![]() ![]() The executives’ participation in this article is solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. by Peter Schwartz, senior vice president of strategic planning, Salesforce Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. How can we help our community and society? How can we help the world deal with this crisis? By engaging all of our people in bottom-up, independent thinking and innovation, we can do our part to help design the world’s new future. We need to step up and help deal with the crisis itself. ![]() In terms of strategy and tactics, it’s insufficient to consider only how we can help our businesses. In times of crisis, business leaders have a different role than in ordinary times. If something is supposed to happen and doesn’t, it’s noticed very quickly. Our senior executives, especially Marc Benioff, are very familiar with these indicators and frequently question operational leaders to head off problems before they can materialize. During every good scenario exercise, leaders identify the leading indicators of potential problems. ![]() When you move this quickly, the organization’s operational cadence must accelerate as well. We accomplished in one month what would normally take a year. This new product helps businesses and communities get back to work safely. When many cell phones move from a coronavirus hot spot to another area, the tool alerts local health organizations to give them time to prepare.Īnother example was the design and launch of in early May 2020. We’re using a mobile survey tool that follows cell phone movement without capturing personally identifiable information. Quickly adjusting strategy and tactics requires real-time data and sophisticated tools to create scenarios and forecasts.įor example, we’re helping health agencies in California and Hawaii, as well as our own global organization, to anticipate where the COVID-19 virus could spread next. The ability to capture and display information for decision-making becomes hyperrelevant when you need to move this fast. Moreover, to succeed in an accelerating world where strategies and tactics are merging, leaders need to know what’s going on. “It’s up to leaders to figure out a new future-otherwise, it will be determined for them. But we didn’t provide specific actions they should take-instead, we suggested the questions they should be asking themselves in this new environment. We gave them a playbook that provides guidance for how to think about running their part of the company and how to interact with customers during this transition. Every Wednesday, we have an all-hands call to keep our people up to date. Of course, we don’t send them off without context. We gave every employee a copy of our near-term scenarios and asked them to consider: How do you need to operate and adapt to this environment? How are you going to help your customers do this, too? We’ve pivoted from the centralized communications cascade we used before the pandemic to a hyperdistributed enablement of strategic thinking. We are also working to harness the strategic thinking of our 50,000-plus employees. Because there are so many unknowns during the pandemic, we temporarily shortened our planning horizon at Salesforce to nine-month scenarios to inform our strategic choices about the technology that will be needed in this new world and how we could tackle even bigger problems. ![]() The pandemic has accelerated the pace of technological change, so when I think about technology and strategy, it is in the context of a malleable world of possibilities that didn’t exist before. ![]()
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