At Salesforce, 83% of employees use Slackbot. The heaviest users are saving 20 hours a week — roughly six months of recovered capacity per year, per person. Ryan Gavin, CMO of Slack and EVP of Salesforce, isn't citing those numbers as a product pitch. He's citing them as the answer to a pressing question in the C-suite: Where is AI actually moving the revenue needle?

"When you think about maximizing … productivity by 2x, 3x, 4x, that can be one of the best drivers for top-line revenue in a company while maintaining your costs," Gavin told Forbes in an interview in Cannes.

So what's the best path to achieve lasting impact?

Below, Gavin breaks down how giving your employees the right AI framework and tools can result in a massive productivity win.

Make AI A Growth Strategy, Not A Tech Project

The organizations leading the AI revolution tie investments directly to growth, Gavin says, prioritizing measurable gains in employee productivity, revenue and customer outcomes over simple efficiency.

Top leaders skip the agent headcount and ask one question: where does AI move the business?

Specifically, where can employees get time back to focus on revenue, not administration?

Shifting from accumulating tech to targeting outcomes is what separates companies capturing real value from those still waiting for it.

"It's really critical that every C-suite spender not only understands how are they applying AI across the enterprise — but what are the areas that are going to have the biggest impact for things like employee productivity," Gavin says.

The companies getting there, he says, are becoming what Salesforce calls the agentic enterprise — not a technology upgrade, but a new way of operating, where humans, agents and platforms work together inside the systems a business already runs on. The goal isn't to add more AI tools. It's to change how the organization actually operates.

Use AI To Turn Conversations Into Results

Work has always been conversational. What's changed is what a conversation can now do.

Collaboration has traditionally involved coordinating people and information to move projects forward. Gavin says agentic AI is fundamentally changing that dynamic. Rather than serving as a separate tool for employees to consult, the technology is becoming an active participant in the flow of work.

"[AI is] transforming how employees work, and it's transforming the things that they can do every single day," Gavin says.

Instead of waiting for employees to seek answers or ask for help, AI agents can proactively identify bottlenecks, coordinate follow-ups and recommend solutions in real time. When AI operates across conversations, data, systems, and teams simultaneously, it uncovers decisions that were previously invisible — and frees employees to act on them.

“When AI just works — when I don't have to learn something new and it's trusted, meaning it knows me, it knows my business — that transforms an organization.” Ryan Gavin, CMO, Slack And EVP, Salesforce

The shift Gavin describes has a specific shape: AI that knows your data, your colleagues and your connected enterprise systems — and operates inside the conversation rather than alongside it. He calls this the agentic enterprise. The unit of work isn't the task or the ticket. It's the conversation.

"When all of those things work together in a single surface, that's when you stop switching between tools and start actually getting valuable work done," he says. For Gavin, that surface is Slack — not as a messaging layer, but as the operating system where agents, data and people converge.

Hire Talent For AI Adaptability

As AI continues to reshape the future of work, Gavin says effective leaders should rethink what defines a great hire. With agentic AI ready to take on more routine tasks, organizations will gain the greatest advantage from employees who are adaptable and creative, not just those with the most impressive resumes or specialized experience.

"One of the things we look at when we think about success in this era is: How are we transforming individuals into these makers? Employee success really kind of starts with a redefinition of their role, a redefinition of how they show up every single day," Gavin says.

Gavin's hiring framework is deliberately disruptive: the resume that got someone the job three years ago is increasingly the wrong signal.

"I'm looking for go-to-market builders and makers who are coming in with creativity, who want to learn, to explore," he says.

In an agentic enterprise, the durable skill isn't domain expertise — it's the ability to direct agents, interrogate outputs and turn a conversation into a result. That's not a soft skill. It's the new core competency.

Writer: Kendra Langlinais