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Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
written by Yvon Chouinard
Studio : Penguin (Non-Classics)
by Penguin (Non-Classics)
Publisher : Penguin (Non-Classics)
Released : 2006-09-05
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780143037835
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 50 reviews)
List Price : $16.00
Our Price : $8.98
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Product Description |
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In his long-awaited memoir, Yvon Chouinard—legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, Inc.—shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth. From his youth as the son of a French Canadian blacksmith to the thrilling, ambitious climbing expeditions that inspired his innovative designs for the sport’s equipment, Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life—a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike. |
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Americancivilwar.com |
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Like the carefully engineered dies which created his company's first products--steel pitons and carabiners which climbing enthusiasts would recognize as primitive forerunners of today's sleeker gear--Yvon Chouinard is if nothing else an original. How many other shy French-Canadian boys become surf-and-climbing bums, then blacksmiths forging their own play tools, and eventually founders of world-renowned sports equipment and apparel companies like Patagonia? How many other heads of multi-million dollar enterprises open their memoirs by stating bluntly, "The Lee Iacoccas, Donald Trumps, and Jack Welches of the business world are heroes to no one except other businessmen with similar values. I wanted to be a fur trapper when I grew up." The proverbial mold from which Chouinard was cast got broken. In Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, readers get a fascinating look inside the history and philosophy of both Patagonia and its irascible, opinionated founder. From its beginning, the book shares a sense of Chouinard's strong-willed personality and his love of the outdoors. He recounts a mostly happy childhood spent in a still-unspoiled southern California, climbing, diving, fishing, and surfing. The narrative soon moves into Chouinard's early entrepreneurial efforts, which were less focused on market-share domination than on earning a basic living to finance his own sporting habits. As his company's first catalog noted, delivery could be slow in the summer months, when Chouinard typically left the "office"--a dilapidated shack converted into an ironworks--for climbing adventures across the American West. Eventually, though, the story settles into a pattern familiar to business audiences: Patagonia grows rapidly, takes on more employees and product lines to sustain hungry demand from customers, but overreaches with over-ambitious expansion plans and suffers a hiccup in its adolescence. This make-or-break juncture of a business's development often contains the most interesting material, and here Chouinard and his beloved company are no exception. He describes a series of wrenching decisions through which he and Patagonia management team navigated in 1991, as sales growth stalled while capital and operational expenses sprinted ahead. From this crisis emerged Patagonia's first-ever layoffs, affecting a hefty 20% of the workforce, and a serious re-examination of the business's core principles and methods. The historical part of Chouinard's book largely ends at this point, and gives way to an exposition of philosophies which emerged at Patagonia during its dark moments in the early 1990s. The rest of the book serves as a kind of primer to business, the Patagonia way: one chapter each on product design philosophy, production philosophy, distribution philosophy, image philosophy, financial philosophy, human resource philosophy, and so on. Fans of Patagonia can revel in the company's working details, as can those who support or want to build businesses with self-consciously cultivated soulfulness. Readers who enjoyed Gary Erickson's story about Clif Bar, for example, should definitely find this a welcome addition to their bookshelves. --Peter Han |
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The Ultimate Company to work for |
Yvon Chouinard began his foray into business as a way to create a product for himself and his climbing colleagues. His desire to life an unconventional lifestyle, along with his mother's philanthropic influence, led him to create what Patagonia is today: a socially responsible business that makes high quality products while tending to the environment and its employees. Chouinard believes in his people and they in turn trust him.
Author, "Trust is Everything: Become the leader others will follow"
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best business book in years |
this is the best business book i've read in a long time, hands down. and, that's a bit strange, in many ways. because it's not a pure business book -- let's call it a business memoir. chuoinard tells his own life story, including a detailed telling of the creation of chouinard equipment, and then patagonia. he's sometimes-arrogant, he often unfairly generalizes, he occasionally overstates his case. he's overly proud of this "i did it my way" path.
but... it works. and there are nuggets in here that are so wonderfullly different than what one would read in other business books. in a sense, this is a "life book" -- it's about leading a company who is voraciosly and unflinchingly committed to its mission and values, even when those are contrary to profit. it's about a company or an organization being about something other, something more, than revenue and profit. and, really, it's about being the kind of person who knows herself, knows his values, knows her strengths, knows his commitments, and works ruthlessly to keep them. for chouinard, those values are all about the environment. so the book is packed with both the theoretical and the practical when it comes to environmental issues (including lots of side stories).
personally, i found the environmental stuff really helpful. we (ys) aren't patagonia (either in their singular commitment to environmental issues, or in many other ways). but we are trying to become more green. but the environmental passion of patagonia transfers, conceptually, to what other organizations could be passionate about (assuming that something is outside of themselves).
so...
1/3 personal and organizational memoir
1/3 environmental manifesto and practical organizational guide
1/3 business book on passionate commitment to internally and externally focused organizational mission and values
i'm going to buy a case lot of these (really), and give them to the ys exec team, the ys green team (a group of ys staff working on ways to help ys be more environmentally friendly), and some on the zondervan leadership team. |
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Why can't we all...... |
I found the book to be very enjoyable and definitely thought provoking. Even though I don't run a company, it got me thinking about ways I could have a similar affect on our world in my own job and personal life. If the book did that alone, I would consider it a success.
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Decent case study diminished by pontification |
The tone of arrogance and condescension really diminish what would otherwise be a good autobiographical case study of growing a hobby/skill into a successful brand. Critical self assessment is sometimes subordinated to over emotive passages and screeds about Chouinard's take social and economic trends. Some of the more interesting aspects of forming company goals and culture were lost amid a general tone of contempt for what Chouinard considers `the business world'. The good stuff is there, you just have to get past the maverick chest thumping and "I am a reluctant businessman and I run my business better without old and tired business practices and paradigms. . . like profit".
Two things were rather galling. First, the first sentence "No young kid growing up ever dreams of becoming a businessman." Well, sorry, a lot of kids actually do, they dream of following a parent or relation in a particular line of business or endeavor, just because Chouinard wasn't like that doesn't mean it doesn't occur.
Second, the restructuring of 1991 was a prime example of the arrogance and hypocrisy that marks the books tone. In July of 1991, Patagonia fired 20% of its workforce. So what does Chouinard do? He packs his executives off to Argentina for a `walkabout' to discuss goals and direction. Nice. You fire a bunch of people then you blaze a huge carbon footprint down to Argentina to brainstorm. WOW, that is brilliant. Excellent use of corporate and global assets. That's the kind of morale crushing maneuver that Chouinard pillories `the business world' for throughout the book. "Where's the boss?" "Oh, after the red ink of the second quarter, he and the executive committee went to Argentina to figure things out." Right out of Dilbert.
Again, some good information buried amid the screed and propaganda (at Patagonia, it's not propaganda, it's activism). I would recommend reading Goldratt's `The Goal' parallel with this. Still, the book is a good case study of brand development and growing a hobby/skill into a corporate business.
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Not your typical business book |
I thought this book was excellent. It definitely causes you to think about the relationship of your business to the world at large.
The most helpful part of the book was how Patagonia incorporated their principles into the decision making for the corporation. The real world examples were helpful and easy to understand. |
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