Embrace Uncomfortable Growth | Asana’s COO and Head of Business, Anne Raimondi (Podcast 198)

Take more risks doing things that feel a little or a lot uncomfortable where you're like, I have no idea how this is going to turn out. Those have actually been some of the best experiences in my career with some of the best people. Just enjoy the journey and don't worry about the destination.

Our guest today is Asana's COO and Head of Business, Ann Raimondi. Ann first joined Asana's Board of Directors in 2019 and is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience leading various products and business functions in fast growing SaaS companies. Prior to her role at Asana, she was the Chief Customer Officer at Guru, Senior Vice President of Operations at Zendesk, Chief revenue officer at TaskRabbit, and held senior positions with SurveyMonkey and eBay. With a strong commitment to fostering innovation in the technology sector. Ramundi is also a lecturer in Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business and she served on the board of directors for Gusto, Patreon, Guru, Sendgrid Block and Thredup and holds a BA in Economics and Sociology and an MBA from Stanford University. That's a crazy bio. You really got some experience behind you. What do you think got you to where you are today?

I trace it all the way back. It's actually just willingness to stay curious and keep learning. I started out my career as a management consultant and just discovered that I actually really like business problems, but also business and people and team, you know, challenges and so found my way to becoming a product manager. And I would say I credit a lot of the rest of my career path to that early product training of, you know, customer discovery and development. Like what's asking the five whys, you know, what's actually at the root of it and how do you create many possible solutions to solve a problem? I would also say timing. You know, I was really fortunate to enter the workforce at a time, you know, during the dot com boom and all these businesses were being built, you know, really for the first time with the growth of the Internet and so really saw the possibility of startups and scale ups. So those two things I would credit for then creating lots of doors that opened.

Okay, so I'm going to date myself, then I'm going to travel back in time with you to kind of March of 2000 when Steve Ballmer stood up and said there was an Internet bubble and the whole stock market collapsed. The Nasdaq crashed by 78%. Why would you stay in that space? Why did you stay in that sector? Because it was fun. From kind of 97 to maybe 2000. But why did you stay?

Yeah, and when he said that I was living in Seattle selling diamonds online.

I was in Seattle too.

So I would say what I why stayed is chasing it back to being at a startup, Blue Nile. And then later what led me to join ebay was actually the customer pain point. Yes, there was a lot of froth in that era and lots of businesses, if you look back that are the original concepts are now huge businesses today. They're not in the same iteration as the dot com boom. When I looked back all the way to like, well, what kept me engaged was we were really reimagining how to solve, you know, customer pain points. So whether that was the friction in buying jewelry in traditional retail settings or then later at ebay, being able to reach other like minded collectors and fans across the world who, you know, had sort of these shared passions. And prior to a platform like ebay, if they could travel, they would have to go to annual shows and meet one another. But if they, you know, had a local antique business, they were really limited by the number of people that they could attract. And all of a sudden ebay opened up all these possibilities. So I think that combination of like customer pain point and then just seeing real kind of entrepreneurial spirit just kept me really motivated of look, there'll be ups and downs in the technology industry, but this desire to create and improve life for other people is really motivating.

So I understand why you stayed and probably what got you to where you are. I was living in Seattle that same same time period. So I probably bumped into you at Belltown Billiards and I, I was living at second and Vine. My office was at first in Bell. Love that whole area.

We were, we were, we were neighbors because Glen island down there and I lived on fifth in Queen Anne, so we passed each other.

Do you think that's critical for COOs to actually understand product and product development? It feels like it is.

Well, I'll caveat this being like my experience is, you know, within technology and different industries, within technology. But I do think it is really important for CEOs to understand the fundamentals of like what you're putting out in the world. Right. And so within a technology organization that's product and your customers and you know, what are their pain points and what's the strategy around building that product. Again, there's different flavors of CEOs certainly as a head of business that's responsible for go to market and how we meet our customers and how we serve Them intimately is related to. Then how is our product built? Why are we building it the way we are? And then how together do we deliver for our customers? You know, my partnership with our R and D organization is extremely critical to our ability to grow the company.

Now you're at a company right now that the brand is super strong, publicly traded company, your career is kind of strong. What keeps you there versus being poached to go somewhere else?

I really fundamentally love a couple of things here. One is the problem that we're solving. I sort of feel like this is the problem I'm meant to solve. I was an organizational behavior major as well as econ. And so from an early standpoint, I just love the problem of like, how do you help humans work better together? And. And so that's very much the problem that we're solving at Asana. How do we reduce friction in teams of all sizes and just make sure people's talent and time is put towards the most important problems in the world and spending time there versus what we call like the work about work. And then the second is I really love the people I got to know, the leadership team and employees during my time as a board member. And I just deeply believe, especially over the last, you know, almost two years of what the world has gone through, like who we spend our time matters so much, changes us. It can change us for the better if we pick wisely. So the problem that we're solving and the people I get to solve it with is, is why I get excited to wake up early every morning and come to work.

When you were on, on the board at Asana, how big was the company back then? How many employees approximately?

We were, let's see, when I first joined, we were probably about a third of the size of where we are now. We were probably around less than 300 employees.

Okay, and you're bumping into the thousand mark now.

Yeah.

So was it a board of directors at the time or board of advisors?

It was a board of directors. I joined as the first independent director.

You didn't seem bored enough to be on boards. What was it that kept you intrigued as being a board member?

You know, I actually had found over my career that sitting on boards made me a better operator. As an operator, you know, so much of my day to day can be reactive, especially in growth companies going through a lot of change. And I just really enjoy the opportunity to be on board because the conversation at that level is strategic. It needs to be. And so I would go back to my day job Asking better questions and tying my work better to the strategy of the company. I was really motivated there of balancing that strategic view with my day to day operating role. And then now I've come to really see that boards done well in terms of thinking about governance, really have the opportunity to change the arc not just for the company itself, but if they're seen as a leader in the space, things like DEI and pay and pay equity boards are governing those decisions. And so I just feel like that's such a important opportunity to make an impact in more people's lives. If I pick wisely with boards and companies that really are kind of pioneering change.

That's interesting and listening to you too. I love that it actually deepens or richens your operational expertise as well. You said something just around the product and I want to talk a little bit about Asana. Can you explain to people, I guess, why Asana is different than some of the other project management tools or I guess tools that are in around your space?

Our fundamental difference is how our founders, Dustin, our CEO and jr, who's the co founder, they met each other and worked together at Facebook and decided to solve this problem when they were at Facebook and built an internal system there, which then motivated them to start Asana. And it was very much this, you know, architected from the beginning the concept of what we call the work graph. And so it's not just about task management or project management, but it's understanding all the elements of what comes together for teamwork and in particular cross functional teamwork. So it's the who, what by when, why, all that context and that richness in our data architecture actually translates into, you know, real benefits for anybody who's using Asana to make it more concrete. So me coming in as a new leader, I've been here about three months now, I had gone through a lot of C level onboarding in my prior lives. You know, in high growth companies, bringing on other C level execs and onboarding a new exec is usually a heavy lift for the organization, the team, right? There's a special meetings, decks created, ways to update and you want to ramp a new leader, you want them to make an impact. The difference here at Asana, because we run Asana on Asana, is I did not have to have a special meeting or special content created for me to get up to speed on what was happening, decisions that had been made and probably most important for me, people, context around all the incredible team members globally that I have the privilege of working with. Like I'VE been able to see their work, their contributions, their successes even before I meet them. And that's really the power of Asana. It's that contextual information around the work that gives people clarity.

Okay, so you just dovetailed into a question that I was burning to ask you, which I'll ask now. Then in 2005 or 2006, I was down at Microsoft's head office about 120 entrepreneurs or CEOs from around the world. I was there as a COO and we were being taught project management by the head of Microsoft Project. And he, after day one, partway into day two, he stopped and he said, but I need to tell you something interesting. Microsoft has banned the use of Microsoft Project inside of Microsoft. And we're like, wait, what? And he goes, yeah, we don't allow it to be used because it's too complicated and it slows everyone down, so all we use is Excel. And I was, we were just like, what the f is wrong with your company that you build something you won't even use? And I always kind of wondered, and you said it, that Asana was built on Asana. Was that because Dustin was kind of entrepreneurial in a fast paced growth company and wasn't the big bureaucratic Microsoft that. Because you guys have crushed project.

Yeah. I would credit to this deep passion that Dustin and J.R. had for great user experience. So what you just shared of like the, you know, Microsoft banned Microsoft project because it was too complicated. I think Dustin and J.R. really understood, hey, to do this well, people have to enjoy and want to use it. Right? Because there are less well designed alternatives that break at a certain point. But spreadsheets and docs and email. But in order for us to truly realize the value of a product like Asana, people have to want to use it. They have to want to use it and see it as a great place to get their work done, to collaborate with colleagues. So from the beginning, a simple user experience that's intuitive, but then also fun. You know, when you check off tasks in Asana or complete, you know, projects, a unicorn might come across your screen. And if you're like me, I've also turned on. There's a feature where you can turn on extra delights. And so, I mean, who turns down extra delights, right? We need more of that in our life. So. So there's just lots of those moments of like surprise and delight and also appreciating and celebrating your colleagues. I think that's the other thing that sort of built into Asana. Is when they comment on something that you're doing, when they share something, you can thank them really easily and show that appreciation. And I think that builds stronger relationships too.

Yeah, I think you really listened to and built it for humans and then you also built it for Gen Y. But because you built it for Gen Y, the baby boomers love it as versus Microsoft Project and some of the old legacy project management systems were really built for engineers, project managers and it never really bled into the rest of the organization. So you really are right in listening to the consumer. I want to ask about Dustin really quickly. What did he see in you to bring you on as a coo?

When Chris Farinacci, our retiring COO shared his news after an incredible 30 plus year career. So when he and Dustin reached out and said, hey, you know, you know the business, you know the team, what do you think about this opportunity? It was probably the only operating role that I at that time would just dive into and say 100% yes. I'm so excited given our stage and scale, the opportunities ahead. You know, my hypothesis is some of it was just that we had had a chance to build a relationship, you know, over two and a half years and gotten to know one another. I had the privilege as the lead independent of sharing feedback from the board and having these conversations with Dustin after the board meetings. That's my hypothesis on the reasons of just like we had a trusted relationship and you knew how much I cared about the team and the business as well as just how much I care about the problem that we're solving.

How do you push back with that classic. Because he is classic entrepreneur. Right. I would imagine a little bit add kind of bipolar, driving a thousand miles an hour idea to execution. You know, right now how do you get to push back with him or, or is he like that?

Yeah, I was just going to say actually Dustin's not. I would describe him differently. I think Dustin is incredibly intentional. He is absolutely a visionary founder and CEO. He's got a long term vision for the problem that we solve. And I think that is rooted in just a deep understanding that how you help humans work well together in any size team and especially in larger organizations in solving some of the most complex problems is not an easy thing to do. Right. Humans are inherently complicated and especially very smart humans with lots of different ideas of how to solve problems. You know, that long term view that Dustin has is incredibly motivating and then he goes about decision making and empowering people in an incredibly intentional way. And so what I have Found is maybe unlike stories that we hear and even the experiences you and I have probably both had with other founders where there is almost this sort of frenetic nature of like there's just so many ideas and they're trying to get them out so quickly. I think Dustin actually is quite self aware and he does a really good job knowing how and when he should have an impact and knowing how to empower the people around him. That self awareness is also something that helps all of us get better. Right. He models a way to lead that I think is quite exceptional.

I love that. All right, can you talk about when you're listening to the customers and you're so customer focused and customer centric, customers always have ways that they want us to build our product bigger and better. And for some of their own use cases, how do you know when to say no and how do you say no to them so that you don't build something that's maybe tangentially different from what you're supposed to be building?

There are a lot of tropes in Silicon Valley in particular about like listening to the customer, not listening to the customer. Does the customer know what they want? All those. I think my deep belief is the customers absolutely understand their pain point. You know, they definitely know what doesn't work for them, what they're trying to solve, how they wish it could be solved better. And then our responsibility in building a product and a platform that we want to be accessible to as many customers of as many sizes as possible is to look for those underlying commonalities that then inform what we say. Yes to what we say, hey, how about an alternative to right and stay creative because we ultimately do want to solve their problems, but they may come at it with a solution that in the end when we unpack is not actually the complete solution or doesn't solve the pain point, you know, as completely as we ultimately want to for them and for many other customers. So and especially something like Asana, we believe that the more companies and more people are using it, the more rich examples we get that we can share across our customer base of the future of work management and that we're particularly excited about. So we do not see ourselves as creating something bespoke. We think the shared learnings across the incredible customers we have actually will accelerate our ability to have, you know, more people have more time towards their missions.

Talk about how you stay entrepreneurial and fast growth when the company is that, you know, 900 person, I mean you're, you're not the behemoth of like a Google. But 900 people is tough to get stuff done. Politics has absolutely started to be around. You know, you've got silos and how do you stay entrepreneurial and fast growth in those organizations? What do you do to bust through that or to keep away from the politics?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that are really important. One is to instill in the culture that no matter what team department people are on, that everyone should stay as close to customers as possible. Whether that is creating opportunities for people to join customer discovery interviews, to hear customer stories. Just that focus on here's what we're all here collectively to do, I think is one of the most critical things leaders can ensure. The second is to continue to really look at and ask the question of where is there friction in the organization? What are we doing that makes things harder? And to stay really open to that feedback from employees, whether they are veteran employees who will say, gosh, it used to be a lot easier to do XYZ or. Or they're newer employees in their tenure who come in and say, oh, this, this feels a little unexpected. I didn't. This feels like a little bit heavier lift. And so as long as leaders are staying very open and curious about those friction points and what is happening that makes things more difficult, then we can like unpack and solve those. It's sort of not letting those become inertia. And just like that, the stories being told by employees, if it becomes the like, this is just the way it is, or this is part of being a big company, then it becomes the reality. But if you say, hey, our priority is to stay as entrepreneur and agile as possible, this is what it means to do that. Call us on it when we're not enabling that. The last talked about politics, and I think politics come from when people don't have shared clarity on the work that they're doing, who's doing that work, how it's reaching the impact and objectives and outcomes of the organization. Because then people start to create the okay, well, if I don't know and no one knows how my work is impacting the purpose, then I've got to create my own stories and my own proof of that. I don't inherently believe that humans want to come together and spend their time politicking. I truly believe people want to show up and matter and know that they're making a difference. And that's also fundamental. To sauna is like providing that transparency and clarity. And again, emphasizing that as leaders, the stories that we Share and tell have to be those ones around solving customer pain points, staying entrepreneurial, rewarding and recognizing when people are giving direct feedback to make something better versus rewarding and recognizing what's perceived as political.

Yeah, I was almost curious whether, you know, building a sauna on asana helps you steer away from politics because it does give visibility to all of that. Right. It shows people the value and meaning in their work. It shows people what they're getting done. It forces them to stay away from it.

Yeah, definitely.

Can you speak to the onboarding of. Because you mentioned onboarding earlier in your onboarding, I'm curious how you go about onboarding new senior and mid level people that you bring into an organization from the outside in two aspects. One, how do you bring them in and socialize with the team that, you know, the seven of you did not get hired. We brought this person in above you, but we still love you and want to keep you. So how do you do that? And then secondly, how do you onboard new people so that they understand, you know, the culture and the DNA of the organization and their role and so that you onboard them at 100 miles an hour.

The first one I have experienced deeply many times at high growth companies. So I joined ebay when we were about a thousand employees and left when we were 10,000 after five years. So talk about a lot of growth. And I had a great manager who just drew a really simple diagram on a whiteboard one day when we were experiencing all of these pain points like all these new directors were being brought in and VPs and people wanted to know like, why weren't they getting promoted as fast? And he drew this chart which said, hey, we are growing at over 100% year over year right now. And I said, no, humans grow at 100 year over year in terms of capability and learning, competency. It is just not, you know, we're just not wired that way. And different people are also on different parts of their learning curve and their mastery curve. And so to expect that every, you know, that you're just going to keep getting promoted and take on bigger and bigger roles. You will, everyone will get that opportunity because you know, the company is growing. And of course we're going to put a priority on the people who know the customers, know each other, know the product, but it's just not going to on the outside look like the same rate for everybody. And I just, I always go back to that and share that with teens, which is if we do it well together, bringing a new leader in actually adds you know, what I call, like, new amplifying DNA to the team. That, done well, creates actually more opportunity for everybody on the team because it can bring in a new perspective, someone who can help look around the corner, someone who understands how to scale a particular function, or someone that just brings, like, creative new ideas and good leadership coaching that all of a sudden gives the whole team, you know, different and new ways to grow. And so part of it is how to make sure people are included in that process and understand the outcomes you expect a new leader to drive in terms of both business and team. So being really clear on that and then having that inform onboarding. Right. To me, there's onboarding into the culture, the product, the business, and then there's also onboarding that's a continuation of the journey of the interview process, which is, hey, these were the beliefs we had on why we brought you in. Let's make sure you hit those milestones, and together we're achieving the outcomes that we brought you in versus, if not done well, oftentimes, again, because people are in maybe a wait and see mode, then it's like, I'm gonna wait on the sidelines to see if this person succeeds or fails. Right. Versus, like, wait, we're all in this together. Like, our success depends on this new person's success.

Yeah. And as a leader, you hired the person. It's your job to make sure they're successful because you love them. When you hire them, it's your job to make sure you love them all the way through. I think definitely you kind of touched on something. And I launched a course earlier last year called invest in your leaders. And my belief has been that a leader's job is to grow people. And there's a series of. I have 12 skills that I always want to grow people in. Situational leadership coaching, interviewing, running effective meetings, one on ones, delegation, all the kind of soft skills of leadership. What areas do you or does. Does Asana focus on growing their people? Because again, if the company's doubling in size, we've got to double the capacity of our people and their skill set every year or they're out of a job. Are there areas that you focus on growing your team?

One area that from the beginning Asana has invested in is making available to all employees conscious leadership training. So the 15 commitments of conscious leadership and providing, you know, a day and a half, kind of deep dive into it, what's so important to doing that for and making that available for everyone and then having those practices available is it provides a Common language and framework. There are so many. You know, there are so many different leadership frameworks and books and methodologies. I do believe at the heart of them, so many of them. There are similar themes right around accountability, around, like, how we show up, around how we understand and empathize with how other people are showing up by beginning with conscious leadership and saying, hey, this is a framework that we want to make available to all employees, and different employees are going to have different levels of engagement with it. But at a minimum, it gives us a common language and framework to bring people in, to create a more shared experience.

I love that. All right, I want to talk. You mentioned earlier about, you know, staying open to customer feedback and really kind of soliciting some of that hard feedback from customers. How do you stay open as a leader to feedback from your peers? Like, feedback about you and feedback on how you can grow. How do you search for it? How do you stay open to it? I used to really take it very personally, and I. I almost got confrontational at times with my feedback. I felt like it was criticism, and now I'm way open to it. How do you stay open to it?

Yeah, I. I couldn't agree more with you on, like, that journey. And I think many of us go through that journey, right? Especially people who have a high bar for themselves. And. And usually the. The reason we react to that feedback is, like, somewhere we already recognize, like, we could have done that better, you know, and so. And then someone kind enough to point it out, you're like, ooh, that hurts a little. There's a common phrase of, like, feedback's a gift, which also kind of makes people feel like feedback can be unloaded on you in any form. And it's a gift, and you're, you know, you're supposed to be open to it. My alternative is I have come to see feedback as, like, a good workout. Right. And the reason I like that analogy is, like, there's definitely some mornings where not looking forward to the workout, but I know it's good for me. I feel great after I do it.

Yeah.

But I also like that analogy because when I think about a feedback that if I'm taking a good class, you know, with a good trainer, the feedback that that person might give me is really to help me get better, to make sure I'm not hurting myself. Right. But it's also very specific to me, and it gives me ideas of what I could do better, you know, in a particular exercise. And so I like that analogy because there's a few Things it's one not having to go into get, you know, any feedback session of like all this feedback to give. It's sort of the choice of how I take the feedback, what I learned from it, questions I should ask good questions because I don't understand the root of the feedback or what I could do better, then I could do a better job understanding it and helping to unpack that. And then also for in terms of giving feedback, right. If we, you know, so often I think again with that analogy of feedback's a gift, it encourages people to sort of just dump everything and be like, well I'm helping you. And I actually think to give good feedback you have to begin by deeply caring that it's going to help the other person get better at something. And so what's a way to share that? What's an example? When do you pick a moment when that person is open to it? Do you have you asked permission to see if they're open to that feedback? But to me having shift because I actually love giving and getting presents and I never felt that way about feedback. And so now that I think of it as a workout, I can separate the two and continue to enjoy gift giving but also just see feedback as a way that like I get stronger. I love that I'm helping other people get stronger.

Is there something that you specifically do to ask for feedback or to get feedback? Like do you have a question or two or do you have like a survey you send out or do you use something like 15, 5 like how do you get feedback when you're looking for it, when you, when you want it, before someone's maybe offering it up?

I actually like all different formats depending on the situation and my relationship with the person. But in general I just like asking open ended questions like what could I do better? You know, we just had a meeting, we just had a conversation. Is there anything that I could provide greater clarity on? Is there anything that's confusing? Just sort of asking those questions of like what could be better? I also like to ask questions of like what seems to be going well? What would you like to see me do more of? So some of the more of less of question. Is it landing? Is it not landing? Why? Why not? I think are always like good beginning threads and it just sort of reinforces ideally for everyone. Like I'm always open to feedback. And then, and then I think as a leader I think it's really important to then publicly share, hey, I got this piece of feedback, right? This is something somebody or many people Shared with me of what I could be doing better or what we could be doing better. And so here's the steps I'm going to take then. It helps people see like giving feedback actually matters. It actually leads to change. And then I think structured ways as an organization where we actually just diving into our employee pull survey that we do twice a year. There's gold in that. In the free forum comments that employees take the time to share for me, reading in their own words what they're excited about, what they wish we did differently. There's just no better way for us to improve as an organization.

Yeah, it's huge. Yeah. I find on sometimes when I'm looking for feedback is I'll. I'll be in a situation and I feel like the energy just went flat or something. I might be coaching somebody. I'm like, oh, that kind of sucked. I'll be like, hey, what. What can I do better? Because. Because I know it didn't work right. Whereas other times I'm like, wow, that was awesome. It just felt good. It's. Whenever the energy feels flat, I usually kind of loft something out and they're really apt to give it too because they know it kind of sucked too. Right?

Yeah. And maybe bring it back to this framework that we have of conscious leadership. There's a concept of like facts versus stories. And so often the things that we're like, oh, this is the truth, this is the fact is actually a story that we're telling ourselves. And so even just approaching it that way, like when there is a situation where energy level is down or like the meeting didn't go well is even just beginning with like, oh, I have a story that that wasn't how we wanted it to go or I have a story that that wasn't how I wanted it to go or that my, you know, mess like we didn't achieve the outcome or that felt there was more friction or more uncomfortable than it needed to be. What was your story? You know, even just that like opens up the conversation in a different.

I love that. Can you give us some thoughts around how companies should work better with a board, With a board of directors or board of advisors. How can we get more from a board than we do?

You know, I do think it starts with that which is like, what does great look like and what does excellence mean for that company at that stage with that board? And then where's the gaps today? It often from a even just like board meeting and time spent standpoint the friction points or the like, gosh, we're not getting as much out of often is because that hasn't been clearly defined or redefined. Right? Which is like the time, the precious time we all spend together and the time that the management team spends preparing for these meetings. What does a good outcome look like? And what does the company need over this next arc of its journey?

When have you had imposter syndrome? And then how have you gotten yourself through that imposter syndrome that I think we all find ourselves in once in a while.

I'm smiling big at that question because I was actually asked that. Someone said, oh, imposter syndrome is something that I face. Like, have you ever faced that? And I said, I faced that this morning. Getting up and saying, like, I'm gonna do a fireside chat in front of all these employees and be expected to have all these smart answers of like, what does success look like and how do you build this amazing career? In that moment, it was like, oh, do I, do I have smart enough answers ready? Is it going to be insightful enough? Is it going to help as many people as possible? I think everyone on the inside has moments, no matter where they are in their career, where they're like, ooh, am I good enough for this? Am I going to be successful? Did they make the right decision? And I think for me, going back to even the beginning of our conversation, for me, the way that I've kind of recognized it, so it's not trying to get over it, it's trying to understand, hey, what, what triggers that? Why do I feel that way? And then over time for me, it's just been, I don't have all the answers. There is no way that I'm ever, especially in high growth tech, ever going to have all the answers and all the confidence, especially if the job keeps getting bigger and bigger because the company keeps getting bigger and bigger. But what I can do is go back to the can I ask the right questions? Can I stay open and curious? Can I bring as many wonderful people along the journey so that we create better solutions? And can I stay in learning mode? Because as long as I'm staying in learning mode and growth mode, the fears that we have of failure, like, are lessened because, okay, maybe I am going to make a mistake. We all make mistakes. But if I stay in learning and curious mode and I'm with the right people, we'll learn from that and get better and stronger.

I love that. All right, I want to go back, final question to the 22 year old Ann Ramundi. And I want you to give yourself some advice that you wish you'd known when you were 22 that you know to be true today.

One piece of advice is like, take more risks. Especially in. In the world of technology, there's such rapid change and doing things that feel a little or a lot uncomfortable, where you're like, I have no idea how this. Enjoy the journey. You know, enjoy the journey and don't worry about the destination.

That's great advice. Amramundi, the COO for Asana. Thanks so much for sharing with us on the Second In Command podcast. Really appreciate the time and the experience shared today.

Get them the tools, get them the vision, and get out of the way. Leadership is about making people grow, and sometimes they go wrong, and that is okay. If nobody kills themselves, that's just a lesson learned and we'll do it again. This is a great way of learning what you live in, so I had to learn it myself. And I've learned how to give a little bit more space to people to get on with that, give them some space.