kind of business we were. How many “normal” businesses would attract a volunteer army of customers and suppliers to help them in their hour of need? That is one of the reasons we understand so well the importance of stakeholders and the power of love in business, because they made us realize how important they were to our success. Not only would we not be successful without them, but we wouldn’t have even survived. What more proof did we need that stakeholders matter, that they embody the heart, soul, and lifeblood of an enterprise?
More Awakenings
Business can be a wonderful vehicle for both personal and organizational learning and growth. I have experienced many more awakenings as Whole Foods has grown and evolved over the past three decades. We will share some of these throughout the book. Most importantly, I have learned that life is short and that we are simply passing through here. We cannot stay. It is therefore essential that we find guides whom we can trust and who can help us discover and realize our higher purposes in life before it is too late.
In my early twenties, I made what has proven to have been a wise decision: a lifelong commitment to follow my heart wherever it led me—which has been on a wonderful journey of adventure, purpose, creativity, growth, and love. I have come to understand that it is possible to live in this world with an open, loving heart. I have learned that we can channel our deepest creative impulses in loving ways toward fulfilling our higher purposes, and help evolve the world to a better place.
We have opened this book with a recounting of some of my awakenings because that is an apt metaphor for my journey of rising consciousness in my life and work. This journey has helped me to access some fundamental truths about business that were beyond my reach earlier. I have seen the power of this wisdom at work in my own company and at other companies and have come to realize that the world urgently needs a richer, more holistic, and more humanistic philosophy and narrative about business than the one we have encountered in economics textbooks, in business school teachings, and even from the mouths and pens of many prominent business leaders.
Why We Wrote This Book
My own awakenings to higher levels of consciousness have been paralleled by the evolution of Whole Foods Market to a deeper sense of its own purpose and potential for societal impact. Looking beyond our company, I see that so much about business and capitalism that for so long has been unconscious is now becoming conscious. The most exciting but unheralded change human society has experienced in a long time may be that we are beginning to collectively awaken to the incredible potential of business and capitalism being conducted much more consciously!
My coauthor, Raj Sisodia, has gone through his own journey of seeking deeper truths about business over his twenty-eight years as a professor, an author, and a consultant to numerous companies. He has come to discoveries similar to mine by studying a number of companies (including Whole Foods Market) that are loved by all their stakeholders and have consequently become extraordinarily successful at creating both wealth and well-being. He investigated and described what made these companies special in his influential and inspiring 2007 book Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose.
Over the last five years, together with a number of influential business and thought leaders, Raj and I have pursued our shared calling of changing the way business is thought about, taught, and practiced through our work in the Conscious Capitalism movement. In 2009, Raj cofounded the Conscious Capitalism Institute, which has now merged into Conscious Capitalism, Inc. (www.ConsciousCapitalism.org), a nonprofit of which we are both trustees. Our shared passion for the extraordinary potential of a more conscious form of capitalism makes it only fitting that we write this book together.
Our primary purpose in writing this book is to inspire the creation of more conscious businesses: businesses galvanized by higher purposes that serve and align the interests of all their major stakeholders; businesses with conscious leaders who exist in service to the company’s purpose, the people it touches, and the planet; and businesses with resilient, caring cultures that make working there a source of great joy and fulfillment. We truly believe that this will lead to a better world for all of us. Together, business leaders can liberate the extraordinary power of business and capitalism to create a world in which all people live lives full of purpose, love, and creativity—a world of compassion, freedom, and prosperity. This is our vision for Conscious Capitalism.
How the Book Is Structured
In chapter 1, we provide some much-need historical perspective on free-enterprise capitalism: what it really is, how much it has helped transform our world for the better, and the challenges it faces today. Chapter 1 is also a call to adventure to you (the reader) to actively participate in changing the narrative of capitalism. In chapter 2, we expand on the idea of Conscious Capitalism, a more evolved form of capitalism and business enterprise that addresses the challenges we face today and offers the promise of a dramatically better future.
The next four parts of the book each deal with one of the four tenets of Conscious Capitalism. Part 1 (chapters 3 and 4) is about purpose: we explain why purpose is so critical, offer some generic kinds of purpose, and describe how every company can go about discovering its own authentic purpose. After that, we turn our attention to stakeholders. In part 2 (chapters 5 through 12), we discuss how conscious businesses think about each major and secondary stakeholder. We also discuss how they can leverage the interdependent relationships that exist among stakeholders, which lies at the heart of the Conscious Capitalism philosophy. In part 3 (chapters 13 and 14), we turn to the crucial issue of conscious leadership: what it means and how one can cultivate it. In part 4 (chapters 15 and 16), we discuss the fourth tenet: conscious culture and management. Chapters 15 and 16 describe the key elements of a conscious culture, especially love and care, as well as an approach to management that is consistent with a conscious culture and leverages its strengths. In chapter 17, we provide some suggestions on how to start a conscious business and offer guidance on how an existing business can move toward becoming more conscious. We conclude the book in chapter 18 by discussing how we can spread the Conscious Capitalism philosophy more broadly and more rapidly, and offer a credo for Conscious Capitalism.
The book also has three appendices. Appendix A describes how and why conscious businesses perform better than traditional businesses over the long run. Appendix B compares Conscious Capitalism with other recently proposed alternatives such as Natural Capitalism, Creative Capitalism, Shared-Value Capitalism, B Corporations, and Triple Bottom Line. Appendix C addresses some common questions and misconceptions about Conscious Capitalism.
A stylistic note: while this introduction is in my voice, the rest of the book is very much a joint effort and is in “our” voice, including instances in which we recount aspects of the Whole Foods story. In a few places, we revert to using my voice when describing episodes in my personal journey.
CHAPTER 1
Capitalism: Marvelous, Misunderstood, Maligned
In the long arc of history, no human creation has had a greater positive impact on more people more rapidly than free-enterprise capitalism. It is unquestionably the greatest system for innovation and social cooperation that has ever existed. This system has afforded billions of us the opportunity to join in the great enterprise of earning our sustenance and finding meaning by creating value for each other. In a mere two hundred years, business and capitalism have transformed the face of the planet and the complexion of daily life for the vast majority of people. The extraordinary innovations that have sprung from this system have freed so many of us from much of the mindless drudgery that has long accompanied ordinary existence and enabled us to lead more vibrant and fulfilling lives. Wondrous technologies have shrunk time and distance, weaving us together into a seamless fabric of humankind extending to the remotest corners of the planet.
