58 pages • 1 hour read
Yvon ChouinardLet My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Index of Terms
Clean Climbing
“Clean” is the term Patagonia uses in its catalog in the 1970s when advocating the switch from pitons that scar the rock to removable chocks that don’t. This philosophy of clean climbing represents a larger leave-no-trace approach to outdoor recreation that comes to define the brand. Patagonia presents clean climbing as a way for a person to become a part of nature, to become, as the company terms it, a “natural man” (105). This goal of becoming one with nature in a Zen-like harmony manifests in different ways throughout Patagonia’s history, including in its final goal to achieve net-zero production and thus become perfectly sustainable, like nature.
Environmental Externalities
Externality is an economics term that refers to a cost (or benefit) that a producer doesn’t incur in production. An environmental externality is a cost stemming from environmental degradation caused by some production that isn’t factored into the producer’s cost. Chouinard uses this term to explain that this omission means that consumers are not paying the true price of a product. He argues that an economics that doesn’t factor in environmental costs encourages environmental degradation through these artificially low prices.
Toyota’s Five Whys
The Five Whys are an investigative method of questioning Toyota developed for finding the root cause of a problem. This root cause isn’t usually apparent the first time one asks why something happened, which is why it’s necessary to ask the question of why a problem occurred five times. Chouinard establishes the Five Whys method as the leader’s problem-solving modus operandi. This deep questioning is more effective than farming out the solution of a problem to a consultant. Chouinard also notes that often governments and companies don’t engage in this deep self-examination for fear that it will reveal the hidden downstream consequences of their actions. Asking the Five Whys is a good way to ensure you address the root of a problem and not just treat its symptoms.
Yarak
Yarak is a falconry term that describes a bird’s ideal state: “superalert, hungry, but not weak, and ready to hunt” (216). In a typical analogy between natural world and business, Chouinard uses this term to name the ideal state of a successful company. A good leader knows to keep a company in yarak because complacency in success—a sated attitude—spells incipient doom.
Zen
Chouinard uses the word Zen to refer to a philosophy of simplicity. From his early days blacksmithing when a day of working in a flow state without a wasted move leaves him in a state of bliss to his later philosophies that simplicity of design indicates sophistication and that a simple product line is more profitable because it is less overwhelming to consumers, Zen guides much of Chouinard’s life. Applying Zen means undergoing a process of harmonization that results in deriving greater happiness from simple things.
