The New Needs of the Workforce – with Saket Srivastava, CIO of Asana

Whatever decision you take, whether you decide to go fully remote, whether you try to be a hybrid office-centric hybrid workforce, or all in office, you'll never be in a situation wherein everyone's going to love the decision. It's not a consensus-based vision, but the bigger challenge ends up being when you have not taken the company along in this journey on what are the reasons, what are the first principles against which you are making a decision on how as a company you want to operate, and then everything that sort of follows after that has to support that vision.

Well, great question. I totally agree with you. It's not a problem that one has been solved, or it's not a problem that has an easy answer. Basically, not one answer that sort of fits for all sorts of problems. I have a sort of interesting perspective on this because when the pandemic started, I was at another company. I was at a fintech company called Square, now Block, and the approach we had taken for workforce and future of work and hybrid workforce was very different from where I am now, which is at Asana. And our perspective on where people work from and the future of workforce is slightly different. So it's interesting, these are two different models. Where at Square, even before the pandemic, Jack Dorsey and we all decided that we wanted to be a remote-first company. We want to give people the flexibility to come in when they need to, but otherwise they can work from wherever they want to, wherever they feel that they're at their creative best. At Asana, this was a little bit before my time here, but at the start of the pandemic itself, Asana had made a decision that yes, obviously through the pandemic people are going to work remotely, but once the pandemic is over, we're going to ask people to come back in some shape or form. And what I think was interesting in both of these cases was a thoughtful, top-down sort of point of view on how do we want to think about the future of work. It's something that I think companies who are struggling more are companies who've just sort of meandered around this problem, that we'll see how it plays out. And that becomes, in my opinion, a little more troublesome. Whatever decision you take, whether you decide to go fully remote, whether you try to be a hybrid office-centric hybrid workforce, or all in office, you'll never be in a situation wherein everyone's going to love the decision. It's not a consensus-based vision, but the bigger challenge ends up being when you have not taken the company along in this journey on what are the reasons, what are the first principles against which you are making a decision on how as a company you want to operate, and then everything that sort of follows after that has to support that vision. And that could be hiring. If you decided to be sort of in and around your office and in an office-centric hybrid environment, make sure that the hiring practices through the pandemic make sure that candidates who are being told that you've got to come back, right? That's where we decided to sort of open up the talent pool and just hire people from all across the geography. So those are important considerations that result from that initial point of view of how do you want to think about that future.

Yeah, the way I sort of think about this is it's important that one stays curious, one keeps their ear to the ground to listen what's working, what's not working. And when things are not working, it's totally fine to sort of acknowledge that and sort of work around what to do to kind of make it work. Technology can only take you so far. There's a whole lot of innovation that sort of cropped up even before the pandemic and obviously through the pandemic certainly helped, but that human connection is just so important that if you've been in a place where you've kept most of your workforce remote, it's still very important to find opportunities to get people together. So at Asana, what we've done is we have landed in this office-centric hybrid environment where three days a week we ask people to come to work and two days a week they can work remotely. And that model sort of works well for us. Sure, there are times where we feel that people could be more remote, people could be more in office, but I think just being curious and knowing where things are working, when things are not working, not thinking that this technology is going to solve all of these problems.

Yeah, in fact, my onboarding with Asana happened when we were remote, sort of instilled with the realities of COVID. And what I found being done really well was that onboarding, in fact, even before the onboarding, right from the time the conversation starts as a candidate, we are very explicit about explaining, yes, we are a very thoughtful company, but this is what we expect. So once the pandemic is over, we would expect people to come. So that clarity is very helpful. It does not help to keep things vague and in a confused state for anyone. And so when the onboarding happens, it's clearly that through that onboarding journey, we're telling people how does the company work, which are the ways that people work here, how do decisions get made, how do teams operate. And then we, as part of that onboarding, we surface up the tools and technology that will enable people to do deep work or collaborative work. All of that absolutely is something that we focus on through our onboarding journey as well.

As I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of energy and focus that has certainly gone in making this onboarding experience something that one obviously learns and ramps up really fast, but also starts understanding the culture of the place just as quickly as well. And our product is something that we truly believe helps with creating an environment, a place where people can just do work. I look at Asana as a hub where people can focus on the work, they can create accountability, clarity for work, and then we've got a bunch of integrations across different tools that sort of bring their work in, all with the mindset of how do we reduce that context switching for people and be able to provide people a platform through which they can do deep work. So we obviously adopt, 'drink our own champagne' through the onboarding journey as well.

That's a better way to put it, yeah, drink your own champagne. But we absolutely focus on that.

Right, and that means that we have to have a point of view wherein, sure, we're listening to our stakeholders and our functions and the rest of the organization, but we're also informing them that this is how work happens at Asana, or for that matter at any other company that is a CIO organization that's trying to inform this. And it can't necessarily be looked at as one tool or one platform. It's going to be an ecosystem of tools. And it's very important to, in many ways, just tell people this is what you need this tool for, and this is how the work should flow into this tool or flow out of this tool. But you have to very simply educate people that these are the platforms that we've made a decision to invest in and focus on, and this is how, this is what you should leverage. And yet be curious, and yet be listening to people on things that they think are better out there, and then over time sort of pivot where need be. But having that informed point of view from the CIO organization is very important.

If only we were in that simple world where we could say that security is not my problem. Yes, you know, the button that says 'secure' and you just click yes and then it's secure. Yeah, I mean, interestingly, the way I think of security, security is everyone's problem. Not just whether you're a security company or not, but also not just about if you're the CSO organization or not. It's for every employee in the organization to understand that they have a role to play in making sure that the company is secure. It's also not okay, to that point, for us in the CIO organization to say that because we lean on a bunch of these SaaS providers and vendors that it's their problem. We have to do our due diligence to make sure that they're secure, they're compliant, and all of that trigger needs to happen before the process of onboarding any of these vendors. So that due diligence is something that we absolutely need to own and do better at. What I think is very important is empowering the organization, the employee base, through frequent and creative ways of educating them on our security posture and what are things to look out for, and what's good behavior and what's not good behavior. That is perhaps the most effective way to kind of make sure that you're staying on top of your game from a security standpoint. And then obviously, as a security team, you've got to do your tabletop, your red team, blue team exercises and be at the top of your game. So those are some things that I and my organization do often. I think everybody should be thinking of.

Yes, and that's the problem that we've seen in the past, and that's a problem that we continue to see quite a bit as well. But a few things that are important, right? We are the judge, the jury here. We are making a decision on your behalf. Sure, we have to have a point of view, but we've got to take the organization along in that journey. It's very important to stay close to your employee base, to your different cohorts that you partner with, so that they look at you as a partner and you can hear of some of the things that they're trying to do sooner rather than later. So there are fewer of those occurrences. There'll still be occurrences where people find fascination with some new shiny toy out there in the market that they want to try out, but that's also where then you want support from policy. You want to make sure that you are putting in appropriate controls wherein you're further reducing any chances of tools being brought into the ecosystem without the right due diligence. You also don't want to always stop all of this. There has to be a level of federated decision-making, and you perhaps need to start thinking of creating tiers or classifications wherein, hey, this is low risk, this is an area wherein you're not going to be sharing data or putting in meaningful classified secure data, and so this is low risk, and so we're going to make it easy for you. We'll still do the basic due diligence from an IT security standpoint, and then we'll let you go on your way. But these are systems of records wherein company sensitive data is going to be transacted or stored, and this absolutely requires us to kind of go through the entire process and the rigor. So those are a few ways I think you can limit some of this. But net-net, the closer you are to your partner organization, where it's a partnership of trust wherein they believe that you're listening to them and you're trying to solve for their needs, people are not out there trying to go and do the wrong thing. It's just when they feel that they have less of a partner and more of a back-office CIO organization that's just going to force things on them, that's where you see more of this Shadow IT crop up.

I think industry aside, sure, there are some which are more regulated industries and the sensitivity of data is perhaps going to be higher than maybe in some other industries. But you've got to be curious, you've got to learn, you've got to listen, you've got to understand the business of the business, and then see how you can be that enabling function and not be looked at as that roadblock or someone that everyone's seeing you come and then maybe pivoting and going elsewhere. I'd say they should come down the hallway and they're like, oh, and they just start walking the other direction. That's the worst-case scenario. And so having that sort of partner mindset and wanting to learn what are people trying to solve for, and then helping them find the most efficient, best way, educating them along the way that while these are considerations that we're thinking of, it is something that's quite doable.

I think as a generational sort of macro shift, things are still sort of on the go a little bit. They're still sort of not fully settled. There are some companies who seem to have landed in a good place, there are some companies that are still sort of figuring their way around. Again, I believe what this sort of shift has brought is that your workforce craves flexibility, and you cannot completely ignore that and force a top-down mandate. Yet, this is a business that you're running and there are expectations that you have out of running this business. And so it's that marriage of allowing for that flexibility and yet creating a highly productive, accountable workforce that is delivering and answering to their stakeholders and shareholders is where different companies will land in different places. I see that there is an aspect where there's some bit of remote work that's more or less acceptable with different companies. There are certain roles that require you to be full-time in office because that's just the way that work can be done. But if you are in that either hybrid remote, hybrid office, or a fully remote environment, you still need to consciously find opportunities in a repeated fashion to bring people together. That is just so important. And then you can't just leave that to chance. You've got to create a space, budget, funding, all of that stuff to get people together. That's how people's guards will lower, that's how teams will start operating at a higher velocity and with greater trust. That's the shift that I'm seeing, and that's where I see the future ahead continue to head as well. It's very organic, it's changing in different areas and different geographies.

The good part is that everyone's gone through this journey at the same time, so there's some empathy in there, a lot of empathy in this conversation. Also understanding that there's broad understanding that there's no one answer that works. The conversation on the board is really about how do we have a motivated, highly driven, high-performing organization. And for that, you've got to be sensitive to employee workforce needs as well, and you also need to make sure that the organization needs to be high-performing. So there are certain expectations, just sort of thinking about from a shareholder, stakeholder perspective, and how to kind of create a high-performing team. I think that's what it really boils down to. So it's—I actually don't even think that this is much of a conversation, at least in the board meetings that I am in, because the companies that I have been in over the last three, four years, we have landed in a place where we feel generally good about how we're approaching this. This is not a decision that you'll have 100% people and everyone on the board agreeing to fully, but this is an informed decision based on these principles, based on what we've heard from people. This is where we've landed, and you need to give it time. You need to give it time so that it plays out. Yes, you will continue to sort of keep listening and be curious about it, but it's not something that you can very quickly continue to pivot either. That's the way sort of I think about it. And I believe these are conversations that I would be surprised if there's still a constant with the board, because it's been three years that we've been navigating this now.

Both full-time jobs. LinkedIn, I'm fairly active on LinkedIn. That's the best way to kind of reach me.

All right, thanks a lot.