Whole Foods Market Case

1. My opinion about John Mackey’s social mission at Whole Foods as a corporate strategy is that there is a way to do business where everybody win and where all stakeholders get benefits, such as customer satisfaction, team member happiness and excellence, return on capital investment, improvement in the state of the environment and local and larger community support.

In today’s business environment, employee retention can be challenge, especially in retail food service occupations due to long and sometimes unpredictable hours, limited benefits, and growth potential to name a few. Despite the obstacles, Whole Foods Market has been able to overcome such limitations allowing employees flourish and as a result have set an industry benchmark for reducing voluntary turnover. All this has been possible because it takes more from a leader than just having a written mission statement and values in order to foster a culture that adopts and truly believes them. Mackey has been leading by example – walking the walk.

The values on Mackey’s “Declaration of Interdependence” are very important on the success of Whole Foods and I think they would be very beneficial in some other business.
Sell the Highest Quality Natural and Organic Products Available: Having a product with high quality standards that focus on ingredients, freshness, taste, nutritive value, safety and/or appearance it is important to offer high quality to their customers.
Satisfy, and Delight and nourish Our Customers: The customers are the most important part of their business. Customer satisfaction is very important to have a customer come back for more.
Support Team Member Happiness and Excellence: Working as a team/group has it benefits. The energy and intelligence of the members help bring success to the business. Having a safe work environment where motivated team members can flourish and reach their highest potential, and increased communication through team member forums and advisory groups, and open book, open door and open people practices, makes the environment of an agreeable place to work.
Create Wealth through Profits and Growth: Profits are essential to create capital for growth, job security and financial success.
Serve and Support Our Local and Global Communities: having a high quality product natural and organic, give them the choice to look for the best for their customers, near and globally depending of the product and the quality. The best for the most important part of the business -the customers.
Practice and Advance Environmental Stewardship: It is important to give to the earth back, so it continues to flourish for generations to come.
Our Business Associates: The business world is extensive, and there is a lot of competition and complementation between businesses to have the job done. To create an outstanding shopping experience for their customers, they need to trade partners as allies to serve their stakeholders.
Balance and Integration: It is very important to satisfy all of their stakeholders, and an important responsibility is for their leadership to make sure the interests, desires and needs of the all stakeholders are kept in balance. Balance is everything to keep everybody happy.

2. Mackey’s plan for how teams operate will be effective because people tent to interact and flourish in smaller teams as part of a larger organization. This unique model allows individuals to combine talents and support one another, to be collaborative, creative and innovative. Small teams can make decisions about everything from what gets stocked on the shelves to who gets hired as a team member, and as far as the overall design of the store, giving a lot of confidence to the individuals and feeling of being a part of the company.

The idea of publicly shared performance data and its links to compensation it could be good in a certain way as a tool for comparison between stores and to be competitive. Being competitive between