Do you worry about losing your stakeholders’ trust? Why should you be completely open about how your business is doing?
According to Marc Benioff, all stakeholders must have confidence in your business, its leaders, employees, and each other. The way he gained the trust of stakeholders for Salesforce was by being transparent about the company’s operations.
Read below for more details on how Salesforce keeps its stakeholders confident in the business.
How Salesforce Promotes Confidence
Benioff learned about the importance of stakeholders’ confidence by witnessing other companies undergo public crises of confidence—for example, Salesforce helped Toyota recover from the controversy that ensued when it knowingly failed to address safety issues with vehicles it manufactured, and Google suffered from mass public disapproval due to executives’ inappropriate handling of sexual harassment issues. Benioff also reasons that this confidence gives Salesforce a competitive edge—the company is more likely to attract and retain customers and employees if it has their confidence.
(Shortform note: In The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey explains why confidence is essential to a company’s health: In business contexts, trust magnifies the results of your efforts, which means you don’t have to work as hard to accomplish your goals. To illustrate, consider the financial impact of Toyota’s failure to address safety issues: In addition to hefty fines and lawsuits, the company had to invest in expensive recalls and repairs to gradually regain some—but not all—of their customers’ trust, all of which amounted to a significant strain on resources exacerbated by damaged sales potential. Similarly, the loss of stakeholders’ trust in Google following its misdeeds may have cost the company upwards of $180 billion.)
The primary way that Salesforce inspires stakeholders’ confidence is via accountability supported by transparent communication. Benioff says this often happens in relatively small ways—for example, executives livestream some of their meetings so that all employees have access to important company information, and the company has a website customers can consult to find out about the current operational status of Salesforce products and services, including any incidents or maintenance activities that may affect their availability.
(Shortform note: Covey says in The Speed of Trust that transparent communication inspires trust when it features authenticity (demonstrated by being open about uncomfortable topics), humility (demonstrated by taking responsibility for one’s mistakes), and accountability (demonstrated by clarifying expectations). Business leaders often employ these tactics in times of crisis, when stakeholders’ confidence is paramount to the company’s continued success. For example, Howard Schultz communicated transparently about his return as Starbucks’ CEO during the 2007-2008 financial crisis, a journey he details in Onward. By employing these tactics proactively and regularly—not just in times of crisis—Salesforce may build a reservoir of confidence from which it can draw later if needed.)
Stakeholders often demand accountability and transparent communication from Benioff about large and contentious issues, too. One major example of this came in the form of a 2018 open letter to Benioff about Salesforce’s deal with US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Salesforce provided software to CBP for mundane purposes, like human resources management, and employees were concerned that Salesforce software was being used to facilitate the separation of migrant children from their parents, a Trump-era border policy widely deemed inhumane. The open letter called for Salesforce to re-evaluate its relationship with CBP and impose a system that would ensure Salesforce’s software could not be used nefariously in the future.
Benioff explains that this controversy was difficult to handle because stakeholders’ confidence needs seemed conflicted. While employees needed to have confidence in Salesforce’s ethics to stand behind their work, customers needed to have confidence that Salesforce wouldn’t abandon them if their values didn’t align with employees’ values. To resolve the issue, Salesforce issued a statement clarifying that its software was not being used to separate migrant families and promising to donate to organizations helping affected families. Salesforce didn’t drop CBP from its client list, but to meet employees’ demands, it instituted an Office of Ethical and Humane Use to develop a strategy ensuring responsible use of Salesforce products.
| Salesforce’s Entanglement With a Humanitarian Crisis Former President Donald Trump’s policy of separating migrant families at the US-Mexico border involved forcibly removing children from their parents or guardians when they crossed the border illegally or sought asylum. As part of a system meant to deter immigration from Mexico, children were placed in detention centers while their parents faced legal proceedings. Over 5,000 families were separated. In time, officials found that they were poorly prepared to eventually reunite families; in some cases, reunification proved impossible. The policy sparked domestic and international outrage due to the trauma it inflicted on children and families, which many experts deemed a humanitarian crisis. Benioff alleges that since CBP didn’t use Salesforce software to facilitate the separation of migrant families, he was morally justified in retaining Salesforce’s contract with the agency. But critics of this decision argue that it’s impossible to reconcile Benioff’s supposed opposition of this policy with the ethical implications of providing any form of support to the CBP, regardless of which specific software applications were utilized in the process. Furthermore, some critics say Benioff was uninformed about the issue, while others argue that by continuing to work with CBP, Salesforce and Benioff enabled and profited from migrant family separation, since its contract made CBP run more efficiently, per Salesforce’s announcement. Benioff elected to keep Salesforce’s contract with CBP, which inspired a protest at Dreamforce and a major nonprofit’s refusal to accept Salesforce’s donation to families affected by the separation policy. Benioff stated that he felt underqualified to make this decision, which led him to hire Paula Goldman to head the Office of Ethical and Humane Use. During her tenure, Goldman has weighed in on decisions like whether to greenlight facial recognition software and how to regulate the use of generative AI. Technology reporter Kara Swisher explains that it’s increasingly common for tech companies to hire ethics experts, but notes that this approach may prove ineffective if, say, their advice isn’t heeded. |
