Transforming Culture

Rob Goodman:

Over the past few years, we've seen the way people work be totally upended. So how do the strongest companies adapt and how do you maintain company culture? That elusive, but deeply important thing that binds your team and your company all together? Hi, everyone. And welcome to Ready for Takeoff, the new micro podcast series from Wix, all about hyper growth. I'm your host, Rob Goodman, Executive Producer for Content at Wix. In each episode, we go deep on one single topic in under 15 minutes, sharing insights and lessons learned from the leaders that built Wix, as we talk about everything it takes to build a world class global organization. Today, we have Idit Carmon, Vice President of People for the US at Wix.

Rob Goodman:

For many tech companies, the distributed workforce isn't going anywhere anytime soon. So I spoke to Idit about how companies can create that sense of culture, even as people are working from home, others are in the office, and teams and employees are spread all across the globe, as is the case here at Wix. I started out by asking Idit about what she thought the most crucial part of culture is, especially for a company that's growing rapidly. Here's Idit.

Idit Carmon:

So I think for me, this is trust. I trust leadership. I trust this company. How do you gain that where you have so many people joining the company during the past two years that have never met each other? What we saw specifically in the US is that we've hired so many people. We also hired their team leaders and their team leaders’ managers, and their group managers and site managers. So we have a chain full of people that are completely new to the company, new to this culture, new to the Wix way of managing, which is sometimes maybe not typical or not similar to what they knew. How do you create that connection? I believe that with the connection, you can create, also, the trust. You can nurture this trust. I feel like at the beginning of this journey, we were very reliant on the fact that we will go back to the office and things will just go back to how they were.

Idit Carmon:

Once we realized that it's not happening and it will change probably for the long-term, we started to make things differently in the way we onboard and the way we train and maybe the support we give managers in that sense. So people really feel that they're still connected. I have to say, it's very hard to measure it. How do you measure trust? How do you measure connection? It's hard. You learn a lot from conversations with people. You learn a lot from people that are leaving, unfortunately. So what worked for them, what did not work, and you're trying to improve in that sense, but you really need to put that on the top of your priority.

Idit Carmon:

This is definitely, for us, top of priority to see how we're able to help people get connected. I want everybody at Wix to feel happy waking up in the morning and trusting their team and trusting their managers and trusting the company on a daily basis. Otherwise, why would they? We were having a lot of communication going on, sometimes a little bit over-communicating. We were new to this. We wanted to communicate all the time, to meet with the team all the time, to communicate all the time. It's exhausting.

Rob Goodman:

At the start of the pandemic.

Idit Carmon:

The start of the pandemic.

Rob Goodman:

Yeah.

Idit Carmon:

Then you start changing it. You're starting to find different things and you have to reinvent yourself all the time. So again, it could be something like, how does your onboarding look like? What type of activities do we offer you after work sometimes? How can we support you with building your home office and simple stuff like that? Or what are the courses that maybe we offer you to manage your time better? Or if you're a manager, to manage a team remotely. This was gradual. Again, it's a discovery. So you're trying to find the things that will help people understand who you are as a company.

Idit Carmon:

When we saw that we had times that were unbearable to our employees sometimes. As a company, we said, "Okay, hey, let's take a day off just to relax and recharge." So we're trying to, in different ways, help people connect to who we are and understand through that and through how we are working and how we communicate with them, understand what this company is about. Hopefully, with that, we'll build trust. It's not about us promising something and now meeting this promise or not, it's not about that. It's about day-to-day, day in, day out, how do you connect with the team? What is the message that you get from your manager? What are we pushing our managers to do, to communicate? All these things that are on a daily basis, on a day-to-day, that hopefully then builds up and nurtures a better relationship and then trust as well.

Rob Goodman:

We've talked about, through the crisis of the pandemic, we've talked about growth in terms of the number of people joining the company. How do you think of culture as it relates to all of these teams spread across all of these geographies across the world where there's local culture that needs to be infused, there's the corporate vision of culture, and it all needs to connect and it all needs to work, but it also needs to be personalized. What is the approach and the strategy when it comes to dealing with that kind of growth and that kind of distributed team?

Idit Carmon:

So I think the beautiful thing at Wix is that we never hung up in any conference room in our company the list of values. We talk about it sometimes. We have it in our library for people in their onboarding, so you can review it. But most importantly, I don't think that everybody remembers our values by heart. It's not about that. But I want to be in a position that with the majority of people, if I ask them, "What's the culture of Wix, or what our values are?" They will say something that is probably very, very, very close to the formal values or the list of formal values that we have. This happens, I think, in a company that has a really, really, really strong culture. So the way I feel it's working here is that there is some kind of a magic that happens in energy between people talking at Wix, I guess. So there's something just very natural that allows you to bring your true self to work. You don't have to wear any imaginary suit or be someone that you're not.

Idit Carmon:

I think it frees a lot of the heavy weight of you trying to perform or you're trying to be something you're not. When that doesn't happen and you can just be yourself with everything, and none of us are perfect. When this happens, really, I feel like the magic happens and then you don't of need to know or remember the list of values, but you understand just from seeing how people communicate, how people interact with each other, what they're wearing, sometimes how they talk, what is the process that they follow or how they think that makes you understand, "Oh, this is it." So if someone is just talking very freely and giving straight feedback in a meeting with multiple people, this can surprise me the first meeting that I participate in, but then on the 10th meeting, I understand, "Oh, this is what they mean by just being direct. Okay. Just be yourself. Just say." So you don't necessarily need to learn the values, but you know them because you're part of what's going on. So the culture doesn't have to be exactly the same. We don't need to see everything the same way.

Idit Carmon:

There's also something, we have differences between teams, between different groups, between different products within Wix that creates a little bit of a different culture. We have differences just from being spread all over the world and being from different areas on the globe that also changes something in the culture. We have different managerial styles. There's no one manager...we don't force you to manage in a very, very strict way. You get the tools, you get advice, you get things that are important for us, but we don't necessarily tell you, "This is how you do it." So different managerial styles also creates different subcultures. So all of that is great. I think it happens. It's very few things that we care about mostly. If we're able to recognize them between teams and between countries and between different products, that's the most important thing. The how is less important. If you're a manager and this is what you want to adopt, go for it. Nobody's going to tell you. But as long as it's aligned with really the core values that we have.

Rob Goodman:

Yeah. I love that freedom and space to move and be one's self and work in a way that's going to be most productive. It feels freeing, but it also feels like a chance for everyone to bring their own personalities, their own personas, their own experience to the role in the goal of moving the company forward through all the work that these teams are doing.

Idit Carmon:

By the way, it's not great for everyone. Not everyone can feel like they connect to that. Some people need a lot more framework. They need to understand exactly not only what to do, but how to do it. For some, this might not work perfectly. Also, I'm always concerned when I talk about the culture, because I really love the culture of this company, but I'm not here to say that everything is working smoothly and everything is great. Yeah. I think it's really important to be connected to our values, to remind ourselves, "Hey, why are we here? What are we doing these things for? Why are we trying to change things?" So we are able to maintain the things that are really, really important for us at the end of the day.

Rob Goodman:

Thanks, Idit, for joining the show and for sharing so much with us. One of the biggest takeaways from me from this episode is that everything is constantly changing. We all know that, and it's okay to admit it to ourselves and into our teammates and to the people that we're leading in our organizations, and that you don't always have to have everything figured out or know all the answers. So much of both business and life is just paying attention to yourself and to the people around you, seeing what's working and what's not, and adapting as quickly as you can. Company culture is no different, especially during these turbulent times. So how has your team been evolving over these months and years? Is your company culture changing or just taking on new forms and shapes, new habits, new rituals, maybe in person, maybe remotely? Tell us what you've learned on social @Wix. We'd love to hear about how your teams are building culture and are still thriving amidst all of this change.

Rob Goodman:

Ready for Takeoff is brought to you by Wix. Now, if you don't know about Wix, we're the all-in-one platform for running your business online, trusted by over 210 million people around the world. With Wix, you get incredible security, reliability, performance and SEO, no matter the kind of business you run or the size. With Wix, anything is possible. So visit wix.com to start building and growing your business today.

Rob Goodman:

Thanks so much for listening. You can find more episodes and information on our website at wix.com/readyfortakeoff. Ready for Takeoff is hosted and produced by me, Rob Goodman, at Wix. With production by Lindsay Jean Thomson at Wix. Audio engineering and editing is by Brian Pake at Pacific Audio. Music is composed and performed by Kimo Muraki. Our Executive Producers from Wix are Susan Kaplow and me, Rob Goodman. We'll see you next time.