《财富》独家：创始人“分权”，Salesforce迎来首位联席CEO

8月7日晚，美国云计算公司Salesforce宣布，公司副董事长兼总裁凯斯·布洛克将出任联席首席执行官，和马克·贝尼奥夫共同担任领导职位。关心社会的亿万富翁贝尼奥夫近二十年前创立Saleforce以来，一直领导公司。他开创了被业界普遍复制的Salesforce商业模式，将软件作为订购服务出售，并且推动全行业转向云业务。未来他将继续担任公司董事长。

贝尼奥夫在夏威夷出席一场管理会议期间向《财富》杂志表示：“（设置联席执行官）能反映出现在Salesforce的运作方式，即过去五年我和凯斯建立了非常牢固的合作关系，当然之前我们就认识很久，1986年我们同时进入甲骨文，确实算得上旧相识。我们合作无间，现在希望进一步深入，所以共同许下诺言联手出任首席执行官。”

这一决定既让人大跌眼镜，也在意料之中。说不算意外是因为，布洛克2013年加盟Salesforce，从2016年起担任首席运营官至今，帮助推动公司达到一个又一个营业收入高峰。2018财年，Salesforce的年销售额突破了100亿美元，比其他企业软件公司都更快。贝尼奥夫说，如果按现有速度发展，今年销售额有望达到130亿美元。我的同事，也是《财富》执行编辑亚当·拉辛斯基曾称，“布洛克性格保守一板一眼，喜欢穿夏威夷风格花衬衣的贝尼奥夫则比较随便，二人一阴一阳非常互补”。

五年来Salesforce年营业收入增速是两大劲敌SAP（7.7%）和微软（7.2%）的四倍，远超软件巨头甲骨文。甲骨文五年间营业收入年增长1.4%。

“我们说过，2022财年会实现230亿美元（营业收入），现在我们预计届时会超过，”贝尼奥夫说，“凯斯和我共同领导是未来加快增长的关键。”

然而，如此大胆的言论也显示出，为何此次Salesforce高层管理者的人事调整有些令人震惊。贝尼奥夫是IMAX大屏幕版的现代首席执行官，就像电影的3D人物走出屏幕，雄心壮志袒露无遗，极具表现力，讲述天才的愿景并最终付诸现实。这位现年53岁的企业管理大师不仅定下目标让Salesforce销售猛增，也领导企业实现转型。比如最近Salesforce的一次内部评估发现，在同一地区工作的男性和女性员工未能同工同酬，贝尼奥夫选择直接下令按实际情况提高薪酬，直到男女薪酬平等。多年前，他也曾用同样的方式制定了公司的“1-1-1”政策，即将1%的股份、产品和员工时间投入慈善事业。

如果公司有两个指挥者，行动起来很难像过去一样决绝或是雄心勃勃。布洛克目前是公司董事，未来他将向整个董事会汇报工作，而不是另一位联席执行官。

这可能是为何过去三十年中只有23家《财富》500强企业尝试过联席执行官管理结构。蒙哥马利·莫兰和史蒂夫·埃尔斯共同管理墨西哥风味烧烤公司Chipotle表现不佳，至少很长一段时间里不够好。在萨伏拉·卡茨和马克·赫尔德联手领导下，Salesforce的竞争队手甲骨文增长乏力。同样说明该管理架构并不理想。

然而，我们还是有理由相信Salesforce采用该管理架构可能比其他公司成功。首先，两位高管从一开始就明确了分工。贝尼奥夫表示：“我会把精力集中在产品，这是第一位的，还有技术以及企业文化。凯斯将负责运营和渠道分发部门。我们觉得，这样可以自然发挥双方的优势。”

其次，或许对股东来说最重要的是，新管理结构根本算不上独创。“业内很多如此经营的例子，”贝尼奥夫称，“公司没有进新人。我和凯斯已并肩作战五年，合作很顺畅。管理的节奏非常稳健。这是我们在日常配合中形成的。我们没有刻意搭建架构，只是把现有工作关系强化一些而已。”

布洛克也很认同。他向《财富》表示：“过去五年我们一直在合作。非常密切地合作，发挥双方的长处，相互提意见，彼此信任。对我来说，马克是一位优秀的教练和导师。所以这次安排只是过去五年工作模式的延伸，合作收获的业务成果也是有目共睹。”

贝尼奥夫还坚称，这并不意味着他会甩手一部分工作。“领导一家在全球飞速发展的软件公司强度远超全职工作，这就是需要两人分担的原因。”

我们应该很快就会知道，投资者怎样看待贝尼奥夫的分权管理。过去五年，他们不断加注的Salesforce每年股价涨幅约26%。过去12个月，Salesforce股价累积上涨约58%，远超微软股票回报率，也将甲骨文和SAP远远甩在身后。不少投资者看好的就是Salesforce掌门人贝尼奥夫。现在的问题是，一位强人领导变二人分治是否值得看好。（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审校：夏林

Salesforce announced this evening that Keith Block, the company’s vice chairman and president, would become co-CEO alongside Marc Benioff, the socially minded billionaire who has led the business software company since its founding nearly two decades ago. Benioff, who pioneered not only Salesforce’s now-widely copied business model—selling software as a subscription service—but who also helped propel an industry-wide migration to the cloud, will remain board chairman.

“This announcement really reflects how Salesforce is run today, which is that Keith and I over the last five years have developed a very strong partnership,” Benioff told Fortune from a management meeting in Hawaii. “Of course, we knew each other for quite a bit before that—we both started at Oracle in 1986—so we have known each other forever. And we’ve really grown to be great partners. We wanted to cement that, so we’ve exchanged our vows and now we’re co-CEOs.”

The move is both an eye-popping surprise—and, well, not. In the latter category, Block, who joined Salesforce in 2013 and whom my Fortune colleague Adam Lashinsky once called “the buttoned-down yin to Benioff’s Hawaiian-shirt-wearing yang,” has served as chief operating officer since 2016, helping to drive the company past one revenue milestone after another. Salesforce raced through $10 billion in annual sales in its 2018 fiscal year—a feat it accomplished faster than any other enterprise software company—and is on pace, says Benioff, to pass $13 billion in sales this year.

The company’s annualized five-year revenue growth is four times that of its nearest competitors, SAP (7.7%) and Microsoft (7.2%)—and well ahead of the giant in the field, Oracle, which has grown revenues at a 1.4% pace over these past five years.

“We’ve said we’ll do $23 billion in fiscal year 2022 and we can now just see tremendous trajectory beyond that,” Benioff says. “Cementing Keith and I together as the leadership is really the key to accelerating future growth.”

But such hairy audacious talk shows why this C-suite shuffle is a bit of a shocker, too. Benioff is the IMAX version of the modern chief executive—a larger-than-life 3-D figure who can meld brassy ambition and showmanship into genuine vision…and then pull it off, it appears. The company’s 53-year-old maestro has not only set the company’s prestissimo sales pace, he’s also changed corporate practice with the wave of a wand. When a recent internal review, for instance, revealed that women and men at the tech giant weren’t being paid the same salaries for the same jobs in the same locales, Benioff fixed it by fiat—boosting comp, as needed, until there was equity. In much the same way, he long ago instituted a “1-1-1” policy at the company (Salesforce devotes 1% each of its equity, product, and employee time to charitable efforts).

It’s hard to act that decisively (and perhaps ambitiously) when there are two maestri. In his new role, Block, who is currently a company director, will report to the full board, not to his fellow CEO.

That may be why over the past three decades, only 23 companies in the Fortune500 have tried this co-CEO structure. At Chipotle, where Montgomery Moran and Steve Ells divvied up the top job, it didn’t work well (or well enough for long), it’s fair to say. And the lackluster growth at Salesforce rival Oracle, where Safra Catz and Mark Hurd share top billing, would suggest that arrangement isn’t ideal either.

But then, there are good reasons to think the Salesforce setup may succeed where others haven’t. For starters, the division of labor appears to be clear from the beginning. “I am going to be focusing on, No. 1, the products, the technology—as well as the culture,” says Benioff, “and Keith is very much focused on the operations and distribution functions of the company. We feel it’s going to naturally align with both of our strengths.”

Second—and perhaps most important for shareholders—the new structure isn’t that new after all. “This is very much already how we are operating the business,” says Benioff. “It’s not bringing someone new into the company. Keith and I have been doing this together for five years in a strong partnership; we have a tremendous management cadence. This is something where we’ve already found our natural synergy. We’re not creating something artificial—we’re just amplifying something that already is.”

Block, for his part, echoes the thought. “Over the last five years this has been our partnership,” he tells Fortune. “We’ve worked very, very closely together, we’ve leveraged each other’s strengths, we advise each other, we trust each other. Marc has been an incredible coach and mentor to me. So, again, this is just an extension of our operating model that we’ve been running with over the last five years and we’ve seen the results in the business.”

Benioff insists as well that this isn’t a half step out the door. “Running the fastest-growing software company in the world is more than a full-time job and that’s why we need two of us to do it,” he says.

Whether investors will see it that way will be clear soon enough. Over the past five years, they’ve bet up Salesforce shares by roughly 26% a year—and the stock is up some 58% in the past 12 months, far surpassing the return of Microsoft and utterly trouncing the stocks of Oracle and SAP. Much of what these investors have been betting on, it would seem, is the man behind the curtain. Now the question is whether two men will be worth as much.