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