Talking Work-Life Understanding With Okta’s New CMO, John Zissimos

by Susan St. Ledger President, Worldwide Field Operations

Spend five minutes with John Zissimos (AKA JZ), and three things become clear: this is someone with an inspired approach to people, culture, and leadership. He believes in data-driven creativity, is a master at designing and building digital ecosystems, and is one of the best storytellers I’ve personally ever encountered. Most importantly, his family always comes first. 

After spending more than three years at Google and seven years at Salesforce, JZ was recently promoted to CMO of Okta. While building strong teams and fantastic work culture, he’s helped build iconic brands and plans to do the same at Okta. This interview will give you a glimpse into why we're all beyond excited about our bright future together.  

SSL: Last week at our Company Kick-Off you told the story about how you got to Okta. Do you mind repeating that here? 

JZ: Not at all. I wasn’t recruited to come here. No one called me. I didn’t see a job description. Because none of that existed. I reached out to Okta because I wanted to come work here. I was an early investor in the stock, and I’ve been following this story from the start. I wanted to be a part of this amazing company because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I could see it. And I felt a great sense of purpose and a magnetic pull to join.

SSL: When you first spoke to Okta’s CEO Todd McKinnon, he said: “You’re a great marketer, I don’t care about that. I just want you to be a great people leader and help me build a company that people love working for.” What did that mean to you?

JZ: It’s kind of shocking to hear something like that actually. It meant everything to me. Working at a company that really prioritizes putting people first, I’ve been searching for that my entire career. Every company says that in some way, but very few actually do it for real. When Todd said that to me, I knew for sure I was in the right place at the right time. 

For me, it’s not work-life balance. That puts pressure on the employee to figure it out. I believe in something I call work-life understanding. You have to get to know your people in a profound way if you want to truly create a great team and culture today. What is our connection to each other? If you want to build a purpose-driven brand, you first need to make sure as a leader you foster the ability for everyone on your team to have a higher purpose outside of work and enable them to make that their #1 priority in life. 

For me, it’s my family. Being great at home is the ultimate mission for me. On my final day on this planet, I’m not looking for my wife and daughters to tell me I was an amazing CMO. That’s not the goal. Hearing that I was the very best husband and father is what I’m looking for. I tell my team, whatever your passion in life is outside of work, focus on that. To be great at work, you first need to be exceptional outside of work. Make that your focus and you’ll be amazing here. And if you’re working somewhere, where that’s not possible, come join us. 

SSL: We recently held our Sales Kickoff in Las Vegas (our first in-person Okta event in two years!), and you spoke about the power of purpose-driven brands and storytelling.  What is your approach to building a purpose-driven brand? 

It all comes down to one word: Listening. It’s so important to do your research and truly listen. It takes time. You have to find out what all of your stakeholders think of you, and more importantly, what do they want from you? 

A brand isn’t a logo or a color or a font or a tagline. A brand is a promise. I like to dig in and figure out what that promise is and bring it to life through powerful storytelling. 

Most companies focus on the product. It’s great, but it only tells a fraction of the story. A powerful story needs three acts. It’s who you are, what you do and how you do it. We have 5,000 dedicated employees focused on customer success and doing it in a way that no other company on earth operates. It’s an amazing story. 

Our products are phenomenal, but the only thing that matters is what those products allow our customers to achieve. Our products help our customers’ hopes, dreams, mission, and purpose come to life. That’s where the magic is. Everywhere I look there’s an Okta superfan with a great story to tell. All we have to do is give them the platform to do it. 

It’s the customer’s story that’s magical. The moment we forget that we’re just like any other product for sale.

SSL: What are some of the key insights you’ve uncovered in your brand research with our customers and stakeholders? 

JZ: We’ve invested a lot of time talking to customers, CTOs, developers, solutions engineers, IT directors, and product leaders. We found that we're super trusted across the board. Some of the anecdotes underscoring that trust include

• Strong product innovation, with a roadmap they can believe in

• Integration with existing and future apps

• Speed-to-business value

• Ease of implementation

One of, if not the most powerful things we do as a brand, is to allow our customers the freedom to make powerful choices. This came up time after time after time in our research and interviews. We free them to safely use any technology. Our neutral and open identity platform is key for them. And the power of the Okta Integration Network further complements this story. It’s an enduring idea that’s shared across all our customers. The more freedom decision-makers have, the more they like their jobs. That's pretty powerful stuff.

SSL: What does working for you and with you look like?

JZ:  My most important job is to be a mentor and a coach. I work for the team. Not the other way around. We’re all here to help each other. The moment we forget that we’re all lost.

I have 4 simple things I ask my team to do:

• Show up. Be helpful

• Make daily progress

• Pour love into the room

• Take everyone with you

I believe success is a choice. And making the choice to show up each and every day to help everyone succeed is what I aspire to do. One thing I took for granted for a long time was thinking too far ahead and wasting important opportunities to have a profound impact daily. Do you know what the most important moment of your life is? It’s the one you’re presently in. It’s the only moment you can be certain you have. Life is crazy short. Don’t waste it. Use every single day, every meeting, every interaction you have to lift someone up, to motivate them, to inspire them. 

I want success for our teams, but to get there, I allow space for all voices, for innovation, for risk-taking. If someone has something they’re really passionate about doing, my job is to be a good partner, to ask the right questions, and to empower people to put forward ideas that they really believe will work. You need to let people execute and learn. Micromanagement is poison at work. I’ve worked for many micromanagers. They drain the life out of you, create fear and crush innovation. People don’t leave companies. They leave micromanagers. 

I’m inspired by the mission, the people, the culture, and also your leadership style. Every week we meet and the net takeaway of our 1:1 is I believe in you, and I trust you. That inspires me to achieve the impossible. Creating a culture where our people can thrive is what you and Todd and the rest of the team care about, it’s why I’m so happy to be in this role.  I’ve had a lot of success throughout my career, but I haven't worked in an environment like this before. I’m in a culture I’ve been searching for my entire career, and I absolutely love coming to work every day at Okta. 

Rapid-fire question round:

• Favorite business story: Who Moved My Cheese?

• Meal of choice: Homemade pizzas with my kids and wife every Friday night

• Hobby: Work is my favorite hobby. I love my job.

• Favorite organization: 3% movement

More on JZ

JZ is a true customer champion, creative thinker, and transformative leader. He has already made a tangible impact here at Okta—strengthening our marketing organization with incredible team-building and bringing an innovative approach to storytelling.

Before joining Okta, John was the VP of Creative, Brand, Media, and Customer Programs at Google, where he led the team responsible for building the Google Cloud business globally. Prior to that, he spent over seven years at Salesforce where he served as Chief Design Officer and reported directly to Marc Benioff. During his time there, he built the Salesforce brand and crafted the company’s story around the world. He inspired a data-driven, design-led culture to accelerate digital transformation, and built a full-service agency within Salesforce to innovate and help drive the fastest-growing software company in the world from $1 Billion to $8.5 Billion in revenue. He led the creative and marketing organization across digital, strategy, brand, advertising media, interactive design, films, events, customer stories, and UX.

This blog post first appeared on Okta.com by Susan St. Ledger: https://www.okta.com/blog/2022/02/oktas-new-cmo-john-zissimos/

You can never be great at work unless you're first exceptional at home.

I'm seeing, watching, hearing and reading a lot of spinning across companies right now to adjust and help the world. All of this is causing great change and it comes with confusion and a much higher level of ambiguity for employees. 

The best thing to do in these moments is to lean heavily into making sure you’re all helping each other at work. I can't stress this one simple core value enough. We all have to keep in mind that the pressures of home and work are colliding and you’re going to get comms from your company in one email filled with compassion and empathy that is completely disconnected from another email from the business asking for a level of intense work that comes off like it's business as usual. 

Don't take this personally. Understanding moments of uncertainty and stress brings out the best in people and leaders, but also the opposite.  

"How can I help?" has to be your core value in this time.

Leaders need to lead with...

“Is this possible?” 

“What can we stop doing so that we can do this instead?”

“How are you doing at home? Can you help right now?”

The best way to approach shifting work and teams quickly is to not add to a mountain of work, but to first eliminate mountains of work. 

Clarity is the greatest commodity right now. 

Be clear. Eliminate obstacles. And bring large groups of people together when and only when you can provide clarity. 

In the short term, in order to help everyone, you’ll probably have to let go of the way you’re currently organized and all align in small tactical teams to help drive the kind of work that helps all of your customers, but also doesn’t sacrifice your employees in doing so. 

You’ll have to slow some things down as you pick up all of your net new projects. 

If you’re a team member confused during this time, concentrate on your family first and your health and don't let the pressure of any individual, team or business function get in your head.

You can never be great at work unless you’re first exceptional at home. 

Nothing you achieve at work will ever matter if your family and your health suffers because of it. 

Building the Brand Experience Inside and Out at Salesforce

This blog post and podcast episode originally appeared on Brand Driven Digital @ http://www.branddrivendigital.com/branding-at-salesforce/

“You have to build marketing inside out today. It has to come from inside the company.” It’s this kind of hard work that drives John Zissimos, Chief Creative Officer for software giant Salesforce. His work includes growing a coherent brand and bringing a promise to life across a variety of channels online and off. We discussed all of this and more on this week’s episode of the On Brand podcast.

About John Zissimos

John Zissimos is the Chief Creative Officer at Salesforce. As CCO, John is responsible for building the Salesforce brand and crafting the company’s story around the world. He leads the creative organization across digital, strategy, interactive design, films, events, customer stories, and UX. Over the past 6 years, John has inspired a design-led culture and built a full-service, creative agency within Salesforce to inspire, innovate, and tell the story of the fastest-growing software company in the world.

Prior to joining Salesforce in 2010, John spent over two decades as an advertising creative executive, film director, and photographer. John began his career in marketing at Chiat/Day and has held top creative leadership positions at McCann Erickson and J. Walter Thompson.

John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Radio, Television, and Film from Temple University. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Pam, and daughters Alexandra, Ellie, and Katie.

Episode Highlights

How has the Salesforce brand evolved since John has been there? “It wasn’t always this big! But really — a brand is a promise. Usually in three dimensions. It’s about the products, the people, and the vision of the future set by the CEO. Our promise is of a deeper relationship with your customers and data to grow your business. That’s why we’re completely focused on customer success — connecting customers with their information.”

Telling life-changing stories. “We have a product that has changed people’s lives. These stories were all over the place but they were trapped in the building, at events, with evangelists.” Eventually, Zissimos sold the storytelling concept through video to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and the rest is history (and a fun story that you’ll have to listen to).

“We’re all story-tellers,” Zissimos shared. “Everything you deliver to your customer has to have story elements — empathy, conflict, authenticity. Millennials attach themselves to brands that stand for something — that are about sustainability and community.”

Where do you start with brand experience? “You have to ask yourself these questions — where are you? Ask both your best customers and the ones who have left you. You also have to ask — Why are you here? Is it just to make a profit? Or is it about something bigger? Dreamforce (Salesforce’s annual user conference) is a great example of listening to the community because we’re doing something bigger together. There’s tons of volunteering that goes along with the event that week.”

Unifying the brand. “Plugging into the mother brand is the best way to grow. Early on there were a lot of groups and it was more silo-ish. We had to tie it together through processes and systems. I have a 24-hour plan and a five-year plan. I always wanted to bring everything together but never in a way that stifled innovation.”

“Insight is key. It’s a hard step and a lot of people are skipping it. I have to explain, I have to intellectualize about the why. Why is this on brand? Why is this better? It’s subjective. If you want the most power, be the one to write the brief. Then let it go. Let the team take over.”

What brand has made John smile recently? “Social Print — you can build a framed photo from your Instagram feed. But they do something great with what they actually send you.” As an avid Instagram user, I’ll have to check this out.

To learn more, go to Salesforce.com. For more information on John or his work, please visit zissimos.com and follow John on Twitter.

3 Ways to Create Stories that Resonate with Your Audience

As the Chief Creative Officer for Salesforce, I’m responsible for overseeing our brand, wherever it appears — across our different web properties, in advertising campaigns, at massive events like Dreamforce, and everywhere in between. And to build a great brand, you must first have a great story to tell.

One of the most important aspects of my job is telling stories — our Salesforce story, our employees’ stories, and the stories of our amazingly innovative customers. I’ve been a storyteller for as long as I can remember. Most of us are; storytelling is a fundamental part of being human. From the way you talk to your spouse about your day at work to how you report performance metrics back to your boss, you tell a story. You make decisions about which details are important, which to leave out, and package it all up into a beginning, middle, and end.

As a storyteller for a corporation, I’m not just trying to elicit an emotional response with the stories we tell (although that’s certainly important). I also use data to inform choices around user experience, design, and response rates. I want the work we create to generate clicks, which become leads, which eventually, through the hard work of our salespeople, become customers.

But in order to drive those clicks to meet those new potential customers, there needs to be a story — and it needs to be a good story. I want to inspire people — to get them to imagine and understand that there’s a better way with Salesforce. In my years as a storyteller, I’ve learned that you can’t inspire people without three key ingredients.

1. Don’t Bore People

This may be obvious, but it’s actually pretty difficult to do unless you’re paying close attention to your craft. Start by asking yourself, ‘Why should anyone care?’ If you’re going to put something out there — if you’re going to take the time to sit down and write a story, or create a film — don’t bore people. When you’re telling a story, remember that people want to hear something profound, and they want to be moved.

2. Show Change

People who talk about their own low points and what they did to change, and how they got to a certain place — those are the stories that we all want to hear. If you’re telling a story about how a business has transformed its customer service, you’ve got to talk about when the customer service was terrible. There’s nothing perfect about any of our lives or our businesses. We’re all trying to be better. If we’re not, or if we’re trying to pretend that everything is already perfect and we’re in denial, we won’t be in business much longer.

3. Be Honest

For any story, no matter what it is, you have to be honest. When people ask me what I believe makes a good manager, I can start with all of the things I do that inspire my employees to push themselves to innovate and think bigger than ever. And yes, that’s certainly interesting to a degree. But with some vulnerability, I can make that story much more powerful by talking about mistakes I’ve made along the way, or misconceptions about what makes a good manager that I’ve since corrected about myself. You have to reach the extremes of the theme that you want to tell — that’s when you can pull somebody in. People can smell inauthenticity a mile away, but they believe you when your story is real, and it’s honest.

Of course,  these tips are much more widely than just brand or corporate storytelling. I believe that what makes stories compelling is agnostic of the topic — whether you’re talking about a company, or an individual, or an idea. Stories are what make people interesting. Stories are why we will matter in the world long after we’re gone. When you’re thinking about telling a story, remember the power that stories can have, as well as the formula for how to tell a great one.  

This blog post first appeared on the Salesforce blog. The “What I’ve Learned” series features interviews with top Salesforce executives on what they’ve learned about business, success, and life. Keep your eyes peeled for more insights from top Salesforce executives, coming soon on the Salesforce Blog. In the meantime, check out Zissimos's first post, What I've Learned About Innovation.  https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/05/create-stories-that-resonate.html

What I’ve Learned About Innovation.

One of the most important things I’ve learned in my career is how little I know.

I’ve worked in creative roles for over 25 years, so I bring a lot of experience to the table when it comes to setting a brand strategy and driving innovation. But I’ve learned, over and over again, that you have to come in every day and start fresh. Erase what you learned yesterday, and take a new look. That’s where you find innovation — in the things you realize you don’t know.

The enemy of innovation is the old narrative — statements like “We’ve already tried that” or “We always do it this way.” All the innovation that I’ve seen happen at Salesforce, especially in our marketing department, has come from someone stopping and saying, “It’s time to take a fresh look at this.”

Of course, truly changing your own perspective isn’t easy to do. For me, it’s the product of a long career with a lot of mistakes made along the way. When you’re shaken to your core and your deepest beliefs are challenged or you make a really stupid mistake, you learn the kinds of lessons that enable you to develop new perspectives. You learn to be able to say, “There’s a better way to think about this.”

Which mistakes taught me the most? It’s hard to say. As a creative professional, your early career depends on your ability to build a great portfolio. That is, in essence, a selfish endeavor: You’re holding ideas in rather than sharing them. It’s the right thing to do for a while, but if you don’t let that go, you become someone who can’t lead or manage people because you’re always focused on your own work.

It happened to me: I found myself in a position where I was leading people, but it wasn’t going well because I kept trying to impose my will on their idea. They kept pushing back until one day, it hit me: They had a really great idea, and I was destroying it by trying to make it my thing. Now, I really try to inspire people without imposing my own views — even letting them make their own mistakes, which isn’t easy. The great thing about Salesforce is that if you have a great idea or a fresh perspective, you’re able to act on it. I’ve never seen a great idea get shot down here.

When it comes to innovation, though, great ideas are only half of the equation. The other half — the half that’s infinitely harder to achieve — is turning ideas into reality. And, surprisingly, your ability to get something made usually isn’t about your budget or internal authority. While these are important, the secret to successful innovation is much simpler, and much more difficult to achieve. It is patience.

The more transformative your idea is, the more patience you’ll need to make it happen. People are creatures of habit; disrupting those habits can be a long, slow, sometimes painful process. And bringing your vision to life — so vividly that others buy into its power to transform — is often just as painstaking.

When I first joined Salesforce in 2010, we did not tell our brand story the way that I thought we could (and should) tell it. You would go to Dreamforce, and there were customers, admins, these fiercely loyal superfans beyond anything I had seen at any other company. But that story wasn’t making it out of the building. I had a vision for how I wanted to tell that story, but turning my vision into reality was a serious challenge. It took a long time talking, convincing, putting presentations together, tinkering, and occasionally being willing to fight for what I believed.

At times, it was discouraging. When you have a vision you believe in, it can be difficult to understand why others don’t jump on board. But you have to have empathy; you have to try to see what unique experiences and convictions the other person brings to the table. In my case, each obstacle only made me more certain of my vision to change the way this company told stories. And ultimately, I did. I’m proud to say that our customer films have redefined the way Salesforce tells its brand story, largely by letting those superfans help tell our story for us.

So how did I keep going despite the doubters, naysayers, and incremental failures? One of the best tactics is to develop multilevel plans that align with your vision. I’ll have an end goal, which may be one or five years down the road, but I’ll also have plenty of short-term milestones along the way. This helps me focus on incremental change while keeping the big picture in mind. If I meet a short-term obstacle, I’m less easily discouraged; I can tell myself, “OK, that’s a five-year thing. I have to let that go. I’m not going to change the company this week.”

But, of course, that doesn’t stop me from doing everything I can to create the kind of change that will make a profound difference eventually.

This blog post first appeared on the Salesforce blog. The “What I’ve Learned” series features interviews with top Salesforce executives on what they’ve learned about business, success, and life. Keep your eyes peeled for more insights from top Salesforce executives, coming soon on the Salesforce Blog. https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/04/what-ive-learned-about-innovation-john-zissimos.html

Welcome to the Age of the Customer

Today’s customers are more powerful than ever, with the ability to shift markets and define a company’s success in a matter of seconds. They’re not looking for products, features, or gimmicks; they’re looking for a complete and effortless customer experience. They don’t just want to solve problems; they want to build a faster, smarter future — and they’re disrupting entire industries in the process.

We are all customers, and we are living in the age of the customer.

This is nothing short of a revolution — the fourth industrial revolution, a blurring of the physical and digital worlds — with customers at its center.

Amid this change and opportunity, the question for every business becomes: How will you adapt? How do you shift your entire strategy to create the connected experience your customers demand?

At Salesforce, that’s precisely the problem we’re helping companies solve. Salesforce Lightning connects your entire business around the customer, aligning your sales, service, marketing, community, analytics, and apps around a unified goal: customer success.

So what exactly does that mean?

The sales process is drastically shifting away from the linear model. Succeeding in selling means knowing where your customers are at all times, and being prepared to engage with them on their own terms. Your team needs selling tools designed for this faster, mobile, customer-first world. Sales Cloud Lightning puts the power of the lightning experience into every sales rep’s pocket for a faster, smarter selling experience.

But in the Age of the Customer, selling is only one piece of the puzzle. In this new era, customer service reigns supreme, and your agents need shareable, omnichannel, 360-degree views of every single customer. Service Cloud Lightning empowers your agents to make your customers love you, and Field Service Lightning expands this power to your field service technicians.

It’s crucial for your business to connect to customers, but also to leverage and build peer-to-peer relationships. With Lightning Community Builder, you can build a powerful community of customer evangelists and create more meaningful, one-to-one experiences for every customer. And with Lightning Trailhead, you can continue learning and building even more connection points to your customers.

The Age of the Customer is a powerful shift. The opportunity has never been greater, and every business needs to innovate and transform in order to succeed. But at Salesforce, where we’ve been focused on the customer for the past 17 years, we have the tools your business needs to succeed in this new era.

This blog post originally appeared on the Salesforce blog, 2016: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/03/age-of-the-customer.html