PMISV Monthly Book Club | Trailblazer by Marc Benioff

PMISV Monthly Book Club | Trailblazer by Marc Benioff

 

The Monthly Book Club is a forum for talking about books that touch on the widely varied challenges of project and program management.

 

 

 

About the Book

Trailblazer by Marc Benioff

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The founder and co-CEO of Salesforce delivers an inspiring vision for successful companies of the future—in which changing the world is everyone’s business.

“An urgent and compelling book for anyone in business who yearns to fulfill a higher mission in the world.”—Richard Branson
 

What’s the secret to business growth and innovation and a purpose-driven career in a world that is becoming vastly more complicated by the day? According to Marc Benioff, the answer is embracing a culture in which your values permeate everything you do.

In Trailblazer, Benioff gives readers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of one of the world’s most admired companies. He reveals how Salesforce’s core values—trust, customer success, innovation, and equality—and commitment to giving back have become the company’s greatest competitive advantage and the most powerful engine of its success. Because no matter what business you’re in, Benioff says, values are the bedrock of a resilient company culture that inspires all employees, at every level, to do the best work of their lives. Along the way, he shares insights and best practices for anyone who wants to cultivate a company culture positioned to thrive in the face of the inevitable disruption ahead.

None of us in the business world can afford to sit on the sidelines and ignore what’s going on outside the walls of our workplaces. In the future, profits and progress will no longer be sustainable unless they serve the greater good. Whether you run a company, lead a small team, or have just draped an ID badge around your neck for the first time, Trailblazer reveals how anyone can become an agent of change.

 

Praise for Trailblazer

“A guide for what every business and organization must do to thrive in this period of profound political and economic change.”—Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase

“In Trailblazer, Benioff explores how companies can nurture a values-based culture to become powerful platforms for change.”—Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube

 

About the Author

Marc Benioff is chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. He founded the company in 1999 with a vision to create an on-demand information management service that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. Benioff is regarded as the leader of what he has termed "The End of Software," the now-proven belief that multi-tenant, cloud computing applications democratize information by delivering immediate benefits at reduced risks and costs. He reveals the story of salesforce.com--and offers unconventional tools for any business to achieve lasting success--in the national best-selling book, Behind the Cloud.

Under Benioff's direction, salesforce.com has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a publicly traded company that is the leader in enterprise cloud computing. For its revolutionary approach, salesforce.com has received a Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award, been lauded as one of BusinessWeek's Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, named No. 7 on The Wired 40, and selected for the past two years as a Top Ten Disrupter by Forbes. The product has won the Software & Information Industry Association Codie Award for Best CRM for the past six years, and the Codie Award for Best On-Demand Platform in 2007, as well as multiple "Editor's Choice" designations from PC Magazine.

Benioff has been widely recognized for pioneering innovation with honors such as the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, the SDForum Visionary Award, and Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year by the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business. The San Francisco Business Times named him as its 2009 Executive of the Year. Additionally, Benioff has been ranked named No. 7 on the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT survey by eWEEK, one of the Top 10 Greatest IT Chief Executives by VNU, and among the top 10 most visionary CEOs in the technology industry by InternetNews.com. He was appointed by President George W. Bush as the co-chairman of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee and served from 2003-2005, overseeing the publishing of critical reports on health care information technology, cybersecurity, and computational sciences.

Throughout his career, Benioff has also been committed to using information technology to produce positive social change. In 2000, he launched the Salesforce.com Foundation--now a multimillion-dollar global organization--establishing the "1-1-1 model," whereby the company contributes one percent of profits, one percent of equity, and one percent of employee hours back to the communities it serves. Benioff authored The Business of Changing the World, in which 20 great leaders reveal how businesses can go beyond writing a check and leverage the full scope of their resources to make a difference. Compassionate Capitalism, also authored by Benioff, is the first-ever best-practices guide for corporate philanthropy that illustrates the success of the integrated model. Acknowledging his commitment to building partnerships between business and society to improve the state of the world, the members of the World Economic Forum named Benioff as one of its Young Global Leaders. In 2007 the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy presented Benioff with the coveted Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Award and a year later welcomed Benioff to its distinguished board of directors. In 2008, for his thought and action leadership in corporate responsibility, CRO Magazine named Benioff CEO of the Year.

Prior to launching salesforce.com, Benioff, a 30-year veteran of the software industry, spent 13 years at Oracle Corporation from 1986-1999. In 1984, he worked as an assembly language programmer in Apple Computer's Macintosh Division. He founded entertainment software company Liberty Software in 1979 when he was 15 years old. Benioff received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Southern California in 1986.

 

Registration

• Required and limiting attendees. First come first serve.
• Zoom link to be distributed to registrants on the day of the event. Look for a Zoom invitation the day of the event from scotchlas@gmail.com. Feel free to set that not to go to your junk mail.

 

About the SV Monthly Book Club : 

 

List of Books for 2025 and prior years : Click Here for more information

The SV Monthly Book Club is a no-cost forum to discuss books and publications that touch on various topics about project and program management. It recurs on the 3rd Thursday each month, virtually. There is no club membership, and anyone can join the discussion forum of the month. To attend the forum, please pre-register (for free) and be sure you have pre-read the book of the month. Registration is necessary as we are limiting the number of attendees, so that everyone has a chance to express their opinion and listen to others.

This is a professional event. While we are open to opinions from all angles during the book discussions, please be respectful to the host and all attendees.

About the Event Leader

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marc Scotchlas - Event Host (Contact Marc)

Serving at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Marc completed a career in the Navy and after retiring in 2018, joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as Shot Director at the National Ignition Facility. After managing operations at the world’s premier laser facility that has achieved ignition, he has taken on several other challenges including recapitalizing more than twenty thousand square feet of laboratory space, saving more than $330,000. Residing in the Bay area, he is perpetually expanding his horizons.

  

Additional Information

PDU: Up to 5.0 PDU to complete the pre-reading; 1.0 to participate in the monthly meeting. PDU claim code available to attendees at end of event.

♦PDU claiming instruction

 

Recognize that PDU credit may be partial if you've read only the part of the book that you will read, or that full credit can be taken later after the discussion event is complete and you have completed the entire book.  There's no drop-dead requirement by the discussion date for reading, but the discussion is much fuller if you've read the entire book.