Yvon Chouinard Showed Us How to Be a Triple Bottom Line Unicorn

"When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."

- Steve Jobs

As leaders, we often make excuses for why we don’t lead in alignment with our values. We’ve internalized the idea that successful leaders need to maximize shareholder value, to meet or exceed short term expectations. No matter how passionate we are about our personal values, we believe that we have to run our companies for our customers, board, and investors and not for the benefit of the wider world.

Patagonia’s “going purpose” rather than “going public” is a call to step up and do the right thing. Its founder, Yvon Chouinard, has raised the bar. He’s run the mission driven leader’s 4-minute mile.? And now we know that we can do it too.?

Chouinard has shown us that aligning personal and professional values is good business. And he’s provided a playbook, a case study for the power of genuineness, alignment, and consistency. From start to finish, Chouinard has stayed independent and true to his values..?

Whole Foods new CEO, Jason Buechel, said this summer that he wants to, “reconnect to many parts of our heritage as a company.” Patagonia never disconnected from its roots. And I admire that. A lot. There’s beauty in the alignment and consistency of Patagonia’s approach, a beauty that is rare in business.

Patagonia’s success is proof that it can be a good business to address the negative effects a business has on people not directly involved in that business. When I was in business school, I took two fantastic classes in public policy, and I learned about externalities. Externalities are when one party’s actions have an effect on another without their participation. A negative externality affects the neighbor downstream from a polluting factory, a positive externality affects the neighbor of a gorgeous garden. Chouinard was the master in taking responsibility for his company’s externalities - from reducing manufacturing’s impact through using renewable energy to active investment in environmental causes. And the company reaped tremendous benefits from those policies as customers flocked to the brand; it’s a virtuous circle.???

I feel personally challenged by Chouinard’s actions. I feel compelled to step up, to do the right thing, to speak my mind, and hold my ground. It's time for all leaders to stop compromising on our values. So we too can become triple bottom-line unicorns.

What do you think about Patagonia’s going purpose rather than going public?