Zuddl’s Madhav talks all things employee engagement and culture

Kishore:

Welcome to Backstage with Zuddl. I'm your host, Kishore from Zuddl's very own marketing team, and this is a podcast where we share eventful stories from thought leaders across industries to give you epic insights into the world of events and and beyond.

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Alright. Alright. How's everyone doing? Welcome to episode six of Backstage with Zuddl. Now we are just coming back from our super, super fun company offsite Bonfire 2022.And for all of us who have been working remotely, it was super cool to really meet our teammates and the extended Zuddl family.

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One of the awesome things that we kind of noticed was though most of us hadn't met each other evenonce in our life, we seem to kick it off and get along really well and I guess that's a reflection of a very healthy culture.So this thought kind of sparked the idea of basing this episode on culture.And we thought, who better to feature in this episode than Zuddl's Strategic Advisor  Madhav Vamsi, who is also General Manager of the EMEA region. So we were lucky enough to have some time with him during Bonfire and chat about employee engagement, culture, and a whole lot more.So stay tuned and enjoy the conversation.

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So, Madhav, how has Bonfire 2022 been for you? 

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Madhav:

Well, I would say it's a much awaited event, and I would say so while we are proud that we are entirely remote, first company, there are a couple of emotions which you can only feel touch when you all meet in a physical environment. And the entire design of Bonfire is to ensure that people have a platform to meet each other, have faces to the names, build more comparatory and connectedness. And once we go back, when we connect again, the amount of empathy you would show, therefore, to that particular person or people would be very different as compared to what it is right now. Aside to that, the platform also kind of gives leadership a space to kind of talk to the fellow Zodlers in terms of what's the vision we are supposed to carve as a unit together and then share with them certain macrorealities economic realities, like a couple of conversations which we had, which were very intense, which comes out of our conversations with the investment environment, from industry, et cetera. And then we came and shared those with you. That what does it mean to us as a company? Right. I'm deeply excited. Deeply excited. A because it's an opportunity to meet all of us. Yeah.

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Kishore:

Awesome. And from running the show, basically, I'm sure over a year, the team has scaled up a lot. So it takes a village, truly. How was that experience for the whole team who put it together? 

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Madhav: 

Well, I think clearly I see a huge difference in the way we approached Bonfire One versus Bonfire Two. Right. What's interesting, when we did Bonfire One, we saved a lot of those frameworks. And at that time, we spoke with him and said for the upcoming Bonfires, we'll use that framework. Okay. But then the big learning lesson for us, that's not a scalable framework. Right. So Bonfire Two, we approached it like a project. We created a project management team. We broke the project into different project units, and we allocated teams to run those project units. We created a sponsor. We created an owner, and then we had teams. That's pretty much the framework we designed. Me and Veda pretty much took care of the sponsorship. We also internally thought we need to also kind of be very for activities like this, how much resources we need to allocate in terms of people, in terms of money, all of it. I'm very happy that we stuck to our decisions on the resources which we allocated. Right. And it's more to be self disciplined around how you run your projects. And even Bonfire is like a Trek, by the way. Right. So you need to give that discipline I need to create. Last time when we ran the project, it was like two people running the show this time. Bonfire as a project is built by close to twelve to 15 people.

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Kishore:

Right. So that's the intensity which was required for this year. And just my curiosity, how many people were there last month? 

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Madhav:

I guess we were close to 30. 

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Kishore:

Okay. That's a big difference. 

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Madhav: 

Yeah. And I think the number was 30 because we were just making offers. And then we invited those of them who haven't joined us but haven't accepted our offer. Got you. couple of people flew from different places and same deal. Another very exciting place. Right. And you would see most of them now as ziddlers from over one and a half years. 

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Kishore:

What are the new challenges like for employee engagement in such events? 

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Madhav:

It's a beautiful question. And you know why I'm saying that's a beautiful question is I'm yet to see a remote working playbook. Right. While Covid had been a leveler, there's so many opportunities which haven't taken the shape of a design. Okay. One such opportunity is being removed. First, what should we are designed to engage with people. That's a huge opportunity. Okay. Right. I don't have answers to it. Right. But I do have data to support. There is something we do from a culture perspective which ensures that we are operating at a negligible iteration with a data point. That's a science. One of the meaning and insight you can draw from this data point is the culture of perhaps Zadal is really good. People might feel are making an assumption here. People probably are feeling they're empowered. People probably are feeling they feel relevant. Right. People probably are feeling they are competent. Right. And if these are the three tenants, you can take care. I think they're pretty sorted. Right. The point here is for us to process all of us is what's the call for this culture? Okay, we've got to decode it. Right. It seems to be beautiful. It smells really nice. Right. But it's super important to give it a code. 

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Kishore:

Yeah. And it is an abstract sort of thing. 

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Madhav: 

Yeah. It is an abstract. But there are tenants of culture which are pretty tangible, which is what I spoke to you about, which is the data point of our retrieval is negligible, which is science. Right. Correct. From that science, you can draw an insight saying maybe the culture of the company is good. And also why I'm saying that SaaS is crazy. Right. There's a lot happening in SaaS. Right. People talent choosing to join SAS now. Right. But that story as an economic story, if people at Zuddl are not moving out. Right. Which is a great indicator because there are so many staff opportunities, so many opportunities to just switch. Yeah. Just switch. Right. And you're talking about talent who are 20 to 27 or 29 years old. Right. And the way they are mine process opportunities a little different from the experiences I have seen in the past. Sure. Definitely. But even with that talent, if you are running a low iteration, that's something that's the point. Yeah. And do you think, like, even for other organizations as they went hybrid or remote, this factor of employee engagement came more and more into the forefront in terms of retaining people, communicating with them, using technology, et cetera. Yeah. So I'll tell you, there are a couple of companies I was part of who were pushed to go remote. Right. And then they really struggled. Right. They struggled to take care of employees because for them, for Zuddl, remote is a default. It came very natural to us. So we have the advantage of not ever doing offline workstations. Right. Maybe we would have struggled too. Yeah, sure. But back to your question, I think a lot of companies really struggled to stay connected with employees working remote because their entire culture was also not designed on an assumption that something like this would happen. Correct. And people operate remotely. Sure. Yeah. Right. Say, for example, legacy companies, largely It services companies, they had to kind of spend so much to take care of the connectivity while people go through remote. Right. They had to install new security software. And since they also operate a login logout, punch in, punch out kind of a behavior. They also install software which will measure login log out, which doesn't I mean, I personally feel like I don't like doing those things. Yeah, sure. Which means you are exactly talking opposites of empowerment. Right. And you're exactly telling indirectly, you know what, I don't trust you. Right, exactly. So how do you expect ownership? How do you expect accountability if your direct, indirect actions are conveying to the employee something else? So I think back to your third point in the same question. This is about communication. One huge opportunity area for Zadal and the journey we are at right now is to ensure there are aspects of the company which should be overcommunicated. Okay. I largely feel that communication is a huge area of responsibility and an improvement within Zodiac. Right. Especially when we are 25, 30. It was pretty easy because pretty much every day you meet everyone. Of course, when we turned 125, especially in this bonfire for the first time, I felt there are a few phases. I don't know. Okay. And I didn't like that. Okay. I didn't like that because it took me time to connect with them. Got it. I didn't feel genuine. Got it. Right. And that's where I'm talking about the need for us to enhance internal communications. So I think moving forward, we will incept internal communication as a project work that could be positioned within marketing or in people function. Sure. But large part of that responsibility is to reiterate the importance of culture, keep sharing the tenants of vision what we discussed last two to three days. Right. And keep that fresh within people so that we keep visiting our goals at least once a day. Right. You get what I'm saying? So that's how I was thinking in the last two days. Like sitting in that room. I was like, why wouldn't I know people? I immediately went to peril. All right. How many people you don't know? You said, I'm feeling so sad that there are a few phases for which I don't have needs. Correct. And I checked with Beta shippers the same. That's not a great position to get. Right. You want to have that same one to one equation to everyone that you had with 30 people. Yeah. It's important for us to stay connected with everyone. Yeah. Because fortunately we designed a very, I would say nonhierarchical structure. It's been an organic Orange design for us. It's not like we consciously thought no hierarchy. But I think as leaders, that's not how we operate personally. Got it. For example, I don't see micromanagement or maybe, I don't know, I would like to believe we are not a company where they micromanagement. I can vouch for that. Yeah. You get it. Right. So that's a beautiful process. Right. And therefore, how do you continue that process as you scale up? As you scale up is a threat. Right. In case you don't enhance your communication. That has a lot of designs. Sure. I'm talking about internal communication as one aspect. They could be aspects like free to interviews. And that's the reason we deployed the values today. Sure. So that you can anchor conversations around attitude. So when you had 30 people, you used to talk to them almost on a daily basis. Yeah. I mean, pretty much. At least in my case, I would know what they are doing. Who is their family. Okay. To that extent, yes. Which is so important. So unfortunately, we call it as to that extent. Right. But I think that's how it has to be. Yeah, definitely. Like, for example, the entire notion of creating homework, station process, that project was anchored within the subject for wellness and well being and positioned towards taking care of ergonomics. A few people get it naturally because they care for how they say stand. They're healthy. A few of them are too young for them. To even care for it because that doesn't come as a natural priority. Yeah. Especially posture and things go forward. We took that decision on ourselves and said, hey, your health is super important for us and we insured. I think I haven't seen Series A companies or pre Series A company doing employee insurance. Sure. Yeah. We took that as a conscious call. There's a lot of sweat which went into it. Sure. I can imagine. And then the team has a direct directive from the leadership that anything to do with insurance or with respect to health, we always on the call with them. Okay. So I think Abe did a normal job on that. Like there are people good news, not a lot of insurance claims for our Zuddler's dependence. Right. And not directly for them. Sure. So it convinced that Zidler seems to be healthy, right? Yeah. But dependents for whatever reason is, et cetera, they had to kind of put up a clean process, which is fine. Sure. Right. So that's the intent. Okay. And for certain internal communication processes, like, say, little banter, you had this from the word go, or is it something that evolved over time? So since we are remote company, we were looking at constant spaces for having intentional conversations. Right. So when the intent was so strong, design becomes easy because if the intent is strong, you're pushed to consistently thing. What should we do to meet the intent? Then we thought, hey, we're growing. Why don't we do a weekly call like virtual all hands. Sure. Right. Where everyone comes in and then they share their key highlights and headlines. Even the word highlights and headlines evolved. And we learned it through different banters, I'm sure. And then we also learned banter is not about a one plus coming and sharing his order input. Correct banker is about teams coming and anyone from the team sharing their respective functions. Headlines. And it sure. And one of the huge successful ritual for me, it's a ritual because we did 60 bandits. Sure. Anything which goes beyond ten and consistently plays out can be termed as a ritual. Like a ritual. Got it. Right. Like for you and me when you are porn. By then it was a ritual. We can celebrate it. Panther. We celebrate. Right. Pawn Fire is a ritual for the second time it happened. But people for the amount of questions people have in the organization. When is the next bonfire? It says bonfire as a team is a superstar in the company. Yeah, definitely. They keep seeking when is the next superstar happening? Right. So it's another successful. Sure. But we are still looking at avenues to have more engaging platforms. And I'm not sure if you noticed we ran a couple of experiments like open mind, right? Yeah, sure. We want to see how do we scale it while we do that? There are also a couple of challenges, like one another aspect to connect build more Cambridge and connectedness while having virtual sessions is by giving FaceTime, which is not happening much. Right. So my 99.9% of my calls, I go face time with the hope that people also respect the importance. Yeah. Because I don't feel we have a right to ask someone to say, hey, you should be on video. It should come from within. It should come from within. Which also goes back to how we culturally want to operate is we want to be ruled as much ruleless as possible. And don't confuse rule with process. And we don't rule here. You can take it as policy. Right. We don't want to create policy that creates a distance. That creates a distance that makes people question. Right. And which also tells people within the system our hiring process may be bad because if you're creating more policies, which means you're saying, I'm not sure what kind of people are hiring. Sure. Which is sad. Right. So if you plug in your hiring process strongly, you do not have too many policies. Right. You can have processes. Sure. That's it. But you have to adhere to certain compliance with respect to the government. Wherever we operate from us, UAE and India, we fulfill our responsibilities as a particular country citizenship and we take care of it. Like the PF and other parts. But other aspects, like policy, we are not a huge fan. Sure. It requires a tremendous amount of cut to design a program like flexibility, right. It's not easy. Yeah. And it's not very common, I would say, at least in my personal experience. But 90% of companies couldn't succeed. Yeah. They moved back to the old reservoirs. But we want to be on it. Right. And we want to tell we trust you one. Another part behind the thought behind the design was we have noticed from our past experiences, employees go through not all, but a good portion goes through an anxiousness to run a conversation with their immediate manager around the request to do with leaves. Right? I don't think so. We don't want our people to worry about. Right. Like this. Some sort of guilty mixture of guilt. Anxiousness. What would he or she say? How would I be perceived? Would I be ended up being judged? Would it have an impact on my review, et cetera? It's a mixed bag of emotions, right. It's so ruthless on people. Right. We told, no, we don't want our people to go through it. Yeah. Just be free. Sure. Like you're given a certain task. The underlying assumption is we know you will deliver. Right. The assumption is not around how you will deliver it's. More around. We know you will deliver. You get what I'm saying? Got it. There's a lot of gravity in this. Yeah, sure. And that propels. I think this is a strong force. People should be given that freedom. You didn't ask me, though, but I just wanted to convey, please, I think there are. Empathy is a very strong and very beautiful word. And I think if you look at the most successful organizations or startups, maybe even they don't know. Right. But trust me, all of them would be largely empathetic either to listen to the consumers or listening to their own people internally. Sure. And empathy is so important. Like, for example, I knocked at your door, I asked you a question you didn't hear was, can I come inside? Right. Yeah. It is super important. It's not about etiquette, by the way. Right. You got to empathize because you want to know if the other person is comfortable. Right. Like, for example, after the asked leadership, naturally. It's not about me. By the way, I'm setting an example of it. I felt I should pull the chair and keep it to the left because I would know there's someone else who's going to come. Correct. And it's important to do that effort. It's a very minor effort, but do it. I think the small, small things contribute into how you design the ecosystem internally. Right. That empathy is super critical. One of my worries is how do we build more empathy in the system? I want to kind of look at some learning, not curriculums, to let people know the beauty behind empathy. It's super important. And if you kind of understand empathy to as much depth as possible, you'll end up being a great, successful company. Right. And you end up being a great human. Yeah. So one of our core values, which is delivering delight. If you really kind of double click, triple click the value that value will throw one prominent behavior, which is empathy. Right. Empathy is core to it. Right? Yeah. I just wanted to share. I'm liking this conversation. I thought it's super important for people to understand it. Another thing was if you are a remote working company, the best way to understand virtual event space is the possibility to understand virtually when space, that intensity increases. Actually, there's a correlation of culture with your business objectives. Got it. If you are remote working, you are remotely working. You are virtually working. Therefore, the underlying assumption is your ability to fundamentally empathize with virtual events perhaps could go high. Correct. So you will design solutions accordingly. Right. I'm not saying we'll not work at a common hub, but I'm saying that also plays into our business objectives. Sure. And I think the opportunity we are dealing here as a company is a huge, huge opportunity for all of us to create impact in various ways. Can we be the company to create a virtual employee engagement playbook. Right. For the upcoming virtual remote working startups or companies? Sure. To look up on us and say, hey, these guys did it. I think there could be some control C. They don't need to reinvent the wheel. They don't need to reinvent. That's the opportunity I'm talking. Sure. I think we should play into it. Yeah, definitely. We should play into it and try to create data points. So one of the slides on People Ops was talking about system integrations. It was talking about tooling to do more, less. To do more with less also means do not throw money at problems. Do not throw people at problems. Look at a beautiful blend of design thinking using tools to scale your processes. Right. And that slide was indirectly hinting towards what I just said to integrate your systems within the organization. Sure. It will throw data measure Pulse from the DATA.org business pulse and also.org people pulse, right? I don't think so. It might sound abstract, but what I mean is that if I have to cite an example, there are Pulse tools, employee engagement, Pulse tools. Sure. There is your HubSpot and there are your other tools like Freshest and Oil. There are so many tools. I think we are a huge fan of tooling in the.ORG right. We want to now integrate all of it and have a data bank. Sure. You run any query onto that data bank, it should be able to give you insights. Okay. Test all will believe in God, right? Yeah. Basically I'm trying to say as we scale the gut which really worked up until now would also go for test. Okay. That the same gut further work or not, right. Before it goes to test, you have to deploy system to reduce risk basis gut. Okay. Have more insights to take people decisions, business decisions. And that gave birth to role like data analytics. Correct. Prabhu, join us. That's a very business driven role analysis. But the input there is, we will also start doing people analytics. Sort of. Right. To really help. Sure. I don't know. Does it make sense or not? Yeah, of course. Because as you said to someone outside of the process, measuring people always seems like an abstract thing. But there is a way to make sense of certain things. Now tanks to tech and all these things. So culture has both the tenets of invisibility and visibility, right. Earlier we used to think it's all invisible. But trust me, there's a lot of visibility in culture. There's a lot of metrics which gives insight in terms of is the culture good, bad, whatever, right? Sure. We want to also have those metrics talk to the organization. That's really important so that we reduce the cut tendency. Is Kishore really happy? Right. Does Kishore understand the difference between happiness and chore? He's wise enough to handle Kyo and make him understand the difference between happiness and joy. For example, CTC is happiness. I'm just writing in ESOP is joy. Right. Traditionally we are used to reviews as an increment in CPC. My point is if people really love to be in Zari, which is the Attrition data, then people should also aim earning ESOPs as opposed to CDCs. Right. Because ESOPs have compounding effect from an earnings standpoint as compared to CDC. I think we want to also create a culture and to encourage people to opt for ESOPs. Right. We'll do some amount of increments, but I want the mindset for our servers to be, hey, ESOP is the game I need. Sure. I want to make that compounding interest and not work till 60, work till 40, 45. Take that money, exercise my hobbies, do some gigs here and there. Sure. And just live life. Right. That's the thought process, which I think which should be communicated to people, not import communicated. Obviously, the choice is for people to go back, process that conversation, see if it makes sense to them. Got it. But I think largely that's where the economy is shifting. Okay. Awesome. It's not anymore a compensation game. It's more of an equity game. All right. And if it is equity, Zadal is as much yours as much it is mine. Yeah. The ownership also on everybody. It's like you would also think twice on spending something and ask yourself a simple question, does it have a written of interest? Right. Because it's your company. Correct. So I think Saddle is a bigger than all of us. And I'm very glad the founders thinking alliance with this concept that, hey, Saddle is much more bigger than all of us. Sure. Yeah, definitely. That's super important. So that keeps us going. That keeps me going in person. Sure. Yeah. For us. You know how our thinking has become. That's been a large conversation in the leadership is there are so many people with us, and it's our responsibility to ensure they all succeed and make good money here. Right. And that's been a very deep conversation most of the time. Right. Obviously, these conversations don't come out as much because it just happens between us. Sure. But I wanted to share with you. That's been a very strong intent. Again, hey, you feel responsible for them. Yeah, sure. And that's so powerful. Yeah. It's like you're watching for them. Yeah. You're watching. And you also want to take care of that, right. They trusted the opportunity. You are the custodians of the opportunity. Sure. So you hope that responsibility to ensure all of us succeed, which also means if something is going wrong with them, you just stand with them and say, hey, you know what, you screwed it up. Yes. But there are ways to fix it. You better fix it. Right. That comes as a positive feedback with an intent we are invested and interested in. Right. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, sure. That is totally a different thought process. Right. As opposed to here come, I'll give you feedback. Right. So I think that's an area where just not three of us, but most of the one pluses should start playing into having consistent review cadence settings. Just start talking. Sure. The.org should be people who should be able to enable those conversations in the form of values, in the form of KPIs. Kras so that you eliminate bad emotions in those conversations and have constructive conversations around, hey, sure. For your role. These are the KPIs. And your KPI dashboard is saying you're operating at this percentage of your KPIs as opposed to having a conversation. Conversation because it can be perceived any choice. Right. But when you have that data and when you signed into those KPIs. Correct. You are contracting with your team saying, I know my KPIs. I know these are my KPIs. And I've opted for it. Right. And if that oath is going here and there, I think it's the responsibility of the to talk to the person and say, hey, that was yours. What's happening? Sure. Where do you want us to help you? Right. But it's important to have that confidence. We also believe if there is someone who is unable to perform well, it's a dear responsibility of the organization to let him or her know so that you save his or her time. Absolutely. And let them figure out an opportunity which is more relevant to his or her competition. Sure. Yeah. I think we should also do that. You need not be brave for it. Right. A lot of companies perceive that as how do I do it? If the intent is really strong that you look there for people, you can do these things are really fast. Right. And we have done that. Right. And we've done it pretty fast. Very amicable conversations. Well, there were no bad lead we are in touch with. You got to take care of it like that. And it can only be genuine if you have a strong intent of care for people. Right. And the outcome is priceless because you're just channeling them into the right direction. Absolutely. And I'm giving you two extremes of intent. Right. The intent is the care and concern for the people. If they are not doing well consistently, it's your responsibility to tell them, open their eyes and say, hey, you are wasting your time here. Right. And saddle is wasting its time with you. So I think you have to look up. Sure. If we could help them do that, that's super important. That's delivered delight. I hope we reach that state somewhere. That's one extreme. The other extreme is people who consistently hit the ball outside the park. Right. Dude, take more of it. So have more compounding effect of your life. You're hitting the ball and you're also demonstrating values. Right. So your living behaviors, you would inspire people that's magical. Those are like value chat gifts. Sure. Those are ideal profile. Then we should take care of that person. Absolutely. We should take care of everyone. This person. We should take care in a way where he or she feels more inspired to be part of this. What I'm saying is ESOP fundamentally should be a way for people to get excited that they are a lot more part of the company and start looking at the old school of increments from a percentage impact. Right. You end up eating the same meals, maybe you end up paying more tax. Sure. Right. Or largely, it is more like a social status. Esop is also a social status. Right. If your mindset is not able to process it, that's your fault. Okay. Got it. And therefore the.ORG should be able to educate it more. Like we talk quite often about ESOPs. Pretty open. I think that's the healthiest way to. Yeah, we should. I don't think so. We did a great job on that. Yet while we did use of sessions, we should continue to do more. It's also a subject which is very new to this part of the world, including us. We are also learning a lot about our use of design was purely aimed to give more comfort to the employees when we were talking to the team, which helped us design, and it's an external team which worked on this process with us. Okay. They were supremely happy that they probably felt, hey, it's very rare you meet a leadership team where the entire ESOP conversation on the design aspects of the resource was around taking care of employees. Right. I remember they passing that feedback to us. Oh, God. We said, yeah, that's the best way. Sure. And that comes quite natural to the founders as well. Okay. You need to engage employees if you're not here with them from day one. Right. That's the other way to do it. Right. If you take care of having engaged people to be engaged in your organization, you are pretty much taking care of it from day one. Right. In an organic way. That's the best. I think employee engagement framework should not be like eating a day to keep the doctor away. That's not the aspect. Right. The aspect should be, why do you need to create designs for employee engagement? Which means you're talking about, oh, I have a problem now. I have to engage with my employees. I think that model won't work. Create institutionalized culture in such a way. People come into that institution, get institutionalized to that culture. Right. Yeah. And that's the journey. Yeah. And that's where it reaches the depth, I think. Yeah, that's where it reaches depth. Then the conversation is not how do I engage with them? The conversation is how do we do better from where we are? You don't have to design tools, too. It cannot be a cost header. Why do you have to screw up things and think, hey, I should have engaged more than design something? You get what I'm saying? No, not at all. Awesome. On that fantastic note, thank you so much, Madhav, for making the time. 

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Madhav:

Thanks a lot. Great conversation. Yeah. I mean, very enlightening for me, especially since it was very organic. It didn't look to me like Q and A. Then your mindset is also about hope. There's a question I need to answer, but the moment you said let's have a conversation. It was like a conversation. 

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Kishore:

Exactly. And that's how we kind of want this podcast to be. We don't want everyone to drop 

everything that even if you're on a job, you want to learn something which is very story based storytelling and that's the kind of stuff that we engage with when we're driving, et cetera. So this space, thankfully, we have the Liberty to do it. So yeah, it's totally awesome talking up. Thanks a lot. Let's celebrate. 

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Madhav:

Okay. Sure. Thank you. Thank you.

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Kishore:

This was backstage with Zuddl. If you'd like to hear more episodes, don't forget to subscribe you can also listen to our episodes on Spotify Google or wherever you stream podcasts don't forget to visit jungle.com to know more about how you can begin humanizing events.

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