ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the story of Unilever—an original member of the Global Living Asset Management Performance Index® and a leader in the new paradigm’s development. Unilever is the world’s second-largest manufacturer of food and household products with annual revenues exceeding $70 billion. A key part of the mental shift was an implicit recognition that living assets are the source of capital assets, which meant Unilever’s future resided in how well it stewarded those assets. Discerning the linkages between the stresses, and the growing threats they posed to global commerce, Paul Polman raised the ante on Unilever’s culture of stewardship. The strength of Unilever’s culture resides in the coherence between means and ends. The life-affirming goals of its Sustainable Living Plan are credible to employees and stakeholders precisely because they are achieved by life-affirming means. The magic of Unilever’s strategy resides in continuously engaging the whole system in which it operates.
