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