Why rebranding a corporation isnt for the faint of heart

Listen to the episode or read the full transcript below.

---

Transcript

Alan Murray: Leadership Next is powered by the folks at Deloitte, who, like me, are exploring the changing rules of business leadership and how CEOs are navigating this change.

Welcome to Leadership Next, a podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. Im Alan Murray, and this is a very big day for me. Ive got a brand new co-host.

Michal Lev-Ram: Im Michal Lev-Ram. I am thrilled to be here, Alan.

Murray: Im so happy to have you here, Michal. Youve worn many hats during your years of Fortune. I think youve probably even been here a little bit longer than I have. Isnt that right?

Lev-Ram: Yeah, I believe thats right. I have been at Fortune now through two economic downturns, a pandemic, a revolution in print and media overall, and my current hat, or hats that I wear at Fortune, is an editor-at-large. I tend to write about the tech industry, as you would imagine, being out here in the Bay Area. A lot of CEO profiles, which is great, and I also work across our live events, which has been very exciting. So Im thrilled to add this to my portfolio at Fortune and join the team here.

Murray: I know our listeners are all going to miss the amazing Ellen McGirt, as will I. And Michal and I have vowed to bring her back from time to time when the issues are right, but Michal, what I really love about this pairing is, were on opposite coasts, and being on opposite coasts sometimes these days is like being on Mars and Venus. So I appreciate what youre bringing to the conversation.

Lev-Ram: Yeah, Alan, this is one of the biggest reasons we became journalists, right? Is to talk to incredible thinkers, to people who are in the news, and definitely hope that we can add some perspectives, and more perspectives from the tech industryyou know, happens to be in the news quite a bit these days.

Murray: And were going to do that today with our conversation with Christa Quarles, who is CEO of the software company, Alludo, which used to be called Corel. You may not have heard of Alludo or Corel. Before that, she was CEO of OpenTable. And she did work in interactive games at Disney. So she has quite a history and is also somebody you know pretty well, right? 

Lev-Ram: Yeah. So Christa is a rare breed. She is a CEO who always seems to speak her mind. And my first interaction with her, she really, really made an imprint on my brain. It was at our Brainstorm Tech conference a few years back. She just called out B.S. literally as she saw it.

Murray: She said bullshit

Lev-Ram: Yes, she said, bullshit, Ill go ahead and say it too. But yeah, shes a big thinker, and really influential, a very influential woman in the tech industry. And so I was very excited to talk to her.

Murray: Yeah, and whats great about Christa is that she is a CEO who really walks her talk. After calling bullshit on that conversation at Brainstorm Tech, shes also done what she needed to do at the company. She said, when she was CEO of OpenTable, she set a goal of 50/50 gender parity and hiring, which you know, better than I do, is very rare in the tech space. And she got there, and were going to talk to talk to her about how she did it.

Lev-Ram: Yeah, absolutely. And were also talking to her about the process of rebranding a company, like you said, from Corel to Alludo, her thoughts on the state of remote workI know you have a lot of thoughts on that as well, Alanand her use of haiku, the 17-syllable Japanese poetic form, in management.

Murray: And I dont want to spoil the podcast, Michal, but you and I did both read our original haikus written for the occasion.

Lev-Ram: Yeah, and I have to say, yours was a little bit more poetic than mine. Well, I dont want to keep people waiting any longer for the beautiful haikus we wrote, Alan. Here is our interview with Christa Quarles of Alludo. 

[Music] 

Welcome to Leadership Next. Christa, before we dig into your story, I want to get just a few details about Alludo, and I understand you have about 2.5 million customers. So we want to know: Who are they, and how do they use the product?

Christa Quarles: Yeah, so we rebranded our company to Alludo back in September, and its sort of a portmanteau for all you do, which is really about knowledge worker software. So we have two, essentially, buckets of businesses that we do. One is workspaces. So our Parallels business enables anybody to work on any operating system on any devices, virtualization software that really exploded during the pandemic. With things like remote application server product, IT departments were having to get to remote workers, and so it became foundational to our remote-work philosophy at the company. And then we also have our application side or you know, we talk about workflow and so these are businesses like MindManager, which is, you know, task software, CorelDRAW, which is graphics software, or WinZip, which really helps around security at rest and security in motion.

Murray: Christa, ;istening to you describe that, the first question that comes to my mind is, who are you competing against? I mean, is it Box and Dropbox? Is it Slack? Is it Miro? Are you taking on Microsoft? Who are you after here? 

Lev-Ram: Canva? Everybody.

Quarles: Well, on the virtualization side, its pretty specifically VMware and Citrix, and whats awesome for us as both companies have gotten taken private, are about to get taken private in the next couple of months here. And so whats exciting there is that both companies have also said that theyre going to fire all their customers that are under 5,000 employees, theyre going to get rid of all their small customers. This is the Broadcom strategy. So I looked at the team and said, my goodness, theres a swath of blue ocean that just opened up right in front of us. Lets go after it. So its a really exciting time. You know, I think if you look at the graphic side, you know, were kind of sandwiched in between Adobe, and maybe Figma and Canva. And both are giant giants in the business. We take a little sliver of that in this area called vector graphics, which allows for like high pixelation so if you want to wrap a bus in a design, thats something that you would have to do on a product like CorelDRAW.

Lev-Ram: Okay, so were going to get into more about the company and the product and remote work, and I know Alan has a lot of thoughts around that. 

Murray: So many.

Lev-Ram: So many. Its going to be fun in just a bit. But Christa, I want to hear a little bit about your story and kind of your evolution as a leader and your story, for me, at least begins in Aspen. That sounds very bougie, but in Aspen in 2017, there was this amazing moment, and I know it was a moment for you as well. We were at Brainstorm Tech, our annual tech conference. We had a town hall about diversity and inclusion, and one of our speakers said something about women not supporting each other. You just yelled out bullshit. Tell us about that moment. Tell us about what it was for you.

Quarles: Well, first of all, I mouthed the word bullshit. All right.

Lev-Ram: Well, I was very close to you. So it to me it sounded like a quiet yell.

Quarles: So, I kind of had a bit of an out-of-body experience, and I think it was a culmination of all of the injustices that I felt had been done, or perpetrated, or discussed. And here it was, again, it was our fault. The classic like blame the victim, and part of the thesis was just, its hard to, you know, have you know, support another woman when youre the only woman in the room. And this idea of scarcity was so, you know, demonstrable in the experience. And by the way, this was before Times Up and before #MeToo. This was just, you know, the stories were just beginning to come out. And and it just really, I just couldnt do it anymore. I think, if I take a step back, so much of this is about, as a leader, getting really clear and connected to your personal values. Because I think, when you know what you stand for, the decisions, the commentary, the communication all just become obvious. And it was in that moment where my values were being crossed, and I had to stand up. 

Murray: Well, good for you. But here were six years beyond now. Has it gotten better for the tech industry? What is the situation for women in tech?

Quarles: You know, I mean that theres a loud exhalation. I dont know if itll get picked up.

Murray: We heard it. I think the production team can amplify it if you want them to.

Quarles: One of the sets of studies we looked at was just dollars going into venture, for example, that are supporting female founders. And it went down over the last year or two, and it was at a paltry 2% for female focus founders, and it was like 7% for like one female founder. But you know, I think you know, so I think it hasnt maybe gotten worse, but I dont think its necessarily gotten better. And you know, one of things I did is like in the last couple years, I dove into like evolutionary psychology books, because Im like, why is going on out there? Because I dont think if you talk to men, there is a desire to say, hey, women are not able, or not qualified. I dont think theres a prefrontal cortex decision going on here. I feel like its something deeper almost and, and I think it comes out yeah, they look and saying like, well, are tall people better leaders? You look at the Fortune 500, and over 80% of those CEOs are taller than six feet tall. So, are tall people just naturally better leaders? Are short people not as good? And I always will put it in tall and short versus male or female, simply because people are going to go well, thats dumb, but it is, it is. So you know, I mean, what do we think about when we make some of these decisions?

Lev-Ram: I have to point out that youre actually pretty tall, Christa. 

Quarles: So I probably benefited. I joke all the time that I showed up as a man to be accepted by men in the workplace, and I was tall, I am tall, I played basketball, and Im sure that that in some way, shape, or form gave me a leadership benefit that maybe I did or didnt deserve, but it was a bias that you know, in some ways probably did benefit me.

Lev-Ram: So going back to that moment in 2017, you were running OpenTable at the time, another company. Did anything change for you? Did you get to 50/50?

Quarles: I feel like the Fortune moment was such a gift, because we look inside and say, Gosh, you stood up and made all this kerfuffle. But if were not, you know, doing it ourselves and doing it well, then how dare I? And so it was a great moment of introspection and it was from that where, you know, we looked across the overall company and had done a pretty good job in areas except for engineering. 

I happen to have gone to Carnegie Mellon, and I happened to be aware that 50% of the computer science grads at Carnegie Mellon were women. So the the highest instituteyou know, we think were better than MITthe highest computer science program in the country was able to do it, and why? And how? And you know, I looked into their example, and so we started to make changes in our own organization, and I in particular, you know, said it was important, which I think is the most critical thing. Any leader can do this whole, like, Lets go hire a chief diversity officer, and then all of a sudden diversity problems get solved by this person in the corner who doesnt necessarily have the moral authority to drive and direct the business. Its just not going to happen. Because CEO doesnt want it to happen, or doesnt enable it to happen, it will not happen. 

And so we changed our entire recruiting process from, you know, putting our resumes through gender and person of color identifying kind of anonymizers, so there wouldnt be bias at the head end. We had to have two diverse candidates in a slate, because if you have one diverse candidate, it doesnt work. We changed our entire [interviewing] panels, because if you got interviewed by two men, youre not going to join. So we just looked at the entire throughput, and then the next quarter, 50% of the women that we hire, or the engineers that we hire are women. And so it was just like, wow, okay, like any problem, any business problem you put your mind to, you look at the system that sits around it, and its usually a systems level issue, its not even an individual bias. So its, you know, its James Clear and you rise to the level of your goals? No, you sink to the level of your systems, and if you dont have a system around it, youre going to fail.

[Music starts]

Murray: Jason Girzadas, the CEO Elect of Deloitte US, is the sponsor of this podcast and joins me today. Welcome, Jason.

Jason Girzadas: Thank you, Alan. Its great to be here. 

Murray: Jason, public trust in institutions has taken a hit in recent years, but trust in business remains relatively strong. Why do you think that is? Why does it matter?

Girzadas:  rust is a function of businesses meeting their stakeholders expectations and creating value. That is true for customers. Thats true for the workforce. Its true for society at large. And I think given the challenges that other key pillars of the economy and society have faced in terms of trust, businesses have an opportunity to actually rise above that set of concerns and forge new levels of trust with all their stakeholders. This is an opportunity for businesses to really lead around trust, creating experiences that are reliable, resilient, as well as fulfilling their expectations to those stakeholders. And over time, I think trust will be a function of are businesses actually meeting the human needs that are resident, whether its around health and well-being, or contributing to the environment, or to worker satisfaction and engagement.

Murray: Jason, thanks for your perspective. And thanks for sponsoring Leadership Next. 

Girzadas: Thank you.

[Music ends]

Murray: I want to go back to Alludo and remote work, which is what youre, and I feel like Michal, is setting me up here. This is the first time this is the first time Michal and I have done this podcast together, and she knows that I recently told our team that come the fall, our expectation is youll spend three days a week with your colleagues. And look, I feel like the pandemic was an amazing period. People learned to work from home really well. Productivity was very high. It gave you a kind of a balance in your work and your life that was really impressive. And I want to keep all of that. I want to keep as much of that as possible. But I also feel like something was lost. That the connections between people, the trust, particularly between its what people refer to as loose ties, you know. The teams that were on Zoom calls together every day could work together well, but the interaction between teams, you could feel it eroding. As I said, I think Michal is setting us up for an argument here, but Im really eager to hear how you think about that and what your view of that is.

Quarles: First, a lot of what you said is true. You know, and I think when people hear the word remote first, they then interpret meet never. And that is not the intention. We gather all the time to come together, to break bread. And I learned this actually during my time at OpenTable. The purpose of a meal is also special. Like I remember being in front of a very angry restaurant customer. And all of a sudden, like she ordered oysters to come in, and then all of a sudden we started eating, and the entire tenor of the interaction changed, and I thought to myself like, wow, theres something really human that happens when you break bread. And so we absolutely invest in that. We meet regularly in those contexts, but when we gather it is highly intentional. We know our purpose for being there. Every time we have an off-site, I say the number one thing were doing here is neurobiological connection. We are wiring ourselves together so that we can tell each other like really honest, direct things next month, because we had that moment, we have that trust. You are 100% right that trust and trust building absolutely needs to be invested in. 

Where I have disagreementand I see this over and over and over with knowledge workersis they come into an office and they spend eight hours on a Zoom call with colleagues that are not in that particular office or are not there that day. And now youve youve added two additional hours of that persons work, because it took them an hour to get in, and an hour home. They havent probably been able to get out to exercise during lunch. So theyre coming back and theyre foggy in the afternoon. So theyre not able to produce. And so, I just think what its done is, it is an identity crisis for leaders, because leaders now have to change the way that they operate. Because it used to be, Id go into the officeI mean by the way, if youd asked me in 2019 if I would ever have dreamt of leaning into this, I would have said no, Ive got to kiss the babies and press the flesh and see the person making coffee and corner somebody in the elevatorbut what I have done is you know, I think there was a lot of motion in the organization and not a lot of progress. And I think its forcing people to look at outputs, not necessarily inputs. I was talking about was like well, Bobs doing a great job. Hes getting in at seven and hes leaving at seven, and that Bob was crushing it. I dont know what Bob was doing, what he was producing. We have no idea, yet the bias was, he was crushing it. And so weve got to change the paradigm to look at outputs to be able to measure what the what done looks like. Do you have a better marketing plan when somebodys, you know, hovering over your shoulder, kind of thing? And so I do think, yes, you absolutely need to gather. You need to get people together. And you need to set them up for autonomous success to be able to do the work, and so, when when its collaborative work, get together. When it is individual work, so I always say like, your personal productivity pod should be wherever you want or need it to be.

Lev-Ram: So okay, you guys are not disagreeing enough for me here.

Murray: We didnt achieve your goal.

Lev-Ram: No, you really didnt. But Christa, I mean, we are seeing more and more tech companies coming out and saying that theyre seeing the data is showing them that employees who are remote, employees who came in during the pandemic and are fully remote, are less productive than employees who are in the office, to some extent at least. So why is that? And are you seeing that, and how do how do leaders handle that?

Quarles: I think so. I think some of the data is correct. And I think part of that goes into your middle managers. Right. So, like I saw Mark Zuckerberg made his comment right and, and I think its a question of, how then are those you know, leaders set off to work? How are your middle managers driving and cascading the mission of whats happening? A lot of these companies, by the way, are having to rewrite their DNA, though. So when you look at the profligate times of, really we had free money from 2008 to 2023. So 15 years of essentially free money in our businesses and whatnot. And so you had a mechanism that we solve problems by throwing bodies at the system, and there was growth at any cost. It was, you know, there was no desire to create focus, efficiency, and things of that nature. And so I think what youre also seeing is a bunch of companies who were not super profitable, who hadnt already scrutinized the elements because they didnt have to, the market wasnt requiring them to. And now youve got, you know, my classmate Brad Gershom saying, you know, flatter is faster, and you know, with his open letter to Meta, and hes right. And so, if you havent and dont have that structure, youre going to have to do some interesting and material things to the organizational design of your business in order to be able to get to the outcome that youre seeking, because its not built into your DNA. Your DNA is spend it, spend it, spend it.

Murray: This is not achieving your goals at all, Michal, because I agree with everything Christa is saying. I do think at the end of the day, its a leadership challenge, and maybe a leadership challenge that people arent quite rising to yet. Although you would think after two years, we would have it figured out. But Ive written a haiku on the subject. And I dont think I shouldI dont think I should recite it to you until we discuss why haikus are appropriate for this conversation.

Quarles: So I often joke about you know, leadership by haiku. And what the heck is that? First of all, its just constraints-led approach. And one of the things like, when you are given no constraints and you know, your venture capitalist is saying, Gosh, you know, the world is your oyster, you know, were going to just keep pouring the jet fuel on. Youre like, Well, I gotta go over here and start this business, and Im going to go over and look at this adjacent thing and look at these things, and lets have these markets, none of which were probably profitable. None of them were the unit economics has looked at. And so what you saw was just this explosion in activity. You know, a lot of it needed to be pruned, you know, kind of going back to the brain, like if you have a bunch of stuff and it doesnt get pruned, it just turns into a mess. And I think the beauty of it you know, I started talking about this, I was like, its like, you know, its like a haiku. You know, you get 17 syllables. You can be really creative, and really thoughtful with that focus. And, and I just think that most great companies when given a set of constraints that they have to operate within, become much more innovative and creative as a result.

Lev-Ram: Do you communicate to your team in this way? Are your people getting Christas haikus constantly? How does this manifest itself in your leadership style?

Quarles: Mostly the idea I think, although you know, I learned for example, we have a strong or large European presence, and our German workers didnt really know what a haiku was. So that was just an interesting byproduct that

Lev-Ram: There are also a lot of syllables in the German language.

Quarles: Thats probably why.

Murray: Its one word. Seventeen syllables, one word.

Quarles: Youre probably right, Michal, they just couldnt stuff it in. I, unfortunately, double majored in German in college. But yeah, so its not a universally known concept, but its definitely known and you know, in our English-speaking markets, and, and I think people just got it it was like, Oh, I cant do a bunch of stuff. Ive got to really focus in. Im not like a regular Yoda in the office, you know, speaking in these, you know, obscure haiku. But I think it is, its just a reminder of the times that we were in before. How, you know, I think, again, profligate that many of these companies where everybodys getting religion, everybodys recognizing that profitability is the new kind of gospel, because the money was just coming in the door, and now the money is not. Hopefully the money is secure in the banks that you have them.

Lev-Ram: Oh, Alan, are you are you giving us your haiku at the end, or are we doing this now?

Murray: Its your call, Michal. But if I show you mine, you have to reciprocate.

Lev-Ram: I dont know. 

Murray: I do have one other subject before we get to the haiku, because I know I maybe we should end on it, and that is rebranding. I mean, Ive been watching these things, literally for four decades. Its very scary, Michal, for me to say that. But what at what point did you decide that Corel needed to be Alludo and why?

Quarles: Well, I mean, at the point I got recruited, to be honest.

Murray: It preceded you.

Quarles: Well, no, no. I got recruited. KKR called at [inaudible]. And they said, How about Corel? And I, you know, kind of furrowed my brow a little bit and I was like, I remember this dusty old Canadian software brand. I will admit I had some, you know, disdain and curiosity. But what I found underneath the hood was a collection of really high-performing software assets, you know, subscription-based cash generative, that we could then go do something with. And if I was having that moment, I cant imagine the employees that we would go on and hire, or the customers that we would go and talk to, and so, and then youre right, its not for the faint of heart. We use the same branding agency that Airbnb use. So we found somebody who like, understood what were trying to create as a company. I tried to recreate the company that I wished I could have joined when I was 22. And the values that sat underneath, the ambitions that we had, and then when kind of all you do thing came together, what I observed anyways people, a little synapse kind of fires in their head and we talk about knowledge work, they get it and then they never forget it. And so it was just a great collective example from a team. Our branding team is amazing. And so its been fun. And I was told again, it was not for the faint of heart, but I think whats been interesting is youre trying to work and now earn and build the brand value that sits underneath. A name is just a name. How you activate, how you show up in the world, how you speak to the world is everything, and so, weve got to earn and build and invest in that.

Murray: How do you feel about Fortune? Because weve been using this one for 93 years. Wondering if we could take it for another 100 years. Are you okay with that?

Quarles: Oh, its funny. You guys will laugh at this. On my LinkedIn profile. I have F150 board member, or something like that, because I was trying to keep the words. Somebody asked me like, What do I do with the Ford F-150 truck? And I was like, Well, I thought Fortune could stand on its own with just the F, but apparently its also Ford. So, I dont know. [inaudible]

Lev-Ram: Thank you. Well, well take it. It actually you reminded me of another question I wanted to ask you. You were at Disney for quite a while and had a played a really key role there on the digital side. And its so interesting to watch the transition and the transformation there and talk about a, you know, a brand thats got some some heft. But what do you what, you know, from your point of view, where do you think things are going there? What do you think of Bob Iger coming back and the task that he has today? Not an easy one.

Quarles: Not an easy one, but honestly, theresI havent met a leader like Bob Iger. I think he is unparalleled in this space. I mean, one of the things where Ive been part of the gaming space at Disney, and what just completely impressed me, was how he could go from debating the finer points of The Sims with me one day, and then, you know, theyre building Disneyland Shanghai, so like, conduct high-level Chinese diplomacy the next day. His capacity to dive in deep is extraordinary. And youre seeing it right like theyre cutting out. Hes managing by haiku, the way, right now. Youre seeing him cut out all of the superfluous stuff. I mean, even just like the virtual world stuff is going away, because you know, its like, does any of this make sense? Does any of this really hit at the consumer level? And he has such an incredible grasp of what the consumer needs but also, you know, kind of the financial fortitude to understand where its making sense, and where its working and where its not. So Im glad hes back. I hope hes doing okay. I hope hes got the energy for it.

Murray: I just had this remembrance, Michal, was it the same Brainstorm Tech where Christa called bullshit and Bob Iger sat on the stage and told usI think Disneyland Shanghai had just openedand told us the surprise hit

Lev-Ram: Yep. 

Murray: Disneyland Shanghai was turkey legs, turkey legs.

Lev-Ram: Turkey legs. Yeah, its

Quarles: What I remember is that Michal was desperately trying to ask the succession question, and Bob was very successful bridging over turkey leg supply chain. And so he did a masterful job of trying to get around answering these questions. 

Lev-Ram: He dodged the question and, you know, to your point, I think amazed everyone with the fact that he knew where the turkey legs were sourced from, which was Poland, randomly so.

Murray: Yeah, Ive never Ive never looked at a turkey leg the same way since.

Lev-Ram: I dont think Ive eaten one since.

Murray: Is this the moment?

Lev-Ram: I think were at the Haiku point here. Yes.

Murray: Do you want me to go first?

Lev-Ram: Sure.

Murray: Okay, can I have, like, attention and silence? 

Pheromones passing. 
A look, a sound, a taste, smell. 
We belong together.

Lev-Ram: Very deep, very deep. Its hard to follow that. Christa, do you have one up your sleeve that you would like to share? 

Quarles: Im going to go a little more practical. Although, I have a 15-year-old, so the pheromones thing its a little too traumatic for me. Im going to go with a more business-y practical thing. So, here we go. 

What do you measure? 
Is it outputs or inputs? 
Only one matters.

Lev-Ram: That was very deep too, in a different way. 

Murray: Oh, that was good. That was good.

Lev-Ram: Okay, my turn. All right. This is mine. 

Today is the day
I step into big shoes and
I will do my best. 

Lev-Ram: I love it. I think Im going to try to parent by haiku from now on, Christa. So well see if that works.

Quarles: And your young ones will appreciate it.

Lev-Ram: Well, Christa. Its just been fantastic talking to you and reconnecting and, you know, we, again that moment at Brainstorm Tech in 2017 is seared in all of our minds. It was definitely one of those moments we really always remember, and as were programming future town halls, we bring it up constantly. So its just, its been great watching everything that youve done, before and since.

Quarles: Well, thank you and you know, Im a fan of Fortune. Keep the brand. I think its a good idea. And I can see the companies and individuals values shine in the way that you guys report. So always, always enjoyable to watch what you put out.

Murray: Leadership Next is edited by Alexis Haut. Our theme is by Jason Snell. Our executive producer is Megan Arnold. Leadership Next is a product of Fortune Media. For even more Fortune content, use the promo code LN25. Thatll get you 25% off our annual subscription at Fortune.com/subscribe.

Leadership Next episodes are produced by Fortunes editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel. Nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.