ECOS: The world faces huge environmental and social challenges. In terms of changing course are you an optimist or a pessimist?

TEBO: I am on the optimist side no question. I just think there is first too much innate desire to see this change occur and I think that the ability to make the change and the leadership is there. I've found that big change really occurs in three ways. One is that you have a huge disaster and therefore people step up and change. The other two ways are the ways I prefer. One is leadership and the other is vision. We don't have enough good examples yet of leadership and vision, but where you have it you can make changes effectively. But a great deal of the change that has occurred particularly in the environmental movement has been driven by a negative event - whether it is fire, explosion, toxic waste dumping, tragedy and things like that - and then you see either an individual company or a whole industry change. A more exciting thing would be to see more people step up to vision and leadership as the way to make change.

ECOS: What was the driver of change inside of DuPont?

TEBO: In what sense do you mean?

ECOS:  To really get serious about incorporating sustainable growth into its strategy for the future?

TEBO: There were two great leaders we had. The first was Ed Woolard and in 1989 when he became chairman and CEO he put DuPont on a new course. Now again I will go back to great vision and disasters. We'd been through the CFCs issue we'd been through though we were not responsible for Bhopal. The chemical industry took a big hit as people looked at that. The whole issue of toxic chemicals had grown in its importance as a negative subject. The industry reputation was probably at an all time low. In the '70s the reputation was probably 56 percent positive. It dipped to 20 percent and Ed as he got in place recognised that the industry in part needed to do much differently. So visionary leadership (came into play) but there has always been a negative thing to drive us. So we fast-forward to about 1997 and Chad Holliday becomes chairman and CEO. He'd lived in Asia for about seven years and saw what unsustainable growth looked like. Unconstrained growth. Grow at all costs. And he's an optimist and he believed he could make positive change and he took on what I call a very significant transformation of DuPont. So we had the environmental stewardship piece put in place back in 1989 and then you had the sustainable growth piece put in place in 1997. The exciting thing is we are finding that the more we implement it then the better the business gets and then once that happens it just takes off.

ECOS: You have talked about the three stages of that transformation. I think you said that you are still in the second stage?

TEBO: Well the three stages were environmental stewardship, that is the Ed Woolard era, where he created the goals, he created the systems and processes to achieve the goals, and he made the investments. The second stage was integrating environmentalism as part of the business so it was 'good for business, good for the environment'. We switched from looking at environmental protection as a cost to figuring out ways to eliminate waste and do the rights things around productivity, all of those kinds of things. The third stage we are actually into now though we don't know when that will be done, I doubt it ever will be, which is to figure out how to grow in a much different way than we have in the past. That's what the optimists would say. But the pessimists would say that we have unlimited growth and we are destroying the ecosystem and there is all of the data that you can bring up to support that. The optimist looks at that and says "You know, if you can figure out a solution to some of these problems it's a huge opportunity to be the solution provider and make a good effort at a return."

ECOS: How do you view the challenge of getting recognition from the market, from Wall Street, for what you are doing?

TEBO: I have a firm belief that we are not a charity so we should not have people buying DuPont stock because we are a great company and we are doing great social things. Like we learned on the environment if you can get the businesses to lead and you can eliminate waste in the right way and you have more product to sell your earnings go up. I believe that the more you align societal values, meeting societal needs, with the products and services that you produce the more shareholder value you create. So it is clearly a business strategy verses a strategy to save the world alone or to protect the environment alone. If these things are done in the right way then that is the business integration approach - with vision and courage and leadership verses being driven by disasters, regulations, somebody in your footsteps, somebody climbing your sites - is a much better way. It's an optimistic leadership vision way verses a negative driver type of approach.

ECOS: Was there a choice for DuPont, a viable business way of taking a different path from what has been done?

TEBO: Oh there are lots of ways to be just a regulation only company. You might take some public relations hits. I mean people might continue to come at you. That's a viable business strategy. It's not the right one for DuPont but you can do it. I think you lose a lot of value if you do it that way though.

ECOS: You talk about the characteristics of DuPont - the desire for fundamental change and the core values that you can trace through nearly two centuries. Is it typical or atypical of corporations from what you've seen?

TEBO: Ah, you'd have to tell me the answer to that one. I've lived with DuPont for 32 years. I think it's a special company. Other people feel the same way about the company they're in. There are a lot of very progressive, good companies that have stepped up. I've talked to BP for example. They are doing some wonderful things. Johnson & Johnson is a terrific company. S.C. Johnson over the years has been very much a leading edge company. Dow Chemical is doing some wonderful things. So I think there are more today but I still don't think it's yet the average.

ECOS: Among those progressive companies that you've listed is the big driver what you've mentioned before? Leadership?

TEBO: I think the key element is leadership. We find it in our safety culture. About 90 percent of our ability to be really safe is how leadership behaves, how much attention they pay to safety, whether they walk the talk, whether it's part of everything they do instead of being a separate safety meeting, and when we have an increase in injuries we always go back and look at the leadership at DuPont. I feel the same way about sustainability and environmental protection.

June 2001