Global Ocean Trust: Protecting the Blue Planet in New Ways

BRIAN KENNY: Whoever came up with the saying, “Don’t boil the ocean,” never met Torsten Thiele. In business circles, the saying cautions against taking on too big of a project. Rather than changing the whole system, the idea is to focus on a smaller part where you can have a greater impact. It sounds like pretty good advice, but what if the problem doesn’t lend itself to that? What if the problem is so gaudy and complicated and involves so many players that you really have no choice but to take on the whole thing? The ocean. That is literally what Torsten Thiele, founder of Global Ocean Trust, is doing. After decades spent in finance, he knows how to bring parties to the negotiating table and how to build strong coalitions. To make the oceans front and center in the churning currents of sustainability, he’ll need all those skills and more. Today on Cold Call, the case of “Torsten Thiele and the Global Ocean Trust,” with case author Rosabeth Moss Kanter, and joining us from London, Torsten Thiele himself. I’m your host Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call, recorded in Klarman Hall Studio at Harvard Business School.

BRIAN KENNY: Rosabeth Moss Kanter is an expert in strategy, innovation, and leadership. She is the co-founder of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative, which she led for a decade, and the author of a newly released book, “Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Smart Innovation at a Time.” Torsten Thiele has over two decades of experience in international finance with firms like JPMorgan and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He is the founder of the Global Ocean Trust, and a 2014 Advanced Leadership fellow. I sense a common theme here. Rosabeth and Torsten, thank you for joining me today.

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: A pleasure. Thank you, Brian.

TORSTEN THIELE: Thank you so much.

BRIAN KENNY: Torsten, we’re bringing you in over the line from London, so it’s great to have you in the conversation so we can hear sort of firsthand some of your experiences. I’m just going to take a moment to sort of set up the case for us here, because it’s important for people to understand the context in which this conversation unfolded, but the case opens up in August of 2015 and it focuses on Torsten sort of reflecting on the previous year, which you had been very busy traveling the world and speaking about the ocean and trying to collaborate with NGOs and engage governments and rally support for ocean protection, and there’s a landmark event that’s about to happen, which is the Conference of the Parties, also known as COP 21, which would be the first ever legally binding universal agreement on climate change, but the oceans were conspicuously absent from the agenda and that conversation. And so really, the stage is set here for you to start to think about what you have to do to further your work and to build the coalitions that you need to build to make the ocean sort of forefront in that conversation.

BRIAN KENNY: So, I actually want to ask the first question of you, Rosabeth, tell me how this sort of … what sparked your interest in this case, and how does it relate to your work here at Harvard Business School?

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: So, I’m interested in the big ideas that are going to make a difference in the world, which I think is increasingly important to people at every level. In the business world, on the edges of the business world, companies have to do that, and certainly climate change is one of those big issues, big ideas. There are many ways to approach it and many groups working on it, so that’s what made Torsten’s initiative so exciting to me because he was unwilling to settle for just one approach. He wanted to change the conversation, change the agenda, and then you can get lots of people working in different ways, but clearly, we haven’t made enough progress by using the same old methods, same old techniques. So I’m interested in change. I wouldn’t call it disruptive change, but change that produces innovation, new and unconventional ways of thinking, what I call thinking outside the building, thinking outside the existing establishments. So here was somebody who was exemplifying what we were trying to do in Advanced Leadership, which is get that experienced leadership and different ways of thinking from every sector to tackle really big problems, and what could be bigger than the ocean, and yet not always included in discussions of climate change.

BRIAN KENNY: Can I ask you to take a minute just to explain for our listeners who might not be familiar with the Advanced Leadership Initiative, it’s a fabulous program that’s over a decade old here now, which is hard to believe, but I would love for you to explain sort of, what’s the core essence of the program?

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: Thank you. Well, my colleagues and I were also being fairly audacious, and I certainly encourage people to think big with audacious goals because we said, “Let’s invent a new stage of higher education.” People are living longer. We have many accomplished leaders who could have 20, 30 more years on their career after they’re ready to move on from what has been their primary income earning years. Why don’t we harness that leadership force to make a difference in the world? This is catalyzing a great deal of social innovation. So it’s given me an opportunity, personally, to have my hand in a range of issues dealing not only with climate change, but gun violence, early childhood education, health disparities, major institutional problems that business cares about, but also often go beyond the power of any one company to do anything about it.

BRIAN KENNY: You know, Torsten, I’m going to turn to you for a minute. I, actually, Rosabeth and I were talking about her new book and I said, “Is there a case that really does well to sort of surface the big ideas in the book?” And without hesitation she referenced this case, and having read the case now, I can totally see what she’s talking about. So I want to ask you to, first of all, maybe we can just talk about the oceans themselves. How serious are the problems that are facing the oceans from your perspective?

TORSTEN THIELE: This is the fundamental issue. 97% of life on earth takes place in the ocean, so the ocean is the core to the life system of our planet. As we are combining different stressors, both local specific stressors, but also these more global climate change stressors, we are starting to see tipping points in the ocean that are not reversible. So this is an urgent issue, and it’s a very large issue, but it is an addressable issue in the sense that we can pick off these different stressors. To give just one example, at the COP in Madrid on Sunday, we launched the latest IUCN report, the largest science organization working on this, around deoxygenation. People were already aware of the warming of the ocean, the acidification of the ocean. What is becoming very clear now is that we’re getting increasingly dead zones in the ocean, which then mean that in those depleted ozone oxygen zones, fish cannot survive. So we get massive changes there, and these changes reflect back on us. The ocean risk that increases means our coastal systems, and half of the world’s population lives within 50 miles of the coast, are directly affected. So it’s a massive issue, and it’s at the heart of the ocean climate debate.

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: So I think it’s important also because, even for those people who live inland, who eat seafood, who get goods shipped from other countries that come into the United States by surface transportation, which means the ocean, I mean, the amount of industry and commerce that’s dependent on the ocean is also huge. So what I also loved about the case is, this is so huge, and there are already so many different groups and constituencies doing some part of it, but there’s nobody in charge. Nobody really owns the oceans.

BRIAN KENNY: Who are some of the players, Torsten, that you’ve had to encounter as you move on this journey?

TORSTEN THIELE: We have a number of ocean industries, so it was important to come up with a narrative to shift them towards sustainability, and so I’ve worked with a whole range of actors, including the European Union, around the narrative of a sustainable blue economy, of really understanding what type of commercial activities function and work with sustainable development goals with our future pathways. The second very active constituency is the NGO community. So there are a lot of ocean experts there. However, these organizations are relatively small compared to large governments and business, so it was very important to bring them together so they work with a common voice. So we supported the High Seas Alliance as the premier organization of NGOs that negotiate on this new biodiversity treaty for the high seas, which is that international part of the ocean that is not under national control. And similarly, it was very important to make sure that these amazing ocean scientists that we have learn a language that allows them to engage beyond just science, so we founded the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative to introduce the concept of stewardship and allow these scientists to speak out in international meetings, to explain how their work directly affects these decisions of society. So those were important groups. And then of course, you have the negotiators in these international processes who tend to move from one issue to the next, so they need support in sticking with this core theme, and in particular, from my perspective, there’s this distinct lack of understanding of finance, so I focused a lot on using financial mechanisms and innovative finance as an entry point. There’s real demand because people understand the measures need to be financed, so they have an open ear, but the background is missing, so we’re working with the largest financial institutions in order for them to really understand how ocean risk affects them, how stranded assets become an issue, so that they can allocate their money wisely.

BRIAN KENNY: These are all big societal issues with huge implications, but if you don’t sort of attack it from the financial angle, if you don’t look at it from the business perspective, does it just sort of feel like altruism, which doesn’t really seem to move the needle a lot?

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: I think it definitely depends on the issue, but it’s also true that bringing an economic or financial perspective to issues that have generally been considered only humanitarian or only done by NGOs, I love many of the NGOs, but if they’re unsophisticated about that, if they depend only on donations, they can’t think about making it sustainable. So another set of projects and people that I talk about in Think Outside the Building took on the Syrian refugee crisis. That also is not a small issue, but they found a new pathway for mobility for Syrian refugees by finding people who had skills and creating a platform to match them with employers that had needs for talent. So suddenly you don’t have to claim it’s a humanitarian issue, which is good. It’s nice to have values, and that’s not bad. But you had an economic rationale for moving it forward. So in the case of the ocean, the idea … I mean, I also just love about this case the idea of connecting all these unrelated parties. I mean, Torsten only gave us a small sample of the large numbers, and each one of those alliances, one of them has 37,000 organizations as members, and that’s organizations. So they operate, how do we say silos on the ocean? In their own lane. They never talk to the others. So one of Torsten’s challenges as he’s working with, say, banks, is how to get banks to be able to talk to NGOs for whom banks might have been the enemy, and how to get the NGOs to understand that they may not be the enemy, but get the banks to understand what the goals are that are a bigger goal that are going to benefit them. So overall, I think by adding a financial lens it opens up a new world of possibility, but it wouldn’t have without the coalition building. How do you ever get all these people to be in the same room together and agree to anything?

BRIAN KENNY: Torsten, do you think of yourself as an activist?

TORSTEN THIELE: I have been thinking about that, and I think the role really is to make this kaleidoscope of interests and players work better together, and so in that sense, I’d rather say a catalyst. So the ocean risk example wasn’t a wonderful example. We had a small group around the table and convinced AXA, large insurance company, that this was something that didn’t just affect their charitable arm and their corporate responsibility, but also very much their business, and this is now progressed to the point where the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance that resulted from it contains people from Bank of America to The Nature Conservancy, and in the center of these types of efforts is a small group of people who try to make sure that we move into these actionable items, and that’s really where my role sits. The same is with the Coalition for Private Investment in Conservation. I think the point that Rosabeth made about innovation is a key point because that changes the story for potential investors, and one of the things that the vast ocean in the past wasn’t very good at delivering were network effects, because people thought so small, that it’s not in their region, so you built a system or solution for one particular place, but you didn’t take into account that if you think of this in a much more global sense, you get these positive reinforcements, network effects, innovation. You bring a whole different range of players in. So yesterday we had an event with large banks, local mangrove companies, and their project in Colombia actually is of interest to Apple. So you get exactly this combination of technology and innovation mindedness, true nature solutions, and this whole narrative. I think that’s part of the other aspect of this, is really trying to build a broader understanding. There had been some discussion around trading carbon credits, and what I explained was you need to think of it more broadly as blue natural capital, as a process that includes all the benefits, and that is what we need if we want to sustain it, but that’s also how we create an emerging asset class that is interesting to long-term investors. So we helped the largest sovereign wealth fund, the Norwegian fund, to write their ocean expectations document, which is really their way of engaging with all their investee companies to say to them, “Tell us more. How are you acting in the ocean? Have you understood all the risks? How are you planning to deal with it?”

BRIAN KENNY: So, you mentioned the word narrative, and Rosabeth, I know that’s kind of a core principle in the book. Tell me, how important is it for somebody that’s in Torsten’s shoes to have a good story to tell here?

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: Absolutely. You need a good story. You need the right story. A lot of people may not think they’re in Torsten’s shoes because they don’t take on something quite so big, but even if you want to do something in your neighborhood, in your company, you still have to convince people who have been operating inside their buildings, their silos, with their assumptions. And so in order to do that, you have to have a very compelling narrative, and you have to go about it the right way. I mean, we see increasingly that leaders have to be great storytellers, and they have to have a narrative that connects the past to the future. So, for one thing, if you think the past has led us to this, it’s inevitable, nothing will ever change, then people give up and do nothing. And of course, I love the word catalyst, that Torsten’s a catalyst, not an activist, because that’s what you have to be inside a company or inside a country or inside a community. So you have to convince people that, actually, change is possible. So sometimes you have to go back and show examples of things that have changed, and you can create a better, brighter future, but then you have to be meeting with people to tell them about that. And can you imagine, you can’t just walk in cold and, speaking of cold call, you can’t just walk in cold and say, “I’m inviting all of you to a global meeting to talk about financing the oceans.” That would not work. And so the work of beginning to tell the story, and that’s just as true I think across the board, you have to start by knocking on doors, going to see people, and listening to them first, because they don’t want to hear your story until you’ve listened to theirs. I believe that Torsten’s great patience comes from being European, where you deal with bureaucracy more readily than we do in the U.S. where we want to bypass it. So you have all these governments, where you’re often dealing not with the top person. The top persons can be very enlightened. You’re dealing with all these middle people who are told what to do and have their own territories to protect. Then you have the NGOs, who believe they’re on the side of the angels. I mean, they have values, they’re doing the right thing, and that’s what they tell their donors. So a totally different language, totally different motivation, and then the business world. So you can’t go in from one world and tell people in the other world, “Here’s our plan and come to a meeting.” You have to do a lot of pre-selling. You have to get to know them. So I have a whole chapter on coalition building, which is building the lessons from how you persuade. You listen before you tell, and when you listen, you learn, and then you kind of become an expert on their position. Then you can carry that position to somebody else. And Torsten, I hope you don’t mind my saying this, you’ve read it so you know that I’ve said it, where Torsten went from begging to be included, “Please can I come to your meeting?” to being helpful. He tried to be helpful. So then he could be there, he could get a seat, to starting to speak at their meeting, to getting to the point where he could call the meeting.

BRIAN KENNY: Torsten, was there ever a point at which you said, “I can’t handle this.” That this is too complicated, and sort of was there a point at which you thought about walking away from it?

TORSTEN THIELE: No, that didn’t occur to me. What does happen is from time to time you get dragged in to actually do the work. So as a for instance, we were doing this amazing deep sea science expedition around Bermuda, and with support from multiple players but funded with the private sector, and all of a sudden the organizers needed somebody to join the board, so I just had to step in. I did that for six months. We managed to do that expedition, and we did one thing differently from traditional science. Rather than having one submersible that goes deep, we had two, and we put into the second submersible the deepest radio station ever done. The report launched on the ocean the direct links to all kinds of media outlets, and we ended up with 750 million media imprints on that six weeks expedition. So sometimes the challenge is that you have to step in, and you can’t do that all the time with all the projects, so you have to also then find a way to step out again, so to be on the balcony, see where things are moving and who needs that little bit of extra support.

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: I love Torsten’s passion and ability to keep going. I mean, you have to really care about the issue. That’s another thing about change that really makes a difference, because it isn’t always easy. It’s nice that you said, Torsten, that you were not tempted to step out, but there have to be moments where you say, “Oops, I’ve promised all these things. It’s not clear it’s really going to happen.” You know, it’s what I call Kanter’s Law, that everything can look like a failure in the middle. So if you don’t truly care about the issue, and also that’s where you need your big coalition. I mean, imagine you’ve gone to all these organizations, you’ve made friends, they trust you, you’re convening a meeting for them. The number of governments that now have asked Torsten to help with these convenings is amazing. How do you let them down once they’ve agreed to invest in you? So you build your own momentum by continuing to do it. The really big opportunities come from getting people to think about technological innovation to solve a big problem, and here’s just the other thing I want to stress. This is one guy, and you know Torsten, I think you’re a very talented one guy, and I know all of your peers think so too, but you started your organization. You didn’t come with a big entity, but by calling it the Global Ocean Trust and thinking about a world bank for oceans, suddenly you’re a big player. So, I also want to stress, and I do in Think Outside the Building, that you can be one person, and by mobilizing the ecosystem around you, you can have big impact.

BRIAN KENNY: That actually leads me to two questions for you, Torsten. One is, I should have asked this earlier, why the ocean? What is it about the ocean that you have this passion for it? And the other is, is this moving? Has this become bigger at this point than you ever thought it could?

TORSTEN THIELE: I guess I grew up on the coast of the Wadden Sea in Northern Germany, and I saw the changes as I grew up, so I already felt engaged with the ocean, and I swam, and I just loved that environment. I think the more I looked at the ocean space, it is the unfinished part of the planet, and it’s the largest part of the planet, so it’s really the right place to bring to the lessons that we can take from others, but also to think forward, to think on this more global level. And it’s just so fascinating. The average depth of the ocean is four miles. It’s just a universe of amazing proportion and diversity. Life had a billion years longer to diversify in the ocean. It’s wonderful.

BRIAN KENNY: Has this idea taken off to a level that you are surprised by?

TORSTEN THIELE: I just got back from Madrid this morning, and we had 100 events around the ocean. I spoke on half a dozen different panels, workshops, et cetera. So it has moved so, so fast, and so that’s an interesting question you raise there on whether I fully was aware that that would happen. I’m not sure, but I know it’s the right thing to happen.

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: And consumers, average consumers are so much more aware. Ocean plastics, people are aware now of ocean plastics. I hope so. Or at least, it’s been talked about a great deal of this pile up, and I think I tell the story of Torsten seeing the ocean plastics in the Pacific when working on a project in the Pacific, and the idea that Adidas did shoes out of ocean plastic, but then I realized that today I’m wearing my Rothy’s, which is a very hot shoe among professional women right now, and it’s made out of recycled plastics. That’s all it is. Again, think about the possibilities as we start changing the narrative, finding uses for things that were otherwise destroying this vital habitat. It’s so exciting. I mean, so rather than getting discouraged about how hard it is to boil the ocean, or as I say, to stop it from boiling, instead you say, “Big problems are a source of endless possibilities for innovation and change.”

BRIAN KENNY: I think that’s a great final word on this podcast. Rosabeth, Torsten, thank you so much for joining me today.

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: Thank you, Brian. A pleasure.

TORSTEN THIELE: Thank you.

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: Torsten, nice to talk to you in London.

TORSTEN THIELE: A pleasure, Rosabeth. Thank you so much.

BRIAN KENNY: And I will just say quickly before we sign off that “Think Outside the Building” is available so you can look it up and read all about Torsten’s example, but also many others in the book of people who are doing equally impressive things to address some real big societal issues. If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like other podcasts on the HBR network. Whether you’re looking for advice on navigating your career, you want the latest thinking in business and management, or you just want to hear what’s on the minds of Harvard Business School professors, the HBR Presents network has a podcast for you. Find them on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I’m your host Brian Kenny and you’ve been listening to Cold Call an official podcast of Harvard Business School on the HBR Network.