Jack Sim: Today we say a billionaire is one that took a billion dollars from everybody else. We are incentivizing selfishness. So, I think that we need to define a billionaire based on this, that a billionaire is one that improved the life of a billion people. Andrew White: Hello everybody and welcome to a new series of Leadership2050, a podcast bringing you leadership lessons from the front lines of positive change. I'm your host, Andrew White. I'm a leadership coach and senior fellow in management practise here at Saïd Business School, where my work focuses on leadership that's fit for the 21st century. This is an exciting but daunting time to be a leader. We're living at a point where almost every industry is being disrupted. It's the most profound shift since the Industrial Revolution, but with that disruption comes the opportunity for growth and innovation for leaders with the right skills. In this series, I'm in conversation with exemplary leaders who are showcasing the new rules of leadership and we're kicking off this series with the one and only Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organisation. Jack Sim: Now you can ask me anything, because I know everything except those things that I don't know. Andrew White: Jack is a remarkable example of what can be achieved when you lead for impact and purpose. Jack's background is in construction and building supplies in his native Singapore. Having achieved financial success in his 40s, Jack felt the need to change direction and give back to humanity. He wanted to live his life according to the motto, "Live a useful life." So, he looked for a wicked problem to fix and turned his attention to sanitation and in particular to toilets. According to the World Health Organisation, more than 1.7 billion people still do not have access to basic sanitation such as private toilets or latrines. To improve toilet conditions worldwide, Jack set up the WTO, the World Toilet Organisation. The story of how he created a global movement to do this with, in his words, "No money, no status, and only two other full-time members of staff." Is a true inspiration for anyone setting out to achieve what might look to be impossible. I started by asking Jack to tell us a little bit about himself. Jack Sim: I am actually a school failure and so I never went to the university until very late in life, when I was 52 years old. So, I save a lot of time and got a early start with running my first business when I was 24, and then at 40 I have already accomplished 16 businesses and made some money. So, I decided that I don't need more money and I want to do social work for the rest of my life. Generally, people die around 80, so I've already squandered half of my life making money. So, I then started to think, "Which is the most neglected agenda in the world which I can help?" And the answer was toilets. So, I created the World Toilet Organisation 20 years ago. Andrew White: So, that's a really interesting story and I think it's really interesting because it shows that life is non-linear. Sometimes we think you have to do well at school, you have to do well at university. You then go into a career and you increase your impact or your seniority. And I think what you are sharing is actually, that's not true. You can not do well at school, you can not go to university, you can still make a lot of money and then you go to university at 50. So, in some ways you threw the whole normal structure up in the air, which is a story I love. So, tell us a little bit more about the World Toilet Organisation. What do you do? What was the motivation? What's the impact you're having? Jack Sim: So, the issue of toilets, poo, pee, and even, I don't know if I'm allowed to say the four-letter word starting with S. Is very difficult. And when I went on BBC they say, "You cannot say that word otherwise all the journalists will be fired." And so, you can understand the taboo nature of sanitation. You can't even speak about it, then how do you improve it? So, what happened is that 20 years ago they call it a water agenda. Can you imagine that it is sanitation, it is toilet, it is poop, but they call it water. It's just a state of denial. It's almost like saying that all women's issue are men's issue because we don't say women, we say, "All men are brothers and mankind and men this and men that." And I think if we don't talk about women issue, we cannot solve woman issue. Similarly, if we don't talk about sanitation issue and call it water, then we cannot solve it. So, how do you solve a problem with no money, no status, no permission, and no legitimacy? So, I went out there to make it a very funny subject. I call our organisation the WTO, and by calling ourselves the WTO, we got a lot of attention because people thought that this World Trade Organisation was got to do with toilet, and I was hoping that the World Trade Organisation would get really angry and sue me and then I'll be very famous. They didn't do that. And that also give me the legitimacy to use the acronym WTO forever. So, either way, you sue me, I get famous. You don't sue me, I also get famous. And this kind of guerilla marketing strategy doesn't require any money, and I was operating the World Toilet Organisation for the first seven years without any employees, but we created a global movement with media reaching out, about two to three billion audience reading about this new subject called sanitation, when they have been going to the toilet for millions of years, right? It's a new subject. And so, we decouple the subject and then people start to realise, wow, so many millions of people are dying each year of diarrhoea just because they don't have a toilet. Because when you do open defecation, the flies goes to the poop and then goes to the food of the children and the adults, and it spread diseases. And then when the rain start, it start to wash into the river and downstream people drinking water with faecal matter contamination and they get sick. And so many people are suffering just because we refuse to talk about such a natural subject that we go six to eight times a day, we go to the toilet. We spend an entire three years of our life nonstop in the toilet, and we can't talk about it. That's ridiculous. Once we start opening up the subject, people start to feel comfortable because if the media says so, then I can say too. And it start to spread. I like to think about it as the spread shit model, right? And it start to spread and everybody talks about it and suddenly politician realise, "Whoa, if this guy talks about toilet and gains so much media coverage and then people wants to have toilet, I'm going to make it a election issue. And I'll promise toilet and people elect me because they want toilet, and then I will win election and build toilet." So, that is how an effective advocacy movement of the World Toilet Organisation over the last 20 years effectively mobilised 1.2 billion people in developing countries to receive proper sanitation without actually building the toilets. All we have to do is to incentivize each of the stakeholder, the government, the politician, the corporates, the NGOs, and the media and the academia, to give evidence to back up this importance of toilets and sanitation. And then suddenly the whole ecosystem have a life of its own and it works. So, what I learned from this process is you do not need to be a heropreneur. You can't save the world all by yourself, but you can get everyone to save the world in their own names. If you are willing not to claim credit for the work done, amazing things happen. Andrew White: It's an incredible story. Is there a particular country or a particular politician, or particular region of the world where you saw this impact most, you saw the energy that you created really transform a part of the world? Jack Sim: So, we started in two biggest country in the world, China and India. In China, we started in 2004 when they were preparing for the Beijing Olympics and they need it to be successful because this is the coming of age party of China and it has to be the best and it will fail if the toilet fail. So, we hosted World Toilet Summit paid by the Beijing Tourism Bureau together with all the tourism board of China, to make sure that Beijing city will have very, very clean toilet by 2008. And true enough, they invested in the total revolution, at least in Beijing city, building 6,000 public toilet blocks in hutongs and in tourism sites. And thereafter, every tourism toilet in China has become cleaner and cleaner. And right now, President Xi Jinping has become the toilet champion of China with his China toilet revolution, and he built 32 million toilets. And now going into the rural area to clean up rural school toilet and the rural toilets. So, I think there's a revolution going on in China. In 2007, we got the President Abdul Kalam of India to open the World Toilet Summit in New Delhi together with the Crown Prince of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, who's now the king, a very good friend. And then that legitimacy created so much buzz that all the politician in India started to fight on the toilet agenda. And so, there is a union minister who built 30 million toilets, not a very successful project, but they started the movement. And then, Prime Minister Modi came and say, "I will make India completely open defecation free." Because there's 600 million people defecating in the bush and on the roadside. So, he built 110 million toilets. And this is the biggest toilet construction project in the history of mankind. And he succeeded. And now there is big change in India culturally with movie stars and films about toilets. So, these two countries has gone into major transformation. Three years ago, we went to Brazil and we created a World Toilet Summit in Brazil with a legacy of changing the law in Brazil that all the water treatment plants should be allowed to attract foreign investor to invest in their sewage treatment. And I went to lobby at the senate and they translated into Portuguese and all the senators says, "Yes, of course we have to do this because we are losing so many productive hour with sick people. We are paying all this medical fee for nothing. We have loss of tourism income because our beach is full of faecal sludge, and our river is polluted." So, they agree. And then they launched this bill and seven months later when I came back to Singapore, they send me the newspaper to say the bill is passed and 10 billion US dollar is now invested into their sewerage treatment plan. And by 2035, they expect 135 billion US dollar to be invested in all their sewerage treatment plan. So, you can see the power of advocacy, tipping the scale, making people realise about something that they have forgotten, can make a very big change. And I think the next is to go to Africa. And so, this year in Nigeria World Toilet Summit will be hosted by the Minister of Water Resources, Mr. Adamu Suleiman, and he's very happy to do that. They've already got UNICEF and sanitation and water for all of the UN and all these people together to form this year, not just for Nigeria sanitation but for Pan-African sanitation. So, I think that a small little NGO like the World Toilet Organisation, not very well funded, with very few people, is a voice that created this change, is quite amazing, especially when we have no money and no power and no permission. And each year our World Toilet Summit created legitimacy. Until 2013, we actually created the United Nation World Toilet Day. Our founding day, 19th of November, became enshrined by all 193 country of the UN General Assembly as the official UN World Toilet Day. Andrew White: That's such an amazing story. And just a little bit of a data point, then I want to come back to some of the interesting ideas. So, when you say it's a small organisation, exactly how many people do you employ? What does the organisation look like? Jack Sim: So, it looks really huge outside, but right now I employ two person and one part-time accountant, and myself working for free. And then we have hundreds and hundreds of volunteers around the world doing things for free. And this I appreciate so much, because without the volunteers' time, I could have to employ an army of people. But it's very interesting that you could create legitimacy out of nothing. And even today, a lot of people say, "We couldn't fund you. We really love your work, but it is a brown issue and it's really not glamorous. We are a bank. We need to do green issue, blue issue. We want to be seen glamorous. We want to do climate change. We want to do fancy stuff. But what you are doing, Jack, it's important, but it doesn't match our image because we can't look like the toilet." So, I say, "Nevermind. If you can't fund me, life goes on, because the problem still needs to be fixed." And as long as I can do it, I'll try to mobilise more people and hopefully we can create a new team and a new generation. Because I'm 65, I'm going to die soon. Right? I've got only 15 years before the 80 years expiry date. So, I've counted that I've got 5,600 days more to live, and I need to leave a few years to romance my wife, who is quite forgotten all this time, I'm a workaholic. And also a few months lying in the hospital with all this cancerous pain and all that. So, we have the budget for everything. So, it's quite urgent that we create a new team. And I call this Oxford people who wants to join me, please come forward and take over the leadership. I'll be so happy to groom you guys. Andrew White: Jack, that's an amazing, amazing story. I just think putting everything together, so many people think about transformation as being a difficult challenge because they have to raise money. It's about building a big organisation. How do you transform that big organisation? Whereas, you've led energy and you've led people, but as you said, you don't need to control them and you don't need to take credit. If they take credit, then that's fantastic. It's that having that eye on that higher purpose, I think is what comes through for me. "And if the purpose gets fulfilled, then I don't really care whether I get any credit for that." You're getting satisfaction from seeing that greater movement. And to actually change the agenda in massive countries like India and China, and move so many millions of dollars and different currencies of investment. I think it's just remarkable what you've achieved. Can I take you back to the earlier parts of your life? What made you the person you are today? Jack Sim: So, I was born in 1957. Just to give you an idea, Singapore's GDP was the same as Kenya at 1965. So, we are really, really poor, right? And I was having no toilet, and it was a British bucket system and water is from a standpipe where everybody goes share, and we don't have a toilet in our house. Right? And so, within 25 years, our country turned from third world to first world. And I have seen the transformation of how leadership can change the country. We have an amazing prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, and today this is one of the richest country per capita in the world. And so, it give me a lot of confidence that if we want to solve a problem for millions of people, it can be done. Then I saw that China copied this model and transformed China from a communist country into social capitalist and got 700 million people out of poverty. So, again, you cannot say that this solution is only able to solve small country's problem. Then I see Rwanda in Africa calling itself the Singapore of Africa and became one of the most prosperous, fastest growing country. So, I think this gave me a lot of confidence that we can go out to solve problem. The second thing is that I saw my mother, she was very poor, but she's able to always think of some business to do. And then I learned that business is so easy to do, you just have to dream up some solution and identify a need and solve it. So, she was a low-cost wedding beautician for all the poor people and then she married off 3,000 couples in her career. So, I thought, "She can just create something of nothing doing makeup for poor people." And so later on in life, when I started to do business, I started to import building materials from Europe and sell to Singapore and then started factories. I also created the Australian International School in Singapore and started with 32 student and end up with 3,500 students, and sold it to Cognita UK who owns a lot of international school. And then with that money I could retire. So, I realised that making money is only when you need money. And once you have money you should not make any more money, because when your time is precious, it becomes more valuable than money. In the beginning you need money, so your time is less valuable than money, but the moment you don't need money, you should stop making money, because you cannot trade the most precious thing in your life, which is time, for something that you are not going to use. That is called a loss making business. Trading something of higher value in exchange of something you don't need or is lower value. So, with this philosophy, I went back to university to study public policy and I got a master degree and I start to learn, "Okay, this is how people run a country, how bureaucrats do that." And then I went to Singularity University when I was 59 years old to learn technology. So, I graduated at 56 years old with a master's in public policy, and at 59 I graduated at Singularity University in Silicon Valley. And next month, the University of Strathclyde is giving me an honorary doctorate, so I don't even have to study this time. Andrew White: Congratulations. Jack Sim: Yeah. It's quite amazing also how things happen. You never have to plan. Andrew White: And I think just there's so much richness in what you're saying. I love the point about the shift in life when you've made enough money that what becomes the scarce resource in time, but also that there's a higher level of leadership you're talking about. You move from leading an organisation to a movement, and it's really a movement which I think you've excelled. You've been great at making money and those businesses sound incredible and the legacy of those businesses, and I think particularly your mother's as well, the legacy of having married off 3,000 couples is quite something. But where you are is leading movements and leading things at a much higher level, with more impact, because you're enabling the movement of more energy. And I think there's something of an archetype of leadership in what you're talking about here. Can I just touch on something? And I have no expectation of any answer around this, when I say the word spirituality or higher purpose, do these things resonate in any way with you? Do you see yourself in service of anything greater? Is there anything motivating you or guiding you? Or, do you have that sense of higher calling or vocation? I'm using a lot of words here to give you a lot of optionality in terms of where you go, because I don't want to be descriptive or in a sense project anything onto you, but just to give an opening for a conversation around those things. Jack Sim: Yes. Actually, I don't have a particular religion, but I believe that there is energy out there, holding all this thing together. And I'm a very spiritual person in the sense that this nature is actually so immense that we need to learn a lot out of it. And philosophically, my backing is from Lao Tzu, which is a Chinese philosopher, and he teaches very feminine philosophy of natural law, following the forest, following the flow of things and not to be too hierarchical, not to be too hung up on dogmas like capitalism, democracy, socialism, communism. Those are so stifling and so limited kind of philosophy. Whereas, if you think about practically how to solve problem, how to let go of your ego, you will always have some, but let go as much as you can. Right? And of course, the ego is still useful, but you have to use it in a way that it actually unleash the motivation of the other people. And if you are able to use your person as a tool and a vehicle to solve problem rather than as the protagonist, this is totally different. Then once you are able to facilitate everybody in the same way as your mother facilitate the family without claiming the credit, then you will see that success happens because people take ownership of issue, do it in their own name, and you are just happy that things gets better because they did it. Andrew White: That's so, so interesting. And if people wanted to learn more about this, is there a particular book you would recommend? Jack Sim: Go and read this very short book called Tao Te Ching, which is the only book written by Lao Tzu. It is written in very cryptic language so you can interpret it in any way you like. If you go to the internet and listen to the English version, you probably have 20 different version because each of the interpreter do it themselves, but they're all correct because it's up to you. And I think if you understand feminine philosophy, then you will understand mother nature, which is also feminine. And today the internet is also feminine, yet we are all masculine, practising war. You just look at the Ukraine war and Russia and NATO and America, they're all masculine. They're just like, "Oh, you'll fight me. I'm going to fight you back. I'm going to call somebody else to fight you again." And then it just get worse and worse because they were all masculine. Imagine if a feminine approach comes to the solution, it would be to say, "All right, if you think you are doing this, let's go to the end and see what was the destruction and nobody wins. Why don't we work backward and talk in a much more amicable manner?" And that's when you establish trust, but the masculine approach doesn't like trust because you don't make profit out of trust. You can sell a lot of weapon, you can divide people. And so, the masculine approach fits it. I'm not talking about female or male. We could have a female leader wanting to be a masculine leader, and that's a problem, but you could have a male leader doing feminine approach. So, think of the forest. Every animal is an individual. They all have their own agenda, but harmoniously, they balance each other and it sustain itself with zero waste. And our economic model, our social model, we have to follow the forest. In the forest, there's no winner or loser, there is balance. Andrew White: I'm actually reading that book at the moment. The Tao Te Ching. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. So, there's so much in what you're saying, I think speaks to leadership today. And if you were advising a CEO of a company that really felt that it had to transform, that it needed to go through many changes. What would be your advice in terms of taking some of these ideas, taking what you've done with the World Toilet Organisation and bringing them into a large company perhaps with 100,000 employees that realised it needed to go through significant transformation? Is there a bit of advice you would give to how do you bring this sense of leading for energy, leading a movement into that kind of hierarchical structure? Jack Sim: In a corporate situation the problem is the shareholders wants more and more money for whatever they invested. And when you have that conflict of interest, you're just trying your best to greenwash it to look like you are not really so greedy. So, a lot of companies are starting to move away from shareholder values into stakeholder values. They say so, but are they doing it? So, whether they do, it depends on customers. If their customers would abandon them if they are not kind to society, to environment, then they would do it. So, I think that we need ultimately to define a billionaire or a company based on this, that a billionaire is one that improved the life of a billion people. You still get this feel good of ego boost, but this time you are measured according to your impact. Whereas today, we say a billionaire is one that took a billion dollars from everybody else. Now we are incentivizing selfishness and we are incentivizing conflict of interests from people. And then what happened? We have a concentration of industry, a few companies own a lot of things. And we have a concentration of wealth, 100 billionaire owns like half of all the money in the world, and do they even have time to spend it? No. So, why did all these people spend all their life, precious lifetime, getting money, when they don't spend it? The answer is recognition, and because we recognise them, they end up behaving this way. Now if we recognised them for the impact that they give, suddenly they change their behaviour and they start to challenge each other to say, "How many people did you help? I helped a billion. Oh, you helped 2 billion, I better back up." Then the world change. How do we reach that point? I don't know. I hope the listener get some idea and start working on it, because we have to change the definition of success or we will just be doomed. Andrew White: So, so interesting. You're right in terms of, I mean, what you're talking about is a different motivational structure and that requires individuals with power to step out and do something differently and almost do some experiments with how capitalism might work in a different way. Capitalism for impact as opposed to capitalism for greed. And I think you've set out a good challenge, but you've also demonstrated it. And this is what I like about what you're saying, you're not an academic, you are not somebody who's coming up with a dry theory of how the world should work or how capitalism should work. You've actually demonstrated what can happen when you lead for impact and you lead for energy and you are prepared to make others look good and for others to take the credit. So, there's so much in what you're saying, which is a manifestation of the principles, but I like the way you've left the challenge to others. They've got to work it out for themselves in the same way you worked it out with your approach. So, Jack, we're coming towards the end. Is there anything I haven't asked you, that I should ask you in order to get the best of your story for the listeners of this podcast? Jack Sim: So, let's go to the human construct. We want love, we want safety, we want to enjoy relationship with each other, with nature, with ourself. And why don't we focus on that? In order to do that, we actually have to migrate from a fear-based society to a love-based society. When you live in a love-based society, the chemistry in your body is in harmony, the cells in your body are joyful and happy. I'm not talking about the hippies. I mean, we can get nearer to the hippies, but we don't have to be like the hippies, but the hippies' philosophy is not too bad. Right? So, if you think about the current stress level of the bankers, they're making money, but they have a lot of mental issue. What's that for? So, let's go to a level where we can reflect on ourself. Even the educational system, if you go to Oxford University and stress yourself out and get a degree, but your brain is not the very balance and you are highly stressed and highly competitive, did you become a good human being? So, I think that if we can focus to become good human beings, to become happy people, to live in a love-based culture and love-based society, how will the world look like? I think it will look more peaceful, more sustainable, kinder, safer, and it won't have all this fighting and war and mental health issues. I think we'll be better off if we start thinking of love rather than focus on fear all the time. Andrew White: What a wonderful way to end. And I think my sense is, as a global society, we're touching into that edge. There's a sense of something breaking down, something not working, and a number of people experimenting with what might be different and how we might transform something. So, I think that's a wonderful place to leave us. Jack, thank you for being so, so insightful with your story. Thank you for the bravery you showed in terms of getting a conversation onto the table around toilets, and for showing all of us the power of when you are prepared to take on those taboos, the energy that's released. Thank you for everything you brought today. I'm going to end this podcast as I do with all the others and ask seven quickfire questions. The first question is, what leader from history inspires you most? Jack Sim: My prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, from Singapore. Andrew White: Thank you. And the leader from today that inspires you most, when you look around the world? Jack Sim: I don't see any. Andrew White: And the book that's made the most impact on you? Jack Sim: The Tao Te Ching. Andrew White: And then going on, the characteristic you look for in those you promote? Who's really excelling when you look across that community of volunteers, the politicians you work with, the civil servants, the investors, what's the characteristic that really makes people stand out for you? Jack Sim: Kindness. If a person love other people as much as he or she love himself. I think kindness is the greatest gift they can give to other people. Andrew White: And when you look at the younger generation, do you see a difference coming through? Do you see them bringing something that is more promising? Do you see them bringing the same? What do you see in that younger generation that you're working with? Jack Sim: They are more environmental friendly. They are more worldly wise, they are informed, and yet they are also attack on the onslaught of technology that might lead them either to a very good place or to a very bad place, because technology can both be used to build constructively or to destroy. And I'm so worried about them because they are not given ethical lessons, they are just given engineering lessons. I think we need to cross-train them. Andrew White: And what makes you hopeful about the future? Jack Sim: The future will either have to solve by itself or somebody, a new generation of people solve it. For example, if we don't solve climate change, maybe the population of the world can reduce to half. And then by having only half the people, climate change will solve by itself. So, my optimism is that there's always a counterbalancing force that will happen when the pendulum over-swung to one extreme or the other. Andrew White: And then finally, where do you go for inspiration and renewal? Jack Sim: I go and talk to myself. I talk to myself all the time as if I'm somebody else having a conversation. And because it's very easy to trust yourself, you can be very frank and open and you can even teach each other. And this conversation makes me understand how a typical human being thinks and work and behave. And then I can treat other people as if they are myself, because now that I understand a typical human being, I can respect them and empathise with them more. Andrew White: My thanks to Jack Sim. My name is Andrew White and you've been listening to Leadership2050, a podcast from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. You can catch up with all our previous episodes from the first two series wherever you get your podcasts. While you are there, follow us so you never miss an episode, and help others to find us by taking a moment to give us a rating and review. And if you'd like to hear more from Saïd Business School, exploring leadership and how the business world is re-imagining the future, visit oxfordanswers.org. Leadership2050 is produced by Eve Streeter. Original music is by Si Begg. Our executive producer is David McGuire for Stabl Productions. In the next episode, I'll be talking to social entrepreneur Pinky Lilani, about her global network of women leaders. Until then, take care and thanks for listening.