Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change

by Marc Benioff

At first, they were trust, customer success, and innovation; later, we added a fourth, equality. We also decided that no matter how big the company grew, we would always set aside 1 percent of our equity, product, and employee time for charitable causes, an initiative we call the 1-1-1 philanthropic model.

A few short years ago, I believed the chief reason Salesforce’s market valuation had risen from $1 billion to more than $120 billion since we went public in 2004 was that we had done a commendable job of running the business. But I now know the most powerful engine of our success hasn’t been our software, our people, or our business model, but rather, the decision we made in 1999 to orient our culture around values.

In a competitive business such as tech, where luring top talent can be the difference between profit and loss, it’s often something intangible—like a diverse, inclusive, values-driven culture—that determines where the best and brightest talent decide to work.

how to create a culture where doing well is synonymous with doing good in order to thrive in a world where a company is only as strong as the principles it adopts.

Doing well by doing good is no longer just a competitive advantage. It’s becoming a business imperative.

So if the central premise of this book can be boiled down to a single point, it’s this: A culture rooted in values creates value.

In business terms, Salesforce is engaged in customer relationship management, or CRM, but the service we provide is a lot broader, more essential, and more intimate than it sounds. Our software may be invisible to consumers, but inside a company, Salesforce is a vital piece of infrastructure. After all, the most valued asset of any company is its relationship with its customers, and our vision was to offer businesses of all sizes smarter, more intuitive ways to connect with those customers across sales, marketing, customer service, and e-commerce. Eventually, we began providing tools to help those companies create new processes, customize apps, analyze data, and create predictive models.

His genuine concern for customers and employees clearly rubbed off on me: That explains why “customer success” is one of Salesforce’s core values. He also drilled into me the importance of pristine accounting practices, which probably explains why trust and transparency have always been so important to me.

you can’t live your beliefs to the fullest unless you develop the imagination and the confidence to express them in bold, meaningful ways.

In years to come, the principles we live by, and how we discuss them and apply them, will be the essential function of any thriving business. Not because acting as responsible corporate citizens is the right thing to do, but because consumers demand it.

anyone who’s been in business a long time knows that relationships in business are just like those in life, in the sense that it’s all about connection, not transaction. Business is temporal, but relationships are eternal. Which means they have to be genuine, and built on common ground.

as a leader, you need to be a lot more concerned about what people aren’t saying than about what they are.

once you’ve genuinely embraced the notion of total transparency, it also becomes liberating. It starts to permeate every decision you make. It starts to lessen the destructive notion of “us” versus “them.” It overcomes and exposes hidden agendas and encourages positive, ethical behavior.

Albert Einstein: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend fifty-five minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”

If you focus the bulk of your time and effort on understanding the problems, solving them becomes the easy part.

“The most dangerous place to make decisions is in the office,” he said. “You need to make decisions where the customer is.”

When it comes to customer success, however, I have achieved absolute clarity on four points.

First, technology will never stop evolving. In the years to come, machine learning and artificial intelligence will probably make or break your business. Success will involve using these tools to understand your customers like never before so that you can deliver more intelligent, personalized experiences.

The second point is this: We’ve never had a better set of tools to help meet every possible standard of success, whether it’s finding a better way to match investment opportunities with interested clients, or making customers...

The third point is that customer success depends on every stakeholder. By that I mean employees who feel engaged and responsible and are growing their careers in an environment that allows them to do their best work—and ...

The fourth and most important point is this: The gap between what customers really want from businesses and what’s actually possible is vanishing rapidly.

no great innovation in business ever happens in a vacuum. They’re all built on the backs of hundreds of smaller breakthroughs and insights—which can come from literally anywhere.

There are three mistakes to avoid. First, never convince yourself that you know everything. Second, never refuse to search for the truth. And third, never conclude (no matter how hard you’ve worked) that the job is finished.

Here’s the thing about values: You have to use words to identify them, but they won’t create true value for you unless they turn into consistent behaviors.

That word, “culture,” has become the hottest term in the corporate lexicon, not just in the United States but all over the world. Yet the way it’s often used has always seemed problematic to me. Some business leaders seem to consign it to a glossy brochure under a photo of a carefully curated group of smiling people gathered in a well-appointed office. Others seem to think they’ve developed a culture by providing gourmet meals and installing Ping-Pong tables.

The truth is that culture is about so much more than just perks and freebies. Culture, at its core, is about how you define and express your values.

From the start of Salesforce, our culture totems have been surprisingly basic. The main one is a commitment to getting involved in a world beyond our walls. Our people want to help communities; they want a balanced life; they want to help others grow; and they want to make our customers and company successful.

The management authority Peter Drucker once laid out a simple rule that has always stuck with me: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Based on my experience at Salesforce, culture eats everything.

Mindfulness is top of mind everywhere, and its practitioners are reaping the benefits: not just for their health, but also for attention, focus, and in turn their work performance. As The New York Times reported, a new study that “brings scientific thoroughness to mindfulness meditation” conclusively showed that “unlike a placebo, it can change the brains of ordinary people and potentially improve their health.”

creating a culture of psychological safety—one in which people trust one another and don’t fear speaking their minds—results in smarter risk taking and better problem solving.

investing in training and re-skilling is a critical step in enabling displaced workers to reenter the workforce.

Today, it’s not enough to simply unplug and spend time thinking. We need to make time to think deeply. At times like these, cultivating a beginner’s mind and being open to new ways of thinking isn’t just good for the soul, it’s a survival tactic.

approaching life with a beginner’s mind is a way of opening yourself to curiosity, gratitude and learning. It means pulling out a blank sheet of paper. It means letting go of the idea of being an expert. As Shunryū Suzuki, a leading Zen Buddhist, said: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” An expert wants to know things with certainty and, in the end, to be proven right. When I approach my work and life as a beginner, I’m free to let go of the past—my attachments, fears, preconceptions, even aspirations—to open my mind and heart, be in the present moment.

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Being mindful and “present” in the moment, he says, can give everyday activities a joyful, miraculous luster. Anxiety disappears and a sense of timelessness takes hold, allowing qualities such as kindness, empathy, and compassion to emerge. It is, in short, the source of a beginner’s mind.

People, he observed, “can be victims of their success, but no one has been a victim of happiness.”

pause for a couple of minutes and just sit there, with eyes closed and mind open.

mindfulness isn’t just opening your mind or being present in the moment. It’s also a matter of listening deeply. Not just to yourself, but to others. It sounds like a simple practice, but it’s not an easy one at first, given how our minds tend to jump to conclusions, tune out what we don’t want to hear, and be influenced by our moods and biases.

“I’m going to do mindfulness with you for ten minutes.” My team of forty quickly shoved their coffee, eggs, and turkey bacon aside and got comfortable. “A lot happened in this room yesterday,” I said. “We can take all of that into our heart, and then let it go and breathe…” “Let’s all forgive ourselves for any mistakes that we’ve made along this journey and forgive others,” I added. “In the spirit of yesterday’s presentation, may we all have the ability to speak our truth and say what we really feel and believe. And if someone needs to speak their truth to you, you’re able to deeply listen. You’re able to hear it in your heart.”

V2MOM, which stands for Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures.

The V2MOM boils down to these five questions, which create a framework for alignment and leadership: Vision—what do you want? Values—what’s important to you? Methods—how do you get it? Obstacles—what is preventing you from being successful? Measures—how do you know you have it?

here. Our long-term competitive differentiation strategy for the United States is summed up in one word: immigrants.

it’s not AI, bioengineering, or any other technology that will differentiate or make a country competitive. It’s the people.

our businesses hold the potential to be the greatest platforms for change. Consider just this one fact: 70 percent of the top one hundred revenue-generating entities in the world are not nations but corporations.

We used to think of customers, employees, and communities—local and global and everything in between—as different constituencies. But really they aren’t so different after all. They’re all a part of the larger ecosystem that our companies serve. And they’re united in demanding that we not only deliver them innovative products they want, but also that we deliver on our commitment to uphold the values they care about.

Technology might be accelerating the pace of change and upheaval, but the next revolution will be characterized by something less tangible. It’s not about embracing new machines, or new technologies, or even new ideas—it’s about adopting a new mindset.

In this footrace between progress and destruction, we can’t waste time trying to pick winners and losers. Our fates are tied.

For businesses that want to thrive in this coming era, the question is no longer: Are we doing well? The question is: Are we doing good?

every presentation any Salesforce executive does around the world—whether it’s my keynote or a customer presentation or an internal meeting—starts with two words: Thank you.