Whole Foods Strategic Leadership Essay

Whole Foods Market started off as being Safer Way natural grocery store in 1978. However they were not

Collectively they make decisions on strategy, finances and any other of the organization's affairs. John Mackey, CEO, admits he's not the only person in the organization calling the shots. "I've made a valuable contribution to Whole Foods, but so have thousands of other people," Mackey said in an interview with the American-Statesman. "That's one of our secrets, is the fact that we do really have a team approach to the organization, an empowerment approach." (Gaar, 2010)

Whole Foods has to pay close attention to its remote, industry, and operating environments to make sure that they choose the best directions and actions available for its organizational structure and internal processes.

I agree with Whole Foods Market’s CEO about no business staying undefeated and on top forever. Every business will go through a period of expansion and a period of contraction, this is known as the business cycle. There’s many times a business will get big and expand and then begin to lose profit and must close stores and reconsider their strategies to not go out of business. An example can be Macys, the store is popular for selling high brand and luxury perfumes, brand clothing as well as clothes designed by celebrities. They’ve been on top for many years, but there are many stores that now sell perfumes, such as a specific perfume store or even a retail store like Walgreens. There gets to a point that consumers take notice and even

In 1978, a twenty-five year old college dropout named John Mackey and twenty-one year old, Renee Lawson, had borrowed forty-five thousand dollars from their friends and family. They wanted to open the doors to SaferWay, a natural foods store in Austin, Texas. However, the couple was booted out of their apartment when the owners discovered they were storing the stores food products in there. They decided to live at their store, because it was zoned as commercial. It was a little difficult at first because there was no shower stalls there; however, they bathed in Hobart dishwasher, which had a hose attached. Two years down the road, the couple decided to merge with the owners of Clarksville Natural Grocery, Craig Weller and Mark Skiles. This resulted in the development of the original Whole Foods Market, on September 20th, 1980. Not even a year later a terrible flood washed out approximately four hundred thousand dollars of their inventory and equipment. Unfortunately, the store had no insurance at the time. Customers and neighbors had voluntarily joined the staff of nineteen to repair and clean up the damage. Creditors, vendors, and investors all provided breathing room for the store to get back on its feet and it re-opened only 28 days after the flood. In 1984, Whole Foods Market started expanding out from their roots in Austin, moving to Houston, Dallas, and then New Orleans. While continuing to open new stores from the ground up, they fueled rapid growth by

“Collaboration, teamwork, and communication”, make for a better work environment (Oberoi, 2013, para. 10). “The Whole Foods culture is premised on decentralized teamwork” which is supported by collaboration and furthered by communication (Fishman, 1996, para. 7). However, collaboration, teamwork and communication do not work in the absence of trust. Accordingly, Whole Foods looks to create an environment in which employees trust one another and the organization as a whole. Whole Foods created their culture to oppose the usual bureaucratic style which is mistrusted by many. Instead, Whole Foods relies on teamwork to support their success. In large companies, like Whole Foods it is easier for employees to get lost in the shuffle. The company believes the formation of smaller teams to be more intimate and more likely to result in a “familial” feeling, trust is easier to accomplish, and communication flows freely (Mackey, 2009, para. 12).

In order to achieve success, the first thing any business needs to consider is a proper, strategic business model, which is a concise description of how a business intends to generate revenue. Whole Foods' business model consists of maintaining the motivation along with the happiness of their team members which leads to efficient innovation and customer service. This process allows Whole Foods to give back to their communities, resulting in motivated investors, high quality products, and good value. Whole Foods appears to follow a strong business model, yet the key to their success relies on their competitive advantage in the market place. Any company is capable of holding a competitive advantage as long as the company or product provides

One of the most successful companies of recent memory is Whole Foods, the all-organic grocery store that caters to customers who are concerned about the 'sourcing' of their foods. A cornerstone of Whole Foods' success is its use of team leadership to enable the organization to fulfill its functions and mission. This paper will evaluate how Whole Foods uses teams to advance its interests and create a positive corporate culture.

There are currently 1.3 million people living in Munich, and their population consists of 23 percent immigrants (Official Website for the

Whole Foods Market (WFM) is a leading natural and organic food supermarket founded in Austin, Texas by four local business people: John Mackey and Renee Lawson Hardy, owners of Safer Way Natural Foods, and Craig Weller and Mark Skiles, owners of Clarksville Natural Grocery. WFM opened its first store in 1980, they staffed their first store with only 19 workers, the store was an immediate success partly because at the time there were less than half a dozen organic stores in the entire country.

This case provides an excellent illustration of how this relatively small retail chain can thrive in the face of a dominant market leader. In addition, the key is positioning away from the strengths of the competition, creating your own unique and distinct position. Successful in doing this Whole Foods has brilliantly identified a retail segment of shoppers who are not interested in the items that prevalent mass discount retailers deliver.

Whole Foods has been adaptive in fitting its competitive strategy to its situation. The store first grew to prominence by being a stylish antithesis to the crunchy mom-and-pop organic grocery stores, providing a relatively normal but

The quote stated shows a shift in management where local managers and regional bosses have a limited say in some decision of the stores. This shift to centralization will affects all aspects of a business. When it comes to finance this shift has had a positive impact to this department. The main reason for the shift is lowering Whole Foods costs so they can save money. Some of these cost include salaries because Whole Foods will be laying of many employees since their services would no longer be needed because most of their job will be done from Whole Foods headquarter in Texas. In addition, since certain manager will be the ones ordering the products and the expenses of the store it will be easier to maintain control over the budget of the store.

Whole Foods Market has expanded by a mixture of opening its own new stores and acquiring already existing stores. Today WFM does not follow this strategy, instead their motivation is to open its own large stores. This is due to noticeable sales differences in larger stores as opposed to smaller stores. WFM locates these newer stores in upscale areas of urban metropolitan centers and high-traffic shopping locations. Not all WFMs are isolated structures; some are located in strip malls. WFM offers a larger selection of natural and organic foods than any other grocery store. WFMs marketing expenditure is extremely small. They spend a measly 0.5% of their revenues on advertising. Their chief marketing strategy relies on word-of-mouth. WFM strives to meet or exceed customer expectations. This is so customers receive competent, knowledgeable, and friendly service and become advocates of WFM. The employees here have a decentralized team approach for store operations. This is so some personnel, merchandising, and operating

Whole Foods Market began in 1970 as a local supermarket. Over the past 31 years, Whole Foods Market has grown from a single store in Austin, Texas, to becoming one of the worldwide leaders in providing consumers with natural and organic foods. They have grown to over 300 stores in both North America and the United Kingdom. (Whole Foods Market, Inc., 2011) This report examines the chief elements of the strategy that Whole Foods Market has put into place. Also, it uses past financial data to provide an assessment of the condition of the company going forward. Those assessments include recommendations of future actions, along with concerns I have about the way the company is currently operating and some difficulties that may be on the way.