Lessons in Empathic Teamwork. How Carlos Joly and Vincent Zeller wired the first ESG “ask”.
Carlos saw the opportunity to kick-start financial research on “extra-financial criteria”. The first time we gathered at GroupAMA was a lovely summer’s day. GroupAMA’s meeting rooms were all white and privately situated in the center of the building. They had gorgeous high ceilings that went right up to the top of the building, where they were covered only by glass. Vincent Zeller was not your stereotypical Chief Investment Officer.

As I followed him into the building that morning, we had a jump in his step and a smile on his thin face. As he stepped out of the elevator the five secretaries who could see him immediately looked up and broke into wide, honest smiles. Bonjour Vincent! They all said.
Here was a man that was clearly liked by those others usually ignored. He took the time to greet each one, while still moving at a good clip down the corridor. Vincent had a slightly unnerving habit of looking directly into your eyes. Especially when you were speaking. This also made it clear you had his full attention, if only for a moment. I began to understand why he was in a leadership role.
Vincent greeted all of our far flung working group members with the same attention and grace. He then led them down the hall to our meeting room. It was exactly 22 degrees in the room, but outside was sweltering. We began doing introductions and suddenly the power went out.
We began doing introductions and suddenly the power went out.
We were plunged into a deep twilight, broken only by the glass ceiling fifty feet above us. There was a nervous silence. Had a fire broken out? Were we going to have to evacuate?
Vincent theatrically put his hands on his face and sighed loudly. The French power utility always picks the hottest days to strike by cutting the power, he said. The Canadians and Americans were shocked. How could they do that? Everyone else laughed knowingly. Except for the Japanese, who were stone silent. Personally, I thought it was great.
It proved to be a team building moment. A good power cut is a nice ice-breaker it turns out. Once the French working class had finished making its point, we all went back to work. Carlos began buttering up the audience. There’s a lot of power in this room. The issue is no one sees a market for extra-financial research, so no one’s doing it. But the catch is, with no one doing any research, there’s no way to show it’s relevant. It was a classic prisoner’s dilemma.
Carlos’ pitch was simple. If we show there’s demand, we can open up the purse strings on both sides and then build up a body of paid research. We can then take that research to our clients and use it to convince them to move more money into green funds. I didn’t realize that research was such a massive part of the finance industry.
Banks employ battalions of smart humans to research companies, industries, governments, or whatever could impact the share price of anything. Astoundingly, none of these analysts at the time thought that environmental or social factors had anything to do with share prices. Think about that.
Battalions of smart humans were being paid princely sums at major banks to spend all their time doing research. In 2003, literally no analyst at a mainstream bank anywhere on the planet had ever written a research report focussing on how a company’s environmental or social impacts might affect its stock. The reason was simple. There was no interest in it. No demand. No market.
In 2003, literally no analyst at a mainstream bank anywhere on the planet had ever written a research report focussing on how a company’s environmental or social impacts might affect its stock.
There are two types of analysts. The buy side and the sell side. The buy side analyst works internally and is advising only the bank’s fund managers. They’re paid by the bank and don’t sell their research. No one gets to see it except for the bank’s employees. The sell side analyst lives and dies off of their research. They sell it to fund managers, buy side analysts or whoever will pay.
It’s a bit confusing, because you often have both buy and sell side analysts working at the same bank. It’s meant to be a bit like peer review. Fund managers can draw on their internal analysts, but can also buy information from sell side analysts to double check or get different perspectives. For obvious reasons, the sell side folks were a bit more likely to take a chance on something novel.
That was basically how Carlos made his pitch. The fund managers would all write a joint letter. The UN — in other words me — would send it to a combined rolodex of sell-side analysts. No one outright opposed his idea. But you could hear the crickets. It was pretty clear that no one expected it to work. All the fund managers had to do was sign off on a letter and turn over some unsuspecting analyst’s contact information. Not a huge ask.
Carlos played a number of things really well. He knew he was bombastic and arrogant. He used that talent to ram things through. At one point he got a bit carried away. He was pushing through commitments to support the work, the size of the ask, the number of contacts to be turned over.
Mary Jane took advantage of a pause in the monologue and levelled a well placed sniper shot. If it was a bullet and not words it would have clipped his left epaulet. She recognized what an ambitious leader he was. She hoped he would continue to have the support of the group.
Paul looked directly at me. I looked at Vincent. Carlos had known he was going to ruffle some feathers. Vincent, with his calm yet confident demeanor, was the perfect foil. Carlos had a listening problem and he tended to intimidate people. He was fine with that. Things got done.
The cost of that style was it meant people were unlikely to tell him what they were thinking. All Vincent did was listen. Carlos has purposefully put an empathetic back channel next to him in a leadership role.
It was almost entirely because of Vincent that the group let the plan proceed. Vincent and Mary Jane new the ask needed to happen, but we had to be careful not to force the group to spend too much political capital before we even got started. We had won a mandate. My work began in earnest.

