Successfully Implementing Radical Management At Salesforce

Strategy & Leadership
Emerald Article: Successfully implementing radical management at
Salesforce.com
Stephen Denning

Article information:
To cite this document: Stephen Denning, (2011),"Successfully implementing radical management at Salesforce.com", Strategy &
Leadership, Vol. 39 Iss: 6 pp. 4 - 10
Permanent link to this document:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10878571111176574
Downloadedon: 01-02-2013
Citations: This document has been cited by 1 other documents
To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
This document has been downloaded 511 times since 2011. *

Users who downloaded this Article also downloaded: *
Stephen Denning, (2011),"Successfully implementing radical management at Salesforce.com", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 39 Iss: 6
pp. 4 - 10http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10878571111176574
Stephen Denning, (2011),"Successfully implementing radical management at Salesforce.com", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 39 Iss: 6
pp. 4 - 10
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10878571111176574
Stephen Denning, (2011),"Successfully implementing radical management at Salesforce.com", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 39 Iss: 6
pp. 4 - 10http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10878571111176574

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
For Authors:
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service.
Information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visitwww.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com
With over forty years' experience, Emerald Group Publishing is a leading independent publisher of global research with impact in
business, society, public policy and education. In total, Emerald publishes over 275 journals and more than 130 book series, as
well as an extensive range of online products and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 3 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is
a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive
preservation.
*Related content and download information correct at time of download.

Successfully implementing radical
management at Salesforce.com
Stephen Denning

Stephen Denning’s latestbook, The Leader’s Guide
to Radical Management
(Jossey-Bass, 2010),
describes management
principles and practices
required to reinvent
management to promote
innovation and adaptation
(steve@stevedenning.com).
He is also the author of The
Leader’s Guide to
Storytelling (2nd edition,
2011) and The Secret
Language of Leadership
(2007).

Salesforce.com is one of the most successfulexamples of a company transitioning from
traditional management to radical management. This case explores the factors that made
the implementation take hold throughout the company and identifies the pitfalls that were
avoided. Salesforce.com provides on-demand services for customer-relationship
management. As of mid-2011, the firm has more than 5,500 employees, revenues of
around $1.7 billion and amarket capitalization of around $17 billion. It routinely processes
over 100 million transactions a day and has over 3 million subscribers. The services
technology group, the focus of this case, is responsible for all product development inside
the firm and has grown 50 percent per year since its formation eight years ago.
n April 2011, Forbes magazine examined how well chief executivesdelivered value to
shareholders relative to their total compensation. By that measure, the most effective
CEO on the planet was Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com.[1] Over the past five years
Salesforce.com has delivered a 41 percent annual return to shareholders. This extraordinary
performance – in fact, an example of an innovation turnaround – occurred after the firm
instituted a set of radical...