Woodson Martin on compassion
Empathy is admirable; compassion takes that a step further
The first time I heard the name Woodson Martin was in 2005 during my first meeting with Marc Benioff. Actually, it was more like an interview and Tien Tzuo was there too (but that's another story). Anyhow, for context, I had just traveled from Boston to SF to show some Salesforce leaders a POC (proof of concept) of a little analytics tool me and this developer friend Rob Masson had built. This was early days at sfdc and before the AppExchange even existed.
Marc liked the little benchmarking components we had built...and after Tien chimed in that what we were demoing was different from the dashboards Marc looked at everyday, he had a suggestion. "You have to meet Woodson Martin," said Marc. "He's leading our efforts to raise the bar on our analytics, product-driven, customer-focused." (I'm paraphrasing but I promise that was the gist.)
Of course, Marc was right about all those things but he didn't have the forethought at the time to mention a quality of Woodson's that sets him apart from many other leaders I've met. I've met many super people over the years that have empathy (a big buzzword these days); they have that quality that enables them to put themselves in someone else's shoes; they can see, think and feel from another person's perspective. Empathetic humans can identify with another person's feelings and sometimes even join in their suffering.
Compassion takes that a step further, and Woodson has that unique quality in spades. I can say that because not only have I worked with him for years in the early days of sfdc but we were town neighbors and we still live closeby where I have popped over sometimes unannounced. And on those occasions, I have been amazed with some of the things he and often his wife have been up to. Like hosting foreign students, or sponsoring refugees in need in his own home. A couple years ago, I was amazed but not shocked to find Woodson down at our southern border giving his hands and time to help children and families seeking asylum and facing a humanitarian crisis.
The world would be a better place if we all had a little more compassion.
