Marc Benioff: evaluation

Transcript context

…Speaking of big mind and beginner's mind, we have a recurring segment on this podcast that I call Fail Corner. Where it comes from is people come on this podcast, they share all these stories of, "Everything is going great. We're killing it. I've had all these successes," and people get discouraged because they hear just people only succeeding when they often fail. So I try to ask guests to share a story, and let me ask you this. Is there a story you could share when it was a big struggle for you when you're struggling when something went super wrong that you worked through and learned something from? Sure. Well, I'll just give this example. About two years ago, we went through this huge transformation in our company, and there were a lot of crazy things that were happening, but it was a little bit like we're all on this Airplane, and everything is going really well. Then, something seems to be going really wrong, and we look up front, and the two pilots seemed to be missing. Then, the one guy with the parachute jumped out of the plane, and then we're all like, "Whoa, what are we going to do?" We had to do some really crazy and somewhat destructive things at the moment to basically get the regeneration of the company. One of those things that we did two years ago was we had to architect a layoff, and we had never done a scaled layoff before. We had to lay off 10% of the company to save the company, and I didn't want to do it. I mean, it's the last thing I want to do as an entrepreneur, which is to adjust our headcount, but we were coming out of the pandemic, and we had just hired too many people. Now, it turned out that a lot of companies in Silicon Valley all did that same maneuver during the pandemic. Things were so robust in the pandemic that we were overhiring. By the time the pandemic was over, we had too many people. I mean, what did I know? It was my first pandemic. All of a sudden, my next pandemic, I'll know that there's an economic cycle associated with it and an inflation cycle too. So I learned a lot in the pandemic, and now, we're here. Now, all of a sudden, we're architecting two years ago this layoff. Then, when we did the layoff, then I'm trying to overcommunicate. I'm having all employee meetings. It's a complete dumpster fire. It's a nightmare. I'm getting bashed in the press, on Twitter. Everyone is shooting at me. It's like, "Oh, boy. " If I had a thick skin, it got a lot thicker during that moment because it's never going to go well no matter what, and it didn't go well but we got through it to the point where you're giving me these accolades, wonderful, on this podcast about where we are today financially and from a structural standpoint or now from product innovation standpoint, but that's not where we were two years ago. It was clear we had to go through a financial transformation, which included an adjustment of our head count, and we had to go through a technology, and a product, and an innovation transformation. Those two things were going to require us to do a number of things, and they were going to be painful. So we all had to go through some of that pain to get the gain that we have now, and that was not easy. I was in shock that I was going through this two years ago because I had already been running the company for 23 years. Things were going pretty well. Yes, there were a lot of failures during that period. I just didn't expect another massive issue to hit me. But guess what? There're constantly massive issues coming at you, and there's more coming, and that's the nature. of failures during that period. I just didn't expect another massive issue to hit me. But guess what? There're constantly massive issues coming at you, and there's more coming, and that's the nature. My friend, Michael Bell, is probably the best entrepreneur I know. He says, "There is no linear success." So what that means is that stock chart that you just referred to, there's no up-and-to-the-right perfect chart where it's just one line. I don't care who you are. Apple doesn't have one. No one has one. Okay? There's going to be changes. It could be economic changes. It could be societal changes. It could be the pandemic. There's no up-and-to-the-right. If you think it's only going to be about up and to the right, you're in the wrong business or you have the wrong life. Right? Hey, the monastic life is maybe more for you where you're just out living in that more of that steady state. Right? But if you want more variation where it's not steady state, the entrepreneurial life is a rock-and-roll roller coaster, and you get ready because it's going to be pounding you all the time.…

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