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