If you didn’t know better, you’d think today’s business world was one big Monopoly game.
Lots of corporate leaders - those inclined to be the battleship or cannon when they sit down in front of the big board - run their businesses with a cutthroat attitude and play with the company’s earnings like it’s, well, Monopoly money. This take-every-Chance-Card approach can sometimes produce short-term success, but it doesn’t guarantee against having to mortgage your Park Place and Boardwalk properties. Or going directly to jail, for that matter.
In recent years, there’ve been more than a few high profile business leaders trading in their pinstripe suits for pinstripe prison uniforms, leaving the corporate landscape littered with bankrupt companies. Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom"the list of fiscally-irresponsible meltdowns goes on and on, recounted ad nauseum in news stories and films such as Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and The Corporation.
But the terrain isn’t entirely filled with the busted and broke. There’s still plenty of green out there"the kind that demonstrates that money, growth and social responsibility can all flourish together. Take John Mackey, for example.
Mackey runs the moolah-rich Whole Foods Market. WFM is a nation-wide chain of grocery stores that sells healthy, organic products, everything from pesticide-free lettuce to steroid-free steak. And it makes bank doing it. WFM is a $3.7 billion corporation. That’s right, billion. Whole Foods is doing so well, in fact, that it made $188 million in profits over the last two years, according to the business magazine Fast Company. By comparison, Safeway lost $1 billion in the same year.
WFM even measures up against retail giants like Wal-Mart. Over a recent four-year period, Whole Foods beat out Wal-Mart in both overall and comparable-store sales growth, according to Fast Company. It manages to do so without buying from sweatshops or low-balling its employees on salaries or benefits.
At WFM, both full-time and part-time employees are eligible for stock options. Employees can also compare salaries as part of Mackey’s “no secrets” management style, which requires each store to carry salary books open to all employees.
In Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work,” Whole Foods ranked 15th, thanks to its skyrocketing stock price, which has tripled in the last three years. WFM also has been listed on the “100 Best Corporate Citizens” by Business Ethics magazine.
And if that isn’t enough, Whole Foods is now the biggest corporate user of wind power in the country, thanks to a newly announced plan to buy 458,000 megawatt-hours of wind energy credits from Renewable Choice Energy Inc.
WFM’s success is attributed to Mackey, a CEO who flies commercial and prefers to go economy when he ponies up at the car rental counter. He is also a CEO who loves Star Trek and the egalitarian ideas set forth by the United Federation of Planets. What’s not to love?
Mackey isn’t alone as an enlightened CEO. Take Bob Kierlin, founder of Fastenal, an industrial supplier of tools and fasteners. Kierlin was legendary for paying himself less than most CEOs, and for preferring budget motels"and sharing rooms when traveling on business. Though now retired, the legacy of Kierlin’s modest corporate lifestyle continues on at Fastenal under CEO Willard Oberton.
Enlightened management styles are fast catching on in the business world. Since the bottom line does not in fact seem to be adversely affected by generosity of spirit and cash. Anita Roddick of The Body Shop champions human rights around the world, Paul Hawken, of Smith & Hawken, champions environmental causes. These business icons, as well as others, see public service as an indispensable part of their business model.
The question, as most of them see it, is a sense of leadership, and achieving the right moral tone for the company. In the words of Harman International founder Sidney Harman, “The senior executive has no higher responsibility than the setting of the example and the regular exercise of his convictions.”
In becoming an enlightened CEO, you can be sure you won’t land in jail, or if you do, you’re just visiting. And your bottom line won’t be hurting, either.
Copyright 2006 Find Your Prosperity.com
For more stories, visit http://www.FindYourProsperity.com
Noel Brinkerhoff is founder of http://www.FindYourProsperity.com He has been a professional writer for over 10 years, specializing in journalism and screenwriting.
