The Future of Work with Ginni Rometty and Marc Benioff | Salesforce

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome chairman and.

CEO Salesforce Marc Benioff.

All right, All right. Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. How's everybody doing? All right, great. Wasn't that amazing discussion with Brunello Cucinelli? Yeah, that was an incredible leader and we're so fortunate to have him here. And how about last night with Lenny Kravitz and Alicia Keys and Lucas Nelson? Wasn't that awesome? Late night, a lot of fun. And day three, here we go. One more day and then we'll wrap it up tomorrow. It's going to be amazing and incredible concert tomorrow night with Metallica and with the Grateful Dead. So that's going to be really something with Dave Matthews helping these relief for North Bay fires. So I hope you'll join us for that as well. Today we have an incredible leader of our industry. We have perhaps the very top female CEO in the world. And it's my great honor to introduce you to her. She has been a huge inspiration to me personally. She's been a huge inspiration to, I know very deeply, many of our female executives and female executives I meet all over the world. And she's a huge inspiration to our entire industry. And it's really my greatest pleasure to introduce you to Ginny Rometti. Please. IBCO of IBM.

That's very sweet, honey.

Yeah. We're doing the double kisses in honor of Italy, so enjoy. Okay. Well, welcome, Ginny, and thank you. We're so happy to have you at Dreamforce. And I know that you rarely speak outside of IBM events, so we're extremely grateful for you to be here. I knew you just flew in from Brazil.

I know. I look good, don't I?

You look very good. You look very good.

Thank you for a compliment.

Well, we just learned from Brunello Cuccinelli, actually, that that is a key part of your life.

Yep.

So you look very good.

Oh, thank you, Mark. So do you.

Yeah. Thank you very much. And I know I was in Brazil last weekend myself for a wedding in Rio. So it's. I know it's a lot. It's a long trip back.

It just landed. Yeah.

So thank you for doing that. Ginny, you have become the top female CEO in the world. There's no doubt in my mind. And you're a huge inspiration to not only me, but so many women executives all over the world, too, in terms of being able to get to the highest levels of business and success. You've been at IBM for 36. 36 years, right? Yeah. And graduated Northwestern from Chicago 36 years ago. When you started at IBM. Can you just tell me, you know, did you think, okay, 36 years I'm going to be the CEO of this, you know, legendary company?

Of course not. Did you think you were going to run Salesforce?

Well, when I started it, I did.

Okay, fair enough. Not when you were 22. No, no, I didn't. And I think I'm probably like just about everybody here. And certainly while this is broadcast across the world, I mean, that's very much the American dream, right? That you can be whatever you decide to put your mind to. So. But I never thought that at the beginning. I ended up at IBM because I worked for an auto company first when I got out of university.

And which one was that?

A good one. And so I have a feeling you.

Must have a lot of auto companies then as your customer.

Yes, that's right. They're all very good. And they're all good, very good, excellent. But I can remember, I can remember going. It was one of those first lessons that I can remember the difference between a job and a career because I would go. And while it was lovely and I worked hard, I thought, something's different around me. People are coming and going, and this is just work to them. And I was looking for a career and I love technology. I was working at the time on trucks and buses and I'm like, okay, well, this is interesting, but. And it was my husband who actually said, why don't you just go apply to IBM? And he said, I know somebody, as usual. And so I called someone, he goes, my friend's father works there. And I called him. And at that time, IBM really did not hire professional hires, so. So I really went in the category of their very first professional hire. And I went into. At the time it was. I knew how to convert banks from boroughs, which doesn't exist. I could convert banks from boroughs to IBM. And that's how it started.

Well, that is pretty boring story. Yeah, no, that's a great story. And what was that like starting out? What did you find when you joined the company? People receptive to having you there and did you enjoy the culture? And were the founders still around in the company?

How old do you think I am? IBM is 106 years old. No, they were long gone. I am the ninth CEO, not the third. But look, I think. I am. I'm thinking that overnight flight didn't do me a lot of good. Huh? But in seriousness about, look, I think what is the true. And people ask me that question about IBM today because I'll say 106 years old. What is IBM? And I'll say, look, one lesson is to be 106, you have to be willing to change everything about yourself but your core values. And at its core, it's about innovating technology and applying it to business and society. It was true then, is true today. And that's to me what always kept me there. It was always ability to do something else, do another career, but within the same company. And it was always about. And it's why I went to IBM while I could apply technology to cars. I really loved the technology. And so as an engineer, I started as an engineer. Next topic.

When you think about those core values and those core values are. But they're also very eternal for IBM and they've influenced so many other companies, including ours. And there is a very deep commitment to society, like you mentioned, to the customer as well, on kind of improving the state of the world. This seems like it really came out of the founder's mission for IBM. How do you look at that today?

Mark and I have talked about this topic quite a bit about values and you know, everybody has them. But it's a matter of, as people say, with values, it's what you do when no one's looking that matters. On values. And our values are dedication to every client's success, innovation that matters for ourselves and for the world, and then trust and responsibility in all relationships. And I think one of the issues of today, data will be one of the issues of our time. And this responsibility. With so much discussion about how to treat data or artificial intelligence properly coming into the world, I link this discussion and that to me there's some things that are very simple decisions you make when you have values about this. So when you said trust of clients, I think clients have trusted us with their most precious asset, which is their data. And so I was just before I was in Brazil last night, last week in the European Union, and we had sort of put on paper something called data responsibility at IBM. And it was just to communicate what we've always believed. And I think in this day and age this is a really important topic. And for your clients. Our clients we share together. We have 5,000 common clients that we work on together that things like to say to you, your data is yours, not mine to give away. If it's artificial intelligence, you own the insights, you own the algorithms. I'm the only one I think that can say that if it's free flow data, the IBM cloud was built. So you decide what country the data sits in, not A government, or if a government ever asked for access, we're the only tech that can say we've never given a government surveillance program access to that data. And that, to me, well, that's wisdom of years of values, right? That, you know, that you have trusted me with something. And so in this day and age, that idea, I think is profound. And it's based on values. And I think for all of us, you and I, and I know, Mark, you agree with me. Things like AI, it is our job, we were talking with Bruno outside to usher that safely into this world. Right. I think those of us that make the technology, it is our job to be sure that it's ushered in, in the right way. And if I. Can I go on a little bit more? You didn't ask me this question, but anyways, so when I think about that topic, not just data, and we'll talk a little bit about AI, three things come to my mind. And we sort of published a set of principles that I would. If I was every client in the room, I think everyone to adopt. The first one is the purpose of AI in this world. It's why we called it cognitive. By the way, I know that is not a word that rolls off your tongue, but AI, artificial intelligence, has such negative connotation. This is to augment what everybody does. And therefore the purpose is to augment, not replace man. I think the second principle, back to values, is transparency. For AI to thrive in this world, you need to tell people, this is the data that trained it. This is who trained it. You and I were talking. You can train bias if you're not careful. So this is the data professionally, who trained it. You own the insights. And then maybe later we'll talk about. And the world's gonna need different skills. And skills are gonna be a huge obligation of all of us because every profession's gonna deal with this type. It'll be man and machine in everything. And so we gotta prepare a world for that. That's not a small thing. So that's all to me based on. If you live by values, you take a long arc at those kind of things.

I'd like to come back to that point that you opened on trust. But I wanna continue the discussion on AI first, which is, you know, we've been talking at this conference about the evolution of AI, and I think a lot of the sessions here, and many of the speakers, you know, we can see a world where, you know, of course, there's taxis without taxi drivers with autonomous vehicles and trucks going down the highway without truck drivers. We have seen farms without farmers. We've seen airplanes without pilots. We see there's nation states who are launching battleships and creating navies without sailors. How do you see that kind of broad job and workforce transformation? You've thought this through? I think almost more than anyone else I have.

And again, I think if on this topic, can I back up a little bit to give a little bit of context and then dive into it? So if you think about right now, I know many of you. If I asked you how many people say my job is to help make my company digital, what would you. Would anybody raise their hand? Have Mark and I put you to sleep? Okay.

How many people here feel that their companies are going through a digital transformation?

Okay, okay. Everybody. Right.

By the way, I've had to learn how to ask that question myself.

Yeah, that's very good job.

Well, I'll tell you what's happened in that. As I prepared for Dreamforce, I always go out on a tour. And so I've had an opportunity to meet with so many hundreds of customers in just the last month. And as I've had those individual conversations with them, that has actually come up over and over again, that I think that people do feel like they're going through a digital transformation. And in many cases, it's starting with the customer, which is something that we do always. We both agree on that.

Yeah. So everybody raised their hands. So here's where I say, if everybody's digital, then who wins? And I think what's in front of us, it's going to be necessary but not sufficient. And so people think, oh, my God, more change. Right. But it's necessary but not sufficient. Because I do think when time looks back on this era, I sort of call it. And when people say, if I had to pick one word, I reinvented, we are reinventing IBM around, it would be the word data. And everyone would say, I have tons of data. I do not use it. Right. I mean, don't make sense out of it. And it's only getting worse now with. We talk about the industrial revolution, we talk about the 4.0, we talk about Internet of things. If you're healthcare, it doubles every 75 years. So the point is, so if this is really an era around data, what does that mean? And I think people don't realize that only 20% of the world's data is searchable by the big search engines. Only 20%. The other 80% belongs to you. And the other 80% has got a ton of value in it, if you could do something with it and get to it, right? And so if you could take that 80 plus that 20 and all the expertise everybody in here has in their professions, you will make better decisions. You will really be a learning organization. I think that means that will be the basis of this next era. And I've been with, we had 100 CEOs together with us beginning of two weeks ago. And I said, honestly, I believe this era, there's a chance that it will favor the company that has already existed. If you had a past, it just may be your advantage now as we go to this next era. If you can do this, you'll make better, be a learning organization, make better decisions. And so I'll come to the jobs. I do have a logic here. So this idea that if that's what you really believe, you'll start to say, okay, digital's not enough. I'm gonna also be, I would call the word a cognitive enterprise, a learning enterprise. I'll use AI. And there are some things you'd start right away doing for every profession. How you change, make decisions. You'd add AI to products and services, you change your operations. We can talk about some examples. And so as part of this whole discussion, I've also listened to people who have a lot of fear mongering about AI which will come to jobs, that it's going to kill all jobs. All this is going to happen. You know, it has happened with every era of technology. Some jobs go away and new ones enter. So we just did A study with MIT just finished, on average one estimate 10% of jobs go away, but 100% will change because of this era. 100% will change, meaning that's that man and machine working together. So I feel about this topic, not only that's a good thing as you prepare the world for it. Plus I see so much already of the difficult problems of the world, health care in particular, that will be solved by this era. I mean, this is where I say that fear mongering is absolutely wrong. Singularity is decades and decades and decades. You say, how do we know? Because we're building this stuff. It is far away. But there's so many problems that could get solved today. And that's why when people bring up the JOBS Act. So I wanted to kind of give a view of what the industry, I think what you can do with it. And then yes, it's going to change jobs, but we can prepare the world for that. It's always, you get kind of screwed up in the transitions if you don't work on them, prepare the world for that and then solve so many problems. I'll end on one. Just quick story. I was with a doctor from India last week and they were rolling out Watson for healthcare and it's in 100 hospitals. And he said in India there's 700 oncologists for 1.4 billion people. I mean we live privileged lives, many of us, we will go to a cancer center if we're sick, a developed that is not true for the majority of the world. And so that to me, and I know you feel strong about this, there's one idea after another on this that we will solve for as many sort of challenges that we'll have. That's a speech almost. Go ahead.

And you also have it, but you have a whole nother level of it. I was surprised you didn't touch which is that I don't think any company is doing more for workforce development than IBM. Not just, I mean in six year high schools and apprenticeships.

Mark and I have worked together on this. So it's a little bit of a.

Leading question, but this is all about you.

Okay, so could be about you too though.

This is all about you. So I don't think IBM, I don't think there's any company that's doing more than IBM in workforce development. Six year high schools, apprenticeship program, training program.

A little bit of background, talk about.

How are those things linked together.

A little bit of background for everybody here on this topic. First, some numbers. Right? What would you guess is the percentage of high schools that teach computer science? 45. It's 25%. 25%. I would ask, what would you guess? Just the United States last year only produced 43,000 computer science graduates. That's not very many open jobs. Just in the US a half a million in tech. Five million, six million, generally speaking. And this would be true for your clients watching around the world, similar kind of profiles. So how we both got involved in this is that I also feel really strongly that the divide that we see in this nation and in other countries around the world, if you follow this, it's haves and have nots. That is not a good thing in any country. And the root of that is education. If people don't feel they have a better future, it causes that. And so that's why for decades IBM back to this wasn't like something in my tenure we just thought had been devoted on education. So I happen to be, and we are strong believers that with all of us a public Private partnership can help really change the face of education. So that's how when I met Mark and we started talking about this, we started six year. Think of them as six year high schools. These are regular public high schools. We've now been at it long enough that we kind of coined a phrase called new collar jobs. Not blue collar, not white collar. Those have stereotypes. The idea that new collar is, you know, you don't have to have a PhD or a university degree to have a job related to technology. And to me, if 100% of jobs are related, we have to do something right? And so these kids, we've been at it now six years. So 100 schools be 100,000 kids now starting to come through. And it's a simple formula, give them a curriculum. And I'll tell you a funny story about that. A curriculum, give them a mentor electronically. And now 300 companies, not just us, our donating mentors and as well a chance at a job. Jobs are 2x the median salary. And we're now in 4 continents doing this now and it kind of goes virally and in the US here it's by state, there's 10 states now, a governor takes it on and they start going. And today of our hiring, and we can hire anywhere from 70,000 plus people a year, 15% are these new collar kids now and they're fantastic. And so this is, you know, that's starting to make a dent in the world of a problem. So I'm so optimist, I am. Okay, you can probably tell a bit of an optimist, but I'm an optimist that these problems are ultimately solvable. But it is public and private working together on it. I don't think it is just government or not. And you've done a lot of work on apprenticeships. We've done some. You've done even more on apprenticeships than we have. We do a lot of apprenticeships and we've got some new ones coming out. Maybe you want to tell the group about your apprenticeships.

No, I don't, but thank you.

I'm sorry, I had never really known him to not talk a lot.

This is a very, this is your interview. This is an opportunity for these customers. How many people here want to learn all about Ginny Rometti? Raise your hand.

Oh, ok. All right.

So I think that it's so important that we have this discussion because look, the reality is it's a very rare opportunity to have a discussion with you. Number one, outside of IBM. And so I think it is Great. Because I think that these things that you are thinking so much about and you see so much because you are traveling the world, I mean, you were just in Brazil. All the things you just talked about, it's an order of magnitude more in Brazil. You know that in terms of the schools and the students. I came away from Brazil going, wow, we have major issues in the US they're even more behind us. We've got to double down on all the kids down there. And I was having conversations about that.

This is where our scale, 380,000 people. We've got over 20,000 people in Brazil. We can make a difference in every country we operate in, in 170 countries. So I feel really optimistic about where this is going to go in the long run, and so hopeful because it also goes to training veterans, because these jobs will all require it. But again, I say if you depend on a world where we all have university and PhDs, that's not gonna happen. So we've got to address this now.

Well, here we have an audience of people at a tech conference. How many people in this audience do not have a technology degree? Raise your hand if you're not.

Of course not. But they'll all be.

This is the power.

I think that's it, right?

Yeah, this is the power. I think also of that. I think we are reaching incredible people who want to come into the technology industry but maybe don't have a computer science.

Well, I said a funny story about that.

It's very important.

Also, I happen to have a computer science, an engineering degree. But the funny story I was going to tell you about this was one of the very first schools. We picked the worst school in Brooklyn to start in. And President Obama came to visit. And of course, then so did lots of other people at the same time. And I can remember when he walked in first and he says, hey, where's that computer lab? We're like, no, that's not what we're teaching them. We're actually teaching them the basics of math, of science, of all these things, to be able to take on anything. And so it isn't really just about physically giving people something. Right? And this is why I think it's important for companies to work on policies, not politics.

Let's go back to Trust this where you started this conversation. It was great.

That's all right, guys. My family must be out there somewhere. Actually, my sister was at this conference. She was here yesterday, and she asked me, she said, oh, when are you on? And I told her to go home. I Told her, there's nothing I'm going to say. You don't know. So I said, go home with your kids. Go ahead.

Well, you are part of our family, so welcome. And I want to come back to trust. So you talked about the changes in technology, in AI, advancements in this technology. There's a lot of news stories right now about how some of these big tech companies, some of their technology got out of control. And maybe it's being used in some nefarious situations, especially as regards to the elections and politics. As you mentioned, we're in this fourth industrial revolution. There's a lot of new technologies coming. Your company's working on so many of them. Not just artificial intelligence, cloud computing. Quantum is a huge effort for you. Nano, you've been involved in the biotechnologies, CRISPR and so forth. All of these technologies kind of fall in that category where the technologies are not good or bad. It's how they get used. And we saw them used in some unexpected ways. So how do you look at that?

Yeah, I think back to something I said, your job. My job, I think, is we have to usher these technologies in with responsibility. So I don't think you can turn your back on any of that. And so, as I said, our views about data are what I said to you, right, that, you know, client owns the data, they own where it goes. No government access. I mean, AI, you own the insights, you have to live by those things. And so I think that's our job with all of these. And by the way, some of these technologies coming out, Mark mentioned quantum blockchain. We can talk about some of these in simple terms, but quantum's an interesting one because on one hand, quantum can solve problems that normal computers can't. In the way. An easy way to think of it is normal computers have zeros and ones, they're on or off. Quantum, it has almost infinite. It can be infinite things at one time. That sounds weird, but you gotta be a quantum scientist. So the difference is you could give it a problem that today, if you put it in a traditional, even supercomputer, high performance, it would run forever and never finish. And that's true with like systemic risk. They can kind of paper estimate. They can't truly model. So quantum will be used first. Things it'll be used for is things like drug discovery, material science, things that today they have to kind of approximate. But now you could actually model it and the model would finish and you'd get an answer versus infinite time. And we, by the way, are the Only one that have a 17 qubit already out on the cloud. You can go get it on the IBM cloud. People have to start to play with this and understand it now. That said, in the next things, by the way, for those of you in logistics, or those of you that do financial risk modeling, that'll be the next stuff for Quantum. The reason I used it as an example of this is there's also a dark side of Quantum. Within several years, Quantum can be used to break almost all forms of encryption. So while we are working on building it, we are also working on the anecdote, which is because no way should we unleash something like that in the world without something to address that. And so we are addressing the technology. I won't say what it is because the guys have done pretty darn good on it. That will then be used as the anecdote that can stop that from happening. So I think you have to think about that with everything you do. What's its purpose? I have this conversation with my own teams all the time. If something they want to do with one of our technologies, I'm like, just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it. That is my viewpoint on this. You have to take responsibility. Yeah. I'll leave it at. Thank you. I'll leave it at that. You like that? You agree?

I absolutely agree. And I want to ask you, I want to continue down that track that, you know, 36 years at IBM, you just went through an incredible scenario on quantum computing, but you also hit a number of technology areas and accelerations. It feels like there's, you know, you have a broad view on all these technologies because IBM sees and is working on so much through the technology industry and has, you know, since its beginning. Is this a broad acceleration in technology? Do you think that things are going faster than ever before? Or is it. Or is that just how it appears?

I think they are going faster than ever before. How many people feel like that? Do you feel like they are? Yeah, the same. It is not only because you feel it. Your feeling is real. And if you go back in time, most of technology as technology, there'd be one major technology happening at a time and it would cause a bump and another. Now they're one after another and there's speed. Right. And so that's quite accurate. And again, back to what we are. And we'll talk about our partnership maybe a little bit too. You know, our job is about, I hope, transforming an enterprise. And so I was talking to Mark earlier. I said you know, one of the most important things I think for all of us is to know thyself, know what you are. And for us it's business. We are not a consumer company. We work through you, to consumers, but we support you. And to these number of technologies, I was going to name some of the most interesting ones I think in front of us. So we built what we think is a platform for business, the IBM cloud in Watson. And if you're for business, you're different than for consumer. We believe so as an example, data gotta care about where it is and how it's taken care of. Secure to the core. If it's AI, AI is different for consumer than enterprise business. An example for business, for artificial intelligence, you care about medicine, underwriting, financial sales, an engineer, oil, petroleum. That kind of AI has to know a vertical. It has to be able to learn off of small amounts of data that are very deep regulatory. It's not like there's a billion conversations on the web about the regulatory environment. So you have to learn off of a very different way. So we built AI for business. And that's the root of our partnership between Einstein and Watson, him understanding him. Watson. Watson was our founder, he was a him. So I call it a him that you understand verticals. So these technologies, the reason they can come faster, we're going to keep putting them on the cloud. So AI Watson on the cloud, AI for business. The next one you're going to see Quantum. Now here already is blockchain. And so we're doing some work together with many of you that put salesforce, blockchain together, Salesforce, AI together. And again, these are some technologies, you know, I think of blockchain. My kind of real quick sort of tutorial on it is blockchain will do for trusted transactions what the Internet did for information. Meaning you could change transactions between people who do not like each other, they do not trust each other, they don't need to done properly. And there's so much waste in the world. One of my, we have bunch of 500 blockchain projects. Now one going on is on food safety. So back to that. These technologies will solve problems the world can't solve. Hundred billion dollars of food is wasted a year for food safety, right? I mean, you hear that like bad spinach, okay? Everybody takes all the spinach and throws it out. It's not all bad. So this started work we did with Walmart and Now we've got 20 of the world's largest food producers all working on food safety. And it's easy on a blockchain because these can ride alongside your current systems. You throw off the same transaction and we can. Now, we started with pork and mangoes. It took seven days to trace where he came from. Farm to fork kind of thing. We're down to seven seconds on this and we'll solve a really big issue. There are a lot of people that die from food poisoning and food safety issues. So that to me you say, is it coming faster? Yeah, because just think, I went through cloud to AI to quantum to blockchain, but always about how to apply it to what everybody here does.

How are you keeping up with all of these technologies? I mean, how do you. Seriously, I mean, isn't it that awesome? But how are you doing it? I mean, does he know what I.

Do for a living?

Well, I know, but you know what, we all do that for a living.

You know your stuff pretty well.

No, no, no, look, we all do it for a living. But it is, you know, you are running.

I have IBM research, so it's not like I'm alone.

But you have the gambit, right? So how are you keeping up with all of this and staying at the, not just the cutting edge, but also you're able to then communicate and articulate it to this broad, broad audience and connect with them. What are you doing to do that today?

Well, I am honored, blessed all this kind of words. IBM has a real research group as well. There are very few companies left that can afford and have research. We have 3,600 real true researchers, not developers. Development is a second whole big billions and billions. But the research piece. So I think that is what gives us headlights. We were just talking about this, this conference. Another one that we had done was big bets. All the CEOs shared with us their big bets. We shared ours, but we were sharing kind of our long term view of technology. And funny story, I went to my own guys, I said, hey guys, how often are you right? Prove to me how often you're right about all these predictions and oh, 100%. I said, oh really? And so they said, well, the only time we're only sometimes off a little bit on timing. I'm like, oh, that's it. So, but that's, I mean, I think I'm blessed to have that. And I am. We are blessed to have so many great clients that are here and around the world. So that's. You gotta be.

So what does that mean? Do those.

You're passionate about it, you're meeting with.

Those researchers, they send you an email you get a newsletter?

Oh, I get all sorts.

You get a tutor on the plane. What is happening exactly?

You think they care?

Yes, they do care.

You guys care about that? Oh, yeah. You guys go with him all the time?

Yes, they do.

Yeah. Okay.

That's how it goes here.

That is how it goes. I can understand. I got it. I saw my hotel salesforce on the floor. I saw everybody with the blue things on their neck. I got all this. So, hey, look, I'm a big.

We're going to walk you around too, and show you some of the stuff that's going on.

I know. I want my own big exhibits out there. Right? So look, I.

How many of you have seen IBM here at the show? And Kone and Watson, how many people have already seen it?

How many of you seen the IBM exhibit already?

Yeah. Raise your hand if you've already seen some of the IBM work.

Okay. Don't tell me this is all IBMers here. No, no.

Okay.

All right, all right. No. Did you like it? Okay, that's good. That's good. I got.

I know it's good. That's why you're here. This is amazing what's happening between our companies.

Can I tell a little bit of a story to that, though, to the exhibit that's out there so then I'll entice everybody else to go see it. I've seen pictures of it. Oh, and those researchers, trust me, they talk all the time. So I get all of the above of what you said, and then I do official, obviously many, many different visits with them. But so there's a little bit of, I think, an interesting story for everybody here that leads up to this exhibit. It's kind of a culmination of a lot of skills we've been working to build. And back to this, being 106 years old and changing how people work. Because as people talk to me about the transformation of IBM, and we often talk about the hard work the team has done to change the portfolio. 45% of what IBM does is new in the last few years, new products and services. But I've often said maybe when time is over and we look back, what might be more interesting is what the company did to change how it worked and to change the skills of people. And I can start to look at that now. And this will lead up to this exhibit. So I think all of us wrestle with two things in work and how people work, speed in this day and age. And this idea, maybe you call it B2P or B2I business to individual Business to person. I don't think you're B2B or B2C. That doesn't work anymore. Everybody wants any you for Salesforce.

We've been talking a lot about that.

You, I mean, people love your stuff, right? The consumability of it. And you expect that, not just in your phone and in certain apps. You expect it with everything now. And an enterprise product doesn't matter. You expect that. So we started a journey a couple years ago. First it was design thinking. I don't know how many people have become. I've become quite a big fan about this simple thought that everything you build should start with empathy for who's going to touch it first. And especially if you're an engineering culture where you build engineering out. No, no, no. You got to build whoever's touching it in with great empathy. So we then went on and hired. I've got 10,000 doing work with clients and 1,200 designers doing work internally on our products and services. We hired them from every great design school in the world. So we took them all. So now you could go back out. But for the last few years, we've taken them all, took them in and that started design thinking. So that started to get at that B2P, be business to person, business to individual itch. Then this idea of can you be big and can you be fast, or is that impossible? And this all led up to this exhibit you're going to see. And we started on an agile journey. Maybe many of you are on that too. And my simple definition of agile is small teams, multidisciplinary. But they have to do minimum viable product and iterate. I always say, Mark, one of the biggest mistakes I made in the beginning of my tenure was telling people, come on, we gotta work faster, work faster. And I succeeded in exhausting them. And it dawned on me, they can't work faster unless we help change how they do their work, actually. And so like if you tell people working on something complex to work faster, you'll get this big ugly thing done. Really crummy. Versus if you say no, Agile is get this right, then do this, then add this, then add this, then it's a very different picture of how work is done, right? So we're now at about 200,000 experts on Agile. So then colocation, okay, this is like a yarn and a sweater when you start pulling it. Then that led to 170 building renovations around the world. And then the next thing was, well, you got to have people work together. So get rid of the appraisal. System start. So we did a study of what everybody does on this topic and nobody liked their appraisal systems. And we've gone to something called Checkpoint, which is just five areas, no overall number or anything like that. And then we took on you, I think, do it already. Net Promoter Score, which. How many people use Net Promoter Score in their business? About half. I mean, this was. I had a new market cmo, new chief marketing officer. She's like, do not do this unless it's a religion. I mean, you can't just start this halfway. But we're B2B. Typically you don't think of it that way. We added that and it has really been a wonderful insight. You know, the good and the bad. We do some really great things and I see the things that need to improve with all this feedback coming in. So all that led to a change of how work was done. And that exhibit is an output of one of these, all these new ways of all this work. And so I haven't seen it. I've seen the pictures. I'm anxious I turned that into a chapter for you.

But, well, let me tell you what it is. It's amazing.

You did get to go through it yet.

Well, one of the great. Yes.

Oh, there you go. I was in Brazil. He was here. Okay.

And it's amazing because, you know, we're profiling one of our mutual customers, Kone Elevator and Escalator Company. Amazing. The CEO Henrik has been here. I think he's from Finland. And we built an elevator on the show floor. And of course, it's all about having that one on one relationship. Exactly. Like you said, they're in transformation. They were a B2B company, but now with the connected elevator, it's a great example. They're really, they have to be ready to connect to the consumer. And the reality is, I think, you know, by traveling around the world, nobody likes to be on a stuck elevator.

Nope. Especially if you're claustrophobic.

Exactly. So they have the ability to directly prevent that through using Watson and kind of doing predictive maintenance and saying, oh, this elevator is maybe about to break. Let's dispatch the truck. Let's make sure that, let's notify everybody. Let's make sure all of the, you know, we do all the right things and their elevators are talking to them through the technology. And that's the demonstration on the floor. And it's quite amazing. And there's many other examples here. And, you know, I'll just tell you, it's kind of an amazing transformation leap between our two companies. Because only a year ago, if you were at Dreamforce, and this is the 15th Dreamforce, I don't think there was any IBM technology at the show. But IBM has woven through the show and especially amplified with Watson. So I think everyone here will agree we've actually done a great job between the two companies of showing what we can do as a one plus one equals three type opportunity. I want to get back to my comment before, which is you've worked with so many people now in your career, not just at IBM, but around the world, and you've seen this, you know, lots of people, you know, struggling with success and failure and rising up. Here you are the CEO of one of the largest and most important companies in the world. What do you think the difference is for people along the way? You know, multiple decades, four decades, you know, why. Why is it that some people succeed and then some people drop off? What is your view on that?

That's a good question. And I have a couple views on it. And it's funny, when Mark asked that, like, some things jump in my head and that's probably the answer to it. And there was a quote from. It was Ann Richards, she was the governor of Texas. And she said, oh, Texans are here, okay? But someone said to her, what's the secret to your success? And she said, it's passion and perseverance when everyone else would have given up. And there's so much to be said for that. And again, I'm going to remember, I think I remember this right. If it was Thomas Edison who said, many of life's failures are people who gave up right before they were going to be successful. And so I think so much of what we all do is really about that, right? A you got to be passionate, right? I mean, so that's when I moved from cars to it. I had to be passionate about what I do. Life's too short. You gotta be passionate about it. And I think that in. And you can choose your disposition, right? You can choose to be. To see a way through. And I would only add one other point to it, which is why. So why do I think some people succeed and others don't? I'll tell a story I have told many times. I'll preface that, but it was from my own husband and I think this is the root as well, to why do people succeed or not? I was early in my career, maybe have I told you that story? I don't even remember 10 years or so in. And I had gotten a boss A very good man who I was working for. And he said, I'm gonna get a new job, and I think you should take my job. And I said, oof, I don't think I'm ready for this. And he said, we gotta go to the interview. And I went to the interview and the man said to me, you know, I want to take the job. Job. And I said, I don't think I'm ready for it. I don't know. I need to go home. I want to think about it, and I want to talk to my husband. He looked at me and said, okay. I went home that night. The same husband I still have, by the way, all these years. I wouldn't even say husband. People are like, which one? Or something, you know, same one. And he sits there and he's listening to me like he still to this day does like this. And he looked at me and he said, do you think a man would have answered it that way? I said, no. I went back in the next day and I took the job. And he looked at me and he said, don't do that again. I said, I understand. But the story taught me something so much more profound, which I have repeated endlessly. And it's the other answer to Mark's question, which is, I would say, growth in comfort. They will never coexist. And so you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I find it particularly true for many women, but it's true for men, too. If I asked you to shut your eyes, as I say, if you are not already sleeping and say, when did you grow the most in your career? And I will ask you, did you feel at risk? Almost. I bat 100% on this question. People will say yes. And I say it's true for people, it's true for companies, and I think it's true for countries. And it's a profound, simple thought. But it can make you. When you say, how do you keep going? It will make you take risks. It'll make you feel like, even now, if I'm not getting nervous, I'm like, something's wrong. I am not learning enough then. Because you're not. So it's a very good tool, I think, for anybody to go be a risk taker because, you know, out the other end comes something really good.

I see it very much the same way. And I actually shift to the music industry on inspiration on some of those. Tomorrow night, we're going to have Lars Ulrich play with his band, Metallica.

Yeah.

And for those of us who have been listening to Metallica since the early 80s, 1982. He has right now one of the very top albums in the world. And also reinvented, right? And reinvented. But at the same time, when they play tomorrow night, many of the songs, Sandman, are the songs that we all love and that they've been playing for 35 years. And then just to kind of switch channels, you know, we've had the opportunity to have Neil Young here at this conference, and I've had an opportunity to be friends with him, and it's incredible impact on my life because he's singing the same songs, you know, not just from Buffalo Springfield, but also even Heart of Gold, you know, from the 70, 1970. So you see even more. But then we've also had here at the show and, you know, asked the same question here at Dreamforce, Stevie Wonder. Go back to, you know, when we first heard him was 1962. So it's like, wow, you know, you go all the way back, and yet we're still hearing, you know, you are the sunshine of my Life. And yet when he's delivering that song, it's the first time he's ever sung it. And I think when I look at those great master musicians and I think the monastics who are here, because we're teaching mindfulness here at the show, and we have 30 monastics. You know, when you meditate, when you. Every day, it's beginner's mind. It's starting. It's all right. Taking that breath, every breath as it's the first breath. And there's something about that. I wanted to come back to what you said, though, about gender. One of the topics that we're talking a lot about here at Dreamforce is gender equality, which is amplified by a lot of this technology. You made some very important comments around gender equality. You've probably seen everything with gender equality. How could you not? Here you are, one of the very top women in the world. What can you tell us today about gender equality? And would you specifically address. We've seen some horrible things this year, not only in Silicon Valley with our venture capital community, but also in Hollywood, some terrible stories. How do you put all of this together in the gender equality thought?

Yeah. Oh, I have a lot of thoughts on this. So first off, for all of us, and everyone here is part of a company, right? I have to say, and I can say it with all honesty, in my time in IBM, I have never experienced a time when I felt disadvantaged about this. And I attribute that to values, right? And core values. But I will come back to those, some of my kind of recommendations about it. But I go back. IBM hired its first disabled person in 1914. It had its first woman. Not woman like to hire executive, a vice president. Guess the year. What would sound like a progressive year to you? Okay, 27. All right, 1943. I mean that 1943. And it had things like equal opportunity, decade before civil rights, the civil rights amendment. So I think those tracks were laid many years before me. Right. That it was always about, you know, everyone should be able to give their best here. I mean when I was in Brazil last night, Brazil was a second country outside of the United. Oh, Brazilians are here too. Actually I could have brought. It's a wonderful country, right? I mean I was there. It was actually our 100 year anniversary in Brazil. Part of what I was doing. And they that inclusion of no matter who you are, inclusion is the word. So when people say diversity, I really believe this has progressed. It is about inclusion and inclusion means I don't care about gender or race or any kind of diversity group. You gotta feel comfortable to give, you gotta feel comfortable to participate in your own way. Everybody can do this differently, but you have to create a work environment. That's our job, to create a work environment that makes you feel comfortable. And then we'll get the best innovation for our companies, our customers as well as a result. So right now on this topic and inclusion by the way, should be a parody of a lot of things. So I want to say that kind of first by the numbers, the figures and why do we have such high female participation in our executive team and across the whole company? Well, some people think it's about representation. I think that is necessary but not sufficient. Meaning counting the numbers of people, necessary but not sufficient. Other people think there's a silver bullet about this topic. And I don't think it's a silver bullet either. It is about pervasiveness. And every day I would say it was like tending a garden, but I've never done that. So the idea that you stay on it every day and it permeates everything that you do. So, so to Mark's question for us as an example, making everyone feel welcome. He and I both worked on something here, but things like last night I just happened to watch a two minute clip from the dreamers who work for IBM and you know it would bring a tear to your eye, right? These kids are brought here by no reason of their own and they're full contributors to society. That's about inclusion. Or we Both worked on the bathroom bill. Bathroom bills, North Carolina, Texas. Little editorial I would make. This is a democracy. How change happens is you gotta go work it. You gotta go grassroots. 150 people see their congressmen, get them to change. That's how things change. You know, it doesn't help to just talk. It does not help. This is heavy lifting work. And we don't brag about it. We don't say anything. We go do the work. And so that is about making people feel welcome, because you can't work on everything. But why did we work on the bathroom bills? We're the second largest tech employer in Texas. But it was because people felt uncomfortable going to work if that legislation passed. Right. So you want them to be able to give their best. So A, youth make them feel welcome. B, you asked about women in particular. I think the biggest issue with women is keeping them in the workforce. And so to do that, you have to allow for when life's events. And by the way, it's for men too. So just two weeks ago, we extended our paternal leave. It's now 20 weeks. I think that's the longest or the very long. But that pervasiveness is even little things, like if you're breastfeeding, we ship the breast milk, you know, back to the baby, not to the mother, to the baby. And just every little thing you can think of to keep people in and out. And I'll tell you another one that I think was really profound for our women. It's a little bit back to my growth and comfort. We noticed that when women would leave the workforce for kids or elder care, could be a number of reasons they were nervous to come back. They're like, you know, technology's moved on. Most critical of themselves, don't know it. We started a reconnections program that said, okay, before here, come attend these couple classes. Come do this. And I mean, just like my situation, they were fine immediately. You know, they didn't miss that much. But it was to build that confidence. And so those kind of programs that then keep a pipeline and then that point about bias, we use our own Watson technology through lots of parts of HR to be sure there's no bias. So when it comes to salary increases, verify, you know, I was God, we trust, everybody else bring data. And so we, we verify that all that happens. And so just those are, to me, the kinds of things. And the word pervasive is what comes in my mind about how you deal with this. So there be parity. And I mean it not just for Gender. I mean, it for all, whether it's same sex marriages and our benefits we provide, whatever it is, that to me is what's important. Running out of things.

No, no. I mean. Okay, well, I. There's two different ways we could go. I could circle back and I could say you didn't mention some of these kind of egregious things that we're hearing about in the world and does that put up our antenna further and do we have to be more aggressive? And then there was a second part of that, which is that when you're answering that question, we saw something during the interview that we only saw at one moment during the entire interview. And it was when you actually tapped into something and you started to pound your fist into your hand and you really believe something strongly in there. What was that?

Was that AI in the cloud?

No, it wasn't.

No.

You felt that you had to keep going.

Yes.

What is that? What is that feeling?

To me, it's about a force forward and is about engagement.

Is that the key to your success? A force forward for engagement?

It is about engagement and a force forward. I think that is what for good. I mean, that is what I think is. But not a secret. I don't know what a.

Where does that come from?

Oh, my.

In you.

What a way to end. Well, I look, I come.

Can you give us a couple more of those punches? I mean, that was powerful.

Look, I think like many. I mean, I look, I don't want.

To be on the other side of one of those.

No, no.

It's a partnership.

Well, two things or I'll end on. Maybe end on this point.

But what is that? Where does that come from? In you? There is a power in you.

Yeah. That comes from that passion. Comes from my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother. I have also said. I have maybe like lots of people in this room. I've had wonderful women in my life. My great grandmother came from Russia and she was a cleaning lady at the Wrigley Building in Chicago, if anybody knows. The Wrigley Building. Yeah. And I still have the little tin. You know, every year for Christmas we'd get gum and that was. She'd get gum from them and that would be then our Christmas present. And she worked like a dog so that we could have something. And then my grandmother, who, interestingly, my grandfather passed away. She. No, she had a lamp store and she made lamp shades. And so my grandma. I mean, I don't know how many of you. She taught me how to sew. I guess maybe people don't do too much of that anymore. Bruno does. He was before us. But, you know, she was determined to take care of herself, right? She had a lamp store, and at night and at midnight she'd be, you know, I don't know how many of you had your prom dresses sewn by your grandmother with you. That's how I got my prom dresses. And then my mom. And again, it's maybe a nice way to end on my mom in that she having come from that line is a story I have shared. When I was 16, my dad left, and my mom had four of us young. I was the oldest down to age 4. We had no money about, no home. And I always remember with my mom, she never complained. We never saw her cry, but she had not gone to school. So back to this passion about education. My mom had not gone to school, but here she found herself with four kids and no money, and she had to get to school. We had to go on food stamps for a while. And that's what I believe those kind of social programs are for, to bridge people. But she so wanted to not be that for very long. She went to school at night. I babysat. She was so determined that she would go back to school, get a degree, and she could do this and we would be okay. And, you know, we all watched she did it. She has a very happy ending, my mom, obviously. She went on to be the administrator at Rush Presbyterian in Chicago in their sleep clinic. Not that I sleep much, but in their sleep clinic. And the rest of us, my other three brothers and sisters, are far more successful. And it was just from watching my mom and I think what it taught us. And you say, where does that come from? It comes from which he taught us. And I think it's a lesson, you know it and others do. Never let someone else define who you are. Only you choose. You define who you are, what you believe in and what you go for.

Is that the key? That's the key.

I think that's in you, the essence of it. And it's true for a company, too, by the way. Don't let someone else define who you are. Only you define who you are. And that is a lesson that will be with me for my entire life. And that comes from somewhere deep inside. But again, maybe it's where we started, right? I think it's. I'm like many people here, you know, a little bit of a product of an American dream, right? You can be what you want to be.

Well, thank you very much, Jenny.

Thanks. Now. Thank you. Guys. I'm convinced he must lock the doors because you can't get out. I mean, I feel like we've held them hostage for a whole hour. Can I end by thanking everyone who's our client? Insincerely. I always say we're part of your past. We're part of your, I hope, your future. And a bridge between those two. And so I thank you for allowing the IBM company to serve you.

And I'm going to end by thanking your great grandmother. Your grandmother. Your mother. And I'm going to thank my mother, who's right here. So thank you to my mother.

Where is she?

She's right here. Stand up, Mom.

Stand up, Mom.

Stand up.

Hey. To mothers.

To mothers. Thank you, everybody. And here's to the mothers in the world. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.