Dougal Shaw, Business Correspondent, BBC News
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How do you cultivate team spirit when your 700 employees are suddenly working from home? A tech company boss explained her strategy in our business advice series CEO Secrets.
Lisa Utzschneider did not wear a baseball cap in our video phone interview, but for the current internal company meetings, this is expected.
"As a global organization, we are united and united our team," she said.
During the past 18 months of the pandemic, her employees—usually located in offices all over the world—have been working from home. As mixed work becomes the norm, this will remain the status quo for some time, although the New York and London offices are now open.
She said that a hat is a way of "showing up" to work and proves that you know everyone is together.
The pandemic is a busy time for Ms. Utzschneider, who became the CEO of Integral Ad Science (IAS) in early 2019.
The new job brings many challenges. She soon had to adjust the company's culture to adapt to the lockdown conditions, list the company on the stock exchange, and deal with the challenges of being a parent of young children, while working from home.
IAS is a company that emerged over the past decade to meet new digital needs: verification of real audience engagement and reputation management in online advertising.
Marketing budgets are increasingly used for social media content, rather than television and print. Over the past decade, the amount of funds directly spent by brands on online influencers has increased dramatically, for example, to spread their messages. According to eMarketer data, since 2019, companies have spent more on digital advertising than traditional formats worldwide. Economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom reached this tipping point a few years ago.
IAS works with some of the largest brands in the world, such as Nestlé and Coca-Cola. It ensures that their video ads on social media platforms are effectively targeted and do not leave a bad impression on the brand-such as scrolling next to violent, highly politicized or pornographic content.
"If you think of Nestlé ads running on YouTube," Ms. Utzschneider explained, "we will verify that their video ads are viewed by humans, not robots, and that it runs alongside safe and appropriate content."
The company's software algorithms collect and analyze large amounts of data every day to achieve this goal.
Ms. Utzschneider said that these big companies don't want social media platforms to "rate their own work," and explained that third parties are needed to build trust. She said that advertisers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these platforms and therefore need to get a return on investment.
She said that at first, social media platforms did not necessarily like this arrangement, but this response has changed.
She remembers that YouTube "made a complete 180" in the spring of 2019, when it was under pressure from marketers because of inappropriate and violent content next to their ads.
She explained that since then, digital platforms have realized that they need to become more transparent and allow third parties to inspect the services they provide. Ms. Utzschneider compares her company to Switzerland during World War II—a neutral observer in the online struggle for attention, who was not directly involved in the dispute.
Ms. Utzschneider's path to the top is a gradual and stable path, and she has played roles in some of the largest technology giants along the way.
When she was in her twenties, in the early 2000s, she worked in the non-profit public policy department, but decided to turn to the booming world of business technology.
She left a senior position in the International Relief Commission to work for Microsoft. But this transition has not been smooth sailing. She was rejected after the first round of interviews, which still made her miserable.
"The next day I called the recruiter and asked politely why they rejected me," she recalled. "They said I didn't show enough enthusiasm. So I said,'Give me another interview, I bet I I can show you enthusiasm.” This strategy worked. She worked as an account manager in MSN, Microsoft's digital advertising department, in various entry-level roles.
After working at Microsoft for ten years, she found a job at Amazon, where she became the vice president of global advertising sales, which was an opportunity to build a global advertising business.
Marissa Meyer then persuaded her to join Yahoo and establish an advertising business.
All these tasks require a lot of time, but in a world dominated by male senior technical leaders, becoming a female leader is also a challenge.
"I have participated in hundreds or even thousands of conference calls, and I am the only woman who dials in. I learned early on the importance of finding my voice, being ready to appear, speaking early and often," she said .
"I also developed a very strong muscle... When someone interrupts me, I just call them out politely. Or call that colleague later and say,'Hey, can you give me some meeting space in the future," So that I can share and contribute? It makes me very resilient."
As a direct result of this experience, when she became the CEO of IAS, she set up a female majority board as a "strategic priority" and "personal commitment."
But back to those hats.
Utzschneider said the transition to working from home has been a decisive challenge for many companies during the pandemic, but in some ways it has made IPOs easier.
She can conduct investor-introduced roadshows online through video calls at home—rather than traveling the country with a suitcase on her back, which is laborious. She can have dinner with her children every night.
But the downside of working from home may be a disconnect from company culture. Therefore, the custom of wearing a hat becomes a visual statement that they do not want this disconnect to happen.
She wears hats at town hall meetings, new employee orientation, analyst conference calls, and investor meetings.
Utzschneider said: "Our mantra has unified the organization."
But what she didn't expect is that these hats are also helpful to family life.
"When my two little girls saw me wearing a hat, they knew that my mother was at work, which meant that they could not really come in to visit me, but when I went down to eat, they would tell me:'Mom, it's time Take off your hat!
Utzschneider says that people become more frank and open when discussing their personal priorities with colleagues, which can have a profound impact on simple things like time management.
For example, working parents cannot always stay "five more minutes" at the end of a meeting, nor should they accept two nights of work trips when possible to allow them to sleep their children one more night.
She found that these conversations are now happening more and more at work.
"This is a more transparent way of working, allowing us to support each other and spend quality time with the people we love."
CEO Secrets reporter Dougal Shaw on Twitter: @dougalshawbbc
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