John Mackey
John Mackey
John Mackeyis an American businessman. He is the current co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, which he co-founded in 1980. Named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003, Mackey is a strong supporter of free market economics, has strong anti-union views, and co-wrote the best-selling book Conscious Capitalism, which was released in 2013. He is one of the most influential advocates in the movement for organic food...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth15 August 1953
CountryUnited States of America
To me, you make a tradeoff. It might be a little bit more expensive. But you're getting a better tasting, higher quality food that's going to be better for your health and better for the environment.
The stakeholder approach to business sees integration rather than separation, and sees how things fit together.
Human beings are made up of many different values, and sometimes those values are in tension with each other.
Good leaders need to be able to connect to all of those around them. This is especially true at Whole Foods, where we have a very team-oriented culture.
I really think people should live to be 100 years old pretty much disease-free. I think that's our genetic potential.
I learned how to cook, began reading books on food. I began to understand about nutrition. It never had occurred to me that what you ate could affect how you felt. It could affect your health. It seems obvious now, but at age 23 or 22 or whatever I was, it wasn't obvious at all.
I love my cooking tools because I enjoy cooking - a Vitamix for smoothies and a rice cooker for steel-cut oats. I travel with a small rice cooker. I soak oats overnight, and when I get up, I just turn the rice cooker on, and it cooks the oats perfectly every time.
I'm very encouraged by millennials and their drive to make the world a better place.
In general, when you travel, you get into a different reality and are able to more accurately reflect on your ordinary life. Hiking does that for me.
In many companies, the person who talks the best usually gets the job. I got snowed by a few of those people over the years. I still think communication is important, but I don't think there's always a correlation between being a great communicator and other virtues that make for a great leader.
Any type of political ideology is going to have a lot of different variants of it.
Snatam Kaur is a yogini, and I find her music deeply spiritual. I feel more love and I feel more peace when I listen to her music.
Examine our every action through the lens of how we would feel if it were to become front page news.
If you have a mental model that says big corporations are fundamentally greedy and selfish and exploitative, you don't really want to have an exception to that model. It's much easier to say, 'Yes, Whole Foods has been corrupted.'