How the new CEO of RWE Clean Energy puts purpose into action

There’s a first time for everything. For Andrew Flanagan this past January, it was becoming CEO—of the fourth-largest renewable energy business in the U.S.

At RWE Clean Energy, a subsidiary of German power giant RWE, Flanagan hasn’t wasted any time making his mark.

RWE Clean Energy belongs to a larger organization with a clear purpose: “our energy for a sustainable life.” Flanagan, who leads about 1,700 people, says the company is transforming itself and putting that purpose into action.

On that note, he tells me what RWE Clean Energy is trying to accomplish with its onshore wind farms, solar power, and battery storage systems. Having worked in conventional energy, he doesn’t necessarily see the business through an environmental lens.

“There might be this notion that our purpose is to affect climate change or reverse climate change,” says Flanagan, who was previously chief development officer of the company, formed last year when RWE Renewables Americas and Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses combined. “But our purpose is much broader than that. Our energy will sustain communities.” To him, that could mean fueling the economy as much as shrinking carbon emissions.

At a town hall, Flanagan just introduced a new U.S. market strategy to capitalize on growing demand for clean energy and boost employee effectiveness. RWE Clean Energy’s identity is about generating impact, which the company aims to do in four ways: create value at scale, excel at execution, partner to grow, and team to solve.

Wondering about that last one? Essentially, it means working together to find solutions to challenges and seize new opportunities.

When it comes to delivering on that strategy, Flanagan invokes RWE’s three global values: trust, passion, and performance.

Trust is foundational. “Without trust, you can’t have collaboration, you can’t have a team, you can’t have effective communication,” Flanagan says. “If you do not have trust, that’s the number one dysfunction around a good operating team. Without that, [we’ll] never have the performance we need to differentiate ourselves in the market, as well as to build the relationships that we need to execute on that.”

Part of building trust is making sure people know they can speak up to their teammates—including the CEO. For example, in discussions about the cost of developing projects, everyone involved is encouraged to weigh in, regardless of seniority, Flanagan explains.

“What we want to provoke, or trigger, is good, open dialogue and debate where everybody is comfortable challenging each other,” says the self-described servant leader. “That really helps us to identify and deliver the best solutions for the business and for our various stakeholders.”

In the same spirit, RWE is introducing a program called the Peak Performance Hub to foster emerging as well as current leaders.

Passion is motivation, Flanagan says. For the leader of a large organization, it can be exhausting to have to tell people exactly what to do, he notes.

“If you can create an environment, create a team that at its core has that burning desire,” Flanagan says, “and as individuals, couple it with the right trust and open dialogue; that’s when you really move an organization and make the impact that we’re looking to make.”

He wants team members to get to a place where they tell him exactly what they’re going to do—“just as a heads-up, and give me that opportunity to say no.”

And performance? It’s execution. “We can say all the right things, but ultimately, we have to deliver,” Flanagan says. “In order to establish the trust, when we make commitments, we need to follow through.”

For Flanagan, clarity of purpose also builds trust with stakeholders. “They need to understand your intentions and your motivations,” he says. “Making that clear opens the door for building stronger, longer-lasting relationships that are critical to business growth.”

Some good energy there.

Nick Rockel

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For anyone who uses dating apps, choosing a profile picture can be an agonizing task. Tinder is launching a new feature that lets you entrust the job to AI. This tool scours your phone’s camera roll for images it deems most likely to appeal to others, taking factors such as lighting and composition into account, then offers a list of suggestions. Of course, Tinder threw in a disclaimer that it isn’t responsible for swipe-left-worthy pics.

Small world

Tech and finance bros are putting their trust in Donald Trump. Silicon Valley VC heavyweights Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz reportedly plan to donate to his presidential campaign, adding to a long list of backers from those industries. Most notably, Elon Musk has pledged $45 million a month. Andreessen and Horowitz believe Trump will be better than the Democrats for the startup world, which they dub “little tech.” Time will tell.

Art talk

C’mon, artists and filmmakers, stop being so distrustful of AI. Cristóbal Valenzuela, cofounder of gen-AI startup Runway, pitched that idea at Fortune’s recent Brainstorm Tech conference. “These are exceptional tools for great artists,” Valenzuela said of his company’s text-to-image and text-to-video AI. That probably won’t go down so well with the creators who sued Runway for allegedly using their work to train its models.

Computer meltdown

Dell is losing the trust of its people. In the tech giant’s latest annual employee engagement survey, staff were much less likely than last year to recommend that someone work there. Dell helped drive the plunge in its employee net promoter score (eNPS) by laying off 13,000 people last year. It also warned remote team members that skipping the office would hinder their careers—and tracked and graded hybrid workers’ attendance. Can recess be far behind?

TRUST EXERCISE

“Companies spend billions annually on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). However, experts predict that gender parity will lag for another 151 years. Worse, a recent report showed that, for the first time in years, the number of women in leadership is declining. It’s time to recognize society has overlooked a key piece of the gender parity puzzle.

Women trail men in leadership roles, workplace tenure, and compensation. Understandably, the conversation often assumes an us-versus-them paradigm in which women are pitted against men.

Even our terminology emphasizes this construct. Terms like the ‘glass ceiling’ and, more recently, the ‘broken rung’ in the corporate leadership ladder point the finger at society’s gender biases for limiting women’s professional advancement. While damaging biases still exist, we notably neglect to acknowledge another factor in women’s workplace experiences: unhealthy dynamics between women.”

Kathryn Preston speaks from experience. Preston—whose roles include keynote speaker, corporate consultant, and entrepreneur—recalls being undermined, excluded, and threatened at work by other women. She’s far from alone. In one survey that Preston cites, female bullies targeted women 65% of the time. Research also shows that such toxic interactions can push women to consider quitting their jobs.

Preston calls for an acknowledgment when it comes to elevating women to leadership roles, it isn’t just men who need to raise their game. From that gender-neutral perspective, she also suggests a couple of potential solutions.

By offering incentives for senior-level women to promote their qualified junior-level counterparts, companies could make female leaders less fearful of competition, Preston says. Businesses can also adopt a lateral leadership structure, giving female victims of bullying access to several leaders who can help deal with the problem. For women, both changes would build trust that the so-called broken rung is being repaired.

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