A company’s success begins, ends with the CEO

I just read an article about an innovative Black Friday campaign Patagonia ran last year. As I scanned the Harvard Business Review piece, I quickly learned that the writer was just using Patagonia’s Don’t Buy This Jacket campaign to highlight a greater truth about the brand:

“And this leads into the second nuance, the penetration of the mission throughout the company and beyond. At Patagonia’s campus you can feel it deeply — staff can rattle off their mission like a short breath “Yeah, sure, of course we’re here to build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire…” But it goes deeper. From the executive team to the warehouse staff, employees actually live the life of their core customers.”

After reading the story, I switched back to the Facebook comments from my friends who had shared it and was introduced to Yvon Chouinard, the Patagonia CEO who has embraced corporate social responsibility as an organizational mission instead of just a mandatory sideshow.

Chouinard started Patagonia with a commitment to the environment in mind, and he has not wavered from it one bit. Instead, he has added a similar commitment to his customers to create a brand promise he and all Patagonia employees live every day, according to this recent article in the Wall Street Journal:

“He now takes responsibility for every item Patagonia has ever made—promising either to replace it if the customer is dissatisfied, repair it (for a reasonable fee), help resell it (Patagonia facilitates exchanges of used clothes on its website), or recycle it when at last it’s no longer wearable.”

Switching social networks, when discussing Patagonia and Chouinard on Twitter today, a couple of interesting concepts rose to the top:

1. I would love to see a study comparing CEOs who focus on culture and mission like Chouinard vs those who focus solely on bottom line. The former make up the majority of the corporate success stories we hear about — Tony Hsieh at Zappos, Gary Kelly at Southwest Airlines. It’s a strong argument in favor of CEOs dictating culture and culture dictating success.

2. “75% of a successful CMOs job is building internal culture and educating C-Suite.” Yet most CMOs probably spend 75% or more time on external.

Interesting that most executives feel the need to spend so much time focused on what’s happening outside their company’s walls. Yet the numbers and case studies say those who direct a significant focus on internal culture are most successful.