Conscious Capitalism: The Whole Foods Way
In late 2013 I had a chance to meet John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, at the store I usually shopped in. I had a great love for Whole Foods and when I had a chance to speak with him I asked why WF wasn’t in Australia (“no plans”) or whether he would try to enter my then-future home, France (“we are staying in English-speaking countries, for now”). The lady next to me asked a very pointed (though important) question about GMOs and John answered calmly and fairly. Given he probably answers that kind of question all the time, he’s had some practice.
That spirit of quiet patience and certitude is redolent in the pages of Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Mackey is simply articulating, across 300 pages, the practices and hard-earned lessons that have made WF the juggernaut that it is.
Mackey is not interested in being trendy. He is vitally committed to setting a trend. This book is an important manual for this. From the “Credo” at the back of the book:
Conscious Capitalism is a way of thinking about capitalism and business that better reflects where we are in the human journey, the state of our world today, and the innate potential of business to have a positive impact in the world. Conscious businesses are galvanized by higher purposes that serve, align, and integrate the interests of all their major stakeholders.
Principles like these are what lead WF to offer thoughtful programs for employees like community service during working hours instead of during an employee’s free time, or outstanding health care benefits, or opportunities to travel and meet those farmers who are part of the Whole Trade program.
Despite being in a heavily-unionized industry, no WF is unionized, precisely because their workers feel respected, fairly compensated, and listened-to. They’ve also established an internal “salary cap” whereby no employee at WF can be paid more than 19 times the average salary of all the workers of the company. Indeed, on p. 94, Mackey refreshingly echoes John Bogle’s book, Enough, by saying, “It is a mark of emotional and spiritual maturity to be able to say, ‘I have enough.’”
Perhaps what John does best in this important book is show how interconnected his product is — not just with his own company, which is obviously involved with food — but with all of us. How we manage our bodies truly affects how we manage others. “Our company is in a never-ending dialogue internally and with our customers, trying to strike the right balance between being so restrictive that we no longer have a viable business and so permissive that we are no longer true to our core value concerning healthy eating” (p. 79).
The book is also chock-full of anecdotes about other conscious businesses and how they lead the way and provide examples for all of us. There’s even an episode in which Mackey shows how an open dialogue with a protestor at an Annual Meeting led to drastic upgrades in how WF sourced and graded meat, and even led to Mackey becoming a vegan.
We are undergoing revolutions in how we live, commute, and work. This book is one of the manuals that explains why that’s happening and how you can profit, both personally and financially, by doing business the right way.
Stephen Heiner is a writer and entrepreneur living in Paris, France. If you like what he wrote here and want to see more, click on his Patreon page, and if you feel like it, drop some coins in his tip jar. Also, since this is Medium, please click “recommend” if this post contributed to your intellectual life or feel free to respond with major disagreements. He’s looking forward to engaging with you.
