I have been reading Marc Benioff's new book and also factoring what I heard at the latest Dreamforce, Salesforce's annual conference.
At times, I felt like I was re-reading Frederic Laloux's "Reinventing Organizations" and his points about companies like Patagonia and their deep "sense of purpose". At times, it sounded like Benioff's memoir - he introduces us to his late father, Russell; his mother, Joelle; her father, Marvin and many others and the influences they had on him.
Most times though I felt like he was talking to me. The first person tone of the book brings out plenty of authenticity and comments like "Vulnerability is scary. But it also makes you stronger." I have known Marc as a technology analyst for a while and watched Salesforce take off like a rocket. He has been generous with forewords to my books and invitations to plenty of events where I have found anecdotes for my books and blogs. I chuckled even as I winced when I read how a fall had convinced him to give up on an acquisition bid for Twitter. I had a fall in a restaurant in downtown San Francisco a few days prior. No Twitter bid for me - just reminded me people over 6 feet like him and me just are a bit clumsy and have farther to fall! So, yes, I enjoyed the personal tone in the book.
What's interesting about the first person tone is over 400 Salesforce executives helped shape the book. I understand there was an elaborate process involving coded copies and NDAs. And it shows in the rich set of anecdotes in the book. Which to me was the most enjoyable part. I liked the section he calls the "Merrill Stumble" - if they had not been able to salvage that customer, it would have likely had a significant impact on thee financial services vertical Salesforce has done so well in. I liked how they creatively sold Toyota with an early IoT network called Friend, how they worked with Home Depot to think digitally about a community not just brick and mortar stores.
I also like that the book is generous by citing a wide range of his mid-level executives like Simon Mulcahy, Cindy Robbins, Srini Tallapragada, Molly Ford, Tony Prophet and many others.
You have to admire Marc for his bravery and the stands he has publicly taken on LGBTQ issues, gender pay equality, homelessness in San Francisco and many other issues. He certainly lives up to a moniker he uses in the book - Activist CEO. He was initially uncomfortable with the term, but with so many causes he has been associated with, the tag fits.
What I would have liked more of is around the other moniker he uses - Chief Answerer of Questions. I ended with many questions reading the book
a) By now, he must be a magnet for all kinds of causes. At Dreamforce his keynote was interrupted by protesters. What filtering process does he use to prioritize which causes should get his attention?
b) A question I have asked a couple of his execs and did not get a good answer. Technology is bought based on functionality, architecture, economics. As an right-brained analyst, I doggedly tell customers not to assign more than 5% of scoring to "intangibles". Should we break that paradigm and give Salesforce a lot more credit for its being a good corporate citizen?
c) As a customer advocate, my biggest "cause" is value and innovation for customers. In the last few years, I have heard from several customer execs they could use a better internal advocate for their R&D priorities especially when it comes to vertical functionality, their quest for productivity over the multi-year contracts they sign, their concern about the cost of all the SIs and other "Trailblazers" in the Salesforce talent market economy. I would love to hear more about that.
Marc is a remarkable human with a heart as big as his hug. His conferences break the mold - musicians, philosophers, politicians walk the corridors. So, anything he writes draws on his optimistic point of view and his fascinatingly rich network. This book definitely does. Highly recommend it - with the recommendation that you should let the left side of your brain savor it more than an analyst can allow.
