Marc Benioff Wants a 'New Capitalism.' He’s Right and Here Are Some Ideas to Start

"Capitalism, as we know it, is dead."

So says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, one of the most successful capitalists of all time, in an opinion piece out recently in the New York Times.

I highly encourage you to check it out. It's a challenge to business leaders and governments to create a new kind of capitalism—one that works for the people and for the planet.

It's a timely article—we all can see the catastrophic effects of unchecked, unsustainable business models. The backlash in the headlines, and often in the streets, is visceral.

And Marc eloquently captured the spirit of what I’m hearing in many closed-door CEO conversations these days. In past eras, such discussions would have been exclusively dominated by topics like competitive strategies, growth tactics, or cost containment initiatives—in short purely shareholder value issues.

None of these issues have gone away—they are just as hard as ever. But I’m seeing CEOs broaden the aperture as to what they aspire for. 

I recently attended a dinner hosted by Athena Alliance, an organization focused on driving more diversity in board rooms, that was all about company purpose. The dinner cited this statement around “stakeholder capitalism” signed by nearly 200 CEOs stating that shareholder value is no longer the only priority.

Similarly, several CEOs of public software companies invited private company leaders to an event focused on “Pledge 1%”—the idea that companies can give 1% of their company’s revenue, profits, employee time, and/or equity to charitable community efforts. Benioff’s company Salesforce.com pioneered “Pledge 1%” two decades ago.

And last week, I joined a dinner hosted by venture capital firms Accel and Salesforce’s own venture arm where Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block shared his passion for how Salesforce is taking a stand on issues outside of “shareholder value” - and why that’s still good for shareholders.

The common theme from all of this is when uber-successful luminaries like Benioff or Blackrock’s Larry Fink use their platforms to call for federal privacy regulations, equal pay, and higher taxes—on themselves no less—it raises the bar for everyone. Other big-time CEOs are challenged to a higher level of leadership. And younger CEOs like myself realize there is aircover to redefine what it means to be a “great CEO.”

But there are many problems still to be solved. Everyone is just nodding their heads in agreement to ambiguous ideas and can all CEOs actually put some real teeth behind this new idea and measure the impact over time?

Redefining Success To Success For All

For too many years, the prevailing attitude in business has been that driving shareholder value is the only goal of business. And to achieve that, somebody (unfortunately) has to lose out. Sometimes that somebody is the employees, who take the hit on pay equality, working conditions, or work-life balance. Sometimes it's the customers, who accept terrible service and being “locked-in” to business relationships that they’d rather leave. And sometimes—all the time—it's our planet that pays the price, as precious resources are exploited for maximum profit.

But the encouraging reality is that as technology gives customers more choice, we all have an opportunity to vote with our wallets in terms of what balance we want to drive in society. 

The concept of “Customer Success” has taken off in many industries, forcing companies to more proactively make sure their clients are achieving the goals they aspired to when they bought the company’s product or service. With business models like cloud computing, if the customer isn’t getting value, they’ll leave. And so the vendor only wins if the customer does.

Similarly, employee activism—from the Google walkout to teams challenging their bosses on the ethics around certain government contracts—has put most management teams on high alert. Many companies are re-imagining the dated term “Human Resources” into the concept of “Teammate Success.”

And Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives are driving pressure top-down into board rooms around the importance of sustainability as a consideration in business policy. If our communities around us aren't successful, how can we be?

The world is redefining success in real-time. Shareholders are still an important stakeholder—just not the only one. And to their credit, many shareholders and investors are getting on board with living out these moral imperatives. Success for some is becoming Success for All.

Diversity And Inclusion

In that spirit, these same underlying trends are causing companies to consider how broadly the benefits of “success” are truly being driven.

Many of us have read the headlines about the massive gap in corporations—whether in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, age, or other factors. And in the community I work in, technology, the numbers are even worse. While many efforts are underway, we have a long and important road ahead of us.

Customer Success, the industry in which I work, shows both promise as well as challenges for the future.

On one hand, the Customer Success Management profession is far more balanced from the dimension of gender equality than other parts of technology, with about 47% women and 48% men according to the most recent data from LinkedIn. 

And in some ways, this balance is because Customer Success requires an orientation of balance—aligning the needs of the company’s success in harmony with the goals of the client. Furthermore, you can do the job from anywhere, and it's accessible to people of all education levels. In fact, in a recent study, we found no significant variance among customer success professionals with advanced degrees versus bachelors degrees when looking at those earning more than $126,000 and those earning less than $50,000.

On the other hand, even Customer Success Management is far from where we need to be in diversity by other dimensions (e.g., race and ethnicity) as well as in terms of equity at the top ranks of leadership.

My parents used to imagine a future for me (and are probably still holding out hope) as a scientist, improving the world through a critical discovery or technology. And when I was a kid, I dreamed of that too, looking up to a poster of Albert Einstein on my wall every night. Most kids and most parents imagine they'll leave the world a better place than they found it. 

Instead, I wound up in business—and I’m very privileged to do what I do. The question is what more can we all do, to live up to our dreams as children—and to the hopes of our own kids.

Fortunately, the analysis on capitalism is far from final. By taking up Marc Benioff's challenge, business leaders like me really can help make the world a better place. I for one am eager to step up.