The CIO Journal from today´s WSJ contained a lengthy soundbite from Mark Benioff, Salesforce.com CEO, at a Gartner conference yesterday. It bears a repeat here because it is so unusual to see this kind of comment in a business context.
Tom Loftus wrote this report. He says Mr Benioff said it is important to cultivate a practice that involves stepping back and letting go. “If you don’t do that you can’t innovate.” His morning ritual comprises of the following practice: “I say thank you for everything that is given to me every day. I say forgive me…and then I try to get into gratitude, I try to get into forgiveness, and then I try to come back to my breathe (sic), I try to come back to my heart. I try to let it go. I try to let go of the anxieties and fears and stresses of the world and everything that is going on and all the horror that you see on TV and I try to come back to the gratitude, I try to come back again to the forgiveness. And I try to quiet my mind. I go all the way down. I go deep and deeper into my heart—so far down into my heart that I am trying to listen and then when I’m really listening I try to say ‘let it go’—and if I can get into that really quiet place, if I can calm down even further, then I can maybe start to hear the future.” Possibly not a style or approach that will be to everyone´s taste but, nevertheless, an interesting revelation by the man who more or less created SaaS. Elsewhere, I have read that Mr Benioff has also been known to take breaks from social media.
As the world reacts to technologically-driven changes in ways that often trouble me, I am pleased to see a greater publicly-declared awareness of the benefits of reflection on the part of at least one prominent technology leader.
I am increasingly selective about the quantity and source of my inputs when it comes to learning and acquiring knowledge. But I have recognised it is equally important to have space and silence in which to think about these, turning off all the noise that distracts me. Cal Newport has some excellent suggestions on how to productively carve out and use silence for “deep work”. All of his tactics are underpinned by the idea that “distraction destroys depth”. I couldn´t agree more.
Whether you are the CEO of an industry leader or not, there is a distinct benefit in finding silence. Maybe you, too, will be able to hear the future.