Whole Foods and Conscious Capitalism

Here is a good Fast Company article about the struggle of companies to do good profitably. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, had some interesting thoughts:

"For those companies aspiring to become Conscious Capitalists, Mackey says there are four ways to get there. They can pursue one of four ideals -- the good, the true, the beautiful, or the heroic -- or any of them in combination. "Plato said the good, the true, and the beautiful, and I added on the heroic," ...In Mackey's eyes, Whole Foods itself pursues both the good and the heroic. And the nation's largest seller of natural and organic foods does boast many noble practices: Nonexecutive employees hold 96% of the company's stock options; 5% of the company's after-tax profits are given to charity every year; no executive can make more than 19 times the employee average; and after much criticism from activists, it has shunned purchasing meat from factory farms. "The rule is not conflict of interests -- it's harmony of interests," says Mackey, who reduced his salary to a dollar in 2007 (he still owns about $36 million in stock). "The leader needs to manage the enterprise in a way that you're creating synergies rather than trade-offs -- that's the art of conscious leadership."