John Taschek: "People Are the X-Factor in the Enterprise" Enterprise UX 2018 • June 14-15, 2018 • San Francisco, CA, USA http://enterpriseux.net

1. John Taschek, SVP, Market Strategy at Salesforce
jtaschek@salesforce.com, @jtaschek

3. My World: Customer Focused
Analyst
Relations
Competitive
Intelligence
Strategic
Influence
Relations
Pricing and
Packaging
Voice
of the
Customer
B2C B2B
Scale

4. Goals For Bringing More Humanity to Technology
1. Start with a person first
2. Make empathy our top value
And then tell the story….but there are obstacles
The Goals Are Simple

5. Obstacle 1: Scale is Hard
VS

6. We are now competing on many fronts

7. Growth is great, but scaling is hard
Salesforce Headcount:
FY08-FY18
Source: Salesforce public financial reports

8. Obstacle 2: I Have Personal Issues
Vocal hatred of
meetings
Introvertedness +
passion
Feeling of
isolation

9. Meetings
10. I would rather drink hot tea through my eyelids
9. Let me shoot chlorine into my fingernails with a syringe and I'll be there in 5 minutes
8. I'd rather be the janitor of a vomitorium
7. I'd rather become a Jackson Pollack painting
6. I'd rather inhale elephant dung .. than go to your meeting
5. I'd rather gag on a cactus
4. I'd rather spoon with a flatulent hippo
3. I’d rather have an appendectomy by a four-fingered baboon
2. I would rather be gnawed on by a buck-toothed rattlesnake
1. I would rather have a proctology exam in an earthquake simulator.

10. Dehumanization
Obstacle 3: Scale Introduces Systematic Dehumanization

11. Why Does Scale Impact Humanization
There are processes inherent in scale
1. Contractual agreements
2. Compliance issues
3. P&L Goals
4. Cost Controls
5. Layers of People Who Don’t Touch Customers
How can we achieve success without dehumanizing?

12. Before Solving Issues, First Define It
The Digital Humanism Manifesto is based on three principles:
Start and End With People
Embrace Serendipity
Give People Space

13. Identify Goals for Rehumanizing
Maslow Hierarchy of Needs

14. Realize that Scale Flips the Hierarchy
Your job has been taken over
Job security is at risk
Interaction more difficult
Process takes over esteem
Agency is removed
Maslow Flipped

15. Your Idealism about Your Career Will Change
Adapt to Career Ambitions
Attribution: Jon Husband, Wirearchy - http://wirearchy.com/

16. With Scale, Company Culture Must Adapt Humanism
“I’d Rather Be Known More For Bringing Humanity
into the Tech World Than Anything I’ve Actually
Done”

17. Separated fact from emotion
Deprioritized the hierarchy
Use communications as inclusionary versus exclusionary
Established trust through transparency and reality
Examples: Competitive intelligence losses and wins (transparency)
Analyst Relations Reports (anti-Salesforce)
Directional statements (Commoditization)
The Org “Structure” Itself
Solution 1: Resisting Systematic Dehumanization
Adapt to Career Ambitions

18. And Environment * Time
1920
s

19. 1980s

20. Airlines

21. Solution: Adapt/Reinvent Taylorism
1909 - 2018 The Future
Use the scientific method to
determine the most efficient way to
perform specific tasks. Avoid intuition
and common sense
Elevate intuition to be a peer of the
executive team
Match workers to their jobs based on
capability and motivation, and train
them to work at maximum efficiency.
Encourage new thinking.
Align to goals but realize that the most
efficient behavior is not always best.
Monitor worker performance and
ensure that they're using the most
efficient ways of working.
Monitor organization to ensure that
your customers have the best
outcomes
Make managers do less work so they
can focus on strategy.
All managers are individual
contributors

22. Solution 2: Make Sure Humanism Is Part of Your Alignment
Vision What do you want to do?
Values What’s most important about that vision?
Methods How do you get the job done?
Obstacles What challenges, problems, and issues might
stand in the way?
Measures How will you know when you've succeeded?
1999
2018

23. Solution 3: Change the “Metrics” for Team’s Success
Commonly Accepted Metrics Our Model
Efficiency Success of Customers
Interactions Relationships with Customers
Reduction in Cost
Maximize Opportunities With
Customers
Career Growth
Individual Impact Based on
Customers

24. What Did I Do? Random Anecdotes
Intuition - Data - Efficiency - Accuracy - are all part of a cycle.
They are not mutually exclusive
Hire (and embrace) the misfits. Create an environment of misfits
Make efficiency less important than relationships and trust
Highlight Customer Issues (Internal and External)

25. How Did I Flip the Hierarchy?
1. Untiered Analyst Firms
2. Untiered Roles
3. Untiered Channels of Communication
Examples:
Didn’t believe that one firm was better than another
Didn’t think that ideas only came from the top down
Felt information should be free (as in freely distributed)

26. What Do You Want?
What It Feels Like What I Want

27. “There is no true measure of the cost of doing nothing.
But do it anyway.”

28. 2018

29. Salesforce Core Values
Trust
Communicate openly and deliver the highest level of service.
Customer Success
Focus on customer success to drive mutual growth.
Innovation
Consistently deliver new technology that empowers Trailblazers
to innovate.
Equality
Respect and value a diversity of people.

30. Does What We do Work?
Doing Well and Doing Good
#1 World’s Most
Innovative Companies
Best Places to Work
for LGBTQ Equality
#1 The World’s Best
Workplaces
#1 Workplace for
Giving Back
#1 Top 50 Companies
that Care
The World’s Most
Innovative Companies
#1 The Future 50

31. Your Five Key Takeaways
1. Identify Your Customers. Promoters. Detractors. Internal and External
2. Elevate the Counter-Intuitive Nature of Misfits
5. Humanization is ironic and necessary. Create Your Own Narrative
3. Don’t worry about your next meeting; worry about the two meetings that
will follow
4. There often isn’t good or bad in an organization. There is just “is”