WANTED: Women!

Now that I have your attention, I'd like to tell you about my recent experience at Dreamforce, salesforce.com's annual conference/party/extravaganza,which took place last week in San Francisco. This was my third Dreamforce and if you have not experienced it, I strongly recommend you attend next year. It really is worth the trip - even from Australia. 

Two themes ran throughout: We want to help firms become “Customer Obsessed Companies” through the Salesforce1 Platform, and we want to hire and empower more women: to quote our CEO, “We have dedicated this conference to the power of women”.

I was lucky enough to be present for two ‘fireside chats’ between our inspirational CEO, Marc Benioff, and (separately) Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer. You know who these women are and I daresay you have at least heard of (if not yet read) “Lean In”.  I recommend you take the time to watch the videos of these interviews on Youtube of Sheryl's interview here and Marissa's interview here. 

In each case, everyone in the room was impressed by the driven, forthright, strong woman on stage. I think everyone was also impressed by the warmth, empathy and connection that each woman made with the interviewer and the audience. It struck me that this combination of seemingly diverse attributes was a poignant reminder of one of the points that Sheryl made- that (even when we have the best intentions) we tend to fall back on stereotypes when we consider men and women. Men AND women can have any and all of these attributes.

A great example Sheryl used to illustrate this was to ask males in the audience to raise their hands if they had ever been called “Bossy” as a child. A few hands went up. When she asked females to raise their hands if they had been called “Bossy” as a child, 90% of hands went up. We need to stop doing that to our daughters!

It’s true that women are underrepresented in Technology, and in technology leadership. As Sheryl said  "I wrote the book because, no matter what progress women have made, we're still really far from getting our share of leadership roles - in any industry, in any country, anywhere. That means when the decisions are made that most impact our world, our voices aren't equally heard."

We want to change that. We want to hire, promote and empower more women.

Marc summed things up nicely:  "I want to have more women leaders at Salesforce. I want to have more balance between my men and women leaders. I think there is incredible benefit to having diversity. But it's completely selfish because I know it will create a better company"

Salesforce.com is hiring- to find your dreamjob check out www.salesforce.com/au/dreamjob