Blog • 12. December 2022

What did the founder of Salesforce think when he talked about the mindset of the Beginner (Japanese shoshin)?

I recently listened to an interview with Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff on  Yahoo Finance. He stressed the importance  of keeping  a "beginner´s" mindset in business and management.

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Adera Executive Search Blog 12

I recently listened to  an interview with  Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff on  Yahoo Finance. He stressed the importance  of keeping  a  “beginner´s” mindset in business and  management.

The beginner’s way of thinking (shoshin in Japanese) is an idea originating in Zen Buddhism that emphasizes openness to  new ideas, the desire to experiment, putting old truths,  filters, attitudes aside, and looking at things with a fresh look. Just what every field starter does and thinks about having a white sheet of paper in front of them. Benioff stated that the beginner sees opportunities and new ideas first and foremost, while the expert in the field sees limitations and risks.

The opposite of the beginner’s way of thinking is the so-called Einstellung effect: a person, due to his experience and expertise, prefers already established paths and methods of problem solving.

At Salesforce, Benioff says, they sit down with colleagues at the beginning of each year, forget what they’ve done so far and try to look at  everything in the organization as a white sheet of paper. The question is asked: what do we want? What is important? How do we want to achieve things?  Where do we know that we have achieved our goals?etc. They test and, if necessary, redefine their core values, which are operationalized into clear codes of conduct.  If our core value is  trust, then we  think about  how we  gain trust, how we measure  it, how we know that  we are trusted, etc.

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