Harvard Business Review (@HarvardBiz) recently hailed Marc Benioff as one of 2018’s best performing CEOs in the world. Benioff was included in the top ten out of 100 CEOs in the list due to his brilliant leadership of his cloud computing company Salesforce. The list was published in Harvard Business Review’s November-December issue.
Metrics for the Rankings
It’s not just the annual revenues, stock prices, or the popularity of a leader that matters for Harvard Business Review. They wanted metrics that are far deeper and much reflective of a leader’s overall performance in running a successful company. Hence, they came up with the following long-term criteria to determine the rankings for 2018’s list:
- Market capitalization increase for the CEO’s entire tenure of leadership
- Overall shareholder return
- Environmental, social, and governance performance
Two research firms helped Harvard Business Review in analyzing their metrics: Sustainalytics and CSRHub.
Outdoing Himself
Benioff’s performance significantly improved and pushed him higher up the Harvard Business Review scale. From #12 last 2017, he took a large leap and landed on the #6 spot for 2018. This proves that Benioff’s leadership of Salesforce is moving in a positive light.
Salesforce never lacked in achievements for the year 2018, proving further that Benioff’s leadership was truly effective and worthy of its sixth spot in Harvard Business Review’s best CEOs list:
- The company has enjoyed a consistent boom in its growth over the years and has retained its spot as the #1 global provider of Customer Relationship Management software.
- Salesforce’s 2018 fiscal year revenue swelled up to a whopping $10 billion as well.
- The company’s annual Dreamforce conference gets bigger every year.
- A new headquarters, Salesforce Tower, started its operations this 2018.
- Corporate philanthropy flourishes as Benioff continues to implement his “1-1-1 model”; that is, donating to charity 1% of profits, 1% of company resources, and 1% of employee time as volunteer hours.
- Salesforce is slated to expand to more countries in Europe and Asia in the following years.
All these continuing achievements are driving factors that propelled Benioff to the sixth spot and proved that he truly outshone himself as an outstanding CEO of Salesforce.
Moving Forward
Harvard Business Review recognized the amazing leadership of Marc Benioff for 2018 by placing him among the top ten best CEOs of the year. Salesforce continues to take pride in Benioff’s leadership and sees this recognition as another proof of a strong force that will help keep the cloud computing giant in its glory.