Trailblazer

by Marc Benioff

  I believe that everyone in businesses—from the CEO on down to the summer interns—needs to begin thinking about giving back as synonymous with looking forward: as an opportunity to bring youth from around the globe back onto a more even playing field. These children are our future. Let’s invest in them.

  NINE

  BEGINNER’S MIND

  From a Blank Page to the Same Page

  One of the quirks of the human condition is that all of us, at some point in our lives, will surrender to the universal temptation to kick a problem down the road. Instead of making a daily, incremental effort to address it, we’ll delude ourselves—for the umpteenth time—into believing that it might resolve itself.

  In June 2018, I’d reached the inevitable end of that sequence. The problem had wheeled around and started kicking me.

  In my case, the issue was pretty simple. I was profoundly overloaded. The schedule I’d been keeping over the previous few years had drained my batteries and swallowed up most of the time and energy I should have devoted to friends and family, to relaxing and exercising, and above all, to thinking. Even at work, where I habitually juggled five things at once, I’d grown far too comfortable with being chronically impatient, distracted, and overbooked.

  I know what you’re probably thinking: They’re called vacations, Marc. Take one. And that’s exactly what I decided to do. But here’s the thing: Getting away from it all was no longer a simple matter of transporting my physical person to some intoxicating, faraway locale. The only way to take a genuine break, even from thousands of miles and multiple time zones away, was to unplug from the virtual world. Completely.

  So I decided: This would be a true vacation. That is to say, a digital detox. And not just for a day or two or even a long weekend. This time, I set my sights on two full weeks. No calls. No texts. No email. No news alerts. No Twitter.

  To make the most of this rare event (and to guard against a lapse of willpower), I tacked on two thick layers of security. The first was that Lynne and I decided to visit remote islands in the South Pacific. These places are home to some of the world’s most pristine, beautiful beaches and amazing biodiversity, reminders of why we’d come to love oceans so much (and devoted so much time and money to the global effort to protect them). More to the point, they were also spectacularly terrible places to get any work done.

  The second failsafe was simpler to arrange, but a lot harder to swallow. On the day we left, I shut off my iPhone and iPad, stuck them in an envelope, and shipped them to our home in Hawaii, where we would return after the trip.

  I didn’t ghost the office entirely, of course. In the event of a genuine, code-red work emergency, I gave Joe Poch, my chief of staff, the landline numbers for the places we’d be staying. In the unlikely event that things really went sideways, I told him he could ring us on Lynne’s mobile.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d gone cold turkey in this way, so I had a sense of how hard the adjustment was about to be. In the first few hours and days, while waiting for a flight or a seat at some seaside restaurant, my muscle memory would be triggered. I’d instinctively reach for my phone and, not finding it, engage in a few seconds of frenzied pocket patting before it would finally dawn on me. Oh, right. I’m unarmed.

  This time, however, as I settled into my airplane seat and gazed out the tiny window at the tranquil blue expanse of the Pacific, I felt relief rather than anxiety. The last few years had blown by at a madcap pace. The list of responsibilities I’d taken on had grown so unwieldy that my gadgets had become part of my essential being. Now, suddenly, I felt liberated from them, eager to clear my head and let my mind wander.

  * * *

  In 1621, a Dutch physician paid a visit to the Antwerp studio of the legendary Baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens.

  In addition to his paintings, which still hang in some of the world’s most prestigious museums, Rubens was widely regarded as a Renaissance man. He moonlighted as a diplomat, spoke seven languages fluently, and was an accomplished art collector. He even found time to exercise. To squeeze all of this into a day, Rubens was famously adept at multitasking.

  Yet even knowing this about his esteemed patient, when the physician arrived that day, he could hardly believe what he saw. The maestro stood in front of a canvas, furiously applying paint. To one side sat an assistant who was reading aloud to him from the works of the Roman historian Tacitus while Rubens simultaneously dictated a letter to another assistant. Somehow, in the middle of all that, he managed to greet the physician and engage him in an extensive conversation.

  Clearly, Rubens was an exceptional person. He had a unique mental capacity to travel down several distinct paths of thought at the same time. I’m sure he would have made a formidable CEO.

  The sad truth is that, try as I might, I’m no Rubens. I often wish I were, but the moments when I sense myself dividing my attention don’t seem particularly productive. Research suggests I’m probably right in feeling that way. Multitasking has proven to be a pretty safe way to do many things badly.

  For people who run companies, this is highly problematic. The CEO job is an endless exercise in finding new ways to squeeze work into every last corner of your waking hours. And increasingly, it’s not just CEOs who feel this way. As the pace of life accelerates, employees at all rungs of a company are feeling the pressure of the never-ending workday.

  But there’s no question that leading a business with forty-five thousand employees and scores of customers that is constantly launching new products, acquiring companies, and investing in start-ups, all while operating a giant philanthropic arm, demands a particularly relentless pace. Although I still meditate most mornings, the moment I snap back it’s off to the races. My days are packed with meetings, more meetings, product reviews, dinners, conferences, speeches, fundraisers, retreats, brainstorming sessions, media interviews, and analyst calls. It’s a job that can swallow you if you’re not careful.

  In recent years, whether by choice or necessity (or both), the demands on my time have grown exponentially—as have my priorities. Turns out that it’s incredibly difficult to scale back when everything seems urgent and important. However, my personal dedication to give back is non-negotiable: My wife and I have overseen nearly $500 million in personal charitable giving and serve as impact investors in for-profit companies we believe are doing positive things for the planet. And frankly, it’s hard not to want to always be doing even more. I suppose that Lynne and I didn’t have to decide to buy Time magazine in 2018, for example, but we believe it’s an important institution that is having a positive global impact, and ensuring the viability of a free and open press is a cause that is deeply aligned with our values. The same could probably be said about my decision to write this book.

  And while the job—and all its facets—may be exhausting, it’s not a grind. Even those things that are born out of obligation generate excitement. I certainly don’t pine for the days when CEOs clocked out at five to play golf. I love what I do.

  Here’s the thing: As the Fourth Industrial Revolution changes the way all of us engage with the world, such that time and space pose no barrier to instant communication, everyone involved in business has to understand that the definition of “doing your job” is subject to updating, too.

  Moreover, in an era when technology is upending century-old business models almost overnight, I don’t believe anyone can successfully navigate these uncharted seas without having an open mind, untethered from the past. In the future, the only way to lead a company, or even to work for one, will be to raise your eyes from the work on your desktop and take a much wider view. But you can’t reimagine the world unless you learn to shield your mind from the everyday noise and chaos. 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 is
n’t just good for the soul, it’s a survival tactic.

  In a broad sense, 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.

  If my Buddhist monk friends had visited me prior to my family vacation in 2018, they would have scolded me for my habitual multitasking, for the crowdedness of my mind, and for not being fully present in any moment. As I plodded along, my window into the world we all inhabit, the world I’d committed myself to trying to improve, had gotten increasingly fogged over. This condition is not optimal for decision making. To be effective, a leader needs to both learn from the past and project the future. But you can’t do either of those things until you carve out some time for being in the present.

  * * *

  My journey in meditation got more serious on a deserted beach in Hawaii during my lengthy sabbatical. My daily meditation and ocean swims there, often near families of dolphins, as well as my experiences in India and Nepal, allowed me to slow down and reevaluate my priorities. I wasn’t yet well versed in the notion of beginner’s mind, but I knew I needed to get rid of the mental clutter that was keeping me from being fully present and open to change.

  I’d always been curious about Eastern philosophy and spirituality, but as I immersed myself in its teachings and met many spiritual guides, it now took hold of me with a force that almost knocked me off my feet. I felt clear-headed, liberated, renewed. I became a firm believer in the power of meditation and the importance of practicing a beginner’s mind.

  I’m hardly the first business executive who’s gone on a quest or spiritual exploration and come back from such a journey as an evangelist of mindfulness. From the outside, this might seem like a frivolous self-indulgence, or some flash-in-the-pan Silicon Valley fad. But I can tell you with utmost certainty, this practice hasn’t just made me a happier, more productive human being. It has also been an essential business strategy.

  If you charted all the periods of growth at Salesforce that have resulted from some major course correction I decided to pursue, you would find that those moments were nearly always preceded by a period of time when I made a point to unplug and reconnect with my beginner’s mind.

  After all, in times of high stress or crisis, when there’s little time for careful reflection, instinct has to take over. In some ways, those decisions are the true measure of all leaders: what we do when we have to act in the moment. If you haven’t taken the time to reconnect with who you are and what you really believe, those instincts will eventually fail you when it matters most.

  In 2018, reconnecting with myself, my family, and with nature inspired me to act on a problem that had gone unaddressed for far too long. After two weeks of serene beaches, long walks, and life-affirming experiences in the ocean I love—the highlight was swimming with my family amid humpback whales in Tonga—I finally was relaxed and lucid enough to find a solution to my snowballing overload. For some time, my expert know-it-all mind had been telling me I had no choice but to continue operating like an octopus, casting my tentacles in a million different directions and trying to put my imprint on everything in my orbit.

  Only when I was able to clear my mind did I clearly see that the numbers were not in my favor. By 2018, 86 percent of the Fortune 500 were Salesforce customers, as were nearly a hundred fifty thousand additional businesses of all types and sizes. But I was still just one person, and my obligations were growing in lockstep with our business. The more we grew, the more product rollouts, marketing campaign launches, executive development sessions, speeches, and customer meetings mandated my presence—and yet I was constantly wishing I could do more. And as overbooked, overworked, and overextended as I was now, I suddenly realized, if I kept kicking this problem down the road as I had been, it was only going to get worse.

  For months, the solution had been lurking in the back of my mind, but out in those remote islands, blissfully free of distraction, it managed to work its way to the front. It was time to ask our board of directors to make Keith Block, then Salesforce’s chief operating officer, a co-CEO. Keith had already taken on some of the responsibilities for running the company. But clearly, this wasn’t enough. If I was to maintain my sanity and be the kind of leader Salesforce deserved, I would need Keith to step up and lead the company with me. This move, I knew, would not only take our collaboration to another level, it would accelerate our future growth. I would continue to focus on vision and innovation in our technology, marketing, stakeholder engagement, and culture, while Keith would be responsible for growth strategy, execution, and operations.

  By making Keith a co-CEO, reporting to the board and no longer to me, I would be giving up some control. But during those unplugged weeks my consciousness shifted and I saw that I needed to put more trust in the people around me. Continuing to carry the full weight of the company on my shoulders wasn’t helping anybody. The new arrangement would allow me to be more mindful, more present, and perhaps less chronically late for meetings. It was a dramatic move, but one that I believe will help Salesforce prosper for many years, while also allowing me to reclaim the attention and focus that my jam-packed schedule had been costing me.

  * * *

  Learning to meditate is one of the best investments I’ve made in life. I learned much of what I know about meditation from Thich Nhat Hanh, known in many circles as the father of mindfulness, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for his work in seeking an end to the Vietnam War. Thay (the Vietnamese term for “teacher”), as he is called by his followers, defines mindfulness as simply being aware of what is happening inside and around you in the present moment. He teaches that one doesn’t have to spend years on a mountaintop to benefit from meditation. In fact, coming back to the present moment can be as simple as becoming aware of your breath. 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.

  Several years ago, when Thay was staying with me at my San Francisco home, we meditated every morning at six o’clock. Of course, I cherished those moments with the world’s greatest teacher on mindfulness, but the real lesson he imparted to me during that time came during a dinner I hosted one evening for several tech CEOs.

  “Each one of us has to ask: What do I really want?” Thay said. “Do I really want to be number one? Or do I want to be happy? If you want success, you may sacrifice your happiness for it.” He then explained that he had spent the day visiting Salesforce, Google, and Facebook, and described how he had seen much “suffering.” People, he observed, “can be victims of their success, but no one has been a victim of happiness.”

  I’ve never been entirely convinced that the competitive nature of business today—and even the way we measure our success in it—are necessarily conducive to building a sustainably great company. But I’m increasingly becoming more convinced that they aren’t conducive to achieving happiness. “What is the use of having more money if you suffer more?” Thay said. “You should understand that if you have a good aspiration, you become happier because helping society to change gives life a meaning.”

  I certainly don’t expect everyone who comes to work for Salesforce to adopt these teachings, or to commit themselves to the study of meditation and mindfulness. As you read in Chapter 7, we hav
e gone to great lengths to incorporate mindfulness into our culture by integrating meditation into our wellness programs and installing mindfulness zones on every floor of our office buildings. Salesforce isn’t alone in bringing mindfulness into the workplace; other companies, including Target, Ford, Nike, Apple, and Goldman Sachs, also have seen that mindfulness training is good for their employees and, by extension, good for business. They understand that having a beginner’s mind helps them to uncover new opportunities as well as detect signs of unrest that could cripple a company’s culture.

  There are many ways to practice mindfulness, of course. You don’t have to take up residence in a Buddhist monastery or spend an hour each morning in meditation—although you definitely need to shut off the phone sometimes. Personally I make sure to take small moments of my day to connect with my breathing and take a step back from whatever I’m supposed to be doing. Sometimes when I sit down in a meeting, my colleagues will note that I pause for a couple of minutes and just sit there, with eyes closed and mind open. At this point my team knows me well enough to know that I’m not zoning out or sleeping. To the contrary, these are the moments that help me be fully present, and when my best ideas surface.

  And yet, the most important aspect of 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.