"Be a sponge" is the key to being a great leader, says Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel. It's why he spends so much time on the road

Jason Buechel had two major hurdles in his way when he stepped into the CEO role at Whole Foods in 2022. He was taking over from a big personality in co-founder John Mackey, an entrepreneur who had been in the role for over four decades. And Jason had to guard and grow the company’s unique spirit, while also meeting the needs of its parent, Amazon.

In this week’s This is Working, I talked to Jason about what has enabled him to keep Whole Food on the right track and his lessons learned. The big takeaway for me: Get as close to the ground as possible if you want to find the real secrets to growth.

Check out the video and podcast, and here.

Some favorite bits:

He says that when a company gets big, you have to push leaders out of HQ — and then work to get on-the-ground insights distributed

“One of the things that we did last year after we rolled out our new vision was a roadshow. And this roadshow involved every single one of our stores, facilities, and offices being visited either by myself or another member of our executive team.

“[An earlier trip] was eye opening for us and for me. Not only was I able to learn so much about some of the opportunities we had, but this is where we can help cross-pollinate some of the best things that we're seeing across the company. And going through this, every single one of our stores [now] has a better understanding of where we're going as a company, how their role is going to fit into it, and we're able to address questions, concerns that our team members had by having that direct connection.

“Now, we made the group who's traveling a little bit larger, so we're having all of our senior leadership, our vice presidents and above all have assigned stores that they're visiting, and even for our vice presidents, each one of them is actually spending several consecutive days working in the store side by side with our store team leaders so they can have a better understanding of how a store operates day to day….

"And part of their responsibility is taking those experiences back to their team and sharing those out. My hope is through a lot of this work, not only are we becoming a more efficient company, but we're actually serving our customers better.

“I was just in a store two weeks ago in, actually two stores, Santa Cruz and Capitola, and we probably made a merchandising decision that was wrong for those two stores but was right for about 50 other stores. This was an example where the mechanism allows the store to say, ‘You know what? This is why the new decision didn't work,’ and then we go back and quickly help change this so we can best serve our customers.”

He says that even after an acquisition, you can preserve a culture — but you have to know what is really key to the culture

“Whole Foods has been a company now for nearly 44 years, and so we've had a long-standing culture. It's interesting. As the subsidiary, we're a company that's been around longer than our parent company. One of the things, I get this question all the time, well, a lot of times, people think about, ‘How do you keep the culture separate or how do you keep your own unique culture?’ One thing that I look at culture is it has to be ever-evolving, just like our business.

One thing that I look at culture is it has to be ever-evolving just like our business.

“We deliberately spent time right after getting acquired by Amazon and said, how can we look at the parts of the culture that are really important that we want to maintain? What are some of the things that we have to evolve on? Let's study Amazon's culture and say, ‘What are some of the things that we can learn immediately and start to put into place?’ This has been an ever-evolving process…

“Don't look at culture as being a stagnant thing.”

He says he's had to learn how to talk differently as CEO

“People take things very literally when you [ask questions], and even though I was in the role of COO, as an example, spending a lot of time in our stores with our operators, I'd ask questions, ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Or giving a suggestion on something. And now it's like I say it and everybody's like, ‘Okay, we got to go move. Jason's asking for this now.’ And so I have to be very careful about explaining why I'm asking the question or why I am sharing a particular part of feedback.

When you're in this role, you do sometimes get treated differently. And so one of my goals is to make sure my team members know I'm just like anybody else. I'm part of our company and our jobs are mutually the same. Our goal is to make sure, ‘How do we best serve our customers and our communities?’ And I want to be part of the problem solving process, just like I want our team members to have input as we are helping shape the company.”

He says the best advice he can give everyone is to be open and eager

“Be a sponge and be flexible.

"And by ‘be a sponge,’ I mean learn from all around. Don't just [say], these are the responsibilities I need to do, and go and execute them. Learn the reasoning behind the why.

"Learn things that may not be part of your job today, but could be part of your job tomorrow. Learn from peers. Learn from team members in different departments. And be flexible. When there's a challenging day going on in the store and another team needs help, be flexible to be able to go and support that.

“Being a sponge is going to help you, not just help yourself, but ultimately you then pay it forward — doing the same thing as other folks come for advice.

Being a sponge is going to help you, not just help yourself, but ultimately you then pay it forward — doing the same thing as other folks come for advice.

“A lot of folks see moving to the next job, it's got to be this perfect line, and the reality is is that's not how a lot of careers happen. I can say even for mine. I never would've guessed after graduating college or even my first 10 years into working, I would've ever been in this role. Even when I joined Whole Foods Market, I never imagined I would've stepped into the CEO position.

“Being flexible and ultimately making sure you're learning from your surroundings, I think is some of the best advice I could give.”

I'd love to hear from you how you've seen getting insights from the field work best — how do you gather them and how do you distribute them (or where has it gone wrong?)

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On LinkedIn’s video series, This is Working, I sit down with top figures from the world of business and beyond to surface what they've learned about solving difficult problems. See more from Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, CVS CEO Karen Lynch, PwC’s Bob Moritz, Merck KGaA CEO Belén Garijo, Athletic Brewing CEO Bill Shufelt, AI leader Fei-Fei Li, former US President Barack Obama, filmmaker Spike Lee, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, cosmetics legend Bobbi Brown, F1’s Toto Wolff, and many more.