{"id":3330,"date":"2008-09-02T16:07:33","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T16:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3330"},"modified":"2008-09-02T16:07:33","modified_gmt":"2008-09-02T16:07:33","slug":"former_housemat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3330","title":{"rendered":"Former housemates John Mackey and Kip Tindell talk about poker, retailing, and the limitations of shareholder capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justin Fox<\/a>: <\/p>\n

My column in this week’s Time is about John Mackey, the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods Market, and Kip Tindell, the CEO and co-founder of the Container Store, and their shared belief that corporations perform a lot better over time if their executives focus more on employees and customers than on shareholders.
\nMackey and Tindell go way back–they shared a house in Austin with three friends one year in the mid-1970s as they worked their way through the University of Texas on the eight-year plan. They’ve recently begun hanging out together a bit, and when I met Tindell at a National Retail Federation event in New York late last year, he invited me to come down to Texas to talk to the two of them. So I did. We met at Whole Foods’ headquarters in Austin, which is perched atop the chain’s flagship store, and we talked, and talked. Tindell is stereotypical laid-back, slow-talking Texan. Mackey is a not so stereotypical hyper, fast-talking Texan. But they seemed to get along pretty well. As for me, I mostly just stayed out of the way.
\nWhat follows is an edited transcript of the conversation. I cut some stuff out, moved a few passages around, and removed a lot of “uhs” and “you knows” (mine as well as theirs). Beyond that it’s a pretty faithful representation of what was said. It’s pretty long, too. But most educational.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Fox<\/a>: <\/p>\n

My column in this week’s Time is about John Mackey, the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods Market, and Kip Tindell, the CEO and co-founder of the Container Store, and their shared belief that corporations perform a lot better over time if their executives focus more on employees and customers than on shareholders.
\nMackey and Tindell go way back–they shared a house in Austin with three friends one year in the mid-1970s as they worked their way through the University of Texas on the eight-year plan. They’ve recently begun hanging out together a bit, and when I met Tindell at a National Retail Federation event in New York late last year, he invited me to come down to Texas to talk to the two of them. So I did. We met at Whole Foods’ headquarters in Austin, which is perched atop the chain’s flagship store, and we talked, and talked. Tindell is stereotypical laid-back, slow-talking Texan. Mackey is a not so stereotypical hyper, fast-talking Texan. But they seemed to get along pretty well. As for me, I mostly just stayed out of the way.
\nWhat follows is an edited transcript of the conversation. I cut some stuff out, moved a few passages around, and removed a lot of “uhs” and “you knows” (mine as well as theirs). Beyond that it’s a pretty faithful representation of what was said. It’s pretty long, too. But most educational.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}