In his book The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry sketches two archetypes: the nurturer and the exploiter.
“I conceive a strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer.
The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care.
The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s is health — his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: what is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? what can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?)
The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible.”
The metaphor holds up surprisingly well in today’s corporate landscape, offering investors a valuable guiding question: is management building something enduring, or are they just strip-mining the business for short-term gain?
On the ASX, you don’t have to look too hard to find the latter.
The exploiter CEO is the classic roll-up artist, skilled at boosting headline revenue but often at the expense of resilience, profitability, and per-share earnings. Then there’s the mercenary CEO, who excels at slashing costs and deferring capex, but fails to lay the groundwork for sustainable growth.
Their playbook is predictable: buy something, cut costs, tick the KPI boxes, pocket the bonus, and move on. It creates the illusion of progress, but in reality it hollows out the business and erodes its future.
In contrast, the nurturer CEO plays the long game. They’re the ones making sure the factory roof doesn’t leak, the software stack doesn’t buckle, and the team isn’t burning out. They reinvest not just in physical assets, but in capacity, efficiency, and R&D — not because the depreciation schedule tells them to, but because neglected assets become liabilities.
The nurturer doesn’t chase scale for its own sake. They might pursue acquisitions, but only when those acquisitions truly fit, enhancing the business without overextending it. They’re less empire-builder, more farmer, sowing capital where it will actually yield returns.
Which brings us to capital formation; the secret sauce of shareholder value creation. What really matters isn’t how much capital a business can raise, but how well it turns that capital into something productive. Something that increases its earning power without resorting to financial gymnastics.
The nurturer CEO treats capital like a precious resource. Every dollar reinvested is expected to pull its weight, not just this year but for years to come. The goal isn’t just to juice the return on equity by dialling up leverage, it’s to genuinely increase the underlying return on capital employed.
That sort of discipline often flies under the radar. The results are neither immediate or obvious. But, give it time, and it inevitably shows up in things that the market can’t help but notice (things like cash flows, margins, and returns).
If you’re a long-term shareholder, that’s who you want at the helm — not the one asking “how much value can we extract?” but the one wondering, “how can we build lasting and increasing value?”
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