DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

FastCompany’s overview of Whole Foods and John Mackey’s management style is really interesting. Corporate anarchy and organic produce… a winning combination!

The company had a written “Declaration of Interdependence“… It had a set of written core values (“satisfying and delighting our customers,” “team-member happiness and excellence”). And most striking of all, even for a small company, it had a set of quirky management rules that made Whole Foods an odd but effective workplace.

Each store had a book in the office that listed the pay of every employee for the previous year. The book was available to anyone — and was especially valuable if you were promoted or if you relocated, and wanted to see how your pay compared with your colleagues’. The pay book, surprisingly little used, set a tone of what Mackey called “no secrets management.”

Every store was divided into about eight functional teams: You were hired to the seafood team, or the prepared-foods team, or the cashier/front-end team. But you didn’t just get hired. You got hired provisionally. After four weeks of work, the team you had joined voted whether to keep you; you needed a two-thirds yes vote to join the staff permanently.

One more teaser quote…

Says Doug Greene, founder and former editor of Natural Foods Merchandiser, the 25-year-old trade bible of the organic- and natural-foods business: “If you look back 100 years from now, history will show that Whole Foods will be in the top-five companies that changed the world.”

The article also confirms that the “Whole Paycheck” meme is national.

(Seen at Kottke.org, along with some interesting responses from the community.)