No Business Leader is Perfect

Is it unrealistic for us to expect businesses leaders to be perfect? Are we setting ourselves up for disappointment by expecting businesses leaders to flawlessly deliver every single time? As employees, customers, and shareholders are we expecting perfection when perfection is unattainable? Is that fair of us?

I’m not trying to make excuses for when businesses leaders fail us. But failure happens. No businessperson is perfect. Yet, we seem to expect businesses leaders to be perfect all the time.

John Mackey, co-founder/CEO of Whole Foods Market, messed up BIG-TIME. No doubt about it. He failed employees, shareholders, and many customers. We now know Mackey is far from perfect. But was it realistic for us to expect him to be perfect?

No business leader is perfect. NONE. Business life is a game of progress, not perfection. No business leader will ever be perfect. It’s an impossibly unattainable goal. But while that goal is unattainable, the most admired, respected, and trusted business leaders always aspire to reach perfection. They always make progressive steps to improve their decisions made and how their business connects with stakeholders. Sure, they will stumble along the way. But the true measure of a business leader is how they recover and forge ahead making progress along the way to overcome their mistakes.

Just like no business leader — no person is perfect. NO ONE. As people we also mess up BIG-TIME. We constantly make bad decisions that harm others. We disappoint friends. We betray people’s trust. We cannot achieve perfection. Doesn’t mean we should give up and not try. The most admired, respected, and trusted people I know make progress every day to improve themselves and their relationships with others. And when people see progress being made, they are willing to forgive mistakes.

Thank goodness people are so forgiving. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have any friends. I’ve pissed off enough people in enough ways to not have friends. Lucky for me, people are forgiving. I still have some friends. Lost some along the way—but the ones I still have are great.

John Mackey (and Whole Foods Market) will recover. I think employees, shareholders, and customers have it in their hearts to forgive him for messing up big-time. It’ll take time though as well as diligent, proactive, and compassionate action from Mackey and Whole Foods to make progress in earning back trust from its stakeholders.

In GOOD TO GREAT, Jim Collins says one factor that determines which companies go from being good to being great is how they deal with adversity. He says that many of the good-to-great companies he studied faced a company-defining crisis. According to Collins, what separates the winners from the losers is how they confronted and responded to the crisis …

“The good-to-great companies faced just as much adversity as the comparison companies, but responded to that adversity differently. They hit the realities of their situation head-on. As a result, they emerged from adversity even stronger.”

John Mackey is regarded as a respected and admired business leader. How he and Whole Foods Market confront and respond to this unfortunate crisis will determine if they can continue down their path in becoming a great endearing and enduring business. I think they can and will.

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This essay was repurposed from an earlier blog posting.

Comments

[mike]

Interesting. Whole Foods Market and JetBlue have been put on pedestals by the business gurus and bloggers for a long time, but now we find their leaders have warts and zits like everyone else. (I still don't think what Mackey did was that big of a deal, but it's nice to know heroes all have feet of clay.) Now, on top of Mackey's shenanigans on the internet comes news that JetBlue's CEO decided to sponsor the yearly convention of the likes of the Daily Kos -- a hate-filled lefty blog wherein the president is routinely compared to Hitler and statements like "better luck next time" are written in response to an attempted assasination attempt on the VP. So both these heroes of the blogosphere reveal they are flawed humans who make stupid decisions. It will be interesting to see how these actions are portrayed.

[Rob Stevens]

Hold on just a freakin' second. Mackey didn't just screw up, and it wasn't even just a big-time screw up. This was a calculated (and ILLEGAL) campaign designed to depress the value of a competitor to either drive them out of business or reduce the selling price so he could buy them.

There's a difference between a momentary breach of ethics (even business ethics which are arguably a bit looser) and a pattern of ethically bankrupt behavior. Let's not use Mackey in this context of how it's OK for a business leader to make a mistake, because nothing remotely OK about the deeply flawed ethical compass of this half-a-man.

So when is it OK to be less than perfect? When you have a momentary lapse in judgement, accept your responsibility, and take proactive steps to not only remedy the situation but to personally shine light on those dark places to restore faith in your company.

[johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)]

Rob ... we do not know if this was a calculative campaign to devalue OATS. Mackey started his postings long before WFM thought about buying OATS. The SEC will judge if Mackey's postings were indeed calculative.

This seems to me like a case of a CEO getting his jollies by jostling with others for seven years on an online financial message board.

[Rob Stevens]

With all due respect, John ... horsepucky. While the initial intent was not to devalue OATS, it was most definitely to defame them. They were a competitor, and he did what any politician realizes they probably need to do to win an election ... he went negative. He just did it personally under the cloak on anonymity, but the intent after reading the posts (and I read them ALL) was clear ... he wanted OATS gone. If not the old fashioned way, then he'd purchase them. And I have to disagree with you that this should have no bearing on the SEC's decision on whether or not to allow the merger ... the sale was tampered with by a principal. And some of the postings came AFTER the decision to purchase the company, so it's pretty obvious what the point was after that date, if not immediately before.

Even if you decided to give him a pass and say, well, he was just mixing it up on a financial message board, as a CEO, he had no business doing that. SEC rules are VERY clear on this point. And if he wanted to do that just for fun, why in his own industry, and against a direct competitor? Stupid doesn't even begin to describe it. Maybe the news outlets won't go as far as to say that laws were broken, preferring to wait for the SEC to make a declaration, but it's very clear to me: again, the sale was tampered with.

As BusinessWeek got totally right, Whole Foods built it's entire brand image around trust and integrity, none of which were displayed by Mackey. SEC violations aside, he simply was not acting in his own best interest or that of his company. Firing is the minimum he should get.

[johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)]

Rob ... wasn't the last Mackey/"rahodeb" posting from August of 2006? That's what the reports I've read have revealed. Maybe you've read something else since you're telling us some of these postings came after Mackey after WFM initiated the merger with OATS in late February 2007.

As you say, WFM's reputation has taken a major hit because of Mackey's horrible judgment. We will all see if the SEC determines that tampering did occur.

What we do know is that Mackey, WFM, and WFM shareholders will suffer the consequences from all this messy stuff.

[Joe Wikert]

I totally agree that no business leader is perfect. Goodness knows I've made more than my share of mistakes too...but...it was one thing for Mackey to make the anonymous posts on the Yahoo board. As stupid as it was, yes, let's just call it a mistake. The thing I'm still flabbergasted about is how he initially tried to defend those actions! Everybody does it, so why can't I? Oh please!

At that point, Mackey had to have been getting some advice from those around him. Whether it was a PR person or just his second in command...didn't any of them have the good sense to tell him, "hey, you really goofed up here...please admit your error now and let's put it behind us."? No, instead he goes on and makes a total fool of himself by trying to dismiss the whole situation. It really makes you wonder what sort of advisers this guy has surrounded himself with...

[Kurt]

I appreciate that you correctly point out that everyone makes mistakes and comes up short. These are very Christian attitudes (not exclusively, lest I offend anyone), which strikes a crod with me.

After reading the appology "statement" that you linked from the Whole Foods website, I had mixed feelings.

The request to be forgiven is very rare in statements of regret (not all such statements are appologies). As this is a brand blog, it should be encouraging to the "stakeholders" to see such a display of humility. In that humility, he will find strength.

I was also brought up to make amends with EVERYONE impacted by my wrong. His acts hurt more than just his "stakeholders". He should also appologize to his enemy, the competition whom he damaged. I can respond to some of the critism of this suggestion by saying that while no-one is perfect, we all are made to suffer the consequences of our actions. Only then is our repentance complete, and restoration of trust can be realized.

[Stephen Denny]

Mistakes of judgment, timing and luck are one thing -- I could have gone left or right, chose left, the market went right, and *poof*, I screwed up. Anybody want to buy a warehouse full of Newtons?

Mistakes of character are less forgiving. Mackey's failure is an example of the latter. You don't easily talk your way out of these.