Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel on the Trials and Opportunities of Inheriting a Visionary Leader's Legacy

0:00When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins.

0:35Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes.

0:58Welcome to Harvard Business Reviews, the new world of work. I'm Adi Ignatius, Editor-Chief of HBR. Each week on this show, I interview a CEO, a thought leader, or somebody else who can inspire and educate us on the changing dynamics of the workplace. Our viewers come from all over the world, and they work at everything from Fortune 500 corporations to fledgling startups, from family businesses to nonprofits. The aim of our show is to provide insights for everyone as they navigate this transitional moment in how we organize ourselves in the business world. Today's episode, this is the final episode of the season.

1:31Ten weeks have gone quickly. Time goes quickly when, I don't know, you're my age. We have another great guest, Jason Bickel, the CEO of Whole Foods. I'll come back with a proper introduction for him in just a moment. But first, let's hear from our good friends at KPMG, who have been our sponsors for this season of The New World of Work. At KPMG, it's our people who make the difference for our clients. Talented teams leveraging the right technology to uncover insights that illuminate opportunity. Ready to make the difference together?

2:26Thank you. Be sure to check out our flagship podcast, IdeaCast, available wherever you get your podcast. And you can watch previous episodes of this show on YouTube or right here on LinkedIn and Facebook. So my guest today is Jason Bicol, the CEO of Whole Foods. He has been at the iconic supermarket chain for 10 years and became its CEO last year, taking over from co-founder John Mackey. We'll talk about the challenges of succeeding a larger-than-life executive, about what it's like to be a subsidiary of a giant like Amazon.com, and about how Whole Foods is coping with changes in the business environment, from climate change to hybrid work and more.

3:09So, Jason, welcome. Hey, Adi. How are you doing today? I am fine. It's really glad to have you on the show. Let's just jump right in. Let's start with your transition to CEO. It's always interesting to me and I think to our readers how a founder CEO transitions to the next generation of leadership. So love to hear you talk about that challenge and what you've tried to bring to that role. Yeah, well, one of the fortunes I had was working with John over the course of nine years and had about an 11 month time frame to do our transition. And so it was a great opportunity for me to be able to sort of jump into the role.

3:49I had a lot of great support from John where he really wanted me to help take on some of those responsibilities over the course of the 11 months. So I was prepared when my day was to step formally into the role. You know, stepping into shoes like that is also, you know, a really difficult process. You know, for our team members, you know, John was our CEO for 42 years. And ultimately, that's what they knew. And so for me, it was really important to connect with our team members, make sure that we could provide a vision and that they understood the elements of Whole Foods Market, our culture, our core values, our higher purpose.

4:25They were going to remain intact. And, you know, my job was to help take those responsibilities and support us being able to keep Whole Foods and the important elements intact. So HBR, we love to give people practical takeaways. So, you know, you're not the first and you won't be the last to succeed.

5:10and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes. A CEO, an iconic CEO who's been in place for many years. What's your advice to people who are in your role and coming in? What have you learned from the process that you'd like to share? Well, one, I think it's important to understand the voice of the team members. Like, what are they looking for in that transition and what's important for them?

5:51You know, for me, I took an opportunity over those 11 months to do something we call the whole conversations tour, which gave me some great insights for what was on the mind of our team members. And in some cases, they had fears, you know, with John's retirement of, you know, are there going to be major changes to our culture or our quality standards? What are things going to look like, you know, going forward? And so our stakeholders, whether it was suppliers or customers, community partners, I think it's important to understand the voice of all of those stakeholders as you're making the transition.

6:27I think the other part I would give advice on is, you know, making sure that you're not just trying to be that leader. You know, for me, John and I, we lead in very different ways, and that's why we were so complementary and working together. So I think it's also about being authentic to yourself and at the same time making sure that you're supporting the company and where it needs to go. So for our audience who's watching this, if you have questions of your own for Jason, please put them into the chat. I'll try to get to some audience questions later. You know, Jason, your path to CEO, I think, is not typical.

6:59Maybe no one's is, but maybe yours in particular isn't. Can you talk a little bit about your past and, you know, your life and career and how it ended up in this role? Yeah, so I've had the opportunity to work in retail since 2000. My first set of experiences really came through consulting. I worked for Accenture and had an opportunity to work with a lot of leading retailers and grocers, both here in the U.S. and around the world. And for me, it was sort of that passion I had in working within the retail space. And that career allowed me to connect with several executives at Whole Foods Market, our former co-CEO, Walter Robb, and CFO, Linda Flanagan.

7:43And as they were looking to hire a new CIO or CTO, they had reached out to me. I'd provided some names of some clients that I thought would be good folks to go for the job. And they reached back out and said, why aren't you putting your name on? And we'd really love for you to consider joining Whole Foods. And so I came to Austin, spent two days here, and just really had an amazing appreciation for the fact that the higher purpose and core values just weren't words on a wall. They were being lived out day to day. And for me, that was sort of the awakening of this is the right place for me to go work and spend the rest of my career.

8:25And as I joined Whole Foods, I was responsible for technology as well as our digital businesses, so helping stand up both our delivery and pickup businesses, which we hadn't yet launched. And during that timeframe, I also helped look at ways for us to establish some organizations and support practices we didn't have before, like our first operations support team. And as I spent more time at Whole Foods, I picked up additional responsibilities in areas like team member services or what other companies would call HR, and eventually stepped into the chief operating officer role in January of 2019.

9:02team. And going through that role really helped prepare me in taking the next step up to the CEO position. So I was thinking about your past even before that. I mean, when I first got in contact with your staff, they said, he's a cheese guy. You have to understand that. Can you talk about that a little bit? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, I've had a long connection to food. I've been gardening since I was seven. My dad actually. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more.

9:42Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes. I was a cheesemaker. Both of my My parents grew up on a dairy farm, so I was in rural Wisconsin.

10:23And so just have an interesting connection to our food systems and couldn't be happier to have the opportunity today to be in a role where I can help influence and support our food systems for future generations. So I want to ask you about what it means for Whole Foods to report up to a giant, in this case, Amazon.com. What does that mean? What does that mean to you and your role or to the company to report up to a big holding company like Amazon? Well, I think we are very privileged in a number of ways of having that. First and foremost, one of the things that we've been really excited about over the last six years is we're really focused on the long term of Whole Foods market and being able to have the support of Amazon, providing us with capabilities that allow us to serve our customer in the most amazing ways possible.

11:17And whether it's through technology or other services, being able to help create great customer experiences is one of the things that Amazon has just been so helpful for us as Whole Foods Market. Also, we're helping, you know, redefine what is grocery going to look like in this space.

11:36Jason Buechel:And so having a parent company that has resources and expertise that we can plug into and utilize to support Whole Foods is really important. And I also appreciate the same things where we're able to be Whole Foods and so be able to maintain our culture. I mentioned earlier, you know, we still have the same higher purpose and core values. And so while we're part of Amazon, it's really a complementary relationship where we bring the very best of what we can offer. And we're able to plug in and leverage the very best within Amazon. Yeah, look, I think we have emotional connections to the brands that we like.

12:14And I'm curious, what do you say to people who love the Whole Foods brand and its brand promise, but don't feel the same emotion toward Amazon? Well, I think in some cases it's helping those customers understand some of the benefits that they can use that Amazon can support them as well. You know, whether it's, you know, providing a quicker checkout in one of our stores using Amazon One or ultimately some of the support and work where we're collaboratively looking at ways by which we're going to help meet our environmental and sustainability commitments. And that's something that a lot of our customers care about and something we're able to leverage as Whole Foods in supporting our core value around the environment.

12:56So what do you see as Whole Foods' biggest challenges? Is it simply to grow as quickly as possible, to add new stores? or do you think about it in some other way? Well, for us, it's really figuring out how do we expand our reach and our impact? So one of the ways we'll do that, obviously, is adding new stores, but it's also finding new ways that we can serve customers. One of the things that we launched earlier this year is the ability to have items directly shipped to our customers' homes through Amazon. So we currently have over 800 products available within our exclusive brands, our 365 brand as an example.

13:31Jason Buechel:and that's something that, you know, for us, we can serve more customers in new ways. We're also, you know, really focused on ways that we can help support our higher purpose in nourishing people on the planet. So for us, it's not just growth for growth's sake, but it's how do we help be the force for change? And one of the things that I'm really passionate about is regenerative agriculture as an example. And this is an opportunity that's ultimately going to allow us to take the products that we know and love today and make sure that we can continue to produce those for future generations. Yeah, talk about that, you know, for people who aren't familiar with the idea of regenerative, you know, products or agriculture.

14:11Can you talk a little bit about what that means and maybe with an example of... When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

14:45Propel Fitness Water. With Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolytes. Something that is part of your supply chain right now. Yeah, happy to. You know, this is an area where I think a lot of consumers don't understand that our current topsoil continues to lose the nutrients that it needs to produce the products that we know and love.

15:16Jason Buechel:And regenerative is about not only helping bring those nutrients back into the soil, but help to in a sustainably way, make sure that we can continue to support our soil and the broader biological environments for us to not only continue to produce the products that we know and love today, but ultimately create an ecosystem where it's not as disruptive as what we're seeing today. And for us, it's about how do we make sure that we can partner with our suppliers so they can support these practices and helping be an advocate for them. One of the things that I'm really proud of is the fact that we've already launched three regenerative products under our own exclusive brands to help take that leadership position as well.

16:00as well. One of my personal favorites is our green lentils under our Whole Foods Market brand, a great product. And it's one of the very first certified regenerative products from a private label perspective on the market. Yeah, that's great. Your strategy, if I understand it, seems essentially still to be primarily a brick and mortar one. Do you feel the need to become more of an e-tailer going forward? Well, the reality is we are an e-tailer today. And whether you are having products delivered to your house, you're picking them up in one of our stores, you're getting some of our exclusive brand products like our 365 products shipped directly

16:39Jason Buechel:to your home. We're already playing in that space. And I continue to see that we'll have opportunities both in the physical experience as well as online. And a lot of our customers like the shop, you know, through multiple different channels. And in some cases, you know, they'd like to have center of store, you know, picked for them and ready for them to pick it up when they shop the store and then look at our perimeter, whether it's picking out their own meat or seafood, interacting with our team members. In the case that are, as an example, our cheese case, a certified cheese professional being able to help, you know, choose exactly the right cheeses as you're putting together your cheese board and charcuterie plates.

17:19So fast forward, you know, not way into the future, but a year or two or three, you know, how do you think the in-store experience will change for Whole Foods customers? Well, I think we're going to continue to find ways to just help simplify and make things easier for our customers. You know, one of the things that our customers find value is our ability to help save them time. You know, in some cases, as I mentioned earlier, in delivery and pickup help support that.

17:43Jason Buechel:We want to be able to find ways that customers can find products in the store faster, how we can better provide the expertise across all the different areas within our stores so our customers can help make sure that we're supporting the amazing events and the dinners that they're helping prepare for their family and loved ones to ultimately checking out faster in our stores. And so there's a lot of things that we're making investments on where technology will support things as well as investments we're making into our team member experience to make sure that our team members can best serve our customers and help save them time.

18:18So I want to go to an audience question. This is from Holly, who's in Boston, who's asking from your experience, do you have any recommendations for how companies can best develop an internal leader to be the next CEO, including maybe external development programs? Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I'm really, really proud of is the investment that we put into our team member experience and focus around internal growth and development. We had over 11 ,000 promotions over the last 12 months, which I'm so proud of.

18:47Jason Buechel:When I look at my executive team as an example, two of my direct reports actually started in our stores part-time. Our head of operations, Bill Jordan, as an example, joined through Mrs. Gooch's, which was one of our... When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast.

19:23That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Propel Fitness Water. With Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolytes.

19:46Jason Buechel:Acquisitions that we did, he's worked across almost nearly every part of our stores, multiple regions, and now leads operations reporting directly to me for all of Whole Foods Market. One of the things that we've really done is making big investments into what we call career development programs. And we do this for our major leadership positions within the organization. Just yesterday, I was actually doing the keynote graduation ceremony for our store team leader career development program, which is really focused on helping over a six month period of time, helping make sure that our team members are ready to take that next step up.

20:21Jason Buechel:One of the things that we've done for our most senior leadership positions is help cross pollinate and have leaders work across multiple different parts of the company. And that was something that I was privileged to be part of as Whole Foods and being able to lead multiple different functions before stepping into this role. I think one of the other things that's really unique for us is both for our executive team and something we call WFLN, which is the Whole Foods Market Leadership Network, built of our 19 most senior leaders. We collectively work together across all different facets. And so folks are helping participate in work in parts of the company that they may not lead.

21:00Jason Buechel:And so for us, it's really making sure that we're working together as a team and helping make sure that we're bringing some of those experiences and expertise across our entire leadership team. I'm also really proud of the fact that 50 % of the group I just mentioned also grew up in our stores. And so that expertise of knowing Whole Foods and being able to build a career in a functional area is something we're really proud of. So let's shift gears a little bit. This is another audience question. This is from Gul in Punjab, Pakistan. And it's about hybrid work. And the question is, you know, how do you manage the fact that your frontline workers are there, need to be there full time in the stores versus, you know, let's say white collar workers who are who are able to work, you know, hybrid work from home?

21:46How do you balance that? Yeah, for us, we've done a return to office where our, we call store support team members, are required to be in the office three days a week.

21:56Jason Buechel:But ultimately, many of them also have to spend time in our stores or in our facilities helping connect with team members. One of the things that's been really important as part of our vision is something I call store centricity and making sure that every single one of our store support team members has a connection to our stores. We ultimately have actually included it in something we call our job dialogue process, which is part of our performance management process, and setting the expectation, and ultimately having team members talk about the things that they've done over the course of the last 12 months to connect with our stores and what those experiences have taught them.

22:31Jason Buechel:We've also built some programs around some of our senior leadership and other leaders that we have within our store support group, and actually pairing them with stores and partnering up with our store team leaders and finding ways that we can better support our stores and ultimately making sure that we can bring those experiences where our store support team members really understand everything that's happening day to day in a store, what it takes to lead a store, and how do we help improve our team member and customer experiences in the work that we do. Well, so to build on that, you used the phrase before, the theater of retail, and I love that term.

23:05And I'd like to know more about when you think about the Whole Foods experience. What is your theater of retail?

23:12Jason Buechel:Yeah, for so many of our customers, they're coming to Whole Foods as sort of an oasis to get, you know, out of the hectic day-to-day life. You know, one of my favorite examples of that is our Manhattan West store located in Hudson Yards in Manhattan. And, you know, you get off the busy street and you walk in the store and it's just an immediate sense of zen. And for me, we want to be able to create this oasis for customers, bring the theater of retail. We want our customers to have sensory overloads in the experiences they have as they're walking into produce, the smells that they're having, the beautiful merchandising that they're seeing, the demos of products that we're doing in the store.