READING · JANUARY 1, 2023

The Responsible Company

A short but sweet manifesto by Patagonia's founder Yvon Chouinard and co-author outlining what it means to be a 'responsible company' - eschewing sustainability for the more humble idea of responsibility.

businesssustainabilityresponsibilitypatagonia

I got the idea of starting a bookstagram after talking to @sanne who’s planning to read 52 books this year. I’m trying to really take self improvement seriously this year so here I am with a bookstagram. Wish me luck.

First one is a short but sweet manifesto by a company that made some waves last year when their founder pledged to give away his company to fight climate change. Reading about this radical move from Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard definitely peaked my interest and led me to his book, where he and his co-author (also a Patagonia executive) outlines what it means to be a “responsible company”.

Right off the bat, I really appreciated how short and to the point this book is: only 100+ pages. Most business books could say all they have to say in a long blog post but they try to eke out a full 200-300 pages and fill it with fluff. This book just gets right to the point, even though I’m sure they could have pulled a lot more insights and stories from almost 50 years of running this company.

The authors eschew the term sustainability for the more humble idea of responsibility–kind of grounding what a business needs to do as an obligation to stakeholders (communities, employees, stakeholders, shareholders) that is rarely met but that prompts continuous soul searching and improvement. Whereas sustainability implies making a bunch of fixes to operate in a business as usual mindset.

They are VERY clear that business as usual is untenable for all businesses. I was surprised that they were almost explicit in having a de-growth agenda–specifically calling out that an endless need for companies and economies to grow 3% a year is completely misguided.

I also appreciated how they came to this conclusion not from a theoretical or ideological viewpoint but rather from decades of learning from their own failures as a company–how they switched to 100% organic cotton after seeing how industrially grown cotton completely lays waste to the land; or how they ignored the importance of nature in their urban location of their headquarters until a naturalist pointed out how animals were making a habitat in these places; or how they provided day care services for their staff as something out of common decency and how that led to much lower staff turnover and hence massive cost savings.

There is so much performative nonsense that companies do these days in the name of being ethical and sustainable that you kind of just cynically dismiss it all as a ploy to make more money and greenwash away real responsibility.

As a business owner who’s circle of friends are overwhelmingly activists, journalists and artists who as you can imagine have very progressive political views that I also share, I’m always feeling guilty that I’m in the wrong camp, inevitably going down the path of a douchebag capitalist.

But another part of me that yearns for pragmatically working towards ideals and trudging through the messy real world to continually learn and improve, instead of sitting on a moral high horse and blabbering on about ideals while never getting your hands dirty. And I say this not as a criticism of the artists and the activists because I’ve met plenty of artists and activists who roll up their sleeves and get shit done every day, and are more pragmatic and entrepreneurial than most so called “entrepreneurs” who never walk the talk.

This book definitely gave me some faith that we can keep walking along the hard road to becoming responsible, and staying humble every step of the way.

© 2025 Yan Naung Oak.