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