Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman - Including 10 More Years of Business as Usual

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Kami was a small man in his late sixties with a squeaky, Swiss-German-accented voice, a full beard, and a lot of restless energy. We met on his enormous yacht, and he wore a captain's cap and an open shirt with epaulets. Yvon’s first priority is always to create and play by his own set of rules. And this has clearly worked out well for him. When we returned, we put together our first board of directors, made up of trusted friends and advisers, including author and deep ecologist Jerry Mander. At one of our board meetings, when we were struggling to put our mission into words, Jerry skipped lunch and went off by himself. He returned with a perfectly crafted article that outlined "an ‘ecology' of values that can mitigate the environmental and social crisis of our time." Those words became the basis for Patagonia's philosophies, clear and specific principles that expressed our thinking as it applied to different parts of the company: design, production, distribution, images, human resources, finance, management, and the environment. Before we are entitled to encourage other companies to act responsibly we have to do so ourselves. There’s only one way to lead, and that’s by being in front and leading by example. Our environmental assessment program educates us, and with education we have choices. When we act positively on solving problems instead of ignoring them or trying to find a way around them, we are further along the path toward sustainability. Every time we’ve elected to do the right thing, it’s turned out to be more profitable.” In hindsight, we made all the classic mistakes of a growing company — not training managers, consolidation of channels and products and keeping business objectives in sight.

Patagonia’s environmental philosophy of cutting-edge sustainability weaves throughout its history. In 1986, Yvon implemented a self-imposed 1% environmental tax on his own company. When you get away from the idea that a company is disposable, all future decisions in the company are affected. The owners and the officers see that, since the company will outlive them, they have responsibilities beyond the bottom line. Perhaps they will even see themselves as stewards of the earth.Patagonia is highly unconventional — in just about everything. So when the talent acquisition team at Patagonia reads a resume, they read them from the bottom up. Can you imagine yourself doing what you are doing in the way you are doing it 5 years from now? 10?

When it comes to the environment, it's probably no secret that I'm a total pessimist about the fate of the natural world. In my lifetime I've seen nothing but a constant deterioration of all of the processes that are essential to maintaining healthy life on Planet Earth. Most of the scientists and deep thinkers in the environmental field who I know personally are also pessimistic, and they believe that we are experiencing an extremely accelerated extinction of species—including, possibly, much of the human race.Yvon Chouinard is the Owner and Founder of Patagonia, Inc. He was born in Lisbon, Maine, where a large French Canadian community resided.

having the philosophies in writing, and the shared cultural experiences of our classes, played a critical role in the company's turnaround, at the end of 1991. Within a few years we had eliminated several layers of management, consolidated inventories, and brought our sales channels under control—meaning that for the next decade and a half we would refocus on living up to our mission statement: "Make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis." If you haven’t yet, you can get your copy of Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, at B Corp Certified Better World Books. Books Similar To: Let My People Go Surfing In establishing a “management philosophy,” Patagonia’s employees are encouraged to go surfing when there are waves, go skiing when there’s powder, and choose if they’d like to wear shoes in the office or not. Patagonia has repeatedly won awards as one of the best places to work. A week later, as the new VP of HR, finances, and legal, he began to find his answer to the question.

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