World Economic Forum Book Club discussion

Chapter 10: Stakeholders: We are all connected to this planet

Penultimate chapter! Who has enjoyed Marc Benioff's Trailblazer? Onto Zadie Smith's Grand Union in a few days... grab your copy!

The word stakeholder is an important one for the World Economic Forum. Our founder Klaus Schwab just released a new Manifesto for Davos 2020 which outlines its importance (read more here: wef.ch/manifesto).

Marc Benioff raises it as, when he took his digital detox holiday, a crisis emerged at Salesforce. The Trump administration's immigration policy was separating families at the border, and Salesforce's employees sent an open letter to our author - "they had discovered that the US Department of Customs and Border Protection was one of our customers." They believed "we were aiding and abetting" when the reality was the program was mainly used for HR purposes. When Benioff organised a call with the authors of this letter, they asked "Can we trust Salesforce?", "Are we an ethical company?" - questions he'd never been asked. This shook him to his core. And this just adds to his point that "a company absolutely cannot thrive and proper at the highest levels when you lose the trust of any of your stakeholders."

In 2002, Marc Benioff was invited to the World Economic Forum. Here he met Klaus Schwab, who introduced him to stakeholder theory and told him "Integration is the number one word you need to think about your business. What he was saying is that the only way a company can thrive is if it fully integrates into society and into "the greater effort to build a better world". The stakeholders Salesforce works with isn't just its customers - but its employees, shareholders, partners, friends, neighbours, communities and local schools. And also, the planet.

Environmental issues have always been at the core of Marc Benioff's work - he founded Earthforce, which has dedicated many hours of volunteering, in 2013 Salesforce committed to reaching 100% renewable energy, it delivers a carbon-neutral cloud, etc.. Salesforce Tower "features the largest onsite water recycling system in a commercial high-rise building, saving millions of gallons of water". In 2016, he founded the Benioff Ocean Initiative - "a research hospital for the oceans".

"I was under no illusion that 100% of Salesforce stakeholders agreed with 100% of my decisions about how to run the company." In the end, Benioff tweeted about the immigration crisis, and donated money to the families at the border. This crisis wasn't only about the Customs and Border Protection - it was about how Salesforce's culture needed to evolve.

What did you think of today's chapter? Post your questions below!