@ChrystieV OK, I am going to have my say on this and then I am going to do my best to fade away because there are very disturbing and toxic things going on on this forum. I am going to say these things because I have loved Udemy. I have loved every minute of watching it grow and watching my courses sell. If that were not the case I would just shut up. Before saying what I want to say I need to tell you just a little about myself because perspective matters. I spent 45 years consulting with major corporations, coaching the senior teams and leading culture change efforts. These include Coca-Cola (the world's premiere branding corporaton), Shell Oil, Exxon, Honeywell, Honda, etc. I wrote a book, Barbarians to Bureaucrats, that was an actual NYTimes best seller (not a B.S. kindle thing!), on the rise and fall of corporate cultures corporate life-cycles. You should read it because I am watching it happen before my eyes in real time and you are playing on the stage. 1. Earlier you said that because Udemy had now become a large company (1000 employees) it took weeks or months and three levels of committees to make a decision. I am sorry, but Udemy is a small company, maybe midsized, the size of a small division at Honeywell or other major companies. The problem is that you are beginning to think and act like a large bureaucratic company, a clear sign of cultural decay and an antecedent to economic decline. It has apparently become acceptable to think that being a "grown up" company means being slow. Do you know that Toyota can conceive, design, engineer, and begin production on a new car in one year. Casio designs and develops a new watch in 24 hour cycles. In a lean manufacturing plant, when employees make suggestions for improvement (think instructors) those suggestions are considered and processed and the employee is given feedback in 24 hours. Managers are evaluated on the percent of suggestions implemented and it better be high. Lean, Agile, Rapid cycle time, these are the things that characterize excellent companies, NOT SLOW! This is how entrepreneurial companies die and fail to reach the next level of growth. If it takes weeks to correct the horrific type on this site that is proof that your system is broke and needs to be redesigned. 2. Lawyers NEVER, and I mean NEVER, make decisions about operations because they always want minimum risk and maximum control. They are paid for reducing risk and not for growing the business. Executives make decisions, NOT lawyers!!! In entreprenueral growing companies the executives are necessarily risk takers because you never have growth without risk. I can give you the logo of every company I have worked for. The idea that you can control the use of a logo defies the obvious technology of the internet. Your report that the lawyer had decided that we cannot use the new logo and that this "is the same as with the previous logo" is entirely inaccurate. We were given and encouraged to use the previous logo. But then we were trusted partners. 3. It has always been understood that content creators, the instructors, are literally half of the business model and their engagement and support is essential. I was shocked when you said that you had an "Instructor Advocacy" team at Udemy, but it didn't have any instructors on it. It was only staff. Wow! And, yes you have labeled some instructors as partners or champions or whatever. That should indicate some genuine engagement of those instructors beyond comments on this forum. What that engagement actually has looked like is a team, like the branding team, making a presentation to the group and responding to questions. That is good, by itself, but it is not genuine engagement. It is sharing decisions already made. If you had actually engaged instructors in the changes to this web page, do you think one out of a hundred given a real choice and real engagement, would have said "Oh yeah, we really love grey, small lettering on a light grey background?" Nor would anyone have said that the graphics were ones they wanted to promote on their website. Listening, engaging, is not presenting. Engagement is a collaborative process, a process among partners in the process. Giving new names new labels will not change this. You need to ask why more, most, leading instructors do not participate in this forum. Where is Angela Yu, Colt Steele, Chris Croft, etc. etc? Why are leading instructors not participating in this forum? I think I know the answer but you should know it also. 4. When a group of people grow increasingly frustrated and feel that they have no control, they increasingly turn on each other. I will say no more. It is obvious. @ChrystieV @Bella These remarks are not about either of you or how you do your job. I am sure you are capable and well meaning. All of the above comments are directed at the larger system and the managers who need to take responsibility for fixing an obviously broken system before it is too late.
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