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 technologists. So I’m going to start with a really easy question: what was it like to manage diverse workforce through a global pandemic, a racial reckoning and a very fraught to office?
AS: Oh, it was a breeze, Stephanie. No, it was really challenging. know, I think the only constant has been change. And as a leader, obviously — you have a workforce that’s looking for certainty, and they’re looking to what’s happening around them. And I think what we all found, as leaders, matter what 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 about agility. How do we stay flexible as a team? How do we in real time and keep people informed as we try and move through things? And then, just how 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 the world so differently. have employees who are remote. We have an incredible team in Ukraine … employees who 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 I think it was really just — the hardest part was not able to give everyone certainty, not being able to just apply one-size-fits-all rule for everyone. But I ultimately think it forced us, as a company, to build trust, because to be agile and flexible, and to with humanity, you have to trust each other. And so, I’m sort of optimistic that actually we’re emerging from this time with 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 the pandemic, to enhance or build trust or create a greater sense of community or even to that 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 mean this — one of the hardest parts, when you’re all sort of disparate, is you lose context and you nuance when you communicate. And 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, and your hands and your and your emotions. And we did that through live a lot of communications, recording a lot of videos. We asynchronous video messages. So I send … I record my screen and just send a out to people. Every new hire does a video to welcome and 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 and I think that helped us a lot to, kind of, close. So that was one, I think, really important thing.
Another important thing is, I think, just mechanisms to make 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. And so one the things that we do at Vimeo 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 top things, and what isn’t working — yet. And we’ve kind of created, 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, feel like it’s allowed us to be more open, as an organization, about what we need 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, I has been really helpful, and certainly something we’re carrying forward.
SM: I love 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 my question. You’ve talked about how the organization has changed. How do you see workforce changing? What is different with the young millennials, and even, now, the first wave of Gen Z into the workplace?
AS: I think it’s incredibly different. And, you know, one 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 really antiquated. They designed for a totally different environment and a totally different generation. But I see lot of differences. One of them, I think, is the line between your personal life and work is definitely blending. … If you think about your personal life — look TikTok. This generation is used to consuming content, learning, engaging, in a very specific way. if they then have to come to work and to be 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 watch the Zoom of a three-hour meeting — that’s just not going to happen. And I think that there is definitely sort of this — you know, talk about the “consumerization of enterprise.” Those 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 thing I see from sort of the generation, the 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 of our mantras is we never talk about the “what” without “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 moving away, and people, they don’t just want to do something because someone with authority told them to do it. They want to do because they understand why it matters, why it ties to mission. And I think that that forces leaders to really more of the “why” into how we communicate and motivate people.
So those are two of the things see, and then, you know, the third I think is just flexibility. I think — and is true of all of us, but particularly the younger generation — think they’re looking for flexibility and they want options and choices. And it’s not easy and feasible to provide ultimate flexibility, but this where I try and orient it more to agility. How can we have approaches and principles and committed to things, but also know when to question, and when to actually pivot?
SM: Yeah. Anjali, can share a few examples of ways that you at Vimeo have tried to really be proactive when it comes addressing or understanding what your next generation of employees going to want, either in terms of purpose or 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 all listening, right? And I think, like many organizations, the way we’ve tried listen and understand our workforce is very similar: it’s Q As and engagement surveys, and things like that. And some of the things 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 would say one the things that we’ve really tried to do is 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 how everybody’s feeling.” Because what you actually — when you really dig into and truly listen and do focus groups and talk people — what you’ll find is actually there’s very different experiences and among your employees. And so, I think for us, we’ve really just tried to do is have a bunch of listening mechanisms and then resist the urge to conveniently pull, like, “Oh, this is everyone’s feeling, let’s just do this thing as the action.” 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 our approach to hybrid work or travel or even things our approach to compensation or our approach to DE and I. I think it’s more just like I said, that agile listening, constantly understanding what’s happening, but not treating everything as, like, an or the same. And for us, it’s been particularly because we have offices and teams in so many 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 the name of consistency and fairness, and what we found is we have be more localized. We really do. We have to design mechanisms support our teams in a very different way, because their experiences and the world around them quite 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 not working, and changing them. And a example is our Q and A. I feel like every leader know has a perspective on whether they do open Q and A or anonymous and A, or real-time Q and A. We’ve changed our approach there multiple times, and I know we again, because we’re still figuring out the right way to and have a dialogue with a very diverse workforce.
SM: want to stay on newcomers to the workplace for another moment, because another thing I hear from CEOs of my generation and is a concern about making sure that we are not just providing 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 making sure that knowledge transfer is happening?
AS: I think it’s a major challenge that I don’t know that everyone sort of have a solution for. I think about that all the time. We a very distributed workforce at Vimeo. We have people over eight countries. My executive team is entirely distributed. I’ve really realized the benefits of being able to have distributed workforce and being able to attract talent and just be 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 of nice, is we’re modeling it at the top. So if my entire team is distributed, that means I have to learn how to real-time feedback, mentorship and development for a whole set of new executives who have joined. We have sort of changed up the executive team almost in the last twelve months. So I’ve had to deal with the challenges. And we’ve had to literally — we call it our operating system — we’ve had design an operating system, as an executive team, for how we’re to work together in that environment. How do we real-time feedback? How do we create the right communication loops? so I think, from my perspective, it’s more we have to be able to it ourselves and model it and then, I think it’s a more mechanism for young people. I will say, like many companies … do believe that in-person collaboration is really important for learning. We do have — we bring into an office. If you’re remote, we ask folks to come and spend time in a room with their team, do activities, all of those things. I don’t think they go away, nor do I think they should. But, you know, candidly, it’s an area I don’t think we’ve really figured out perfectly and think it’s really critical that as leaders, we do that, that this next generation is able to get the same growth opportunities that we had.
SM: Well, and it’s interesting — the tools that you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, around video, can be really there. I’ve heard of a number of organizations that 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 us now, you know, they have an opportunity to share their ideas with large group of people, but first, kind of going 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 people are bringing to work, whether it is, you know, exhaustion, burnout. During the Black Lives protests, we had a lot of people coming to the office feeling trauma, and feeling really issues bubble to the surface. I’m wondering if you can share little bit about how you deal with this increasing personal — 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 to empower people to do their best work and the of a company is to empower our people to their best work. And so, of course, we have real role to play in supporting things like mental-health or burnout. And, you know, the way I think, many companies, the way we initially probably sought to do that more, you know, you’re seeing a problem and you’re by trying to provide mental-health resources or support or time off. And, I — and empathy, just empathy. I think that’s really important. I always say, to so many of our managers … just care. If we care, a lot of things get easier. You don’t have to a hundred mechanisms if you just have the right people in place care. At the same time, I will say what we’re realizing now, in of this next phase, is that that’s a reactive approach and actually the cause — that we can control at Vimeo — the cause of a lot of stress and burnout is sometimes either don’t have enough … focus, we’re asking people to do many things or they don’t feel like they’re supported in doing things. And that, I think, is actually where we should be spending more — is how do we actually set the right prioritization focus. There’s some issue there, right? There’s a root there that’s a “Oh, I feel like I’m stressed because there’s too 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 going to be who say, you know, “Out with 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 perspective on — and it hasn’t changed — I think the best leaders cultures deliver results and treat people well. And I think, if you treat people well, with kindness and empathy, will get better results. And so, you know, for me, I what I observed over the last few years is — part, I think, hasn’t changed and shouldn’t change. There were, think, a lot of times when companies, we did things because it was 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 sort of it as — the way you channel how you are caring towards your 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 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 not mutually exclusive things.
SM: Anjali, how have you been care of yourself during this period of tremendous turmoil and change, but 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 how do you sure that you’re getting the balance you need to be the most leader you can be?
AS: I think — recently, the phrase use a lot to myself is “two things can true, both can be true.” I say this a lot. for me, I think of it as, like, “This job hard, and it’s gotten harder.” We went public at height of the pandemic 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 those things has helped a lot. The way I’ve tried to kind of lead, has been — it’s always been this way, is, for me, it’s I have to have passion. have to have passion. I have to believe so deeply that what is doing is important and matters for the world. if I have passion, I have energy and then will — I can kind of move through anything. I have to find joy my team. I feel like, especially in hard times, I back at my career and actually, some of my most fulfilling times in work were — in the hardest business situations. But it’s because it brought a group of people together all one team, and so I think that’s been, you know, a really part of it. And then, yeah, like, you have to be little selfish sometimes, and take care of yourself. And I am fortunate. I think I have a great support network around me and I do … My husband and have a deal, where on Sundays, I disappear for couple of hours. I just disappear and I walk around the city I listen to my music and do whatever I need do, and that’s really important.
SM: So you talked about how hybrid work is going to look very different in future than how we describe it today. It’s basically in office a of days, work from home a couple of other days. Tell a little bit more about what you could potentially see evolving into.
AS: I think the idea of an office as time and place completely goes away. And I think it’s really to be people are going to want to work from anywhere, anywhere the world. Even the concept of where you’re located going to change. And then the idea of like “I’m going to work on this zone” or “I’m going to attend this meeting that’s scheduled this date” — I think that’s going to go away. And I what you’re going to find is more and more work, particularly from knowledge workers, is to be done anywhere, anytime. Communication and collaboration will happen and we will be using tools and technology — whether it’s video, it’s AI — to basically enable that at scale many people, anywhere in the world. And then I leadership, leaders are going to look different. Because I think it’s going to require — if think about the skill set to be a global 30 years ago versus what that will require now — think in the future … the skill set is going to like, “How do you communicate with diverse, global audiences and employees across time in a way that is effective, that provides context alignment at scale? How do you organize programs, whether it’s compensation, it’s, you know, training?” All of that is going to look different. But I think the ultimate thing you’ll see is just … there were these that we’ve lived with, whether it was time or place or budget, in some cases. I think those constraints are going to go away. And the promise that if we are flexible and smart and we use technology in the way, that we’ll actually come away a much more and efficient workforce.
SM: Well, I think you just us some of the passion that you’ve talked about as being the thing that gives you energy lead that organization of 1,300 people worldwide. Anjali, thank you so much for here today.
AS: Thank you. This was great.