I’ve been meaning to write about last week’s news
concerning Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey, who has put his company’s $565 million
acquisition of rival Wild Oats at risk by anonymously attacking and belittling Wild
Oats and its CEO on Internet financial forums. Writing under the handle "Rahodeb,"
Mackey also anonymously questioned why anyone would buy Wild Oats stock and that
the company was probably headed for bankruptcy—just before Whole Foods made its
buyout bid.
Beyond the idiocy of a CEO thinking it makes sense
to do something like this, there’s another management and workforce issue here.
Lynn Turner, the former chief accountant for the Securities and Exchange Commission,
hit the nail on the head when he told The Denver Post: "If it was any other
employee of the company, he would be fired. The board should fire him."
Whole Foods has gotten great press over the years,
and it clearly has gone to Mackey’s head. Now, the SEC is taking an even closer
look at the proposed merger, and the FTC has sued to block the deal on antitrust
grounds. As The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, reports: "It
appears from his voluminous postings that at times Mr. Mackey made financial predictions
that weren’t readily available from company disclosures to the markets. At the 2006
annual meeting, he told shareholders the company would hit $12 billion in sales
by 2010, doubling its sales in five years. Less than a week later, under the pseudonym
‘rahodeb,’ he was even more confident in an online posting: ‘The upgraded prediction
of $12 billion is most likely conservative. Won’t surprise me if the number ends
up close to $14 billion in 5 years.’ "
This kind of management behavior is clearly inappropriate,
probably illegally, and undoubtedly dumb and foolish. What kind of CEO snipes at
his rivals anonymously online and throws in undisclosed proprietary information
for good measure? He puts the entire company at risk with his juvenile behavior.
But more important, what kind of example does he
set for the rest of his workforce by doing this? Mackey clearly violates a number
of the core
values of Whole Foods with his anonymous blog posts. Lower-level employees
at other companies have been
fired for
much less on their blogs. Would anyone else at Whole Foods other than
CEO Mackey still be employed there if they had done the same thing?
Denver Post
columnist Al Lewis probably had the best line on the
Mackey-Whole Foods matter, when he wrote: "If someone were planning a special episode
of Jackass that starred only CEOs, Mackey would be getting a lot of calls
from Johnny Knoxville this week."
Is this worthy of a 2007
Stupidus Maximus
nomination? Let me know if you agree, don’t agree, or have an even more worthy candidate
in mind. Send your suggestions for equally boneheaded workforce business decisions
to me:
jhollon@workforce.com.
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