{"id":273648,"date":"2022-10-20T11:46:15","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T15:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chiefexecutive.net\/?p=273648"},"modified":"2022-10-20T17:10:29","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T21:10:29","slug":"benioffs-way-a-conversation-with-salesforce-founder-and-2022-ceo-of-the-year-marc-benioff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chiefexecutive.net\/benioffs-way-a-conversation-with-salesforce-founder-and-2022-ceo-of-the-year-marc-benioff\/","title":{"rendered":"Benioff\u2019s Way: A Conversation With Salesforce Founder and 2022 CEO of the Year Marc Benioff"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s creeping up on 6 p.m., and at the very top of Salesforce tower,<\/strong> 41 floors above Bryant Park in the heart of midtown Manhattan, company founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff is having one of the more important discussions of his year. He\u2019s holding court with an elite group of Salesforce superusers\u2014\u201cTrailblazers\u201d in the company\u2019s lingo. Over spring water and finger foods prepared by Michelin-rated chefs, surrounded by a panoramic view of New York City, they\u2019re dissecting an early draft of Benioff\u2019s September keynote for Dreamforce, the 40,000-person-strong annual takeover of San Francisco that\u2019s the centerpiece of his year.<\/p>\n

From a product standpoint, the purpose of this year\u2019s presentation is the formal rollout of \u201cGenie\u201d\u2014a substantial rewrite of the Salesforce data platform that\u2019s at the heart of the $26.5 billion (FY2022 revenue) company, one that will allow for more \u201ccustomer magic.\u201d It brings drag-and-drop ease and efficiency to the customer-data revolution for companies from the enterprise scale of Ford down to midsize marketing agencies.<\/p>\n

But exciting as it is, Genie isn\u2019t what\u2019s really resonating in the room. What\u2019s really got them revved up is the idea of a \u201cfamily reunion\u201d at Dreamforce.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last time we all got together was in 2019,\u201d a young superuser in a checked blazer tells Benioff. \u201cThis is the first time we\u2019re going to be back together since then. You should make a bigger deal about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benioff nods in agreement, looks over at his head of marketing, who meets his eyes. Connection. Reunion. Family. Got it.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tiny moment that speaks to something much, much larger: While Benioff\u2019s style of business, liberally combining environmentalism, higher purpose and a Davos do-gooder tag may elicit eye rolls in jaded newsrooms and redder statehouses, it resonates like crazy with millions of his customers and employees.<\/p>\n

The Connector<\/strong><\/h4>\n

That\u2019s because, in an era of social media bubbles and deepening societal disconnection, Benioff\u2019s way\u2014emphasizing social responsibility, trust, environmental stewardship and massive charitable giving\u2014is catnip to the community he\u2019s convened. It makes them feel like part of something larger, something with meaning beyond software or nailing quarterly goals. It\u2019s fueled Salesforce\u2019s perennial presence atop best places to work lists around the world for more than a decade. And it is helping to propel one of the most incredible growth stories in modern business, a revolution that, in many ways, may come to eclipse 58-year-old Benioff\u2019s first disruption: leading software from desktop computers to the cloud.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s 78,000-plus employees\u2014up from 4,000 in 2010\u2014are part of a global Salesforce \u201cecosystem\u201d involving millions of businesses, independent consultants and app makers projected to generate $1.6 trillion in new revenue between 2020 and 2026.<\/p>\n

From 2017 to 2022, the company\u2019s net income clocked a compound annual growth rate of 35 percent, and its five-year total shareholder return is 57 percent, a performance helped by co-CEO Bret Taylor, who ascended to the job in 2021, and juiced by a recent string of blockbuster acquisitions, including Mulesoft for $6.5 billion in 2018, Tableau for $15.7 billion in 2019 and Slack for $27.7 billion in 2021.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the company pioneered the adaption of what\u2019s come to be known as the 1-1-1 model of corporate philanthropy\u2014giving away 1 percent of profits, 1 percent of equity and 1 percent of employee time\u2014annually. As a result, Salesforce has donated more than $500 million, and its employees have volunteered over 7 million hours of service time during the past 23 years. Benioff is personally one of the top philanthropists in the United States, donating more than half a billion dollars in the past decade, including $100 million in 2021 as part of his effort to plant more than a trillion trees to combat climate change.<\/p>\n

This singular combination of doing incredibly well while also doing an incredible amount of good led his peer CEOs to name Benioff Chief Executive\u2019s 2022 CEO of the Year<\/a>. \u201cFor more than two decades, Marc has been a towering exemplar of what it means to be an innovative and forward-thinking leader,\u201d says Ken Frazier, the former chairman and CEO of Merck and our 2021 CEO of the Year, who served on this year\u2019s selection committee. \u201cAs the founder and CEO of Salesforce, he consistently has achieved exceptional business and financial results for customers, employees and shareholders while standing tall in the public square for policies and principles that will foster greater sustainability, prosperity and equity within the business community and broader society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMarc created a company and helped create an industry,\u201d says Brian Moynihan, chairman and CEO of Bank of America and our 2020 CEO of the Year, and also a member of this year\u2019s selection committee. \u201cSalesforce\u2019s track record is among one of the premier companies in recent decades. At the same time, he has proved a company can deliver on profits and purpose and do it consistently. He has championed stakeholder capitalism and demonstrated its value.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018No Software\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Photos: Guerin Blask for <\/em>Chief Executive Learn more about CEO of the Year ><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The creation story of Salesforce is well known: A young, talented programmer growing up in the heart of San Francisco during the wild days of the 1970s and \u201980s, Benioff came of age as a top salesman at Oracle under Larry Ellison during the company\u2019s most explosive period of growth in the \u201990s. Rather than sticking it out for the lucrative long haul there, he quit, and with Ellison\u2019s support, started Salesforce in his apartment in 1999.<\/p>\n

For those who weren\u2019t there, it\u2019s hard to grasp how unconventional Salesforce\u2019s model was at the time. Software was something you installed via disk on your desktop PC or the realm of secretive armies of \u201cIT guys\u201d and their inscrutable, blinking, overly air-conditioned server farms. Benioff pushed for something new. Rather than buy and manage a room full of your own machines, you could simply lease his solution, a \u201csoftware as a service\u201d CRM housed \u201cin the cloud,\u201d on offsite servers his team monitored, upgraded and made easily scalable depending on your needs. Salesforce listed on the NYSE in 2004, and over the next decade, with a brash \u201cNo Software\u201d marketing campaign and a series of bet-the-company pivots, Benioff proved to be that rare Silicon Valley founder who scaled his leadership in step with the explosive growth of his company.<\/p>\n

All the while, he was pairing his desire for growth with a passion for charity, fueled by a family with a legacy of social service, including his grandfather, Marvin Lewis, a crusading trial lawyer known in San Francisco as the major force behind the creation of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. As Benioff\u2019s company grew and his personal wealth ballooned, so did his conviction that business had a more muscular role to play in society. Through his involvement with organizations like the World Economic Forum, Benioff famously advocated for a new \u201cstakeholder\u201d capitalism model, with a strong emphasis on the environment and employee well-being.<\/p>\n

Covid marked another transformational period for Salesforce. Benioff\u2014to the dismay, at times, of other CEOs\u2014was outspoken about adapting a more flexible workplace. Salesforce began practicing \u201csuccess from anywhere,\u201d allowing many employees to forgo ever coming into the office, a policy that remains in place today.<\/p>\n

But Benioff has sensed a deep desire by many in the Salesforce ecosystem to get together\u2014in person\u2014once again. He\u2019s now experimenting with the Salesforce Trailblazer Ranch. Modeled on GE\u2019s legendary Crotonville Training Center, it\u2019s a location-TBD outpost where Salesforce\u2019s culture can be imparted to new employees and renewed by veterans in multiday offsites and team meetings. How that will come together is still, he admits, very much a work in progress. Like so much else in his world, The Ranch feels experimental, unconventional, a bit ahead of its time\u2014and yet tough to bet against given the Salesforce track record, much like Benioff himself.<\/p>\n

Chief Executive<\/em> talked with Benioff in late August about his journey from startup founder to enterprise leader, the changing role of the CEO and how he stays a step ahead of whatever comes next. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a time of tremendous change, a lot of volatility. How do you lead differently in times like these? What are the keys? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Number one\u2014always number one\u2014is knowing what is important to you and your core values. When you have this much volatility and this much change going on in the world, when things are uncomfortable or frustrating or difficult, it fundamentally gets back to: What is the most important thing to you? What are your core values, and how are you going to operationalize those into your company or into your life or into whatever you\u2019re working on? That is more important than ever.<\/p>\n

At Salesforce, it\u2019s trust, its customer success, it\u2019s innovation, it\u2019s equality, it\u2019s sustainability. The values are your true north. When we went through the pandemic, one reason that we were able to succeed and accelerate was we just kept coming back to our values over and over again. What is it that we really want to achieve here? What is our number one thing that really matters to us?<\/p>\n

You\u2019re one of the few people who have gone from founder to enterprise CEO. You\u2019ve had to continuously learn. How do you learn? How do you go to each level of leadership? <\/strong><\/p>\n

We talk a lot about beginner\u2019s mind. The Japanese have this great word, shoshin<\/em>, this idea that everything has to be looked at anew. When we look at the pandemic, that was a moment where we all had to kind of say, \u201cWhat\u2019s really happening here, and how are we going to go forward?\u201d Things that applied before no longer applied. The way we worked didn\u2019t apply. The technology we were using didn\u2019t apply. For a lot of CEOs, they were able to succeed because they started with a blank piece of paper and said, \u201cOkay, now what am I going to achieve?\u201d People who tried to do what they were doing before found that turned into a series of obstacles for them. It prevented them from moving forward.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons I enjoy going to Kyoto, Japan, a couple of times every year and going to those gardens is because it reinforces to me, are you working on your beginner\u2019s mind? Are you taking time? We even bring that into our business at Salesforce, where we have Zen monastics come in and guide our executives through a beginner\u2019s mind meditation. We just had one last week. We had 500 executives come together. We had two monastics there. A lot of our executives have never meditated before, but I think in today\u2019s world, they need that kind of grounding. They really need that ability to put the stress, the anxiety, the fear away to get a little bit clear about what is it that they\u2019re actually trying to achieve right now.<\/p>\n

How do you carve out the time to do that? <\/strong><\/p>\n

A meditation practice has really paid off for me as CEO. Because I had that before I even started the company, it\u2019s paid off for decades where I\u2019m cultivating my beginner\u2019s mind. I\u2019m trying to encourage my executives and my company to do the same thing.<\/p>\n

At the start of every year, we write something called the V2MOM, which answers five questions: Vision, what is it that we want to achieve for the year? Values, what is the most important thing to us, in priority? Methods, how are we operationalizing those values? What are we actually doing? Value by value, how are we actually creating that into the business? Obstacles, what is preventing us from achieving each one of these values? And measurements, how do we know that we have succeeded? What are our KPIs?<\/p>\n

Those five simple questions are remarkably difficult for an organization or, sometimes, for an executive. And it\u2019s going to change. When we went through the pandemic, all of those answers changed. So, you have to be ready to shift and change also. That\u2019s one reason why you need to be developing a beginner\u2019s mind, so that when you ask those questions, you\u2019re not just repeating the same answers over and over and over again, that you\u2019re trying to come up with something new.<\/p>\n

You have spectacular people on your team. How do you put those A players in place, and when do you know to make a change?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In terms of management teams, different managers and different executives have different capabilities at different levels of the business. As the business scaled, we have had four or five CFOs, four or five heads of sales, four or five heads of technology, four or five heads of marketing, four or five heads of every major function in the organization, because different people are needed at different levels.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, somebody can go all the way from the beginning of the company to where we are now. I\u2019m an example, and my cofounder is an example, but not every person is going to be able to move in that kind of scale. So, that\u2019s something that you just have to have your eyes open for. A lot of founders hold onto their management teams too long, or aren\u2019t willing to hire quickly enough or fire quickly enough. In today\u2019s world, hiring fast and firing fast become more important than ever.<\/p>\n

Founders sometimes get tripped up by feeling loyal to the people who were with them at the beginning even when they\u2019ve clearly outgrown the position. Any advice to CEOs in that situation? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to have loyalty, in our friendships, in our marriages, in our relationships. In business, loyalty also matters. But realism also matters. Being able to look and say, \u201cIs this person really going to get me to where I want to go?\u201d If they\u2019re not, you don\u2019t necessarily have to fire them or remove them from the company. Maybe they can be repositioned.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not uncommon for a head of sales who is managing 10 or 20 people, or 100 or 200, or even 1,000 sales executives to not be the right person to manage 10,000 or 20,000 sales executives. That doesn\u2019t mean they can\u2019t be a great chief customer officer. It doesn\u2019t mean they can\u2019t still motivate and inspire a team, but maybe their role on the team can change. That\u2019s extremely important. You have to have that flexibility when you\u2019re looking at people.<\/p>\n

How do you engage with people to make those calls? How do you know when it\u2019s time to make these kinds of changes? <\/strong><\/p>\n

You have to trust yourself. If you lose the trust in yourself, then you\u2019re in trouble. If I don\u2019t trust myself and I don\u2019t have trust and exude trust, then I\u2019m going to have a problem. This has to be the highest value in the organization, because if you do end up with an executive where people don\u2019t trust them, or they feel like there\u2019s a problem, that\u2019s an issue.<\/p>\n

We all have had that situation where all of a sudden there\u2019s an executive in the organization who people don\u2019t trust. There could be an integrity issue. There also could be a substance abuse issue. There could be lots of things where all of a sudden people are like, \u201cI am not able to trust this person\u2019s ability to guide us or lead us or make a decision.\u201d This is the moment where you have to come in and make an immediate change.<\/p>\n

Can you tell us about the Ranch? <\/strong><\/p>\n

The thing about the Ranch idea was that it was clear to me that people still need to get together, but they were leery about coming to the office for whatever reason. We\u2019re in the middle of a pandemic. So, I said, \u201cWell, maybe they\u2019d like to go to the Ranch.\u201d Of course, there was no Ranch. It didn\u2019t exist. Nobody understood what I was talking about. And I said, \u201cYes, we\u2019ll have a Salesforce Ranch. And it will be amazing and magical, and people will be able to go there and have an experience.\u201d Everyone was ready to go. Of course, it didn\u2019t even exist.<\/p>\n

The Ranch is a code word for \u201cwe\u2019re coming back in a new way.\u201d It doesn\u2019t have to be someplace in Montana. It just has to express to everybody that everything\u2019s changed, and we\u2019re going to come back together in a new way.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that we aren\u2019t successful or productive in a pure digital environment; we are. In some cases, people will never come back to the office. That\u2019s just how it is. Some CEOs get upset when I say that. We\u2019re not coming back the way we were. We have to come back in new ways.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve gone through the Great Resignation, the Great Relocation. Ultimately, this was the renegotiation between us and our bosses and ourselves and our families. What makes you happiest? Where do you want to live? What do you want to do? What are you doing with your life? This is a very powerful moment for everybody. Everybody had a chance to look in the mirror and say, \u201cWhere am I?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why you saw a lot of CEOs leave their jobs in the last few years. Their renegotiation with themself was, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not in a place where I want to be, so I want to make a change.\u201d When you look at that, then you can say, \u201cOkay, what are some of these other areas now that we need to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the world, we need to look outside and say, \u201cWe need, I would say, a regeneration of our planet.\u201d That\u2019s what inspired us around the idea of planting a trillion trees. These things are extremely important right now, that we have to keep looking at how we\u2019re getting to the next level. It\u2019s a re-creation.<\/p>\n

Is some of this about competing to hire more talented people?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely. You have two kinds of CEOs. Those who are giving mandates: \u201cYou must be in the office four days a week, that\u2019s how it is.\u201d Or reasons: \u201cWe need to be in the office for these five reasons, because we\u2019re doing professional development, we\u2019re launching this new product, we\u2019re mentoring our young executives.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you can\u2019t articulate your reasons, your mandates are not going to work. They\u2019re going to work against you. You can see now the number of employee letters that have gotten created because of mandates. You have to be aware that it\u2019s a different environment, and how you\u2019re communicating with people has to be different.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just here. I\u2019ve been in Australia, Japan, Europe. I\u2019ve been throughout the United States. It\u2019s a little bit different everywhere, but it\u2019s remarkably similar in that this has changed everybody.<\/p>\n

You led one of the biggest revolutions in technology, the move to the cloud. Where do you see technology going in the years to come?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s becoming more than just the fabric of how we operate. We don\u2019t even know when we\u2019re using technology in a lot of cases. That\u2019s also the scary part of technology, that it\u2019s more intelligent and more automated and more real-time. That\u2019s where you can see that certain countries have very significant surveillance operations now. That is not where we were with technology only a few years ago. I recently landed at the airport from another country, and the customs officer who came in on the plane just had a camera. They didn\u2019t even know my passport number, and they knew who I was. We\u2019re on a new level with technology. We\u2019re not going back.<\/p>\n

It fundamentally is changing everything, and it\u2019s also why values matter. We\u2019ve seen how certain companies, especially in social media\u2014and I\u2019ve spoken about this to exhaustion\u2014have basically put their values aside to increase their monetization. They don\u2019t care about the fundamental interaction with the consumer or what they\u2019re doing with the consumer. In foreign countries that maybe don\u2019t have the same kind of watchdogs that the United States has, they don\u2019t realize the kind of shenanigans that have happened from these social media companies.<\/p>\n

On the positive side, we have the ability to be better educated, healthier, more connected to our friends and families. Today, you can go in and have a scan of your heart. You will know the exact health of your heart. My father did not have that opportunity. He didn\u2019t know what the health of his heart was until his doctor said, \u201cYou need to have a bypass operation.\u201d Everybody has that story in their family from our generation. But in the future, I don\u2019t think that will be true. People will know more about their health in real time. They\u2019ll be able to tune their meds. They\u2019ll have the ability to live longer, because we\u2019re using technology in new ways.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve been at the vanguard of a school of thinking that says, businesses should be a force for good. In the decade to come, how do you see the role of business changing? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Business is the greatest platform for change. This is a fundamental thought that permeates our whole company. We manage for all of our stakeholders, not just our shareholders. These are core values of ours. We don\u2019t use Milton Friedmanism. We\u2019re using the idea that, yeah, shareholders are important, but employees are, customers are and our community is. Public schools are important, and the planet is a key stakeholder, which is why we\u2019re a net zero company today, why we build products to help companies become fully sustainable. This is extremely important.<\/p>\n

Some of our best leaders in the world today are not in government. They\u2019re in our businesses, and we all know that. They don\u2019t want to go into government because they don\u2019t want to be thrashed around with a bunch of nonsense. But these leaders need to be empowered and enabled to improve the world.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been pushback though\u2014some people have branded it \u201cwoke capitalism.\u201d What do you say to that? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I understand how people can misinterpret that. What they don\u2019t realize is that companies have these assets called employees in them. And in today\u2019s world, with technology, if you\u2019re not listening to your employees, you\u2019re going to have a very serious problem as a CEO. People call it woke capitalism right up to the point where I\u2019m not actually listening to my employees when they have a serious problem.<\/p>\n

[In 2015], our employees in Indiana were upset about a law that was being passed that was discriminating against their LGBTQ community. They asked us to talk to the governor, Mike Pence, and say, \u201cPlease change the law,\u201d and he did. But when we first did it, it was like some revelatory thought that we should be able to say, \u201cPlease don\u2019t discriminate against our employees. They\u2019re upset.\u201d But if I don\u2019t advocate for my employees\u2019 well-being, then who will advocate for them?<\/p>\n

Maybe this isn\u2019t the traditional role of the CEO, but it will never go back because employees are going to hold their CEOs accountable for their values and also for taking care of them. My job, fundamentally, is to have my employees\u2019 back. It\u2019s not to support any one particular group or to advocate for any one particular belief or any of that. It\u2019s just, \u201cDo I have my employees\u2019 back?\u201d It\u2019s going to make them happier, more successful, and more productive in my organization.<\/p>\n

But if [your] employees don\u2019t think you have their back or they\u2019re afraid, then you won\u2019t have the company that you want. Your employees have to feel like you\u2019ve got their back. With so many crazy presidents, mayors, governors, elected officials all over the world, employees need to know that companies\u2014who have tremendous resources\u2014that there\u2019s some button that they can push and say, \u201cHelp me.\u201d<\/p>\n

If they don\u2019t feel that, they\u2019re not going to stick around in your company. They\u2019ll find a company that is that. It\u2019s not woke capitalism. It\u2019s just paying attention that you have many stakeholders. If you don\u2019t realize that, then you\u2019re blindfolded as a leader.<\/p>\n

I heard a political leader, I won\u2019t tell you who it is, but a significant one, recently saying, \u201cWell, companies should stay away from ESG.\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, that\u2019s interesting right up to the point where our employees don\u2019t agree with you, because then I\u2019m not going to be able to hire and recruit and have a company. Our employees want to belong to companies that are taking care of the environment, that are practicing the right things for society, that are doing mentoring in schools, that the governance is happening in the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t about right or left, or it\u2019s not about any political belief. It\u2019s fundamentally about what kind of company you are building. Are you building a company that supports your key stakeholders, like your employees and your customers? You go down this elevator right now and walk out on the sidewalk and look around. Are those not my stakeholders? If my employees think that I don\u2019t even care about the people on the sidewalk, who are right outside our building, then they know for sure I don\u2019t care about them. Somehow Milton Friedman convinced us of the wrong thing. It\u2019s not only about shareholders. It can\u2019t be. If you do make it that, you can be around for a little while, but you\u2019re not going to be around for hundreds of years.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure CEOs call you and ask for tips on this. What do you tell them? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I talk to CEOs of the largest companies in the world all the time. Especially when they get into trouble, they call me first. What I tell them is exactly what I\u2019m telling you. Reconceptualize your relationship with your employees, number one. Number two is your communities. When they get out there and they say, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not going to talk about it,\u201d or, \u201cThis isn\u2019t how I look at business,\u201d they abstract themselves as CEOs, they disassociate themselves from their employees. If they feel like they\u2019re separate, when they don\u2019t feel like they\u2019re connected to everybody or everything, that\u2019s when they\u2019re going to get into the most trouble.<\/p>\n

You mentor CEOs. What\u2019s your best advice on how CEOs can school themselves for what\u2019s coming?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It comes back to the beginning, the first thing we talked about, shoshin<\/em>, beginner\u2019s mind. Good for that CEO who does call me and says, \u201cI am running one of the largest companies in the world, one of the most well-known brands. I\u2019ve been in this company 40 years. I worked my way up to be the CEO. I think something\u2019s not right. Help me.\u201d What\u2019s your situation? \u201cWell, I seem to have a problem where I received this letter, saw a news article, or a board meeting is being called because I said something I should not have said.\u201d I say, \u201cWhat is it that you said?\u201d In all cases it\u2019s that they forget that they are connected to everybody else, and everything is connected.<\/p>\n

When a CEO reaches that pinnacle of their career, and yet they actually think they are not part of a total ecosystem, then my job is to hook them back up. That\u2019s it. That\u2019s what I do.<\/p>\n

I have had to navigate a lot of complex situations as we\u2019ve grown this company from an idea to almost 100,000 employees. I\u2019ve gone through all of these crazy things that can happen to you, maybe not everything, but the vast majority. What I find is that when I\u2019m talking to CEOs who are in trouble, it\u2019s because they\u2019ve lost that connection.<\/p>\n

The CEOs who will never have that problem are the ones who come across almost as priests, as rabbis, as monastics. They are people who maybe seem a little more spiritual, have a little bit more of a religious ethos about them. They\u2019re very impressive, these leaders. It\u2019s interesting. In a lot of cases, I talk to them and their brothers and sisters actually have gone on into religious areas. Maybe that\u2019s part of it; their family had values that never let them get disconnected.<\/p>\n

This is the \u201cdo unto others.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

It can be<\/em> do unto others, but ultimately it\u2019s not just<\/em> do unto others. It\u2019s ultimately to realize that we\u2019re one and we\u2019re connected. When you lose that thought, then you\u2019ve lost the whole thing.<\/p>\n

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About the 2022 Selection Committee<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The<\/span>\u00a0Chief Executive\u00a0of<\/span>\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0Year<\/span>\u00a0was selected by a committee\u00a0of<\/span>\u00a0distinguished peer\u00a0CEO<\/span>s.\u00a0The<\/span>\u00a02022 committee consists\u00a0of<\/span>\u00a0Ken Frazier, (former\u00a0CEO<\/span>, Merck; 2021\u00a0CEO<\/span>\u00a0of<\/span>\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0Year<\/span>) Brian Moynihan\u00a0(chair and\u00a0CEO<\/span>, Bank\u00a0of<\/span>\u00a0America and 2020\u00a0CEO<\/span>\u00a0of<\/span>\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0Year<\/span>),\u00a0Marillyn Hewson, (former chair and\u00a0CEO<\/span>, Lockheed Martin; 2018\u00a0CEO<\/span>\u00a0of<\/span>\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0Year<\/span>), Adam Aron\u00a0(president and\u00a0CEO<\/span>,\u00a0AMC Entertainment),\u00a0Carmine Di Sibio\u00a0(global chair and\u00a0CEO<\/span>, EY Global),\u00a0Dan Glaser\u00a0(president and\u00a0CEO<\/span>, Marsh & McLennan),\u00a0Fred Hassan\u00a0(former chair, Bausch & Lomb; partner, Warburg Pincus), Tamara Lundgren\u00a0(president and\u00a0CEO<\/span>,\u00a0Schnitzer Steel),\u00a0Robert Nardelli\u00a0(CEO<\/span>, XLR-8),\u00a0Tom Quinlan III\u00a0(chair, president and\u00a0CEO<\/span>, LSC Communications),\u00a0Jeffrey Sonnenfeld\u00a0(president and\u00a0CEO<\/span>,\u00a0The<\/span>\u00a0Yale\u00a0Chief Executive Leadership Institute).\u00a0Ted Bililies, Ph.D., chief talent\u00a0of<\/span>ficer, managing director, AlixPartners, is\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0exclusive adviser to\u00a0the <\/span>2022 Selection Committee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Salesforce founder changed the world by ushering in the cloud computing revolution more than two decades ago. His latest disruption may have an even bigger\u2014and more enduring\u2014impact. \u201cWe\u2019re not coming back the way we were.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22997,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[81,871],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ceo-of-the-year","category-leadershipmanagement"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBenioff\u2019s Way: A Conversation With Salesforce Founder and 2022 CEO of the Year Marc Benioff<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Salesforce founder changed the world by ushering in the cloud computing revolution more than two decades ago. 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