I read two articles yesterday. They both focus on how the long-term thinking of Jeff Bezos and  Marc Benioff inform their decision making and are well worth your reading.

Bezos is famous for ignoring Wall Street for Amazon’s first two decades.

When it comes to making the most important and the most long-term decisions, Bezos has a simple rule that’s quite useful: “Focus [your vision] on the things that won’t change.”

At Amazon, this means that everything is built around their value of customer obsession.

Benioff has a different approach to making decisions, but still based on the long-term vision he embedded in Salesforce’s culture from the day of founding.

I came back with a clear vision of what the future of the internet was going to be in regards to software-as-a-service and cloud computing. I also had a much deeper sense of my spiritual self. So I said, “When I start a company, I will integrate culture with service.”

When I started Salesforce, on March 8, 1999, I said we’re going to put one percent of our equity, product and time into a foundation and create a culture of service within our company. We’ll be creating new technology, the cloud; we’ll be creating a new business model, subscription services; and we’ll create a culture built on philanthropy.

Last month Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon and a legion of executives came out publicly against Wall Street’s short-term focus.

The emphasis on quarterly earnings, and the importance of beating estimates, is warping American business and the economy, argue almost 200 CEOs who belong to the Business Roundtable, a lobbying organization. Short-term thinking leads corporations to choke back on hiring, and to starve research and development of the spending the fuels long-term growth. The pressure of quarterly earnings is one reason fewer companies are interested in going pubic, preferring the slower growth that comes with being private than the scrutiny that comes with being listed.

Wall Street’s short-term thinking never got a toe-hold at either Salesforce or Amazon, but the reasons it didn’t created significantly different cultures.

While Benioff’s obsession culminates in giving back, Bezos’ obsession comes at a substantial cost to Amazon warehouse workers, the environment and even society.

Image credit: Scott Ellis

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

I often field questions about compensation, stock allocation and bonuses that revolve around the idea of fairness.

There have been more calls since a rise in media attention to gender pay inequities, especially focused on tech. They look at what other countries are doing, such as a recent UK law, and wonder if similar things could happen here or if someday down the line they will have to do as Marc Benioff did.

Whether the subject starts with diversity or compensation, my callers fall in two distinct camps.

• Those looking for ways to bake fairness into their company’s DNA; and
• The ones who want to cloak current unfair actions in a veneer of acceptability.

(I have to admit that listening to the second group stumble around trying camouflage what they want to do is amusing, but definitely not funny.)

Of course, it’s easiest for founders just starting, since they have no historical staff or (hopefully) bad habits, but any size organization can do it if management is determined and has the grit to follow-through.

Here are some basics actions:

• Develop core values around fairness, diversity, transparency, etc., make both values and culture public on their site, and follow-through when recruiting.
• Salary and stock offers should be based on the value and effect of the position on the company’s success, as opposed to the person you are hiring.
• Before approving compensation compare it with similar people inside and out for fairness, especially if the candidate is a woman or minority.
• Talk to others, such as Gusto cofounder and CTO Edward Kim or the folks behind the Founders for Change coalition.

The most critical factor is a willingness to pass on hiring people when it’s obvious they are assuming it’s just talk or that you should make an exception for them because they are special.

As I’ve said in the past, “If you pay your people equally when you hire and promote there won’t be a pay gap for you to erase.”

Image credit: HikingArtist

I find it amusing that of everything I’ve read from a variety of academics, consultants, and other pundits regarding hiring and retaining millennials it is Sharna Goldseker who best described it

Interestingly enough, she wasn’t talking about hiring, but about charitable giving.

Goldseker agreed and said it’s time to do away with the stereotype of millennials as entitled slackers. “What we really saw, the top three reasons for giving among these generations, they’re supporting a mission or cause that fits with my personal values, fulfilling my duty as a person of privilege to give back to society, and seeing that my contribution makes a real difference and the organization has real impact,” she said. “As these people are entering the working world and having more resources, they are caring about values more than valuables, and they’re making choices in alignment with those values.”

“…care about values more than valuables.”

That pretty much says it all.

Of course, values are very much public knowledge, as opposed to a poster on the office wall, which makes them hard to fake.

Think Marc Benioff as opposed to Travis Kalanick and you can’t go wrong.

Image credit: Expert Infantry

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

If you heard only the following comment who would you think it’s about?

He was determined to succeed by any means necessary, subordinating questions of right or wrong to the good of his career and driving himself crazy with his hunger for power and control, his hypersensitivity to perceived threats to his independence and stature, and his overarching need to measure up.

Travis Kalanick? Howie Hubler? Parker Conrad?

Nope, none of the above.

What about this quote?

“It is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standard of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.”

Marc Benioff? Pierre Omidyar? Henry Ford?

Nope, none of the above.

Both the description and the quote are about the same man.

Someone lightly touched on at school, but not explored in any depth, as were those who held the same position at other times.

Certainly most of the information in the article KG shared was new to me and I’ll bet it would be new to most of you.

The person is Herbert Hoover, the 31^st President of the United States.

The book, published last year is “Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times” by Kenneth Whyte.

Read the article (if not the book); you’ll find it very enlightening.

Then choose which parts of Hoover are worth emulating.

Image credit: HikingArtist

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Ask most tech founders about role models and who they want to emulate and you’ll usually hear the same names —  Gates/Jobs/Page/Zukerberg/Bezos.

Rarely do you hear Benioff.

Granted, Benioff’s Salesforce’s revenues aren’t as high and the valuation is “only” $66 billion, but Salesforce sells no consumer products — ads are products — therefore has a much smaller market.

Revenues aside, Benioff is a much better leader and role model.

Not just a philanthropist, but an activist philanthropist who is not afraid to use his clout and get in the face of his peers.

Given the same clout, would you do the same thing?

A guy who believes a company’s concerns should go beyond its investors to include all its stakeholders, direct and indirect.

How far beyond yourself do your concerns go?

Tech’s been on the hot seat lately for a host of reasons, with gender issues front and center, especially equal pay.

Most, including the “role models” listed above, have been vocal in their promises to address the pay disparity.

Benioff, however, has put his money where their mouths are.

In 2015, his company did a salary study, and it turned out they needed to make some changes. So they spent $3M to level the playing field. A year later, they put salaries under the microscope again and found they had to spend another $3M to close additional pay gaps.

Now Benioff has pledged to evaluate salaries on a regular basis. For this and more, he was named a “Global Champion of Women in Business.”

And before you whine about not having enough cash to do that stop and think.

If you pay your people equally when you hire and promote there wouldn’t be a pay gap for you to erase.

Image credit: HikingArtist

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Bill “Badger Bill” Whyte, founder of W.S. Badger, with $16 million in revenue and 100 employees, is an excellent role model for any entrepreneur who wants to grow and run a successful, socially responsible business that treats its people fairly. His thoughts on the subject are succinct and simple.

“You can be financially successful and be a big jerk, or you can be financially successful and be a contributor to making the world better. I know which way I’d like Badger to move.”

Other great founder role models include Anand Sanwal of CB Insights and Marc Benioff of Salesforce, among many others.

However, if you are looking instead for a role model that represents the worst of Silicon Valley look no further than Evan Spiegel.

Spiegel’s boundless arrogance was on full show in the company’s first earnings call with analysts.

During the event, many analysts’ questions about the company were dismissed by Mr. Spiegel. None of the executives made a particularly impassioned case for why the business would be a success over the long term.

But what else would you expect from founders who already dumped much of their stock?

Spiegel, his co-founder Bobby Murphy and Snap’s largest venture investor, Benchmark, sold significant amounts of their stock when the company went public

Along with the current $2.2 billion loss is the whistleblower lawsuit claiming the pre-IPO metrics were inflated.

Malcolm Berko provided the best comment I’ve seen regarding all those who ignored the warnings in the prospectus, bought the stock, and are complaining.

When greed succeeds, everyone smiles. When greed fails, everyone wails.

Image credit: HikingArtist

I am not a lover of trendy terms, no matter how hilarious Dilbert makes them, and I’ve found they turn off a lot of people — from workers to bosses.

One of the newest to hit the trendy list is “agile” in all its various forms.

What became trendy agile was born 15 years ago.

The term originated in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development in 2001. It was a specific approach in a specific sector, but soon its core principles – moving quickly to build a minimum viable product, using iterative development to improve it on the go, with testing and feedback built in at every stage rather than just at the end.

Just how ubiquitous has agile become? It was used by Walmart CEO Doug McMillon last fall in a memo to employees to describe the future (and justify layoffs).

“Our customers are changing. Retail is changing and we must change,” McMillon wrote in the memo obtained by The Associated Press. “We need to become a more agile company that can easily adapt to shifting customer demand.”

Many companies talk about becoming agile and a large number of them think a quick and easy means to that end is to lay off the older and bring in the younger.

They couldn’t me more wrong. It’s not age that makes one agile, Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff isn’t young, it’s MAP.

Your MAP is responsible for how you lead, as well as the values that underpin your company’s culture.

If your MAP isn’t agile, or willing to change to become so, there is little hope that your company (or department or team) will be agile.

Hat tip to Wally Bock for pointing me to this article.

Flickr image credit: Martin Pool

By any measure Mark Benioff  runs a successful, highly profitable company.

Moreover, he runs one of the most socially responsible companies in the world.

This BI interview with Benioff captures in a short read how Salesforce is a perfect example of a founder who incorporated his values into his company.

His socially conscious approach began when he launched Salesforce as a startup;  long before it was profitable.

I view that as a critical part of my business. That’s why when I started Salesforce, on day 1, we put 1% of our equity, 1% of our product, and 1% of our time into Salesforce.org.

Where other CEOs talk, wring their hands and use media time to bemoan the problems, Benioff fixes them.

Gender pay disparity is a good example.

When he saw proof that women were being paid less he made changes to eliminate the disparity and did it without whining or handwringing.

Two women, one our head of HR and one who ran our women’s group said, “Hey, we’re paying women less than men at Salesforce.” I didn’t believe it at the time, when we actually looked at the information we were actually paying women $3 million less than we were paying men for the same amount of work, and so we made an adjustment to how we pay women.

When asked how other companies handle the issue he furnished not only the how, but also the why it doesn’t happen.

Every company has an HR system, every company knows their salaries, that’s obviously how they pay people, and all a CEO has to do is push a button and look at, “Do I pay women the same as men?” Most CEOs are afraid to push that button.

Furthermore, Benioff  sees an attitude from a few academics in the 1970s as responsible for much of today’s inequality, — in short, he doesn’t believe that that a company’s primary purpose is to maximize shareholder value.

I believe that for business, which is where I can speak, we have to shift from shareholder maximization to stakeholder maximization.

Salesforce has been ranked as one of the top innovative companies year after year for a very simple reason.

They can’t look to me for all the answers. I don’t have them, and that’s not our culture. They are coming to me with their ideas and their visions. It’s not my role to be the only visionary in town.

All in all, Marc Benioff is a superb role model, whether your company is large, small or just starting up.

Flickr image credit: TechCrunch

Everyone complains about information overload.

Playwright Richard Forman has a term for it.

“Pancake people – spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button”.

Psychologist and behavioral neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, author of the upcoming book The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, recommends retraining your brain.

“Our brains are equipped to deal with the world the way it was many thousands of years ago when we were hunter-gatherers. Back then the amount of information that was coming at us was much less and it came at us much more slowly.”

But Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff has a much simpler solution.

“I deleted my Facebook account completely. I found it was just overwhelming me. I’m only on Twitter, I’m on SalesforceOne, which is my internal one for work, I’m on email, and that’s it. And I’m limited to that. I’m trying not to take on more stuff. I was with a friend this weekend, he’s got his Twitter, his Facebook, he has his Snapchat, he’s got all these – too much.”

Of course, part of the overload is work-related, but it’s amazing how much is pure trivia driven by FoMO and/or the need to impress by sounding knowledgeable about a twist in Game of Thrones.

You are the only person who can evaluate just how necessary your various information streams are sooner rather than later.

Because even the smallest stream adds to the river in which it is oh, so easy to drown.

Then you need gather your courage, follow Benioff’s lead and shut down the unnecessary streams.

Your sanity will thank you.

Flickr image credit: Cambodia4kids.org Beth Kanter

I try to be polite, but sometimes it’s difficult.

Sometimes I just need to shut up in order to avoid telling my host that I think he is the stupidest person I’ve been around lately.

“Clay” was talking to a group of new entrepreneurs; going on at length about how brilliant he is at hiring talent for his company.

He said that knew when he should interview someone just by hearing a few basic facts, like education and general experience; no need for detailed specifics.

When he finally stopped bragging and patting himself on the back just one guy had the temerity to disagree, saying that wasn’t enough information to make such company success-critical decisions.

Clay turned and asked me to do four thumbnail sketches of candidates I knew and he would prove it was enough.

Here are the four profiles I provided.

1. BSBA, some programming in college; started in customer service and worked his way up through the executive ranks.
2. Some college; 12 years of programming and management experience.
3. Harvard MBA w/ 25 years progressively more responsible positions in consulting, sales and management.
4. MIT BS; more than 40 years programming experience in a broad array of technologies. Strong entrepreneurial bent; excellent manager.

Clay laughed and said he wasn’t surprised I included mostly “oldies,” since I was one of them.

He went on to say that he would pass on 1,3 and 4, because they probably wouldn’t fit into the fast pace of a startup. The second was a possibility, although he didn’t sound particularly aggressive.

Poor Clay, his investors won’t be pleased; he just passed on

1. Marc Benioff (52)
2. Sheryl Sandberg (47), and
3. Ray Kurzweil (68)

He did think number 2 was a possibility, although not a strong one.

But Mark Zukerberg (32) probably wouldn’t fit in.

Flickr image credit: Jon Phillips