Dinner chat series #1 - Let my people go surfing

Lessons learnt from a reluctant entrepreneur

A few months ago, I organised The Week with some of my friends. Having been inspired by Frédéric Laloux and his Reinventing organisations, I was eager to try out his new project.

The Week is a series of three documentaries you watch as a group over the course of one week. It is meant to get you through the U curve of change (anger → depression → motivation) on the topic of the environmental crisis.

The product is smart. Frédéric Laloux style.

One of the things I loved the most about this project was the collaborative part: opening up about emotions with friends, sharing from the I, discussing an important society topic…

I went off with one resolution: I shall organise more discussions of the like.

They make me feel great.

Let my people go surfing 🌊

So here we are, planning a new dinner with our crew, to discuss a new topic: the book Let my people go surfing, from Yvon Chouinard, describing the genesis and history of Patagonia. It had been a major eye-opener for me last year, on the topic of business and the environmental crisis. One of the girls of the group was to read it, present it, and we were to have a discussion about it around dinner a month from then.

Takeaways from the book 🧑🏻‍🏫

Here are the main topics we discussed and agreed were the most striking in the book.

There is good reason to embroil personal and professional life more 🤝👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Yvon Chouinard never wanted to be an entrepreneur. He just wanted to enjoy life, climb mountains. But he realised that he missed gear, so he built it. For him, then for his friends, and soon many more!

This was just the beginning but this mindset stuck with him.

Later on, he encouraged anyone to go catch the wave. Work would not be an obstacle to enjoyment! Among other things, he also encouraged employees to come as they are… and with their little ones! A nursery was created so that people could be closer to their children during work. Children would often roam the place.

His life view involved work, and thus life was invited into work 🌱

People usually try to split the two, but why do this sacrifice?

A lot of well intentioned people will recommend it. We realised though that we tend to feel like at school when at work. Most people have internalised it, and pass along the recommendation. It’s like a neurosis epidemic: there are carrot and sticks, good grades… you should sit nicely in your chair and not move! wait, has anyone actually ever said that? 🤔

What if you brought that perspective yourself? What if you changed your glasses, and suddenly people changed, and you could enjoy more of what your work has to offer, be truer to yourself?

And above all, what if you chose work situations where you’d be happy to go, happy to bring along your whole self, your kids, your dog, your friends… you name it!

Wouldn’t that be a whole lot more fun? 😊

Ideas lead as much as management does 💡

Yvon was always travelling, or having fun. He defined his job as inspirational: he would get ideas away, and bring them back as nuggets from his travels.

Ideas are the most powerful human invention. It cannot be overstated how impactful a good (or bad) idea can be. Ideas might well be the reason humans are conscious, or simply humans.

Yvon’s full time job was to have the right ideas. This positioning made him free, and able to stand up to his ideals.

And he worked with others who would deliver that vision.

Are you more into ideas? Find your delivery counterpart.

Are you more into doing? Find your idea partner.

Standing for your values despite financial downturn is a must in a conscious business 📉

One of the principles of the company is: you cannot pretend you don’t know.

They knew they were using cotton that had severe impacts on lands. The only solution was to use biological cotton. The thing is, it didn’t exist! so they had to influence up the value chain, help farmers, to get what was a better environmental choice. It obviously had a major impact on financials to invest in such a project, then switch from mainstream supply chains which costs were low…

But being a conscious business, or regenerative business, is precisely this: being able to make choices that are bad for your finances, but good for the environment (people and nature).

It requires a new mindset, which puts values above finances, and standing up to them even in dire situations.

An idealistic vision can only be brought about if pragmatic at first ➿

That could be seen as contradictory… yet pragmatism was instrumental in Patagonia’s idealism.

Indeed, they were first in many places, nothing existed! no model, no supply chain… They were pioneers. But as much as an idealist a pioneer is, you’ve got to start somewhere! The strength of Patagonia was that they did things. They did things wrong, then they made it a bit better, then a lot better… They iterated. They were conscious that to be as close as possible to ideal, you have to start pretty close to not-ideal-at-all. I believe this is how they’ve succeeded.

Where other companies fail, is in the ideal. There is no north star, or it is forgotten to the profit of more juicy financial results. At Patagonia, they know it’s not good enough. Yet, they ship it, and with finances earned, they improve.

A good resolution of the idealist/pragmatic polarity!! ☯️

Investors must be aligned with your vision 💰

At Patagonia, the only shareholders were the founders. A lot of the decisions they made probably would not have been possible if investors weren’t 100% onboard. It’s pretty common that a board gets rid of the CEO because finances are not on track. Heard of Emmanuel Faber? Well, that makes it damn hard to, sometimes, prioritize environment over finances.

Today, there are some new investors who are willing to jump on the train of more “regenerative” businesses. But there aren’t that many! If you want to try yourself out on building such a business, then you should consider boostrapping it, or be very careful with the investors you choose.

Are philosophers tomorrow’s entrepreneurs? 🏛

The book is organised around philosophies. Product, marketing, people philosophies… Those define the principles by which decisions are made in those areas. They have all been thought through, and elaborated over time. They are smart, they are deep, and they could be developed because people had interest in defining ways of being that challenged the status quo, and started again from first principles: what do we actually want to achieve, and how to do it?

This goes a few more “Why?” layers that people usually go when thinking about these things. It requires trying to go beyond the current social fabric, the standardized and conventional truths of our time. It requires wisdom.

We could call that philosophy, indeed “loving wisdom” 😊

Fellow philosophers, the road is full of challenges for you!

On the format 🗒

The things we loved:

• Starting with sharing emotions

• The social setting, giving confidence to stand for our convictions

• The pride of building something together and imagining the downstream impacts

The things we wanted to improve:

• Some people hadn’t read the book or had a long time ago. We decided we should have some content to watch beforehand to lean onto

• We felt we were too aligned and wanted to avoid being only an echo chamber. We want to have more information about critiques

What’s next 📆

• The next session is planned for the 20th of April! Topic: Reinventing organisations ✨

• One action per person was identified: create a personal business philosophy, launch a “Café philo” routine, animate one other “The Week” workshop…

Responsibility 💪

Remember me talking about responsibility? (cf Responsibility series) One of the things I love about that project is that it answers many of my internal drivers:

• building a small community around topics that matter to me, for dialogical exchange and truths seeking

• bringing wholeness to the process and giving space to emotions, thoughts and intuitions

• acting on the realisation that most mundane discussions don’t catch my interest as much as these discussions do

• changing the world, at my own scale, and letting the future decide where it’ll end up

Animating this fills me with great energy. It is responsibility, it is creation, it is manifestation of my inner values…

It is Life! 😃 ❤️

Does that inspire you to create similar discussions with your friends? Don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to know more about how we do it or give feedback 👩‍🚀