Somehow I came across an old Ralph Waldo Emerson passage today that reminded me of the concept of vision: vision for life, vision for business, vision for the outcome of each and every little thing we do each day that affect so many people in the end.

I posted the full passage here

It is definitely worth a read.

Often the term vision, especially in business, is misunderstood. Visionaries in business are not those who can predict the future…there is no magic ball. You don’t need to be able to predict the future to be a visionary and to lead people in the right direction. You simply need to have a vision of what you want or more importantly what your customers want. Then surround yourself with people who can help you get there.

Great men can have great visions. No man can carry them out alone.

I find the whole situation with Whole Foods co-founder and CEO John Mackey to be both extremely entertaining and disturbingly bizarre at the same time.

If you are not familiar with this story click here to read all about it.

Long story short is that Mackey spent 7 years posting “anonymously” on the financial message boards under the name Rahodeb (a variation of his wife’s name) about how bad Wild Oats was and how their stock was overpriced and how lame their leadership was. Interesting Rahodeb also seemed to LOVE Mackey…he is “one handsome man.”

Is this seriously reflective of what our business culture has declined to or this just an isolated incident?

Whole Foods, interestingly enough, prides itself on its “integrity” and “core values” on which Mackey says the company was founded.  I sure hope that they are not so distorted as to believe that such actions are those of a man with integrity.

To make the whole thing worse in some way, he did a really terrible job at hiding his identity.  And recently he had to come clean as…get this, Whole Foods is trying to buy Wild Oats.  I’m not sure which is worse, posting anonymous trash about a competitor for 7 years or having to admit you did it.

Back to reality I guess…oh wait, this IS reality…scary!