Marc Benioff Discusses Lessons of the Past Year on What I’ve Learned with Arianna Huffington

Salesforce Chair and CEO Marc Benioff spoke with Arianna Huffington on Thrive Global’s “What I’ve Learned” podcast. The conversation covered what he referred to as the greatest lessons he has learned over the past year. It also covered the connection between leadership and meditation, and how he and others are creating a new future for Salesforce.

Here are selected quotes from the podcast:

• “If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the past is gone — we’re creating this new future. There are many things we learned in our digital reality we’re going to keep.”
• “We created a new vision for what our workforce will do when we come back. We will create a new Salesforce work environment.”
• “I had to create a new way to run my company. We had to enable important skills — like mental health skills. We also had to do a lot more communication.”
• “We have to get people out of paralysis like they were at the beginning of the pandemic. Now we have to unlock them and get them back to be productive, successful and moving forward.”
• “One thing that’s been an awakening for me is the changes in the environment as the pandemic was underway.”
• “Built in our DNA is the need to come together as a family, a group, a company. This is so important for us.”

The full podcast is available here.