Act as One: How Salesforce R&D Transformed Through Synchronized Leadership
The Beauty of Synchronized Motion
Watch a crew rowing team glide across the water. When done well, synchronized motion is mesmerizing and powerful. But synchronization requires each member to work seamlessly together—hands at the exact same height, oars dropping into the water at the exact same time, pulling with equal pressure. Any deviation disrupts the boat's balance and performance.
In his article "Act as One" for Emergence, The Journal of Business Agility from the Business Agility Institute, Pete explores what happened when the Salesforce.com R&D leadership team faced this exact challenge. Over Thanksgiving 2006, Pete received a call from their leadership team. They'd gone all-in on an agile transformation with over 300 people. It was everything but synchronized.
From Individual Strength to Collective Performance
For almost seven years, their organization had grown rapidly from a few dozen employees to a few hundred. The result? They were unable to synchronize a customer release for an entire year. Like a class of freshman recruits—all the best of their class, joining for the first time, each striving to prove individual excellence—their strengths worked against collective goals.
Pete worked with the leadership team to make three critical shifts: establishing shared values that replaced individual autonomy with team autonomy, creating shared initiatives that coordinated teams-of-teams toward collective goals, and implementing shared rhythms that enabled alignment without micromanagement.
The results? Salesforce.com doubled their market share against giants like Oracle and SAP while maintaining their core values through dozens of acquisitions and multi-fold growth.
Want to learn more about Pete's work with Salesforce?
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Pete Behrens | Leadership Insights
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