#28: Melissa Daimler, Udemy

Welcome to From Startup to Grownup, the podcast. My name is Alisa Cohn. I'm an executive coach, an angel investor, and the author of From Startup to Grownup. Each week I talk to founders, creators, advisors, investors, and builders of all kinds about their insights and experiences in going from startup to grownup. This is episode 28, and I'm so thrilled to welcome Melissa Daimler to the podcast. Melissa is the Chief Learning Officer of Udemy. Prior to that, she was an executive at Adobe, Twitter, and WeWork. Melissa is also the author of a wonderful new book called Reculturing. And today we talk all about culture, culture, culture. Melissa is an expert on what it takes to build a company culture, and we definitely get into the tactics of that. And she shares about her experiences at her different corporate environments. We certainly touch on WeWork, the infamous startup, and she talks about when she realized that they really weren't going to change. Melissa has a lot of insights about what was at play inside the system at WeWork. As she said, it's not just one problematic leader. We talked about how Melissa is also managing her work life now as an executive, an author, and a speaker, and how she's thinking about upgrading her own systems to make sure that she can keep up with her own activities, all her activities. Everyone's gonna get so much outta this discussion. So please enjoy this rich conversation with Melissa Daimler, Chief Learning Officer of Udemy and author of "Reculturing." Melissa, welcome to the show. I'm so excited you're here.

I am very excited to be here as well. Thank you for having me.

It's a thrill to have you. We've known each other a couple of years from various different events, including Stanford Director's Club. College, including our meditation group. And now I'm so excited to have you— friends, we have a lot of common friends. It's so true.

I—

it's so true. And so it's surprising to me, actually, we met so late in life. Actually, that is like the most surprising thing. But I'm so excited to have you now as an expert, a massive culturing expert, reculturing, actually. We'll get into your book a little bit, but I want to really start on the topic of coaching because people are constantly asking me you know, what are the results you get from coaching? And I think it's helpful to ask other coaches. In addition to being an executive and an author and a culture expert, you're also yourself a coach. And you were at different environments in terms of being at startups and at— you were at Adobe for a long time, you were at Twitter, you were at WeWork. If you think about all those experiences, can you tell us a specific story about someone that you coached where you really could see the significant changes you made in them, with them, and that led to business impact?

I feel like I've been coaching, and you've been coaching for a while too, before the rest of the world was coaching. So I've been in coaching for over 20 years now, one of the first certified coaches. And I think, you know, two of the skills that I know— I have both of our books right here— that you talk about in your book is just asking questions. And so, to me, a big part of coaching is asking questions and actively listening. And I would say, one of the biggest areas for me when I was at Adobe, as we were growing globally, was expanding our site in India. We had an engagement survey. We did it every 6 months. And there were a couple of times when that particular site in Delhi scored lower. And we had talked to the site leader a number of times. Nice guy, had been there for a while. He didn't know. He, you know, is it a communication issue? Is it a team issue? Is there something going on with the site, with the team dynamics? And he was really open. That is, as you know, one of the first things that is good for coaching, that somebody is coachable. I talked to my boss and my team, and we finally said, "You know, it's been a while since somebody has gone down. Why don't you just go down?" And I think it was 2 or 3 weeks that I— it was 3 weeks when I was down in Delhi. And I just spent time with him. And it wasn't to— we were going to go figure out what was wrong. It was more as a partnership. You know, he thought, "Maybe I have a blind spot. Maybe I'm not doing something, or maybe I am doing something that is not meant to impact anybody negatively. So after talking to a number of people, what we realized was it was actually a communication issue. That he was in the most senior position there. And he invited conversation and invited people to decisions. But it often came across as, "This is the decision." And so, people didn't feel like they could contribute or they had any agency in what was being done. And so, it became this dynamic where it was just, "Okay, he's going to tell us what to do and we're just going to execute." There was no co-creation around the strategy. And so, when he realized this, we, you know, I talked with him and his leadership team and we had a very open conversation. It was probably a 2 or 3-hour discussion around specific examples that had come up, decisions that had been made in the last 6 months to a year that were really significant about the growth of that site. And him listening and asking questions and really being able to understand— I mean, you and I have talked about this too, intent versus impact. That his, again, his intent was to include everybody and make sure that he was getting all the facts before making a decision. But the impact that he made was such that what he was really communicating was, "These are all the things that have been an input to my decision, and this is what we're going to do." So, we got to a point where he had a practice in meetings to say, "I have not made a decision on this. I would like your input," and didn't make decisions as quickly. And made sure that in his meetings, they would have time to contribute to decisions. And that together, they would figure out how to cascade those decisions and communication down to the rest of the organization. So, he did this over time. And we actually saw the engagement scores. I think they went up by 20 points. So, it was pretty significant in the next round. So, the engagement of that site, which at the time, I think was almost 2,000 employees, was a significant increase. And we started to see attrition lessen. And that site continued to increase in engagement. So, you know, I think that's a great example of you think it's— so often, and I'm sure people come to you all the time too, like, "Hey, we need a training." Or, "Hey, you know, we need this." And That's one of the things I talk about in my book is usually the presenting problem isn't the actual problem. We have to dig in and, you know, ask our questions to get underneath and then work with the team to figure out, you know, what's really going on here.

Right, right. Oh my God, I love so much of what you just said. That's fabulous. Totally agree. It's like, "We need a training." "Oh, hang on. What's going on around here? Let's figure that out." But also, this notion that coaches, and I wanna say this to all leaders, leaders, this is important for you too. It's not about like you telling people what to do or diagnosing it for them. It's about figuring it out together. And I think a lot of people say to me, "What do you teach people when you coach?" Well, of course we do some teaching, of course, and showing and modeling, but we often are just sitting beside and talking and sort of looking together with the person we're coaching, the executive we're coaching about what's going on here and how can we figure this out together. And I think that's so significant. And then, I love what you said about being coachable. Like the openness is so important. And also figuring it out with the leadership team in an open conversation. But then, to your point, it's sometimes one or two very specific strategies. As in, you're going to say to people, "I haven't made a decision yet, right? Announcement! Announcement! I have not made a decision yet." And then, kind of bridging that gap so people can see the change that they're about to make. I love the story because it demonstrates so many parts of that. And also, of course, the business impact. So I love all that. And then I wanna shift to an era, an environment, which maybe is a little bit of a sadder story, which is WeWork. So you, part of your career, which was quite a gust, you went to WeWork. And I know that in the book, and we've talked about this also, you thought you could change WeWork. You were like excited about the opportunity to go to WeWork, which is outside of the Silicon Valley bubble. And also there was really, you know, that you could have an impact there. But you left in less than 1 year. And I'm just curious, What specifically made you realize, oh yeah, this is not the right place and, and WeWork is not gonna be the right environment to really be able to make a difference? Like what specifically? Was there a moment of truth that you had?

I don't think there was one moment. There were definitely a lot of signals and signs along the way. I, I think now I can say it was a great learning experience because I did have such great experiences at Adobe and Twitter, both from being able to contribute to the strategy and to the culture. And so, this was an opportunity to see that, as much as the Hulu series and the books and the movies are all, it's fun to just criticize Adam Neumann as the CEO. But we know that it isn't just one person, it is a system. And, and he definitely had a lot of influence in that system. And because those other parts weren't set up to balance that, that system and push back on that system, the system fell apart. So as an example, The leadership team was green. It wasn't that mature. A lot of people on the leadership team as a leader for the first time. Not a very diverse team. So, you didn't have a lot of diverse perspectives. There was fear. So, going up against a personality like Adam Neumann, it's really easy just to be complicit and say, "Okay, we're going to go along." And We're going to invest in wave pools as a strategy. And we're going to have the purpose be elevating consciousness in our S-1 filing. So I just, I think there is a real call to action for boards, for leadership teams, for people partners, for coaches, for all of us to make sure that we're you know, looking at, you know, not only the purpose but also our strategy and our culture and how that all works together. Our organizational structure. And then, of course, how we— part of what I define as culture is how we behave every day. So, is there a gap between what's said versus what is done? And if so, there always is. How do we continue to close that? Yeah, I would say that I talk about in my book, there were a lot of red flags even in the interview. But you think you can fix it. You think you can contribute to it. And I think while I like to think I made some impact, I think at that time, the momentum was there already to go down this path that we all saw.

Yeah, that we all saw writ large. Absolutely. Well, you're talking about your book. Yes, you just wrote a really great book called Reculturing. And I think everyone should go out and buy it. And really, in some ways, it's rich and it's such a wonderful roadmap for everybody. And all my clients are talking about culture. And I know that this is something that you've studied yourself for decades. Let me start on the topic of culture by asking, you say that culture is a verb rather than a noun. I think you were kind of getting at that as you were talking about WeWork. What do you mean by culture is a verb rather than a noun?

I think part of why I wrote the book is because for over 20 years, I have read every book out there about culture and every article and every research paper. And you talk about this in your book too. There are so many different definitions. It's the organization's personality. It's what happens when the boss leaves the room. It's the heart. It's the leaves on a tree. And I just got so frustrated that It also was relegated to be this one-off HR initiative that maybe you do when, if you're lucky, if you, when you're founding the company, but then you never refer to again. And that's a mistake. I think culture needs to be active. Just like it's not just strategy or strategizing. Same with culture. As we evolve in our what of the strategy, we need to also evolve how we're working together. And so, I think of it as an active set of practices and processes that we need to continue to review.

Yes. Oh my God, I love that. I think it's so accurate. And also, it's to your point. We never think like, "Oh, strategy is optional." No, strategy is actually really essential. And so is culture. And I think people even get confused about culture. So, I definitely talk about this in my book. But I also just hear this every day from my clients, the notion when they talk about culture. And I say, well, what do you mean by culture? And they mean all these different things, including we all spend time together, we all like each other, right? That's like one element. We all care about each other, we're like a family. That's one element of culture. And then of course, like, we have ethics and integrity. Well, of course, okay, that's one. That's what they mean when they say culture. And then there's like also this culture committee, which is about the barbecue and about doing fun events together. So like I guess I would ask you, how should companies think about that? And how do— can you give us— because liking each other is actually important. But how do you frame the whole thing so it includes liking each other and having fun events and spending time together, as well as like the actual specifics that we need to agree to to get our work done?

I actually really appreciated how you put it in your book, where we know that ping pong and we know that free food isn't necessarily going to create culture, but we also know that that creates a kind of connection. I think you were even talking about like, "Hey, you can make some really good decisions while you're playing ping pong in a lighter mode." But I think what's happened is that we've almost conflated camaraderie with culture. We've lost sight of what culture is all about. And so often, I'm hearing this question of how do we get our culture back? And that is the wrong question. Because first of all, not all of us loved what the culture was before the pandemic. I mean, we complained about it then as well. And it also implies that, you know, it's this thing at the office, or it is the ping pong tables, it is the free sandwiches. So many companies are trying to figure out like, hey, if we just get free food, you know, Bagel Thursdays, that'll be amazing. That'll be— our culture will start to come back. And it's just, it's condescending, you know, and almost disrespectful. Like, I get it. Like, again, I like a free sandwich, but it's not about that. I believe that culture is agnostic of an office. And we learned over the last couple of years with the pandemic that culture is how work happens between people. It is every decision you make. It is every communication you have. You are actively building and strengthening culture or weakening culture in every situation that you have.

Totally. Can you give an example of that either from, you know, one of your clients that you've coached over the past number of years in your own practice or inside of Adobe or in Udemy or Twitter? What's like a micro example that's behavioral that people can really connect to of like, oh, that's what it means by culture. That's what she means by culture.

So, I think, I can give you an example of two companies I was working with, both of which wanted— they had innovation as a value. But when you dug deeper, one was all about, "We got to go quicker. We got to prototype faster. We got to get to V1 in a much faster way than we are today." So, one of their behaviors was It was, "We make it safe to prototype quickly," you know, or something about setting up the environment so that people learn from failure. I think that was even another behavior. The other company also had innovation as a value, but they were going too fast. So, they actually said, "You know what? The quality of our ideas is not great, and we want to slow things down. And we think that a lot of people are just jumping on these ideas without any context as to why. And so, we want your input. And so, a behavior was we ask each other why. And so, it gave people permission to ask these questions and have it not be seen as something that you would get defensive about. Like, "Hey, okay, that's a signal. I got that we all agreed that that was a behavior." "Let's step back here. Why are we doing this? Does this tie to one of our main goals for the year?" So, again, it's an example of you can have two companies with the same value. But unless you dig in on how that expresses itself behaviorally, you're not going to see the kind of behaviors you want to see across the organization.

Yes, I think that's such a great example. And I especially love that, you know, we ask each other why. And that becomes, I'm sure, embedded in the culture. And I'm sure then it's talked about in the all-hands. And that's how we have meetings. And then people don't get defensive. So as long as that's modeled from people, it becomes kind of the bedrock of how we do things around here. And I think that is the key when you can really sort of take the nuggets away and call out those behaviors. Are there any like quirky or unusual cultural attributes that you've come across or that that you found inspiring or that caused you to think differently?

The biggest thing that I've seen, I don't know if it's quirky, it's more the evidence that this does work. And I think one of the big shifts that we made at Adobe, we were spinning a lot around decision-making. And I think one of our behaviors ended up being, we kind of recultured before I said the word Recultured like 3 times.

Before you coined the term. Yeah.

Before I coined the term. Because we were going through some major, major strategic shifts from acquiring our biggest companies ever to different CEO to shifting our business model to be software as a service. And one of the behaviors, we were going round and round, like decisions just are not made quick enough here. Like what? This is such a big issue that I think you see in startups all the time. And we realized behaviorally that we weren't pushing decisions down to the lowest level. And we needed to have that show up in our feedback process and have people actually be evaluated on it. And so, it's so often I hear leaders and, you know, I've said this too in the past of, you know, feedback is so hard and promotion processes are so hard. Why does it have to be so hard? And then, when I ask them, Well, what are you evaluated on? Like, what are the behaviors that you're expecting? And then they just look at me with a blank face, like, what? It's hard because you haven't defined what it is we're evaluating. And so, you definitely started to see a shift at Adobe around decisions where it wasn't just, we empower people to make the decisions at the lowest level. It was also, and here's the connection to learning, We made sure that people then knew the decision framework we were going to be using. And we developed learning experiences that could have people practice how to make effective decisions so that when the time came to have feedback, that was one of the behaviors where we gave each other feedback on. So it was, again, it took the sting out of the the usual sting out of the feedback process because we already knew the playbook and it was just feedback on, you know, how often am I seeing you do this behavior? So, there was that. I would say the other, I mean, where quirky comes in is where I think you just blindly keep the same practice that you had at 10 people and now your company is 2,000, 2,500 people. But you don't change it. I mean, I, I talked about this in the book with WeWork. You know, the summer camp was a great idea when it was 15 people in a backyard, but when it's 5,000 people in a field for 3 nights, that causes some pause for people. And yeah, it's— there could be another way to develop that kind of connection different than, you know, the form it was taking in a, in a summer camp. So I think looking at your practices and how you want those, like looking underneath again, like what is it we're really trying to pull out here? And then is there a different way that we can express this at scale? Is the question I often ask.

Yes. That, you know, I'm going to push on that for a minute because that's another question I had for you. Like the startups I work with, they get really focused on how do we keep our culture? How do we keep our culture? And by the way, keeping your beautiful culture is of course important and it makes you special and unique. Yeah. But you can't maybe keep this— I think what you're getting at, you can't keep the same practices to maintain that culture. And also, actually, as you get bigger, you may want to expand your culture. You may want to enlarge your culture. You certainly have to find ways to make room for new people. So how do you think about that when you think about growing a culture with more people when a company is growing? How do you think about, first of all, talking about expanding culture, and then what do What do you go through with an executive team, or what do you go through with your team to then think about how do we expand this more? What needs to change in our culture?

I think the culture and strategy— strategy certainly has to be reviewed a lot more than culture. I know you had the Peter Drucker quote in your book, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." And I always joke that I think they should have breakfast together because I think that So often, we separate them. And I think while strategy, you look at, I think, during the pandemic, people looked at their strategy every 2 weeks because it was changing. So, we are dealing with a much more agile shift in how we think about strategy. And so, I think culture needs to be reviewed at kind of major inflection points of a company. But the extent to which I think you can early on, you know, establish or have that thought experiment of, is this practice going to scale? And I talk about this, the CEO of Cloudflare, who in the very beginning, I think they must have been, I don't know, 20, 30 employees. And one of his employees said, look, I want to have— let's go to the bar down the street on Friday afternoons. I think that'd be so much fun. And we can talk about the week and talk about what worked and what didn't work. And he, the CEO, said, you know, I think that sounds like a great idea. And that sounds like fun now. But what about when we scale and we have more diverse people here? And you have people that have to leave at 4 o'clock and they can't go to the bar on Friday afternoons. They have to go pick up their dog or their kid or whatever. And so I don't want to put that practice in place now because I want to make sure that whatever practice we put in place, it's inclusive and we don't have to reverse it or think about something differently later. And so I just thought that was a really insightful approach that, you know, instead of doing the practice now and changing it, let's just get something right in the first place.

Yes, I think that's so enlightened actually, and very unusual that someone is thinking that far ahead. And I love the idea also of recognizing that it's nice to have rituals inside of your company, and then the rituals help bond you and connect you and also really point in some ways to your culture. And that's great. But then you have to think about how do you scale those rituals? It's back to WeWork having a summer camp So the people got connected to each other. That's beautiful. But then with 5,000 people or more, that was no longer going to work. So I think everyone has to think about that. Melissa, I wanted to ask you about the great resignation, the great reshuffle.

The great reshuffle, the great reflection. Exactly.

The great attrition. Yeah. It's not so great for my clients. They are not thinking it's great. OK? So what specifics— first of all, I'd love to hear maybe your thoughts and observations about this great, not so great time. What do you think is going on? And also, what specific suggestions do you have for companies to help them deal with this, you know, macro trend that they are definitely affected, it's affecting them. By the way, it's affecting them in light of even today, there are now layoffs. So you have both your Great Resignation and you also have companies which are retrenching and doing layoffs. So it's kind of, chaotic in terms of the attrition moment. What are your thoughts?

I think the Great Recession reflection, whatever you want to call it, I mean, I think the last couple of years, I mean, it's been rough for everybody. And I think leaders of companies, CHROs, I mean, everybody's fried. So there's massive burnout, as we know. And I think it shifted a lot of the way we think about our work. And people are trying to figure out, what is this all for? What impact am I having? Is this contributing to the greater good of the world? And so, I almost feel like we've, you know, I feel like at some level, and we've been in this long enough that I feel like there's these trends that happen. And hopefully it's not a trend now that people are really wanting to understand what is the purpose or mission of the company and how am I contributing to it? And I think companies, you know, that is— I think the employer-employee contract has shifted. I think it used to be all these things like flexibility and having a purpose and being able to learn and grow in an organization. Those were all nice-to-haves. Those are must-haves now. So, I think if people don't understand, you know, how I'm contributing to the purpose, what my specific role is, so clarity on what it is I'm supposed to be doing and how I contribute to the strategy, and then some consistency in how everybody's treated and how I'm going to learn, then there's plenty of opportunities elsewhere for them to go get that. So, I think the demand from companies is much more on, again, those 3 core pieces, the purpose, the strategy, and the culture. Whereas before, I think it was just, do you have a great culture? Are you scaling? Are you growing? Are you a cool company? Cool. I'm on board.

Right. I think it also comes back to the manager because to your point, people want to know where they fit in, what the purpose is, and how their role matters, how they can have an impact. How— what's your advice to managers specifically to change their own style, to make sure that they are really showcasing to their employees what they need to know in order to help them be great at work?

I feel like the manager is one of the hardest roles in an organization. In every company I've been in, management development has been the number one priority going in. And I think, you know, they're such a key leverage point because they're like the linchpin, right? Because if you help them, you're not only helping them become more aware about their own behaviors and practices, but you're also helping them help their team. So I do think that the manager's role and, you know, playing more of that coach role actively is a huge advantage for companies. If they, if they do, you can tell the companies who are invested in their managers. I do believe that that shows up in employee engagement, that shows up in, you know, the retention of employees. So I think that role is key. And to your point, I think that role was amplified even more And now that all of us are working remotely, I think the, the newer managers unfortunately wanted to check in a lot. Like you, you see all these statistics where, you know, you had a lot more meetings happening on Zoom because managers thought that the way to manage was to actually see you and check in versus the managers who trust you and who hold you accountable for the results that you agree upon and are there for support and guidance and coaching. But they're not going to do the micromanagement that we all have experienced.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think it also takes a lot of confidence, honestly, as a new manager to figure out that level of letting go, because the truth is then you let go and then they couldn't do it and you have to be like, oh, they couldn't do it because you also have to gauge the skill level of that person doing that job. So I think that is complicated. But I think also to your point, It's like so important to invest in manager training. And I think it comes down to even simple as, here's how you do a one-on-one. And when we, going back to the notion of people wanting to feel like their work has an impact. In the one-on-one, if I give you a template for the one-on-one and you understand why as a manager, it's so important to say, by the way, that work you're doing is impacting the greater good and the sort of the purpose and the mission, but also just hitting your goals in this way, in this way, in this way. Do you see that? I think even those conversations didn't used to happen in the past because no one thought of it. Like, it wasn't— it didn't seem like it was that important. And now I think those kinds of questions or those kinds of discussions are essential to make sure that people feel like that, you know, that they're, that they, they're noticed actually as part of it. Do you, what do you see about that? Do you think, do you see that?

Uh, yeah, I totally agree. I, I feel like we complicate things too much. You know, it's like I, we. At the end of the day, it's— I tell my team this all the time. We can have the best frameworks. We can have the best PowerPoints. We can, you know, but we're the ones who enter into that conversation. And so oftentimes, you know, I've coached leaders who are like, "I don't know what to do with this employee. I don't know what they want. I don't know what they're motivated by. I don't, you know, I don't know what—" Have you asked them? Totally. You know, like, have you just had a conversation? And You're right. It's like these 3 questions, like, hey, ask them what their biggest accomplishment was in the last 3 months, how you can support them, what skill do they want to learn, you know? And most, if not all of the time, those managers will come back and say, oh my God, I just had the most amazing conversation with my employee. I had no idea. You don't need an engagement survey and a 360. You know, it's these conversations with a few questions to let that employee know you care and you're listening.

Yes, it's so true that it means so much to employees for sure. And then to your point, the managers benefit from them too. It's great. I appreciate what you're just saying. Now, let's switch to hiring. Hiring. So hard. Everyone thinks hiring is so hard. And I think hiring is hard too. It is so hard. It's hard. Describe a great hiring process. What do you think that people get wrong about hiring, and what should they know?

I, I— a couple things. Um, I think first of all, the hiring manager often just throws the role over to the recruiter and doesn't spend that upfront time, you know, especially in companies that are growing, to say I'm opening this role and I first want to see, is there anybody internally that could actually come into this role in the spirit of development? So spending time there. I also think that in fast-growing companies, there is a high likelihood that you're just going to replace that role versus actually, let's look at our entire org. This is an opportunity to kind of say, are we even designed appropriately? I just had a leader who left and we're not replacing him and we're going to figure out like, hey, where do we best need this set of skills? And in fact, I don't even know if it's that same set of skills that we're going to need going forward. So I think it's important to really think through, you know, again, that system, like your whole org to say, what are all the strengths on the team? What are the different roles we have? And what gaps do we have? So, and how do we need to fill that? And then be really clear with your hiring team. I don't, I don't feel like there's enough time spent on, hey, and I know it's hard to get everybody together, but even in an asynchronous way, here are the different questions. Here's what I want you to focus on. And, you know, if it's these behaviors, I want you to ask these questions to identify if these are the behaviors that you know, if they can be a culture, you know, complement to the organization. So, the upfront time I think is significant before you even start looking externally to figure out where that person falls. And then have a really tight interview process and don't have 25 people either. You know, if it's important to have more than 6 people, perhaps do a panel. And so, because that candidate's time is just as important as yours.

Oh, I love that. Yeah, it's sort of treating them with respect by not putting all these interviews. I had Paul English, the co-founder of Kayak, on the podcast. And he talked also about pair interviewing. The idea that your point is there's a time leverage, which is true. But his point with pairs was that, first of all, one person trains the other. Like the more experienced interviewer trains the less experienced interviewer. And also, they see how we interact. And hopefully, we're joking around, and hopefully, we get along. And so, then they kind of feel like, "Oh, this is a company where people like each other. Maybe they'll have that experience with me too." I think there are a lot of different ways. Isn't that great? I think there are so many different ways to think about hiring, which is different from the sort of traditional way everyone was taught. And everyone was taught by default because they were exposed to a hiring process. Sometimes, it was a bad hiring process. So, I love what you're saying. What you're saying, which is actually every time you're thinking about hiring, it's a moment to do actually two things. One is touch base again with the corporate strategy. It's like, "Wait a minute, maybe we need different skills. Wait a minute." But then second, it's a moment to look around the organization and see, "Hey, wait a minute, maybe there's someone who's up for this opportunity, whether it's a promotion or a lateral move for them." So again, that's a good way to build systemically, to use your word, in the systems way inside of the culture, new ways to think about hiring. Yeah. So I love your hiring thoughts. I'm going to give you now another pitch over the, over the plate here. Onboarding. If there's anything worse than hiring, it's onboarding. Tell me what issues you've seen with onboarding in your experiences and what a good onboarding process looks like. People think they're hired, they're done. You're not done.

Where do I begin? So onboarding starts before the first day. So I think that's a lot of where people get it wrong. Like, I just, I, you know, I still remember the basket that was sent to me from my manager at Adobe like a month before I started and the handwritten note and, you know, the emails from the team saying, we're so excited you accepted like that. You know, that's so amazing. And I'm going to meet you at, you know, when we were in the office, I'll meet you at reception like before you go into like It's so daunting. Even when we're in our 30s, 40s, 50s, that first day of work is like the first day of 4th grade. It's just, even virtually, it's still scary for people. There's so many unknowns. And so, the extent to which you can close the gaps from the unknowns to the knowns, I think, is so key. Hey, this is how your first day is going to go. That's a, that's a huge thing. Like the first day, even at Udemy, I, um, it wasn't exactly planned like this, but I didn't, um, get set up with my computer, but my boss said, oh my God, this is so perfect. Like, don't worry about the work and the Slacks and the emails. Like, just, we just want you to kind of get grounded and be here and be with the CEO and just take in kind of what this is all about. Um, so that's another big thing. I think too often companies focus on the logistics first and not the experience. So please do not have the first thing people do on their first day is the IT experience. That is the worst. Like, I understand that you need a computer, but, but let's do that. Like, maybe you have— I mean, everybody has a computer. So even if you don't have your computer totally set up, there's a way to get into Zoom now and just be part of the, you know, the virtual onboarding session. So I just think we need to think about it as more of an experience and validate the decision that the person just made. Like they're looking, I mean, there's studies on this, like there's new hires are looking within the first 30 days. For validation that they made the right decision. And they're going to continue to look for other opportunities until they get confirmation after those first 60, 90 days that this was the right decision. So, give them all the evidence they need that this was a good thing.

Yes, I love what you just said. That's so powerful. And the idea that it starts before it starts. That is important. And then, When you talk about validation and that they're sort of thinking in the first 30 days or 60 days, you know, did I make the right decision? In addition to they're going to still look, they're just not going to contribute as quickly if they don't have the confidence and the sense of like, ah, yes, I made a good decision. I belong here. And then you're going to lose out on that opportunity for them to contribute, like their actual contribution. And also what I love about the idea of like your manager meeting you on the first day, or also here's expectations for the first day or for the first week. You really want to show people, again, back to culture, here's how our culture is, right? And so, here is the way to get a win. And here's the way to make sure that people see the value of your ideas. It might be we showcase our ideas around here, right? So, if you're the kind of person who's like, maybe you don't want to brag about yourself and you don't want to, You know, say what you've just done. You should be aware that we showcase our contribution, right? Be aware. Or it might be someone who's like, "I did this, I did this, I did this." It's like, you know, our culture is more of a show, don't tell culture. So just so you know, every time you say, "I did this, I did this, I did this," people actually, you lose credibility, you don't gain credibility. And those are nuances that nobody will ever see by themselves. You as the manager have to point them out to people so they can have an easygoing time with onboarding. I'm so passionate about this topic. I know this is something that you think about a lot. Yeah.

Well, I mean, even the, you know, the— so often I'm asked about behaviors and the extent to which they're behaviors that express what is currently going on or is it aspirational. And oftentimes, because you're always stretching and continuing to grow, they're aspirational, or parts of it are aspirational. So, I think just getting clear with new employees that, look, you know, we have these 10 behaviors. We don't expect you to knock them out of the park. We actually expect you to even focus on a couple that where you do want to develop a little bit more and how we can support you in that. And I think that's Those are just some good conversations to have up front for people to— again, you're trying to make people feel safe and feel like they belong even after— don't assume that they think that even though they've accepted an offer. Yes, yes.

So well said. And what I also love is that you're saying, please don't start with the IT experience. I hear you. I thought you were going to say, please don't start with filling out the HR forms. Another thing to avoid. Not to, not to, for sure. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I, but I just wanna say that like the IT element, to your point, we have compute, everyone has computers. How do you think about, you know, first of all, you give people a logon one way or the other, and then they join by Zoom. We're now remote or hybrid. What does creating culture— and I wouldn't say onboarding— look like when so much of it is happening virtually? What do you have to be more careful about when it comes to virtual embedding inside of culture?

I mean, I think because I define culture as behaviors, processes, and practices, I think a big piece of it is just making sure that you define how we think about culture and that you are a part of our culture now. It is not a top-down thing. Co-created actively all the time. And then I think just showing and talking through how those behaviors show up. I think stories are such a powerful mechanism to do that. We still today, Greg, our CEO, we're 1,600 people, probably 2,000 by the end of the year. Still, every other week he is on with the new hires. Because he wants to share stories about how the— like, new ones too. It's not like he has the same old stories, like how, how the behaviors have shown up the last couple of weeks, or examples of what he learned and what his failures were. So we have a lot of leaders who come through. It's not just HR. And talk about these behaviors and share stories and pull stories from the new hires as well. Give them opportunities in breakouts and smaller— some of these new hires or new hire sessions are 30 people plus, and that can be intimidating. And so remembering that part of this is being able to give opportunities for connection. And, and we usually have a— we call it a buddy, you know, or a colleague who you can work with, usually in another department. Who can answer any questions and who can be there for you. So I just think those, those connection moments, those stories, all of those have to be much more intentional now because they don't just happen organically like they did when we were together. Like, hey, Alisa, like, oh, you're new here too. Which function are you in? It's like, nope, we have to now put you in a breakout and you have to, you know, it's, it's still It's still a way to connect. It's just a different form. So we give a lot of space for that in, in even the first week. And we even coach managers like, do not expect anything or that much from your employees in the first week and 30 days because we want them to, to kind of be here and understand their role. And we promise it will be good for you in the long term. Right.

Right. That's great. That's so great. I love what you're— the idea of being intentional. I think that is really the key to the remote environment, the hybrid environment. You have to be more intentional for sure. For sure. Now, Melissa, you've worked at a number of companies like Twitter, which got a lot bigger, obviously. Also companies that have grown through acquisition. I know Adobe was like that. You know, you just said Udemy is growing fast. The question is you always have, whether it's acquisition or just the growth of a company, you have old guard, you have new guard, the old people, their ways, the new people coming in. And I have seen so much, the fiefdoms and the cliques that get formed and the difficulty accepting the new people. How do you, what is your advice, or have you seen that? And then what is your advice to make sure that the old guard does not rally around together and shut out new people who come in?

When I see fiefdoms or politics creep in, or, you know, old ways kind of become more important than kind of where we're going. It's when they're not held accountable for those behaviors. It's when they might be producing results and, and really good results, but in the meantime have trampled over 25 people to get those results. And so, I think if we're holding ourselves accountable to not just look at the results but also how people are working together, that stuff never goes away totally because let's be clear, you know, we're all human beings and that, you know, that happens. But I think you can minimize it quite a bit if you hold each other accountable consistently. Referring back to those behaviors. And I would say, you know, I've experienced this here this last year. We've had a couple of, um, people who have come in and have left, and we did a little postmortem on it, you know. Hey, what did we miss? Um, what did we learn from that? Now that, now that if we look at our behaviors, what, what did that person You know, what kind of behaviors did that person not express? Or what kind of behaviors were inconsistent with what we've already defined? And so I think especially at that leadership level, it's important to kind of— I think you can get so— we talk about onboarding, but I think you can get so much data from either exit interviews or having these conversations after key leaders leave to make sure that we're using it as a learning moment.

Yeah. What would you ask me? Like, how would you have that conversation with me either if I'm exiting or I'm one of the folks around someone when a leader left?

If you were exiting, I mean, first of all, not everybody's willing to have a conversation. But I think if I set it up such that I am trying to learn and understand, I think it's the good questions that we talked about before, like what could we have done differently, you know? So owning some of that too. I think it's really important that it's not just about that person who left. There was a system that that person was in that didn't work. So what could we have done differently? What could I have done differently? What advice would you give us going forward? What kind— like, what kind of Behaviors showed up most. You know, if you look at our behaviors, what would it take for— what would it have taken for you to succeed? What would it take for a new— you know, how would you describe our culture to somebody else now? You know, asking some really inquisitive questions from a place of curiosity, not a place of you're a jerk and I'm just going to validate that you're a jerk. And you're making a big mistake by walking out. Like, very big difference because you're not going to get a lot of information. I've had leaders who've had this conversation. Well, like, they wouldn't tell me anything because, you know, right, that's how they are.

Of course they wouldn't. Yeah, right. Of course. That's right. Just maybe a program note: curiosity always wins over "you're a jerk" attitudes, right? When you try to get information about yourself. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, now, Melissa, you've been an executive in companies, you run your own firm, now you're the CLO of Udemy, This is a big question, but I'm going to go for it. How, what are some ways that you could describe your personal growth as a leader?

I mean, one of the reasons I love this field is, you know, this is going to sound cliché, but I am always learning. I'm asking my team all the time, "What can I do better? How can I approach that differently next time?" I also, it's interesting, I just had this conversation with my team last week. I feel like Talking about systems, like the system, and again, you talk about that in your own book, starts with us. And I just feel like some of my systems just are not working anymore. Like, I'm, you know, I'm on Asana, I have Slack, I have email, I'm doing social media, um, I have Excel of all my projects, I have, um, you know, emails that I'm constantly behind on. And it's like, I gotta just pause for a second and kind of figure out First of all, am I taking on too much? How am I prioritizing? Because I always talk to my team like, what are the top 3 priorities you're working on? And so, I always want to make sure I'm walking my talk. And so, I had this— I do this practice every— not every Monday, but most Mondays where I Slack a video out to my team just to say, "Hey, happy Monday." It's like replacing the hallway conversation. How was your weekend? And I'll just say like, "Hey, here's what I'm focused on this week." Here's what I learned last week. And then last week I posed a question like, hey, talk to me about your own system. Like, how do you manage your days? What are some things that you're doing? And it— like, people wrote a ton back. And so I think that is a huge thing for me that I'm always looking at. Like, how do I just get— how do I stay clean with all my systems when I feel like the car is shaking a little too much, um, and I'm, I'm completely out of control on that turn, I gotta like slow it down a little bit and kind of reset. So I, I think I'm always looking at, um, those pieces. Like, I've gotten worse at showing up late to meetings. I think that is so disrespectful, and I've gotten really bad at it again. And so I'm doubling down on that and recommitting to I'm gonna show up on time and I'm gonna end, you know, on time. So that's a big lesson for me, is just to continue to look at my own system and make sure I'm doing that on a, on a, on a quarterly basis. I love it. Um, yeah, that, that's a big one. I mean, I definitely have more.

And the daily practices, and the daily practices of that. Was there another one you wanted to share?

Well, I mean, I think in this, this hybrid environment, I think it's just always You know, it's always important to connect. I have a person on my team who— he's so good about, you know, I'll Slack something and it will have been a day since I've talked to the team in the team channel. And, you know, hey, do we have this? What's the update? And, you know, he's so good about, hey team, like, what are you doing this weekend? What are you up to? It's like, oh yeah, okay, got it. I gotta, I gotta like I got to connect too with the team. So, there's some really good complementary people on my team that kind of keep me in check. So, I just think those little practices. Our CEO, not only is he on time for meetings, but he shows up a couple minutes early because he equates that time to hallway time too. Like he wants to just hang out and just say hi. And understand what you're working on, whether that's a big all-hands or whether it's a one-on-one or whatever. So sometimes I have to stop myself and just, you know, get out of the results mode and the checking off of the list and remember that, you know, I need to just ask people how they're doing and ask how their weekend was. And that, that sometimes gets lost.

Yes, right. Thanks for sharing that. I'm just reflecting that some of that is systems and getting on top of your email. And then some of that is realizing that it's not about the email. It's about the people. Totally. So I think that's very powerful.

It's and, right? It's not either or. It's disrespectful to people when I'm not responding to them on email, right? Or— yeah, so it's just—

totally. Yeah. A lot of elements. Now, Melissa, a lot of very accomplished people Many, in fact, 95% of accomplished people have had imposter syndrome or severe self-doubt in their lives. Have you ever struggled with that?

No. Move on. Move on. Next question. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. All the time. So I actually, I don't think there's any role that I've taken on where I haven't thought this is a stretch. So every role that I've had, first of all, it's never been what was on paper or on the screen. I've always co-created it with the company or my manager. But yeah, I mean, I have imposter syndrome today. I mean, especially, I mean, you know, writing a book, that's one of the most vulnerable things that you can do. And, you know, being able to offer up your thoughts and how you think about the world and not be able to take that back and just be vulnerable to, you know, people are going to think what they think and, you know, you can't change it once it's out in the world. But I think there's even imposter syndrome around, huh, really? Am I a culture expert? And, you know, even though I've done this for 20 years, Can I— do I really have enough examples and evidence to do this? So I think it's— I think at some level, I will go as far as to say every person has imposter syndrome at some level. Everybody I've coached has imposter syndrome.

I could plus one on that. I can totally relate to that. What practices, what tactics, what tools, what suggestions do you have for people who are struggling with their own imposter syndrome?

Well, I think just remembering that likely people around them have it as well. So they're, they're not alone. This is where I think a coach makes such a difference because the question— I think you even asked me this, uh, before— like, is that true? Um, you know, our own thoughts can be our worst enemies. And I think where I'm swirling the— when I'm swirling the most and I have imposter syndrome that is just so palpable, it's when I feel overwhelmed and I'm not in control of what I said my goals are going to be, or I think I'm going to miss a deadline. So I think it's taking it out of the abstract like, "I can't do it," to getting much more specific. Well, what can't you do? Is it the, you know, launching that product? And is it— are you supposed to be doing the whole thing? Or is there a team? And what part of that team are you accountable for? And if you can't do that piece, then who can you ask to help you? And, you know, so it's breaking the kind of nebulous, unhelpful question down into much more controllable and smaller questions that you can then answer for yourself.

Yes, I love that. It's so true. It's like when you ask these big questions, it's like there's no answer, but the tactics and the sort of like, can I do this? Yeah, I can do that. Okay, can you do this? Yeah, I can do that. Sort of that really helps you See that every big problem is just this whole set of small problems and you can chunk it up and attack them one by one. And that gives you confidence. I think that's really— Yes. Very well said and a great, great tactic. So just a couple of more questions. I ask this of all the founders who I have on my podcast, but I'm going to ask you just the same. What do you wish that you had known earlier on your journey?

That it likely will not turn out how you think it's going to turn out, and that's okay. That I think, going back to our curiosity, just being open and not having— having goals but not unrealistic expectations. Um, because I think when I've had expectations, so often those might not have gotten met, but so many other better things have come into place. So I, I think knowing that, you know, yes, you have— it's good to have goals, and it might not be the exact journey that you think it's going to be, and, and be open to that. Love it.

So good. So good. And Melissa, what advice do you have for founders as they embark on their journey to grow into leaders?

I would think I would definitely identify and build your strategy and culture as early as possible. Because again, if you aren't intentionally building both of those things, they're just going to happen by default. So you might as well be in control of them. And as much as possible, keep your healthy habits in check as well. Keep your own behaviors in check. I always say that a good day starts the night before, you know, you— that you know what the next day is, you're clear about the calendar, you're clear about the meetings, the podcasts, and the things that you're going to be doing to what you need to do to show up powerfully. And those are all things that you can control. So figure out all the things that you can control because as a founder, there's so many things we can't control. But there's probably more than you realize that you can control.

Excellent. Wise, wise, wise. Melissa, what a joy to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for the wisdom. So much fun. Thank you so much for the wisdom you shared. And everyone should go out and get Melissa's book. It's called Reculturing and it's full action-packed wisdom, just like Melissa herself. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to From Startup to Grownup. If you like what you heard, give it a review on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it. And if you know of a founder or someone else who is meant to be on this podcast, drop Drop me a line through my website, alisacohn.com.