Fernanda, thank you so much for joining me here at Davos.
Thank you for having me.
So I just wanted you to, within the week, take a look back.
We hear so much about leaders being still very, very occupied
with the volatility of the world economy.
The question on how global trade develops, AI, obviously climate
change, but I'm really curious to hear what you've been
focusing on in these past days.
Yeah, I've been focusing on a few things of course related to
the nature of my job.
So leading Africa and Asia in Yara, which is a fertilizer
company.
So a lot of my engagements have to do with food, food security,
transitioning the food system to a more sustainable system.
A lot of talks also on decarbonization and regenerative
agriculture.
So I have participated in smaller forums, larger forums,
have met some government officials, NGOs, and other
stakeholders, to talk about it because I think one of the great
things about Davos is it's a forum where you can bring
awareness, right, about those issues.
So I don't think many people understand that all these
geopolitical issues that we are facing today, they are
intrinsically linked with food and food security. Be it the
conflicts in the Middle East or the Russian-Ukrainian War.
So that was really an opportunity for companies like
mine to bring awareness and hopefully find some great
solutions as well.
You mentioned geopolitics and I remember a recent conversation
we had and you said, "look, if you look at all the geopolitical
dynamics in the world, so many people want to speak but only
very few want to listen."
Now we're headed into 2024 that doesn't look much calmer from a
geopolitical perspective than 2023 did.
So what would your advice be for business leaders?
I think that in businesses, like in diplomacy, listening is still
the best skill.
So particularly in my corner of the world, I live in Asia, as
you know, I see a lot of leaders being confronted with questions
around China, for example, should I be in China.
I also lead Africa and you know leaders thinking about you know
will I ever make money in Africa, would this ever be
profitable, and so on.
So I feel that many leaders, they mix their political views
or their personal views, with facts around business, right.
I feel that making decisions that are factual and not based
on you know, personal political views, I think that's still the
best for the business. At least that's how I try to do it.
I'd like to come back to something you said before. You
mentioned your own passion, Yara's passion,
obviously, about food security, sustainability.
If you look back at the last big gathering, COP28 has just
happened.
It actually didn't get a lot of media attention on the progress
achieved.
I'm an optimist.
So I actually think that COP28 had some good outcomes. It was
the first time that fossil fuels were actually officially
recognized as the source, or as the root cause, for the climate
issues that we are facing today.
I think there were some good pledges and charters that were
signed, for example, renewable energy, and also oil-producing
countries and companies, also exactly methane, signed in this
charter, right.
And committing to transitioning away from fossil fuels into, you
know, into a net-zero situation.
Of course, you know, a lot of people still criticized and
said, OK, transitioning away is not the same as phasing out, but
I think it's better than nothing, right, because the
alternative would be to not have that pledge signed at all.
So I think, yeah, it didn't get much publicity, but I think some
some good things came out of it.
As for Davos, it's much more, at least the way I see, it's much
more business focused, right.
So COP is very much of the government and the politician
level, and here you have businesses and other entities
coming together and trying to find solutions.
I think that's my expectation for Davos: that we move a bit
from thought leadership into action leadership, that we get
out of here with many more concrete plans on how to resolve
sustainability issues.
For example, in my case you know in the food system, versus what
has happened in the previous years.
So I'm hopeful.
So if I can stay on action leadership for a moment, but
broaden the aperture.
You've always been very passionate about what leadership
skills the next generation of leaders needs.
You've been passionate about driving transformation in your
own company,
but also more broadly. If you look at the state of the world
today, that's so much at the focus of this Davos, as in all
gatherings, what do you believe are the transformational
leadership skills that really matter today?
I think it's still about curiosity.
If you're going to drive transformation, you need to be
curious about the new, about what is out there that you're
not tackling yet.
It's about cultural intelligence.
So we talked a bit about, right, how to operate in different
parts of the world.
So it's about making sure that, despite these geopolitical
issues that we are facing, that your teams remain united, right,
and committed to your strategy and to your mission.
It is about agility.
I know it's a word that a lot of people like to use, but I do
believe that leadership without agility these days, it's not
going to work because things are changing so fast all the time.
I mean look at the past three years, right, that we've had in
business.
So you need to adapt, and adapt very, very quickly, and be
resilient. Resilient, not only to withstand pressure, but also
to resist the temptation to go back, or stop your
transformation, or scale down your transformation and do
things in the old way, just because they're comfortable.
Sometimes it's very tempting to to stop chartering the path of
transformation.
And just you know what, let me do things as we've always done,
but I think we need to be resilient and resist that.
Because otherwise, we're never going to transform what we need
to transform in business and in society.
So, Fernanda, thank you so much for joining me, for sharing your
expectations and impressions from this Davos.
And have a very good week.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Have a great week.
You too.
Thank you.
Thanks.