There's no difference between a pessimist who says, "Oh it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything." and an optimist who says, "Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyways. Either way, nothing happens."
Yvon ChouinardRead
At Patagonia, making a profit is not the goal because the Zen master would say profits happen 'when you do everything else right'.
Interpretation
The focus should be on doing things correctly, and profits will naturally follow.
This quote by Yvon Chouinard highlights the philosophy of prioritizing values and ethical practices over the mere pursuit of profit. It suggests that when an organization or individual consistently strives for excellence and acts responsibly, financial success will come as a byproduct rather than the primary objective.
In practice
In a business seminar discussing sustainable practices.
There's no difference between a pessimist who says, "Oh it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything." and an optimist who says, "Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyways. Either way, nothing happens."
I think risk is important. I don't care if it's a great financial risk or a physical risk. You only get out of something what you put into it and the fact that you are willing to risk something means that you are going to get a lot more out of it.
The solution may be for a lot of the world's problems is to turn around and take a forward step. You can't just keep trying to make a flawed system work.
We're a part of nature. As we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. It's a selfish thing to want to protect nature.
Evil doesnβt have to be an overt act; it can be merely the absence of good. If you have the ability, the resources, and the opportunity to do good and you do nothing, that can be evil.
The future of Yosemite climbing lies not in Yosemite, but in using the new techniques in the great granite ranges of the world.
Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay. The upshot is that a mediocre-or-worse CEO - aided by his handpicked VP of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo - all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement.
A visionary company doesn't simply balance between idealism and profitability: it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable. A visionary company doesn't simply balance between preserving a tightly held core ideology and stimulating vigorous change and movement; it does both to an extreme.
Consistent alignment of capabilities and internal processes with the customer value proposition is the core of any strategy execution.
If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.
Conscious business.. business that is conscious of inner and outer worlds.. would therefore be business that takes into account body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. Put differently, conscious business would be mindful of the way that the spectrum of consciousness operates in the Big Three worlds of self and culture and nature.
Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?
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