Stephanie Mehta: Welcome, Anjali. I’m so glad you’re here us today.
Anjali Sud: Thank you, it is great be here.
SM: At Vimeo, you lead a workforce of 1,300 people — you have creatives, you have finance people, you have technologists. So I’m going to start with really easy question: what was it like to manage diverse workforce through a global pandemic, a racial reckoning and a very fraught return to office?
AS: Oh, was a breeze, Stephanie. No, it was really challenging. You know, I think the constant has been change. And as a leader, you — you have a workforce that’s looking for certainty, they’re looking to control what’s happening around them. And I what we all found, as leaders, no matter what company you were … for, was that you couldn’t offer certainty, and you couldn’t always control the environment and things around you. And so, you know, for me, it really about agility. How do we stay flexible as team? How do we communicate in real time and people informed as we try and move through things? And then, also just how do we lead with humanity? You know, for Vimeo, one of the things I’ve really over the last few years is we each experience the so differently. We have employees who are remote. We have an team in Ukraine … employees who are on the front lines, who are at war. On the other hand, you have people in different parts of the world who experiencing mental-health challenges or burnout, and so I think it really just — the hardest part was not being able give everyone certainty, not being able to just apply a one-size-fits-all rule for everyone. But ultimately think it forced us, as a company, to build trust, because to be agile and flexible, and to lead with humanity, you have to each other. And so, I’m sort of optimistic that actually we’re emerging from time with a culture that is more flexible and nimble, and also, hopefully, more trust.
SM: Can you give an example of something that you into place, perhaps during the pandemic, to enhance communications or build trust or a greater sense of community or even to communicate there is no certainty, that is a muscle that think you’ll continue to use in the organization far the future?
AS: There’s a couple of things that we did. One — and we a video platform, so I obviously have to talk video, but I mean this sincerely — one of the parts, when you’re all sort of disparate, is you lose context and you lose nuance when you communicate. we did make a concerted effort to move away from and chat, text-based communication, as much as possible, and actually try, particularly for our team, when we were communicating, to do it with your face, your hands and your body and your emotions. And did that through live streaming a lot of communications, recording a of videos. We sent asynchronous video messages. So I … I record my screen and just send a note to people. Every new hire does a video to welcome and introduce themselves. lot of our meetings we’ve actually replaced with just video presentations. And actually, what that really did was allow the humanity and context to come through and I think that helped us a lot to, kind of, stay close. that was one, I think, really important thing.
Another thing is, I think, just creating mechanisms to make it easier talk about when things aren’t working, because a critical part of agile is recognizing we have an area that isn’t working. And so one of the things that we at Vimeo is we try — I do this all of my town halls, we do it in lot of meetings — is always talk about what’s working, what our top three things, and what isn’t working — yet. And we’ve kind of created, think, a framework that sort of takes the stigma away talking about what’s not working. And when you make that normalized and for people, I feel like it’s allowed us to more open, as an organization, about what do we need change, what do we need to pivot. And both of those, more video-first in our communication and being more transparent normalizing what’s not working, I think has been really helpful, certainly something we’re carrying forward.
SM: I love that advice about video-first. So many of our members of our workforce live a video world. They’re used to video as a means communication. Which brings me to my next question. You’ve about how the organization has changed. How do you the workforce changing? What is different with the young millennials, and even, now, the first wave of Gen coming into the workplace?
AS: I think it’s incredibly different. And, know, one of the things that we think about at a lot is a lot of the mechanisms and communication that we still use today, they’re really antiquated. They were for a totally different environment and a totally different generation. But I see a of differences. One of them, I think, is the line between your life and work life is definitely blending. … If you about your personal life — look at TikTok. This generation is to consuming content, learning, engaging, in a very specific way. if they then have to come to work and to be on a job, read a 300-page manual? Like, it’s not going happen, right? Or if you miss the meeting, and you have to watch the Zoom of a three-hour meeting — that’s just not going to happen. And so think that there is definitely sort of this — you know, talk about the “consumerization of enterprise.” Those are just fancy words for saying the way … we communicate interact in our personal lives is going to translate to work. And I definitely think that’s an area of opportunity.
The other I see from sort of the generation, the newest generation coming into the workforce, is of, of course mission-driven, but I think there’s a desire really understand the “why” behind things. And one of our communication is we never talk about the “what” without the “why.” And I think there’s desire to — the idea that, well, there’s a hierarchy, or “My told me that this is what we’re going to do” or — that, I think, is increasingly away, and people, they don’t just want to do something because someone with formal authority told to do it. They want to do it because they understand why it matters, why it to the mission. And I think that that forces leaders really bring more of the “why” into how we and motivate people.
So those are two of the I see, and then, you know, the third I think is just flexibility. I — and this is true of all of us, but particularly the younger generation — think they’re looking for flexibility and they want options choices. And it’s not always easy and feasible to ultimate flexibility, but this is where I try and orient it more to agility. How can we approaches and principles and be committed to things, but know when to question, and when to actually pivot?
SM: Yeah. Anjali, you share a few examples of ways that you at Vimeo have to really be proactive when it comes to addressing or understanding your next generation of employees are going to want, either terms of purpose or in terms of benefits or in terms of flexibility? there programs or processes you’ve put in place that really speak this big sea change we’re seeing in terms of values from the workforce?
AS: Firstly, course, it’s all about listening, right? And I think, like many organizations, way we’ve tried to listen and understand our workforce very similar: it’s Q and As and engagement surveys, and things that. And some of the things that we’ve done, we have a and culture NPS, net promoter score, the same way we have for our users, for our teams. But I would say one of the things that we’ve really to do is appreciate that when we get inputs from our employees, 1,300 employees … can’t look at the averages. You can’t look at it in totality and try and pull out an obvious “Oh, this is how everybody’s feeling.” Because what actually — when you really dig into it and listen and do focus groups and talk to people — what you’ll find is actually there’s very experiences and desires among your employees. And so, I think for us, we’ve really just tried to do is have a bunch different listening mechanisms and then resist the urge to conveniently pull, like, “Oh, this what everyone’s feeling, let’s just do this thing as the action.” And it’s hard, and we’re kind of figuring it out, but I will tell you, some of things that we’ve heard from employees have changed our approach to work or travel or even things like our approach compensation or our approach to DE and I. So I it’s more just like I said, that agile listening, really understanding what’s happening, but not treating everything as, like, an average or the same. for us, it’s been particularly stark because we have offices and teams in so different countries and the differences, they’re substantial. They’re really substantial, the way we solve different things. And we used to have a very, sort of, “One Vimeo” global in the name of consistency and fairness, and what we found is have to be more localized. We really do. We have to design mechanisms support our teams in a very different way, because their experiences and world around them is quite different.
So I think that’s definitely been one, and I will you, it has involved a lot of — as an team and leadership team — it’s involved a lot of trying things, it not working, and changing them. a great example is our Q and A. I feel like every leader I know has a perspective whether they do open Q and A or anonymous Q A, or real-time Q and A. We’ve changed our approach there multiple times, and I know we again, because we’re still figuring out the right way to listen and a dialogue with a very diverse workforce.
SM: I want to stay on newcomers to the for just another moment, because another thing I hear from CEOs of my generation older is a concern about making sure that we are not just providing our youngest employees with flexibility and the purpose that they need, but also training and the wisdom that comes, oftentimes, from being in close proximity to a or to somebody who’s done the job for many more years. What is your philosophy and on making sure that knowledge transfer is happening?
AS: I think it’s major challenge that I don’t know that everyone will sort of have solution for. I think about that all the time. have a very distributed workforce at Vimeo. We have people in over countries. My executive team is entirely distributed. So I’ve really realized the benefits of being able have a distributed workforce and being able to attract talent and just more inclusive. On the flip side, there’s definitely, I think, lack of the same kinds of learning opportunities and mentorship, particularly for the youngest that are entering the workforce. So I think it’s a challenge. One the approaches that we’ve been taking, and what’s sort nice, is we’re modeling it at the top. So if my entire executive team distributed, that means I have to learn how to provide real-time feedback, mentorship and for a whole set of new executives who have just joined. We sort of changed up the executive team almost entirely in the last months. So I’ve had to deal with the same challenges. And we’ve had to literally — we it our operating system — we’ve had to design an system, as an executive team, for how we’re going to together in that environment. How do we share real-time feedback? How do create the right communication loops? And so I think, from my perspective, it’s more we have to able to do it ourselves and model it and then, think it’s a more proven mechanism for young people. will say, like many companies … I do believe in-person collaboration is really important for learning. We do have — we people into an office. If you’re remote, we ask folks to come in spend time in a room with their team, do social activities, all those things. I don’t think they will go away, nor I think they should. But, you know, candidly, it’s area that I don’t think we’ve really figured out perfectly and I think it’s really that as leaders, we do that, so that this next is able to get the same growth opportunities that we all had.
SM: Well, it’s interesting — the tools that you mentioned at the very beginning of our conversation, video, can be really helpful there. I’ve heard of number of organizations that have really encouraged their young to present, as a way of having to go out find the information they need. And then, because we video tools available to us now, you know, they have an opportunity to share their with a large group of people, but first, kind of going through the fact-finding and the research, then sharing their ideas. In an earlier comment, you talked a little bit mental illness and the different things that people are bringing to work, whether it is, know, exhaustion, burnout. During the Black Lives Matter protests, had a lot of people coming to the office feeling trauma, and feeling really personal issues bubble the surface. I’m wondering if you can share a little bit about how you deal with increasing personal — you know, when people bring their whole selves to the office, we encourage, sometimes, they bring things, parts of themselves that are challenging.
AS: Yeah … I’ve always the responsibility of a leader is to empower people do their best work and the responsibility of a is to empower our people to do their best work. so, of course, we have a real role to in supporting things like mental-health issues or burnout. And, know, the way I think, like many companies, the way we initially probably sought to that was more, you know, you’re seeing a problem and you’re reacting by trying to provide mental-health resources support or time off. And, I think — and empathy, empathy. I think that’s really important. And I always say, to so many of our managers … just care. we just care, a lot of things get easier. You don’t have design a hundred mechanisms if you just have the people in place who care. At the same time, I will say we’re realizing now, in sort of this next phase, is that’s a reactive approach and actually the root cause — that we can control Vimeo — the root cause of a lot of stress and is sometimes people either don’t have enough … focus, we’re asking people to too many things or they don’t feel like they’re supported in doing those things. And that, think, is actually where we should be spending more time — is how do we actually set the prioritization and focus. There’s some issue there, right? There’s a root cause there that’s a “Oh, I feel I’m stressed because there’s too much going on. I don’t feel equipped to it.” Then, we should get into the “What is the there, and do we need to do things differently?” And, you know, one our themes at Vimeo this year was “Do less, better.”
SM: As the economy starts to, maybe, move sideways, you think that there are going to be stakeholders who say, you know, “Out all of this touchy-feely, the workplace-as-a-family stuff. Where are my results?”
AS: Absolutely. think the pendulum has already swung pretty clearly. I mean, I in SAS, software as a service, so we already went from “growth at all cost” “profitability,” you know, pendulum swing. My perspective on this — and hasn’t changed — I think the best leaders and cultures deliver results and people well. And I actually think, if you treat people well, with kindness and empathy, you will better results. And so, you know, for me, I think what I observed over the last few is — that part, I think, hasn’t changed and shouldn’t change. There were, I think, a lot of when companies, we did things because maybe it was service or we felt pressured. And that’s not going be sustainable. But that’s not what — ultimately, that’s what people need, in any case. So, you know, I sort of it as — the way you channel how you caring towards your employees and how you are empathetic, should be in service of helping people do their work, which will deliver results, which will be good for the bottom line. And you to believe that. You have to be committed to that if you use that consistently in your decision-making, it should not be a trade-off. These are not mutually things.
SM: Anjali, how have you been taking care yourself during this period of tremendous turmoil and change, but also growth? You mentioned you just had baby. There’s a lot on your shoulders. How, as leader, do you practice some self-care or how do you sure that you’re getting the balance you need to be the most effective leader you be?
AS: I think — recently, the phrase I use a lot to myself is “two can be true, both can be true.” I say this lot. And for me, I think of it as, like, “This job is hard, and it’s gotten harder.” went public at the height of the pandemic and last year, market has been tremendous. You know, we’re obviously going through a ton post-pandemic, we have a team in Ukraine going through a — all these things that have happened. And so, it’s a hard job, and it’s an incredibly job. It’s a gift, right? And so, I think for me, it’s sort of acknowledging both of those has helped me a lot. The way I’ve tried to kind lead, has been — it’s always been this way, which is, me, it’s I have to have passion. I have to have passion. I have to believe so that what Vimeo is doing is important and matters for the world. if I have passion, I have energy and then I — I can kind of move through anything. I have find joy in my team. I feel like, especially in times, I look back at my career and actually, some my most fulfilling times in work were when — in the hardest business situations. But it’s because it a group of people together all on one team, so I think that’s been, you know, a really big part of it. And then, yeah, like, have to be a little selfish sometimes, and take of yourself. And I am really fortunate. I think have a great support network around me and I do … husband and I have a deal, where on Sundays, disappear for a couple of hours. I just disappear I walk around the city and I listen to my music and do whatever I need do, and that’s really important.
SM: So you talked how hybrid work is going to look very different in future than how we describe it today. It’s basically in office a couple days, work from home a couple of other days. Tell us a little bit more what you could potentially see that evolving into.
AS: I think idea of an office as a time and place completely goes away. And think it’s really going to be people are going want to work from anywhere, anywhere in the world. the concept of where you’re located is going to change. then the idea of like “I’m going to work on this zone” or “I’m going to attend this meeting that’s scheduled this date” — I think that’s going to go away. And I think what you’re going find is more and more work, particularly from knowledge workers, is going be done anywhere, anytime. Communication and collaboration will happen asynchronously and we will be using tools technology — whether it’s video, whether it’s AI — to basically enable that at among many people, anywhere in the world. And then I leadership, leaders are going to look different. Because I think it’s going to require — if think about the skill set to be a global CEO 30 years ago versus what that will require — I think in the future … the skill set going to be like, “How do you communicate with diverse, global audiences employees across time zones in a way that is effective, provides context and alignment at scale? How do you programs, whether it’s compensation, whether it’s, you know, training?” All of is going to look very different. But I think ultimate thing you’ll see is just … there were these constraints we’ve lived with, whether it was time or place or budget, in some cases. And I think constraints are going to go away. And the promise that if we are flexible and smart and we use technology in the right way, that we’ll actually away a much more evolved and efficient workforce.
SM: Well, I think you just showed us some of the that you’ve talked about as being the thing that gives you to lead that organization of 1,300 people worldwide. Anjali, thank you so much being here today.
AS: Thank you. This was great.