Conscious Capitalism

The central idea of the book is solid and there's a lot to be liked about the win to the 6th way of running a business. The point being caring about everyone related to the business, not just pursuing the profits. Everyone being: customers, employees, suppliers, investors, community, and the environment. Making decisions with all these parties in mind will create a better and more sustainable business.

But all this is based about constant self-praise in the form of Whole Foods being the best of the best. Which would be fine if the subtitle of the book was “and how we implemented it in Whole Foods”. But it's not. It's saying it's about business and it's “heroic spirit”. There's also a lot of hand-wavy cherry-picked statistics trying to prove his points which just leads to a lot of face palming and screaming in the void while reading.

All in all, I agree with Mackey - capitalism isn't great but it's best we got so far. The main problem is pursuing profit for profit's sake. Or growth for growth's sake. Conscious Capitalism tries to give an alternative view and persuade you that this is the way of all the great companies and that all others will fall in line and follow this model eventually. This is where we disagree since I see the future as far more bleak.

It's a “Whole Foods is the best” book camouflaged as business book. It's not bad, but feel free to skip it and read Let My People Go Surfing which is more honest about what it is and also provides you with more actionable ways to run your business.