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Patagonia CEO
Addresses
Wharton West
Leadership
Conference
What kind of leadership
will businesses need to
succeed in the future? In
February,Wharton West,
home of the School's
Executive MBA program in
California, hosted a wide-ranging, well-attended one-day leadership conference,
"Leading With Creativity
and Conviction," designed
to help attendees answer this
question. A Philadelphia
session will also be held on
June 9.
Michael Crooke,
President and CEO of
outdoor clothing retailer
Patagonia since 1999, gave
a keynote address that focused
on the pitfalls of focusing
solely on the bottom
line, Patagonia's approach
to the business environment
as an ecosystem, and
the use of "flow" to optimize
performance in individuals
and organizations.
Crooke also emphasized
the need for change and
new ideas in an evolving
organization, arguing that
profitability and social
awareness can go hand-in-hand. "When I came
to Patagonia," he recalled,
"I brought in seven new
people. That was a lot of
change and newness for
the organization. Melding
the new with the old and
creating the next wave of
the next thirty years at
Patagonia—that's been a
real challenge."
"We look at our strategic
plans, and we look at what
we invest in terms of the
social side of our business,
as well as the environmental
side or the product side,"
Crooke explained, adding,
"It doesn't matter if you are
eco-groovy and socially responsible.
If you don't have
a great product or service
that's sustainable, then it's
a short-term phenomenon,
and it's going down."
Conference speakers
included leaders from large
corporations, such as MCI,
Clorox, Hewlett-Packard,
and Kaiser Permanente, as
well as from less traditional
venues, such as Business for
Social Responsibility, the
Poetry Foundation, and the
Palo Alto Research Center.
Presenters also included
professors Michael Useem,
director of Wharton's
Center for Leadership and
Change Management, and
Peter Cappelli, director
of Wharon's Center for
Human Resources, both of
whom helped organize and
sponsor the annual event.
For more information on
the conference, visit http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/welcome/index.shtml
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