John Mackie is the founder and CEO of Holfoods, a company that makes whole foods. He has written several books on conscious capitalism as part of his mission to change how people think about business. His new book Conscious Leadership will be published by Simon & Schuster later this month. The author says he's trying to push back against an image of capitalists in which they are seen as greedy or ruthless.
John Mackey says the treatment for the cancer of crony capitalism is conscious capitalism, grounded “in an ethical system based on value creation for all stakeholders,” which includes not just owners, but employees, customers, the community, the environment, and even competitors, activists, critics, unions, and the media. Mackey cites Google and Southwest Airlines as role models, and pharmaceutical companies and financial corporations as anti-role models. In a surprise pivot, Mackey lays the blame for the myth of the profit motive as the only measure of value at the feet of capitalists themselves. Mackey’s goal is to write a new narrative for capitalism that asks us to care about customers and human beings instead of data points on a spreadsheet.