Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual

What they all do share, as our organizational development consultant noted, is a passion for something outside themselves, whether for surfing or opera, climbing or gardening, skiing or community activism.

you care about having a company where employees treat work as play and regard themselves as ultimate customers for the products they produce, then you have to be careful whom you hire, treat them right, and train them to treat other people right. Otherwise, you may come to work one day and find it isn’t a place you want to be anymore.

Corporate life did not appeal; it was regarded as inauthentic, illegitimate, and toxic.

To me, Tomatoes-R-Us is merely a U.S. company doing international business. Acme, on the other hand, is a global company because it knows the importance of tailoring its products to specific markets.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “In pleasant peace and security, how quickly the soul in a man begins to die.”

Again, like the Zen approach to archery or anything else, you identify the goal and then forget about it and concentrate on the process.

Today most Americans are aware we are facing an environmental crisis. But you are what you do, not what you say you are.

DERRICK JENSEN (This article first appeared in the March 2003 issue of the Ecologist, www.theecologist.org)

how important it is for the designer to work with the producer up front. This applies to every product.

I never forget Thoreau’s advice: “I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. . . .”