And we really appreciate all the feedback subscribing rating, telling your friend Chris, thank you so much for gracing us with your presence. Today's a rare sighting here on the show. Anyone anyone who has been digging deeper in the archives of love as a business strategy, Chris was a regular face. But you know, he's, he's doing he's doing lots of important big important things.

Chris Pitre  
So not as important as this podcast. Unfortunately, it's just not as important.

Jeff Ma  
All right, and with that, thank you again. see everybody next week.