Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company—and Revolutionized an Industry

6.10. Play #73: Let Employees Inspire the Foundation

From the foundation's earliest days—actually from the time it was just a seedling of an idea—we determined that for it to be successful, it had to be driven by the interests of our employees. Building a foundation that reflected their passions was the only way they would truly embrace it as theirs. There are many examples that demonstrate that they have. Take, for instance, what happened a few years ago when I opened our annual company-wide meeting for questions and Sue Amar, a premier support analyst, stood up and asked, "What are we doing about the environment?"

It was a good question, and I knew the answer, but instead of giving her some half-baked information on our recycling programs ...