Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and his fast-rising COO Brian Millham tell us where the software giant is headed after 'a difficult time'

• Benioff just shook up Salesforce's leadership, bringing several former execs back to the company.
• The changes shifted more responsibility to President and COO Brian Millham.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff just announced a shake-up that re-staffs his brain trust with an armful of boomerang executives.

The changes shift more responsibility to president and COO Brian Millham, and go some way toward addressing investor concerns about succession -- should Benioff decide to pass the CEO reins in the future.

Salesforce has gone through a challenging 18-month period. Activist investors circled. The company cut thousands of jobs. Some executives left. More recently, results have improved, with quarterly earnings heading toward Salesforce's 30% margin target.

Benioff and Millham sat down with Insider's Editor-in-Chief Nich Carlson to discuss the changes. What follows is a transcript of the conversation. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Marc Benioff: We have a phenomenal situation with Brian, who has been at Salesforce now for 24 years. Employee number 13. Lucky number 13. Brian was appointed chief operating officer last August. And, he's had just a phenomenal run at Salesforce, and this is an incredible new opportunity for him where he's taking on not just some of the traditional functions in sales and service. He already manages more than 50% of our employees, but now he's taking on marking, he's taking on employee success, human resources as well as business technology which is our CIO and transformation function. So it's really a broad extension of his capabilities. What percentage of all employees will now work for you?

Brian Millham: Closer to 70%.

Nich Carlson: An obvious question: Why not name him co-CEO right now?

Benioff: Well, we have to walk before we get to run here. Brian is amazing and president and chief operating officer, my most loyal partner at running the business for two and a half decades, and I couldn't be more excited to have him with this new capacity.

Nich Carlson: Why are you excited to take this role on?

Millham: I'm thrilled to be in this role. Very, very excited to not only take advantage of the great opportunity we have in front of us from a product perspective, the innovation coming out of our teams on the product development side is truly unbelievable. Our customers are going to love what we're delivering.

But I'm also very excited about our Ohana, our culture, to be more involved in the day-to-day operations of our human resources organization, what we call employee success to really focus on our people. We have an incredible culture here. Marc said on our latest earnings call, it is our superpower at Salesforce.

We have great leadership on the IT side of the organization as well, which we call business technology, doing some incredible things with our own technology, to drive efficiencies, scale and our organization. And certainly I'm thrilled that the marketing organization comes under us as well.

Carlson: Brian, given the past few months of layoffs, do you think there's some repair work to be done? What do you mean getting more involved with the people?

Millham: I do think we have to focus on our culture. We obviously went through a difficult time, but I also think we're seeing some rebirth in a lot of ways in our culture. So people are very, very excited about the way that we delivered the numbers in Q4 and in our first quarter. The results are there.

We're seeing many of our ex-employees want to come back to Salesforce, incredible boomerangs back to the company. Ariel Kelman has just been announced as our CMO and Miguel Milano is coming back as our chief revenue officer, and Kendall Collins is coming back as chief of staff. So a lot of people want to be back at this business and are inspired by what we're doing.

Benioff: The key part is that these executives always felt that they were part of Salesforce and now they've gone through what we like to call at Salesforce (laughing) "external training." They never left the Ohana. And now we have them coming back. What's great is when people come back, they can almost start immediately because they hit the ground running. It's really a metaphor for kind of the rebirth of Salesforce in this new way and new structure.

Carlson: So, you've had two other co-CEOs before and both of them left. What's different this time?

Benioff: Well, I think Brian and my marriage is quite proven. Over two and a half decades, I don't think there's been a more successful business partnership for such a long period than Brian and I have had.

Carlson: Brian, what are you going to do differently than others before you?

Millham: I've been around Marc for 24 years now and I've also been around this culture and this company and I know how we operate. I know what the expectations are in the role. I've lived it each and every day for 24 years. And so I come in with eyes wide open to go do this job, and I feel I understand enough about the job and the business to make sure this marriage is gonna work. So I feel very comfortable about our future and very excited to embark on it.