Stephanie Mehta: Welcome, Anjali. I’m so glad you’re with us today.
Anjali Sud: Thank you, it is great to be here.
SM: At Vimeo, you lead workforce of 1,300 people worldwide — you have creatives, have finance people, you have technologists. So I’m going start with a really easy question: what was it like to this diverse workforce through a global pandemic, a racial reckoning and a fraught return to office?
AS: Oh, it was a breeze, Stephanie. No, it was challenging. You know, I think the only constant has been change. as a leader, you 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 found, as leaders, no matter what company you were … responsible for, was that you couldn’t certainty, and you couldn’t always control the environment and the things you. And so, you know, for me, it was really about agility. How do we stay flexible as team? How do we communicate in real time and people informed as we try and move through things? And then, also just how we lead with more humanity? You know, for Vimeo, one the things I’ve really learned over the last few years we each experience the world so differently. We have employees who are remote. We have an team in Ukraine … employees who are on the front lines, who are literally at war. the other hand, you have people in different parts of the world who are experiencing mental-health or burnout, and so I think it was really just — the hardest part was not able to give everyone certainty, not being able to just apply a one-size-fits-all rule for everyone. But ultimately think it forced us, as a company, to build trust, because to be agile and flexible, and to lead humanity, you have to trust each other. And so, I’m sort optimistic that actually we’re emerging from this time with culture that is more flexible and nimble, and also, hopefully, more trust.
SM: Can you give an example of something that put into place, perhaps during the pandemic, to enhance or build trust or create a greater sense of community or even to communicate that is no certainty, that is a muscle that you think you’ll continue to use in the far into the future?
AS: There’s a couple of things that did. One — and we are a video platform, so I obviously have to about video, but I mean this sincerely — one 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 effort to move away 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 your emotions. And we did that through streaming a lot of communications, recording a lot of videos. We sent asynchronous video messages. I send … I record my screen and just send a note to people. Every new hire does a video to welcome and introduce themselves. A lot our meetings we’ve actually replaced with 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 is, I think, just creating mechanisms to make it easier to talk when things aren’t working, because a 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 my town halls, we do it in lot of meetings — is always talk about what’s working, are our top three things, and what isn’t working — yet. And we’ve kind of created, I think, framework that sort of takes the stigma away from talking what’s not working. And when you make that normalized and for people, I feel like it’s allowed us to be more open, an organization, about what do we need to change, what do we need to pivot. both of those, being more video-first in our communication being more transparent and normalizing what’s not working, I think has been really helpful, and something we’re carrying forward.
SM: I love that advice about video-first. So many of our members of our workforce live in a video world. They’re used to as a means of communication. Which brings me to my question. You’ve talked about how the organization has changed. How do you the workforce changing? What is different with the young millennials, even, now, the first wave of Gen Z coming into the workplace?
AS: I 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 that still use today, they’re really antiquated. They were designed a totally different environment and a totally different generation. But see a lot of differences. One of them, I think, is the line between your life and work life is definitely blending. … If you think about your 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 and to be trained on a job, read a 300-page manual? Like, it’s not to happen, right? Or if you miss the meeting, and have to watch the Zoom recording of a three-hour — that’s just not going to happen. And so I think that there definitely sort of this — you know, we talk about “consumerization of enterprise.” Those are just fancy words for the way … we communicate and interact in our personal is going to translate 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 of, of course mission-driven, but I think there’s a desire to really understand “why” behind things. And one of our communication mantras is we never talk the “what” without the “why.” And I think there’s a desire to — the idea that, well, there’s hierarchy, or “My boss told me that this is 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 formal authority them to do it. They want to do it because they understand why it matters, why it ties the mission. And I think that that forces leaders to really bring of the “why” into how we communicate and motivate people.
So those are two of things I see, and then, you know, the third I think is just flexibility. I think — and is true of all of us, but particularly the generation — I think they’re looking for flexibility and they want options and choices. it’s not always easy and feasible to provide ultimate flexibility, but this is where I try and orient more to agility. How can we have approaches and principles be 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 tried to really be proactive when it comes to or understanding what your next generation of employees are to want, either in terms of purpose or in terms of benefits in terms of flexibility? Are there programs or processes you’ve put in place that speak to this big sea change we’re seeing in 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, have a people and culture NPS, net promoter score, the same way we have for our users, our internal teams. But I would say one of things that we’ve really tried to do is appreciate that when we get inputs from employees, 1,300 employees … you can’t look at the averages. You can’t 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 and do focus groups and talk to people — what you’ll find is there’s very different experiences and desires among your employees. And so, think for us, what we’ve really just tried to is have a bunch of different listening mechanisms and resist the urge to conveniently pull, like, “Oh, this is everyone’s feeling, let’s just 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 things that we’ve heard from employees changed our approach to hybrid work or travel or even things like our approach compensation or our approach to DE and I. So I it’s more just like I said, that agile listening, constantly understanding what’s happening, but not treating everything as, like, an average or the same. And us, it’s been particularly stark because we have offices and teams in so many different and the differences, they’re substantial. They’re really substantial, about the way we solve different things. And used to have a very, sort of, “One Vimeo” global approach the name of consistency and fairness, and what we found we have to be more localized. We really do. have to design mechanisms to support our teams in a very different way, because their 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 — 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. I feel like every leader I know has a on whether they do open Q and A or Q and A, or real-time Q and A. We’ve changed our approach there multiple times, and I know will again, because we’re still figuring out the right way listen 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 my generation and older is a concern about making that we are not just providing our youngest employees with the flexibility and purpose that they need, but also the training and the wisdom that comes, oftentimes, from being close proximity to a mentor or to somebody who’s done the job for more years. What is your philosophy and take on making sure 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. have 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 same kinds of learning opportunities and mentorship, particularly for youngest folks that are entering the 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 modeling it at top. So if my entire executive team is distributed, means I have to learn how to provide real-time feedback, mentorship and development for a set of new executives who have just joined. We have 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 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 … I do believe that in-person collaboration is really important for learning. do have — we bring people into an office. If you’re remote, we ask folks to come in spend time in a room with their team, do social activities, all of those things. don’t think they will go away, nor do I think should. But, you know, candidly, it’s an area that I don’t think we’ve figured out perfectly and I think it’s really critical that as leaders, we do that, so that this 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 very of our conversation, around video, can be really helpful there. I’ve heard of a number organizations that 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 people, but first, kind of going through the fact-finding the research, and then sharing their ideas. In an comment, you talked a little bit about mental illness and different things that people are bringing to work, whether is, you know, exhaustion, burnout. During the Black Lives protests, we had a lot of people coming to the office feeling trauma, and feeling personal issues bubble to the surface. I’m wondering if you share a little bit about how you deal with this personal — you know, when people bring their whole selves to office, which we encourage, sometimes, they bring things, parts of that are challenging.
AS: Yeah … I’ve always thought the responsibility of a 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 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 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 think — empathy, just empathy. I think that’s really important. And I always say, to so of our managers … just care. If we just care, lot of things get easier. You don’t have to a hundred mechanisms if you just have the right in place who care. At the same time, I will what we’re realizing now, in sort of this next phase, is that that’s a reactive and actually the root cause — that we can control Vimeo — the root 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 those things. And that, I think, is actually where should be spending more time — is how do we actually set the prioritization and focus. There’s some issue there, right? There’s a root cause there that’s a “Oh, I 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 detail there, and do we need to do things differently?” And, you know, one our themes at Vimeo this year was “Do less, better.”
SM: the economy starts to, maybe, move sideways, do you think that there going to be stakeholders who say, you know, “Out with all this touchy-feely, the workplace-as-a-family stuff. Where are my results?”
AS: Absolutely. I the pendulum has already swung pretty clearly. I mean, I work SAS, software as a service, so we already went from “growth at all cost” to “profitability,” know, pendulum swing. My perspective on this — and hasn’t changed — I think the best leaders and cultures deliver results treat people well. And I actually think, if you treat well, with kindness and empathy, you will get better results. And so, you know, for me, I think what observed over the last few years is — that part, I think, hasn’t and shouldn’t change. There were, I think, a lot of times companies, we did things because maybe it was lip service or we felt pressured. And that’s going 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 towards your employees and how are empathetic, always should be in service of helping people their 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 use that consistently your decision-making, it should not be a trade-off. These are not exclusive things.
SM: Anjali, how have you been taking of yourself during this period of tremendous turmoil and change, also growth? You mentioned 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 sure that you’re getting the balance you need to the most effective leader you can be?
AS: I — recently, the phrase 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 job is hard, and it’s gotten harder.” We public at the height of the pandemic and last year, market volatility has been tremendous. know, we’re obviously going through a ton 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 of acknowledging both of things has helped me a lot. The way I’ve tried kind of lead, has been — it’s always been this way, is, for me, it’s I have to have passion. I have to have passion. have to believe so deeply that what Vimeo is doing important and matters for the world. And if I have passion, I have energy then I will — I can kind of move anything. I have to find joy in my team. feel 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 all one team, and so I think that’s been, you know, a 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 of hours. I just disappear 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 about how hybrid work is going to look very different in the future how we describe it today. It’s basically in office a of days, work from home a couple of other days. Tell us a little bit about what you could potentially see that evolving into.
AS: I the idea of an office as a time and place completely goes away. I think it’s really going to be people are to want to work from anywhere, anywhere in the world. Even the of where you’re located is going to change. And then the idea of “I’m going to work on this time zone” or “I’m going to attend meeting that’s scheduled on this date” — I think that’s going to away. And I think what you’re going to find is and more work, particularly from knowledge workers, is going be done anywhere, anytime. Communication and collaboration will happen and we will be using tools and technology — it’s video, whether it’s AI — to basically enable that at among many people, anywhere in the world. And then I think leadership, leaders going to look different. Because I think it’s going to require — you think about the skill set to be a global CEO 30 years versus what that will require now — I think in the future … the skill set going to be like, “How do you communicate with diverse, audiences 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, you know, training?” All that is going to look very different. But I the ultimate thing you’ll see is just … there were these constraints we’ve lived with, whether it was time or place 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 we technology in the right way, that we’ll actually come away a more evolved and 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 to lead that organization of 1,300 people worldwide. Anjali, thank you much for being here today.
AS: Thank you. This great.