The E Co. Chamber

Episode 3 - 25 years of E Co.

• E Co. • Season 2 • Episode 1

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Happy 25th birthday, E Co.!

In this latest episode, E Co. Founder and climate finance expert, Dr Grant Ballard-Tremeer speaks to E Co. Consultant, Ellie La Trobe-Hogan about E Co's journey to mark our 25th anniversary. They delve into E Co's origins as a purpose-driven organisation, emphasising our mission to empower vulnerable communities through climate finance and development. They also explore the why and how behind how we accelerate mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing nations, fostering a low carbon, climate-resilient future. Grant also reflects on the challenges and motivations inherent in this demanding field, offering valuable advice for aspiring purpose-driven founders. Discover our journey and impact now in this fascinating episode.

The E Co. chamber is a podcast run by the team at E Co. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. Also, make sure to stay tuned for our next episodes, which could focus on anything from climate finance flows to the rights of indigenous peoples, ultimately findings pathways towards a world sustainably transformed.

UNKNOWN:

music.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to The Ecochamber, a podcast that takes you inside the world of climate finance and development. We'll be exploring the inner workings of this field and examining the echo chambers, the sometimes isolated and repetitive conversations that can arise from within it. Through the insights and experiences of those of us working on the inside, we'll go behind the scenes from project design and evaluation to training. We'll tackle the everyday challenges and opportunities and discuss the major trends shaping the sector. This podcast is brought to you by the team at ECO, an international consultancy specialising in low-carbon, climate-resilient development. Welcome, welcome all. My name is Ellie and I'm a consultant at ECO. And in today's episode, we're going to be discussing the past, present and future of ECO and the connection of purpose-driven organisation to creating a world sustainably transformed. I'm delighted to be joined by Grant, the founder and visionary of ECO. Welcome, Grant, and happy birthday. 25 years of ECO. This is a big milestone.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, Ellie, and congratulations to ECO. I wouldn't have believed when I first set up ECO 25 years ago that firstly ECO would still be here and doing great work around the world and that we would have just passed 50 employees in the team and a wonderful, amazing team all around the world and an incredible network of experts in the countries in which we work and a great reputation with our clients. I would never have imagined that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, it is quite incredible what you've managed to set up and create. And at this point, you know, I'm reflecting myself because we met nearly 25 years ago, maybe not quite, but a good 20 years ago we met and I worked as a kind of intern at Eco in that kind of very juvenile stage, I guess, of Eco's growth and into what we see now in terms of developing low carbon and climate resilient projects and all the additional services that ECO supports a range of clients globally. So I'm kind of really interested at this point of retrospect and reflection, where did this kind of concept of ECO come from? I mean, I mean, we can go deeper as well, but when did it start? Where did it come from, Grant?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, there's a danger in thinking that eco leapt, fully formed out of the womb, and it was in my mind, this is what I wanted to create, when in fact it's been a long, slow evolutionary process. And I appreciate the congratulations and such like, but it's not all about me. It's about the team that has put together and built Eco over the years. Some former employees that are no longer working at Eco and the current team. It's those people that have formed Eco and created what we have. And there's been an evolutionary process. But if I look back in my mind to what I used to do, in childhood, in my early adolescence. And I was born and brought up in South Africa. It was an apartheid South Africa. But my family were really passionate about bringing justice in the world and in South Africa. And we had very close associations with a lot of the protest movement. my sister was very influential on me. I remember having long arguments with her about all sorts of things and vigorous arguments. And when we got to the end of them, I would go away and silently change my mind to match my sister's, my elder sister's viewpoints. So I used to be very easily swayed after the argument, not during it and certainly not before, but afterwards I would switch my viewpoint completely. My sister started studying social work and I got hold of one of her textbooks and I was reading about Carl Rogers and the humanistic psychology that he developed, I guess in the 1950s, 1960s. He was an American psychotherapist And empathy was one of the key things that I understood from that. Little stories about how, as a psychotherapist, his understanding was that the therapist's ability to understand the client, their thoughts, their feelings, their perspective... this idea of empathy was really at the root of that. And it was quite an awakening for me. I mean, it wasn't a sort of Damascus road type of awakening, but really thinking that in fact, to be most effective, we need to get onto that side of understanding. And later I read Schumacher's book, Small is Beautiful. He was the founder of what was called intermediate technology, now called practical action. But the whole intermediate technology movement that was the foundation of the whole organic movement and this practical action working for development. And I've tried to find this phrase in the books, but I've not found it. But I really think it's a principle of what he was putting forward, which was, understand what people do and help them do it better.

SPEAKER_03:

And

SPEAKER_01:

that as the basic foundation of development and change. It starts with understanding and then into being an influence to bring about a change. And yeah, that was really influential. Now it sounds like there was some sort of magic and then I started creating that organization. But when I set up Eco 25 years ago, I just worked as a solo entrepreneur. I was spending my time doing consulting assignments, trying to find work, doing all the different jobs, hiring a few people. And there were some amazing people that were working with me really early on, including you, Ellie. But I think that type of philosophy is really embedded in Eco. in the way that we do things. It's a bit of a guiding star, not a distant shore. It's not something that we've ever achieved, but I keep going back to that. It's one of our core values. For me, it's the core value that resonates most strongly.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, you've gone to the intrinsic motivations when I asked that question, you know, like the desire to... bring empathy as a motivating principle to do anything. Then in terms of what eco creates in the world, I wonder, you grew up in South Africa. There was a lot of injustice going on and we have a very strong vision within eco that we're working on climate change projects to address. and the injustice of the impacts of climate change in communities and countries that haven't contributed perhaps as much as others. I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on the motivations of this kind of vision of what ECO is trying to create as much as the intrinsic motivations of how the organization works.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, I've spoken a bit about my own motivations and what brought me into this. And that initial period of protesting, I was at university. We were protesting against the government's imposition on the university. And I got quite used to avoiding or dealing with tear gas and such like and involved in protests. And there were huge marches in Johannesburg at the time. This sort of justice really being a very strong motivator for me. I kept thinking and saying, it's not fair. We need to bring about justice and climate justice is one of those areas where, in fact, the people that need to pay for addressing climate change, the people that experience the costs are not the same necessarily as those that caused the problem. There's this

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

it's not fair. you know, it's a grand vision and we play our little part in it. And we as eco, it's each person within eco is contributing to that, not one single sole person. But we are very strongly driven by that. Does that answer the question?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. And so going back to that kind of initial point, you know, as a sole consultant, working with a couple of other associates, what kind of the key defining points along this journey from being an individual motivated by these intrinsic values of, you know, empathy, excellent providing, creating excellent work, being driven towards the working to address climate injustice, and then how you, you know, go from that to creating an organization that is self-sustaining? There must have been a couple of key points or turning points even along that journey.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, indeed there were. None of these came as pure light bulb moments to me. But in fact, you, Ellie, introduced me to a man, his name's John Brown, who actually influenced ICO hugely. At the time, we were focused, shall we say, focused on three different things. One was supporting mobilization of climate finance. That was the project design type work. We were also doing evaluations of projects and we were doing knowledge management. We had a journal that we were publishing, various things like that. And I was putting huge effort into the journal and into the monitoring and evaluation work and neglecting the project design work. I felt, hey, this is something which it's just running itself. We keep getting that work. That work just continues. It's all fine. Let me focus on the things that are not working. And I guess I'd done that all my life. And it's probably a natural tendency to focus on weakness, not on strength. But after meeting with John Brown, I helped him with something that he was asking questions about. And he said to me, well, is there any way I can help you? And I said, oh, I'd really like some mentoring, some coaching in business development. He recently sold his company, a publishing company. And he said, well, yeah, okay, come around to my office. And I went to his office and sat down, explained the situation. Well, I've got these three things. One of them is working really well. So I'm not, I'm not putting attention on that, but I've got really struggles with these two. And he said, well, get rid of those two, focus on what works. Is there anything else you'd like me to help with? Well, that's it. Okay. And I left his office about, five minutes. It felt like five minutes later, I left his office and almost immediately I made that shift. And that was such a lesson for me. And I really, anyone listening to this, I would really urge them to focus on strengths, not on weaknesses, because when you do that, you fall into the The area of success of being able to get better at what you do really well and at those natural places. I am a believer in becoming rounded, understanding those other elements. But in fact, if you're a round peg trying to force yourself into a square hole is not the ideal area. environment because we each have different strengths and different areas. And I encourage everyone to focus on their strengths. And I guess that also is part of the basis of how we address that at Eco in our core value of diverse or diversity.

SPEAKER_02:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

And so then, you know, as eco leans into its, it's lent into its, its strengths, its gifts, maybe I would, you know, rephrase, um, you found that eco grew kind of organically. Was it, it was a natural, a natural organic growth, or was it a planned structured approach to how the company went from, you know, one individual with a couple of associates to a couple of more associates and, um, And then eventually into the organization of over 50 that we see today.

SPEAKER_01:

You can now say it was organic. It grew gradually step by step, but there were a lot of accidental paths and routes that we went down. Still learning that same lesson of focusing on the strengths, on really capitalize on what is working, not in what is not working, challenges along the way. A really important point for me was when one of, well, in fact, our most senior principal consultant in the team left when we were a small team, around 10 people, I think. And I felt completely devastated and I thought, how can I continue? It's going to fall apart. And I found, and I was, where do I get the advice? Where will I have that sounding board? How can I speak to someone and learn and, and, and, you know, try ideas and think it through what we will do. And I found a group of founders and, entrepreneurs, which I joined, which provided that type of support. And, you know, that connection with other people was really helped me with that organic growth, I guess. We could have grown quicker. We could have, you know, if I'd made all the wise decisions along the way, we could have grown quicker or we could have gone in different directions. It's been a, it's been evolution. It's learn and adapt.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And I guess that kind of makes me think about, you know, growth for growth sake versus, you know, and profit being profit driven and, you know, just growing for to make as much, as much, as much, as much, as fast as possible. And the problems we have in the world because of, you know, exponential growth and, you being solely driven by profit, and how we're working in a sector which has a very deep and purposeful reason why we do what we do. We want to have an impact, and yet we're a private company. We're profit-making. I know that you've taken this very, very seriously of how we embed and how we are as purpose-driven as possible. We have B Corp and there's other standards that we adhere to. Was there a particular shift to creating an eco that had a purpose-driven outlook? Did it naturally happen because of those innate values that you hold?

SPEAKER_01:

I think it's the innate values. Maybe innate is not the right word. It's the learned values along the way.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you to Grant's sister.

SPEAKER_01:

Shout out. And also shout out to my father. What I remember asking him in his work that he was doing, he didn't really enjoy what he was doing. And I wish he'd had more of a chance to do other things. sorts of things. He was working in manufacturing, a brilliant man just in terms of his ability to innovate and create and things like that. And he was doing it at a micro level. But I remember saying to him once, hey, dad, why don't you give it up? And he said, well, of course I could, but I'm here for all the employees in the company. My purpose is to to support these people. And I'm concerned for their livelihood and their well-being. And I've tried to do that, and we've tried to do it as Eco, is have that more important purpose driving what we're doing. We could have made, we could have been much more profitable. Absolutely no, we could have. We could have driven things according to decisions. But I think there's a huge and real place for purpose-driven organizations to go beyond profit, to look to the role that the company can play to support society, to support the people and planet. The purpose of eco is not only for making money, but for providing fulfilling employment for people and giving them a place to flourish, giving them a place where they can realize their ambitions. And with any company, people leave, people move on, they have different types of priorities. But I hope that to some extent, everyone that has ever worked at Eco has had that path opened to help them flourish. It's sounding awfully grand. It sounds as though I had this amazing vision right at the beginning. It's not like that. It's evolved gradually. But I am more and more convinced that being able to help people, and that might be help the round pegs find round holes to be in and the square pegs square holes, but not in a pigeonholing type of way, but in a, this is the place where you can flourish. This is where you can find fulfillment. It's difficult to do it in a company, but that's the ambition.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and so it connects to company culture, which there's a lot, people are talking a lot about it at the moment, going for jobs and employment that is an environment where one can feel at home and can really grow within. So providing the support to grow professionally. But it's interesting how the conversation has gone because from the outside, we're talking now about kind of intrinsic. Again, we've gone back to the intrinsic values of of eco and the creating of this space for good employment, but also there's the activities that eco undertakes as well and the impact that those activities have and create in the world. Does that connect back to this concept of purpose-driven organisation?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, it certainly does. The organization itself is purpose-driven, and the purpose lies in the mission, in what we try to deliver, a world sustainably transformed, supporting the flow of climate finance to mobilize climate finance for mitigation, for adaptation, for improved resilience, to bring about development. We focus on vulnerable people. We focus in developing countries, principally. Our work is not to support transformational change in the UK. We're working to support transformational change around the world, but where it's most needed.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and so, I mean, I know I'm interviewing you, but just reflecting as an employee of Eco, you know, yes, that's a big part of company culture and the environment that we work in as a motivation or a reason one doesn't want to leave, perhaps. But the what we're doing is... satisfying when your work is contributing to the acceleration of that flow of finance, which is supporting the on the ground implementation of actual interventions that are going to support vulnerable communities to adapt to climate change or develop a kind of low carbon and resilient future state. And so that connects, I think, to the employee connection to purpose

SPEAKER_01:

yeah each person has their own purpose and to be driven by their purpose and we're looking for alignment between the employees and the company and sometimes those are well in alignment and sometimes they're not and people move on to explore other things that fill them in their own way and that's well and good but we want to be able to provide the the the framework in which they can do that. And it sounds easy because, well, not because, but it's very difficult because the work is extremely challenging and there is hard work to be done and sometimes feeling rather thankless and difficult. We have multiple projects underway at any one time. We are working with governments, with clients, with beneficiaries. It's challenging and difficult to do the work. And how do we provide and keep motivated with that purpose within the framework of difficult, challenging work?

SPEAKER_00:

So if someone was listening to this and looking to establish their own business, purpose-driven organization. Do you have any tips in terms of setting up such an entity in the world? Anything perhaps you would have done differently? I

SPEAKER_01:

think I probably would have done quite a few things differently. I'm in a really fantastic position, finally. that has taken a long time to reach. My job title is founder and visionary, and it's so amazing to have a role where I can be looking inwards as part of visionary. I look inwards to maintain company culture and values. That is part of my role. I support the team that in delivery of work, perhaps coaching. I just love doing that. And so I've got an inward looking part of my work. And then I have an outward looking, which is, I guess, the visionary side of it is where are we heading? And we've got an amazing managing director who joined us about two years ago, which has freed me to move out so that Rowan, her role is focused on helping us do what we say we're going to do. And my role is primarily focused on where are we going and where are we learning and what are the trends and how things are evolving into the future. So I just love that combination. And I think if I had brought about that change 15 years ago, well, I think we'd be in a very different place because that dynamic is a fascinating one. When we were thinking of this podcast and talking about what we might cover. You mentioned earlier that you'd been reading a book when we were first working together around creating a company and organizational growth and the idea that one can get stuck in a technical role. When you start a company, you're wearing all the hats. every single one of them. The hat that I first pulled off my head and it came off really easily and I gave it to someone else was the bookkeeping, the accounting side of things. I didn't want to do that. I gave them a huge pile of receipts and invoices and said, yeah, sort this out. And I was just hugely relieved. But each of the other hats I think have been coming off my head rather slowly. And some of them are glued on with super glue. I kept, it feels nice to to be valued and to be seen as, you know, superhero coming in with a cape and saying, whoa, I can solve that. And I have that very strong tendency to try and get involved in everything and provide solutions. Someone could say, oh, you managed to get my computer up and running. Oh, I have achieved something. If I identify anything that I would have done differently looking back and if I want to go forward it's around get the hats off quicker get other people to do the stuff the thing that they're brilliant at and the things that they enjoy doing and that I'm you know I feel I can do everything but in fact firstly I don't have time to do everything and secondly I I'm not best at doing everything. No matter what, that little voice in my head said, oh, I can do that. Oh, I can do that. But actually, you

SPEAKER_00:

know. Yeah. So for the benefit of the listeners, when I first came back to ECO, Grant was the managing director and also IT support. So, yeah, we've only recently let that one go, haven't you? And

SPEAKER_01:

even then, it's very difficult to do. Yeah. I see the messages and I have to sit on my hands and it doesn't even work. I sometimes get involved still. Yeah, I was trying to lead the consulting team and trying to innovate here and trying to do all the different things. It's a tendency for someone who was a technical consultant delivering the work and I have to shift out into the role of entrepreneur.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so here we have this, you know, I think it's important to bring up the book that I was talking about before, which is called The E-Myth, Three Reasons Why Small Businesses Don't Work. And the two things that I think are important for this conversation are, you know, one of the key reasons in that kind of theory is that when you're a technical, you know, you want to do the technical work. you know, if you're a car mechanic, you want to do the fixing of the car. You don't want to manage the business. So about bringing the people around you who can create that organizational structure. And so in order for you to either do the technical side of things, or if you're, you know, in your case, Grant, you know, be the visionary, you know, set the course. But the other thing I'm interested that comes out in that book is how the organization itself actually has an effect in the world, you know, and the impact of creating an organism that has its own life and goes out into the world and interacts with other organisms, large and small and individuals and changes the world in some way. Do you have any reflections on that and where we are in our organization and where we're heading?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that a company is one that it's a separate person, really. So we're saying happy birthday to Eco now. And we are all working in Eco. The The change that we can bring about in the world is a result of that collective action of being together, aligned, and aligned around our core values. We aim to wow customers, coworkers, contractors, and partners. We try and listen and reflect and empathize. And that's the empathy aspect. We work together as a team in a collaborative way. That's the idea of connected and being connected. We are diverse. And that's the part of the idea of focusing on where your skills are best needed. We take long-term decisions, not short-term decisions, and try and learn from each of our experiences. And that helps us be more impactful, that core value there. And being persistent and determined and passionate is the driven aspect of it. So those elements, as an organization, we are bringing out into the world. And in our small way, we're trying to influence those experiences the world through those values. I often see those as, and I use this metaphor, people in eco will have heard it lots, the distant star as opposed to the near shore. The idea here is that it is an ambition to work more on this, to be better at this, to develop more and more. And we fail and we learn and we try and get better. So Yeah, we're making a difference in the world. And eco is a tool, an organization that we together can build and use in order to bring about the change of a world sustainably transformed.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I see that. So in terms of eco, you know, the services that we may offer, you know, market assessment, strategy, policy development, program, project design, monitoring, evaluation, learning, training, capacity building, and fund support, they're almost just the shell of actually what we're trying to do through the work. It's equivalent to a restaurant that is delivering meze food, but actually you go to the restaurant and you experience connection and perhaps there's a connection You know, you experience the values by which that organization has established itself upon. And so that is what you're left with, not just good meze

SPEAKER_01:

food. The food is a vehicle through which you're expressing purpose in the world.

SPEAKER_03:

And

SPEAKER_01:

that purpose can be a positive purpose that brings about a positive change, or it can be a purpose that is not supportive of positive impact changes. for people and for the planet.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, okay. So onwards to that distant star. Thank you, Grant, for all of these nuggets of wisdom of where ecos come from. why eco exists and the exploration in how eco is a purpose-driven organization and if anyone's interested in finding out more about eco do go to our website at ecolimitedgroup.com or check us out on all of our social channels thank you grant happy birthday eco

SPEAKER_01:

thank you very much really appreciate

SPEAKER_00:

it Thank you.