Salesforce反复强调新的工作风格

当一家科技公司规模足够大的时候，你可以预测它的一些有头脑有才华的成员会组建一支摇滚乐队。他们会在用户大会等公司活动中演出，如今这只是玩玩形式。一种快速移动和创新引起颠覆性创新的文化是纯粹的摇滚乐。

据我所知，Salesforce没有摇滚乐队，但这是一家拥有数万员工的公司，所以没有承诺。在我看来，Salesforce一直以来更多的是一种爵士文化。爵士乐在某些方面是比较难的，但矛盾的是它也会比较容易。

爵士乐的形式要求乐队成员倾听别人的演奏，并做出有意义的回应。即使他们演奏的是一首古老的标准曲，演奏者们也是在原始旋律上进行翻唱。他们用单个音符演奏和弦（琶音），用不同的节奏演奏八分音符（摇摆），或者跳过音符，让耳朵去暗示它们。他们也会做其他的事情，如时间符号、交换四音（两个音乐家在游戏中交换音乐想法）等等，但最重要的是，演奏者们并不完全知道一首歌会如何发展。他们有一套技巧和一般规则，但要让歌曲在当下发展。

适应大流行的调整

早在第一季度，Salesforce就抛出了年度计划，并很好地模仿了一家创业公司或爵士乐队。他们开发了Work.com和Salesforce Anywhere这样的产品，作为不断变化的系统需求的解决方案，帮助客户应对流行病。这些产品既支持远程工作，又能在人们返回时保护办公场所。

这一切都在我们沉浸在Zoom会议和家庭教育的漫长旅途中之前，我们开始公开猜测下一个常态。我们不知道那会是什么--它可能只是恢复到现状，也可能扯到在家或其他地方工作。但可以肯定的是，现在很少有软件公司拥有一套能够支持这种转变的功能。

可以肯定的是，虽然Salesforce在其流行的产品中处于领先地位，其爵士文化应该有助于确保公司不断创新。因此，关于Salesforce收购Slack的传闻也就在情理之中，不足为奇。

Slack是一款面向企业的软件消息服务，它可以实现远程沟通，可以代替一些更直接的东西。就像比较流行的社交产品的方面一样，其中也涉及到了社交的元素，让用户能够接触到一些群体，但同时它又能保持线程的私密性，因为你可以保留一些也是共享的东西。

其他厂商很可能也在追逐Slack，收购Slack对他们都有好处，既因为它可以增强他们的远程工作策略--也因为不管谁收购Slack，都会阻止其他人拥有它。

Salesforce需要Slack吗？也许吧。

Salesforce有一个强大的开发平台，如果它想的话，有了MuleSoft，它可以与一只旧鞋整合。所以总是要考虑内部开发工作，但这需要时间，而且市场是在移动的。也可以有其他策略，比如前面提到的守株待兔的游戏。

如果新冠肺炎干涸，吹走了（愉快的想法），我们都回到办公室，Slack仍然有用，因为销售人员应该永远不在大楼里，如果他们能帮助它，Slack能力将支持这一点。

不过更有可能的是，我们不会强迫员工回到办公室，如果这意味着再次走上前新冠时代的破败道路和大众交通。对于在位于大城市的公司工作的人来说，这很容易意味着将每天两小时的通勤时间缩短到步行到餐厅所需的几分钟。这也可能意味着空气中的二氧化碳减少了很多，这可能是更重要的。

早在大流行开始时，科学家们就注意到，在洛杉矶和纽约等常年烟雾弥漫的地区，空气是多么的干净。我们得到了一个新的政府在华盛顿，认为气候变化是真实的了。绿色新商有很多关于替代能源和驾驶电动汽车的想法，作为一个写过一本包含这种想法的书的人，我可以说他们有吸引力。但这些想法从根本上来说，只是试图改善一种过时的模式，而这种模式确实需要更换。更有甚者，没有燃烧的燃料，没有行驶的里程，没有乘坐的航班，没有修建的道路和桥梁。

预言家们都在说，Salesforce-Slack联盟可能会对做生意非常有利，但这给我留下的印象是，回到业务照旧的前COVID。他们也是对的，但更多的是；回过头来看，联盟可以被看作是更聪明地工作和支持环境的早期步骤。下一个正常状态所意味着的经济影响远远超出了现在流传的210亿到230亿美元的微不足道的数字。

这使得这笔交易实际上是不费吹灰之力的 -- -- 它使整个方案更像布鲁贝克或巴塞，而不是披头士。

原文题目：Salesforce Riffs on New Work Styles

原文：When a tech company gets big enough you can predict that some of its brainy and talented members will form a rock band. They'll play at company events like user meetings and these days this is just playing to form. A culture that moves fast and innovates to cause disruptive innovation is pure rock'n'roll.

To the best of my knowledge, Salesforce doesn't have a rock band, but it's a company with tens of thousands of employees, so no promises. To me Salesforce has always had more of a jazz culture. Jazz is harder to pull off in some ways but paradoxically it can be easier too.

The jazz form requires band members to listen to what the others are playing and to respond with something meaningful. Even if they're playing an old standard, the players are riffing on the original melody. They play chords by the individual note (arpeggio), playing eighth notes at different rhythms (swinging), or skipping notes and letting the ear imply them. They do other things too with time signatures, trading fours (two musicians trading musical ideas in a game of top this) and much more, but the important thing is that the players don't go into a song knowing exactly how it will go. They have a set of skills and general rules but let the song evolve in the moment.

Adjusting to the Pandemic

Back in Q1 Salesforce threw out its annual plan and did a pretty good imitation of a startup or a jazz band. They developed products like Work.com and Salesforce Anywhere as solutions to the evolving need for systems that would help their customers cope with the pandemic. The products supported both working remotely and safeguarding the premises when people returned.

That was all before it sunk in that we were in for a long slog of Zoom meetings and home schooling and we began to openly speculate about the next normal. We don't know what that will be -- it could just revert to the status quo or it could riff on working at home or anywhere else. But what's certain is that few software companies right now have a suite of functionality that's ready to support the shift.

To be sure though Salesforce has a lead in its pandemic offerings and its jazz culture should help ensure that the company keeps innovating. So rumors about Salesforce acquiring Slack made sense, no surprise.

Slack is a software messaging service for business, and it enables remote communication that can substitute for something more direct. Like aspects of more popular social products, there is an element of socialization involved that gives users the ability to reach out to some groups but at the same time it keeps the thread as private as you can keep something that's also shared.

Other vendors are likely also in the hunt for Slack and acquiring it would be good for all of them both because it could enhance their remote work strategies -- and because whoever acquires Slack will prevent others from having it.

Does Salesforce Need Slack? Maybe.

Salesforce has a powerful development platform and with MuleSoft it could integrate with an old shoe if it wanted to. So there's always the in-house development effort to consider but that takes time and markets are on the move. There could be other strategies too, for instance the aforementioned game of keep away.

If COVID dries up and blows away (cheery thought) and we all go back to the office, Slack would still be useful because salespeople are supposed to never be in the building if they can help it and a Slack capability would support that.

More likely though we're not going to force employees to come back to the office if it means once again taking to the decrepit roads and mass transit of the pre-COVID era. For people working for companies located in big cities that can easily mean shaving down two-hour daily commutes to the minutes it takes to walk to dining room. It would also likely mean a whole lot less carbon dioxide in the air and that could be more important.

Way back at the start of the pandemic scientists noted how much cleaner the air was over perennially smoggy areas like LA and New York. We're getting a new administration in Washington that thinks climate change is real too. Green New Dealers have lots of ideas about alternative energy and driving electric cars, and as one who has written a book encompassing such ideas, I can say they have appeal. But those ideas fundamentally just try to improve an out-of-date paradigm that's really in need of replacement. There's even more to be said for the fuel that isn't burned, the miles not driven, flights not taken, and roads and bridges not built.

Prognosticators are saying that a Salesforce-Slack alliance could be very good for doing business, but that leaves me with the impression of going back to business-as-usual ante-COVID. They are right too but even more; the union could be seen in retrospect as an early step in working smarter and supporting the environment. The economic impacts implied by the next normal go way beyond the paltry $21 billion to $23 billion now bandied about.

This makes the deal practically a no-brainer -- and it makes the whole scenario more Brubeck or Basie than Beatles.