1. The Future of Business Is Integral
Contributors: John Mackey and Ken Wilber
John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, needs no convincing about the merit of an Integral
Approach to business: "I'm certain that Integral Business is a higher synthesis... that it is
going to grow at an extremely rapid rate... and that it will out-compete anything else out
there." If the success of Whole Foods is a sign of the more integral endeavors to come—
and we think it is—the future looks very bright indeed! For a sneak peak at the politics
of tomorrow, and the business models leading the way, listen in to this hopeful dialogue
about the future.
John Mackey
John Mackey is Chairman and CEO of Whole Foods Market, a $4 billion Fortune 500
company, the largest natural foods retail chain in the world, and a “Fortune 100 Best
Companies To Work For” for 8 years running.
Whole Foods is a $4 billion Fortune 500 company, the largest natural foods retail chain
in the world, and a "Fortune 100 Best Companies To Work For" for 8 years running. It
donates generously to charitable causes locally and globally, and, among other
environmentally-conscious actions, has purchased enough wind energy credits to offset
100% of the electricity used by the entire company.
This is rather extraordinary. By fostering health and growth in so many important
domains of human experience—all quadrants (I, We, It, Its)—John has been leading
Whole Foods in an intuitively integral direction. John comments to Ken, "Your maps
have helped me to make explicit what's been tacit, and conscious what's been
unconscious." Ken points out that he is simply providing ways to describe a territory
that John did all the work to get to. Integral consciousness is a wave of development
appearing in individuals across the globe, and Ken's AQAL (All Quadrants, All Levels)
approach is an attempt to provide integral pioneers with a comprehensive map of the
territory they are already living in. Not to mention that, according to Ken, preliminary

2. studies have shown that people functioning from an integral wave of consciousness are
about 10 times more efficient than previous waves of consciousness.
“In the past, when the leading edge of any culture has reached 10% there’s been a kind
of tipping point that occurs—which is what happened with the French and American
revolutions, and the revolution of the 60’s. Now 10% of the population is about to reach
2nd tier....”
Wow! Sign me up for that. But, um, what are these waves of consciousness John and
Ken keep mentioning? In his book Integral Psychology Ken compared and contrasted
over 100 developmental models and noted that, whatever disagreements there might be
between them, they shared the unmistakable drift towards higher and higher levels,
stages, or waves of complexity and integration. From this research Ken distilled the
concept of altitude, which itself has no content, but is more like a yardstick of
consciousness by which one can judge the development of various human capacities.
This is the "all levels" part of AQAL. See the graphic below for a brief synopsis of
some the altitudes discussed here.
The defining characteristic of 1st-tier waves of consciousness is that they all believe
they have the only fundamentally correct way to understand reality. 2nd-tier waves of
consciousness, on the other hand, understand that all levels of consciousness are
important and, in fact, necessary.
So why does all this matter for integral business? Because an integral business helps
people at every stage of development be the best they can be at that stage (healthy
translation). A happy employee is a productive employee, so it is truly a win-win
situation. People at amber often feel secure in accounting, people at orange often love
the challenge of sales, people at green often feel comfortable in human resources, and so
on. Contrary to the critique that stages of development unfairly pigeonhole people, this
kind of understanding can help people flourish in the roles that they would chose for
themselves. And because Integral Business recognizes the transformative impulse in
human beings, people are always invited to step into their next level of growth and
fullness—something a 1st-tier organization could never offer, because a 1st-tier
organization can't appreciate any level other than its own.
John and Ken go on to explore the fascinating possibilities for a 2nd-tier libertarianism,
and why freedom without responsibility isn't actually free.
We invite you to come find out why both an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Of The
Year, and a philosopher endorsed by Bill Clinton, agree: the future of business is most
definitely Integral....

3. Altitude is a measure of development in both culture and consciousness, indicating the
degree of developmental unfolding of such qualities as organizational complexity, depth
of consciousness, and the number of perspectives one can take.