I strongly believe the business of a business is to improve the world.
Interpretation
Businesses should focus on making a positive impact on the world.
Marc Benioff emphasizes the idea that the primary purpose of a business goes beyond profit-making; it should strive to contribute positively to society and the world at large. This perspective encourages companies to take responsibility for their actions and work towards improvements that benefit not just shareholders but also the wider community and environment.
In practice
In a keynote speech about corporate social responsibility.
Once you know what you want and what is important for you to achieve, also define the values associated with it. What is important? That is something a lot of entrepreneurs pass by too quickly. For us, the things that were important were, No. 1, customer success. Nothing is more important to us than making sure every customer is successful in our service.
The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.
I don't look at business as a zero-sum game. I don't. I've never seen it play out that way in our industry, and I think you innovate and you add value, deliver value back to customers, and you get value back from the world.
Although I loved working on technology - I've always been a computer geek at heart - my professors encouraged me to get a real-world job working with customers.
The only constant in the technology industry is change.
The antidote to inequality is equality. The question is how do you achieve equality? I believe that, for business, which is where I can speak, we have to shift from shareholder maximization to stakeholder maximization.
If you want to invest in us, we believe customer number one, employee number two, shareholder number three. If they don't want to buy that, that's fine. If they regret, they can sell us.
Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.
If your goal is anything but profitability - if it's to be big, or to grow fast, or to become a technology leader - you'll hit problems.
Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.
Conscious business.. business that is conscious of inner and outer worlds.. would therefore be business that takes into account body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. Put differently, conscious business would be mindful of the way that the spectrum of consciousness operates in the Big Three worlds of self and culture and nature.
Social media requires that business leaders start thinking like small-town shop owners. This means taking the long view and avoiding short-term benchmarks to gauge progress. It means allowing the personality, heart and soul of the people who run all levels of the business to show.
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