Alison Taylor

CEOs are tired of promising to make the world better. Zuckerberg needs more “masculine energy”, (in a company which is 63% male, ok then), and everywhere people are plugging the idea that DEI is inherently antithetical to meritocracy and undermines performance. The broad retreat is pretty clear.

Beth Kowitt covers this vibe shift in her latest column.

Here’s the thing though.

CEOs seem to believe there are two binary options:

Option One: Make absurd, grandiose claims at Davos, waffle about stakeholders, act like you walk on water and can save the world from politicians, promise to solve inequality, climate change and be a win-win force for good.

Option Two: Retreat back to the twentieth century, greed is good, quit the woke stuff, suck up to the new power players.

But both are the *same option*: shift in the breeze and treat corporate responsibility as reputation management and nothing more. Monitor social media like an obsessive teenager and overreact to whoever is yelling at you, forget corporate governance, principles or strategy. This is all headlines and no substance, and it always was. And, neither path is sensible in such a divided country.

Perhaps we should connect the dots between this and the murder of the UHC CEO just a few weeks ago?

Perhaps CEOs should quit the empty messaging and focus on things their own businesses can actually impact? Be honest, focused and realistic. Treat people with dignity and respect. There is a path through the political mire.

My feed is full of the Patagonia news. Yours might be too. I’ll keep this short.

Of course it’s wonderful. Creative, meaningful, resonant.

But we need achievable paths as well as inspirational poster children. This has already launched a million ill-informed op-eds.

We can’t and shouldn’t depend on billionaire generosity.

We do need to make decisions about trade offs between the environment and people, and this is not a structure that empowers Patagonia’s employees or gives them a formal stake. I will be fascinated to see if and how it changes culture, and I am not going to make any assumptions or predictions.

It’s about the reality of these sharp choices.

And that there are so few models to think differently that Chouinard had to create his own.

UPDATE: this post has now formally been declared a “note of sobriety” by Town & Country Magazine 🤷‍♀️ (link in comments)