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