Throwback Episode featuring with Dominic Price, Atlassian
In this high-impact throwback episode, we revisit our conversation with Dominic Price—Work Futurist at Atlassian and one of the leading voices on the future of work, team culture, and tech-human collaboration.
With over a decade at Atlassian, Dom brings a bold, people-first lens to modern leadership—unpacking what it takes to build thriving teams in a world shaped by disruption, agility, and rapid technological change.
In this episode, we cover:
1:54 What is a Work Futurist
4:28 Creating and Sharing Playbooks at Atlassian
9:38 The Return to Office Debate
19:35 Why Productivity is a Flawed Metric
24:05 The Problem with Waterfall Approaches to Agile
28:33 Responsible AI and Technology Implementation
40:53 Scaling Culture and Distributed Teamwork
49:17 Learning From Mistakes
If you're rethinking your approach to collaboration, leadership, or scaling culture in complex environments—this one’s worth another listen.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Fatimah Abbouchi (00:00):
You're listening to Agile Ideas, the
podcast hosted by FatimahAbbouchi.
For anyone listening out therenot having a good day, please
know there is help out there.
Hi everyone and welcome back toanother episode of Agile Ideas.
I'm CEO, at Agile ManagementOffice, mental Health Ambassador
(00:20):
and your host.
Before we get into today'spodcast, I just wanted to
quickly share and remind youthat next month we will be
starting the PMO coachingprogram.
So if you are interested inuplifting or building a PMO from
scratch, please reach out to usvia www.
agilemanagementoffice.
com or one word, or reach out tome on LinkedIn if you'd like to
(00:45):
be part of that PMO program,looking forward to running it
next month and having you allbeing part of it.
Now on to our guest today,someone I'm very excited to have
had the opportunity to get onthe podcast.
His name is Dominic Price.
Dominic is currently the workfuturist at Atlassian.
(01:07):
For those of you who don't know, atlassian is one of the most
successful tech startups comingout of Australia.
Dom is passionate deeply aboutteamwork and particularly the
intersection of technology andhumans.
He has spent over 10 yearshelping tech company Atlassian
scale effectively by focusing onhow teams and humans should
(01:28):
work together and how technologycan help to amplify that.
In his time, atlassian hasscaled from hundreds of staff to
over 12,000 and from 35customers to over 280,000
worldwide.
Dom is passionate about modernleadership, building learning
organizations and thriving teams, and none of this happens by
(01:51):
accident.
So please join me in welcomingDom to the show.
Welcome Dom to the show.
Thanks for joining us.
Dominic Price (01:57):
I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Fatimah Abbouchi (01:59):
I am too.
I'm really excited because Iwas obviously been following
your journey for quite a whileand, for those of us that don't
know, I've already told everyonethat you're the work futurist
at Atlassian.
But what exactly is a workfuturist?
Because for many peoplelistening they probably don't
know what that means.
Dominic Price (02:16):
Yeah, it's a two part.
First of all, we have to behonest to your audience because
they're all nice people, they'reself-selected to listen in.
It's a made up job audiencebecause they're all nice people,
they're self-selected to listenin.
Um, it's a made-up job like wemade it up um, just over eight
years ago now.
Because we we saw anopportunity in market whereby
we've been focusing for years inAtlassian on how we worked and
how we scaled, how we createdwhat we used to call our secret
(02:37):
sauce.
And I sat down with our foundersone day and we're talking about
it and they were like, insteadof it being a secret sauce, why
don't we make it a source andjust like, give it to the world
and give it to our customers?
Like, if we're getting betterat how we work, why don't we
gift it and pay it forward?
And in doing that, we realizedthat what we were helping teams
and organizations do was todiscover their future.
Right, it wasn't that.
(02:59):
A future was something you hadto dream about and not the
future something you had to buyfrom a consultant for 40 million
dollars.
Yes, a future was something youcould deliver yourself on.
But you had to think a bitdifferently and actually beg
borrowing and stealing fromother organizations was their
way of doing that, and so I justbecame very passionate about
two things that created the workfuturist role.
(03:19):
One was the future of work, butthe second thing was the human
part of that, and if I go backeight years at the time, as it
kind of is now, everything wastech focused.
Tech's going to solve the world.
Tech's going to do this, andyou're like, you know what we
need humans to be workingeffectively as well, and so for
me, when I talk and focus on thefuture of work, it's very much
(03:41):
how do we unleash the potentialof humans and teams and then how
do we use technology to amplifythat, and that is something I'm
very passionate about it's, um.
Fatimah Abbouchi (03:50):
it's really good to see that, because we in
our team have already engagedsome of your content, um, as at
the last, in in terms of, likethe, my user manuals and other,
and it's just so crazy how manyplays that you have available on
the website, like you said,completely free to download, and
they've been, you know,effectively helpful for us, let
alone others that aredownloading.
(04:11):
So how do you, how would you asan organization, with the
amount of people that you have,come up with these things?
Do you have like a team ofpeople, or is it just IP that
gets built on based on having anidea?
Dominic Price (04:23):
It's a good question.
So let's talk because it'shappened in different ways,
right?
So if you go back eight years,when I first, you know, moved
into the role of work futurist,it was kind of hacky, right.
We had a couple of people whothought it was a good idea.
We're like, yeah, let's give ita shot.
Right, we were a smallercompany, you know, it was just
(04:45):
easier to do.
Scrappiness was something thatwe were famous for, and now, as
we've matured, we've gotten alittle bit more systematic.
The reason I mentioned that iswhen people are starting their
journey towards, like, a new wayof working, they tend to look
at other people's end productand say I want that.
What they forget to look at isthe work they did to get there
right.
So the scrappiness was me, aproduct manager, a designer
engineer and a program manager.
(05:06):
There's five of us.
We're like should we have aplay with this?
Like, is it worth trying?
And it was such a smallexperiment Even if it went wrong
it wouldn't have really costanything Absolutely and as it
sort of bubbled up, we kind ofsat there one day and went, oh,
like, this is a thing now, thismaybe needs a team.
But does now this?
This maybe needs a team, butdoes it need a team or do we
(05:27):
make it a self-service thing?
We've we've chopped and changedon that in the last eight years
.
Sometimes we we sort of take astep back and say let the system
right, let the wisdom of thecrowd do this, but it's
everyone's last job in a week,right?
If I say to we've got 11 000people globally.
If I say, if you land on agreat way of working this week,
can you please write it down?
Someone's going to land on anew way of working this week,
can you please write it down?
Someone's going to land on anew way of working and never
write it down because they'vegot a million other things to do
(05:47):
.
Absolutely, the balance we'vefound is we've got a few people
dedicated to it.
We have a lab right of humanswho do experiments and explore
and wonder and try new things,but also we've got 11,000 people
who are experimenting every dayand it's the confluence of
(06:10):
those two things that make itmagical, because I've seen a lot
of other organizations do thisand call it thought leadership,
and a little bit of me diesevery time I hear the words
thought leadership, because Idon't want a thought I want a
practice, yes, and so I knowthat when a, a leader or a
teammate in Atlassian shares anidea with me of here's the way
my team works, I, I know they'vetried it 15 times, so I know it
works.
It's not me sharing somethingfor marketing, it's me sharing
something because we've tried itand it worked for us.
(06:31):
And so we source from a varietyof different avenues, and then
our mantra is share early andoften.
So, as a fan of the playbook,you may have seen, we removed a
few plays a few years agobecause we put them out there.
They worked for a while andthen they didn't, so we removed
them.
Right, it's not.
It's not a finished product.
You can't download it, youcan't print it, it will never be
finished.
(06:51):
It's constantly evolving andthat requires thousands of
Atlassians every week to beexperimenting with their new
ways of working.
Fatimah Abbouchi (06:58):
And as soon as we get something decent, we
share it externally it's areally good um, yeah, really
good way of taking that conceptof iterative improvement and and
the fact that you've got thatmany clients, as you said,
you're probably learning thingsthrough those client engagements
we currently have and then youactually evolve that product or
service offering and, like yousaid, not paying you know 40
(07:19):
million dollars for a consultantto just sell me or provide me
gated theory that then actuallydoesn't help when we move the
dial.
Dominic Price (07:27):
So but, fatima, there's something you've touched
on there that I think themarket's hungry for right now,
which is lived experience.
Yes, so.
So for every play we produce,not only do I get to play with
thousands of teams and at lastin with it, but I get to go to
the big banks in australia and atelco here and a company in the
US and a company in Europe,like I get to play.
I mean, we've got over 300,000organizations use our products
(07:49):
who are all trying to experimentwith new ways of working.
When they try this stuff,sometimes it works, sometimes it
doesn't.
Sometimes they send us back anew version and say we made
these changes.
I'm like, oh now, that alwayshelps me keep my eyes open,
because I'm like, just becauseit works at Atlassian doesn't
mean it will work for you.
The principles and philosophyprobably will, but the exact
(08:10):
practices it's written you mightneed to tweak and tailor.
So I think that iterativeexercise is something that we
all have the capability to do inbusiness right now.
For some reason, so manyorganizations push it to the
side.
The ability to learn fast isthere for every organization and
we keep on going on these 18month leaps and you're like why?
(08:31):
Why wait 18 months to learnsomething when you can learn
something in 18 minutes?
Fatimah Abbouchi (08:35):
yeah, absolutely, and I think one of
the things that stifles at leastwhat I see with some companies
is the the hierarchy.
So unless it's made by acertain person, it's not
considered as a deal where itcould be the best idea in that
company for that day yeah, Ithink.
Dominic Price (08:47):
I think hierarchy also there's.
There's a weird sort of fetishin business certainly in
australia, but I'm seeing it alot in the us as well to manage
everything through process orpolicy or procedure, like even
if you take the you know, postpandemic, where do people work?
And and every hr person in theworld was like we need a policy
policy.
And you're like why?
I mean, maybe the policy justsays work where you're most
effective.
You're an adult.
I pay you good money, I'vegiven you the tools, like work
(09:10):
where you can do the best workyou can Like.
No, no, you must work from homeon this day, you must work from
the.
And so again, we've gone downthe path of policy.
What I, what we want, isevolutionary.
Fatimah Abbouchi (09:21):
Yeah, absolutely.
Actually, that's a good point.
So one of the challenges at themoment is the whole debacle and
debate around returning to thework, and you know different
companies apply, and I'm veryaware of how Atlassian's
approach to that is.
I think I'm thinking you know,organisations that have good
measures of accountability andgood practices in place and
understanding around theguardrails of ways of working
(09:43):
shouldn't really have a concernaround how people return to work
.
But what are you seeingglobally in terms of
organisations and bosses, mayberegretting the demand for people
to return to work?
Dominic Price (09:51):
Yeah, I think, look, I've got this is going to
sound weird, but I've got a hugeamount of sympathy for legacy
leaders, right, it's an oddstatement to make, but I
genuinely have.
There's a whole lot of leadersout there who grew up in a very
different world to the one we'rein today and I think to some
extent, we're being a little bitconveniently mean to them by
(10:13):
saying I can't believe you don'tunderstand this new thing and
you're like I can believe that Ican believe they don't
understand it Because if you'vebeen in the world of business
for 40 years, everything wasabout the office, like where you
worked with the office.
You communicated in the office,you had meetings in the office,
right.
You had this lovely structureand ritual nine to five, monday
to friday.
(10:34):
You also, you know,pre-internet turned off work
when you left work right, youactually left an office and work
stayed there and home started.
So there's a whole lot ofthings that happen in that
environment.
I actually quite like the soundof.
I don't know that I want to beworking 24 by 7.
So sometimes we say, oh,flexibility is really cool.
Fatima, I'm going to call youat 11 pm and I need you on this
(10:54):
thing and you're like, under thebanner of flexibility, you're
like, yeah, now, like, so I?
I think for those people there'sso much unlearning to do of
what worked for them.
Yes to them, embrace this newworld.
And you can multiply that outfor historical organizations,
right, there's a couple of banksthat I work with are like 160,
170 years old.
There is so much history andheritage in there.
(11:16):
Yes, it has probably paid adividend for them.
The world around them's changedand they've woken up and gone.
Oh, the world's changed.
I think it's a bit cruel of usto expect a 50 000 person
organization with 160 yearsexperience to change on a dime
right.
And so I want them to changeand I'm passionate about them
changing.
I think sometimes we miss theempathy and we miss the patience
(11:38):
and then we get this veryconvenient narrative.
So like I've just been laughingfrom the sidelines the last few
weeks as everyone piles intonike, right, so nike was like ah
, they returned everyone fromthe office, they wanted to be
more innovative and their shareprice is quite low.
They've lost a bit of marketshare, share price is quite low
and there's a whole lot ofconvenient commentators going.
Nike share price is downbecause they don't work from
(11:58):
home.
And here's this other randomsports company and they do
flexible work and their shareprice is up.
So see, and you're like, hangon, that might be, that might be
some correlation, but that isnot causation, right?
So I just think we need to likepause and go.
Maybe nike has got someone'slegacy.
It's hard to do distributedwork.
I'm in a company and I think wedo well at it.
(12:19):
That doesn't mean it's easy,and I think I think if we, if we
make it sound easy and thenpeople struggle with it, all
we've done is alienate them.
We're not taking the long onthe journey we're going.
I'm distributed, you're not,and you're you're, you're not as
good as me, which I think isjust unnecessary.
This is saying how do weembrace this, how do we accept
it as a new reality and embraceit?
And that's just going to take alittle bit of patience and for
(12:41):
those organizations, a lot oflegacy to let go of.
Yeah, and then this bravery tobe curious again, right.
Fatimah Abbouchi (12:47):
This bravery to experiment, which is hard in
the current environment, right,when all your shareholders like
I don't care where you peoplework, I need, I need more margin
, I need more return and andit's interesting because, just
on the mindset thing, you hear alot about the fixed mindset
versus growth mindset and thereis a lot of fixed mindset in
some of these organizations haveto work with some of these
banks and I think one of thechallenges I know if you see
(13:09):
this as well.
But even when it comes toimplementing new ways of working
and you're under the agileumbrella, they're really trying
to copy and paste what anotherorganization has done, which is
a bad start yeah, yeah, it'slike, and I get why, because
we're all trying to shortcut,right it's.
Dominic Price (13:25):
It's funny that, yeah, we're still selling agile
transformation.
And agile's 24 years old, right, it can, it can drink and vote
in every country in the world.
So you know, we can stillpretend that it's new and it's
not.
But I think there'sorganizations waking up to it,
going, oh, we need to now catchup.
How can we accelerate this?
Uh, let's go, let's go tospotify and let's go to meta and
let's go to google and let's goto all these other places and
(13:47):
we'll copy them.
Yeah, I, I was chatting to asenior leader of a telco a few
years ago because they weredoing a study tour in the us and
they'll tell me the list ofcompanies.
I'm like, oh, um, you're a telco, right.
And they're like, yeah, andit's like, you're not going
seeing any telcos.
So so don't tell me you want tobe more like Spotify, because
their business model isfundamentally different to yours
(14:08):
.
So what works for them?
Understand the principles, thephilosophies, right, the
guardrails in there.
But copy, cutting and pastingis lazy and dangerous,
absolutely.
What you'll know and I've seenon steroids recently is when
they do the copy, cut and paste.
They copy on top of the otherway of working A hundred percent
.
So their hybrid is not the bestof both worlds, it's the worst
of both worlds.
(14:28):
It's policy, process, procedure, you know, waterfall structure
with bits of agile in the middle.
You're like, oh God, you'vecreated Frankenstein.
Fatimah Abbouchi (14:36):
Yes, absolutely that, literally
that's what I'm living andbreathing at the moment.
It's just they don't actuallytake time to look at the what's
in place at the moment and thenobviously evolve that or even
try to improve it.
And, to your point, when theygo and a lot of the banks have
gone and copied the ing or thespotify model because I think
that's worked and they haven'tlooked at telcos because they
want to be innovative and youknow, we want to be the best
(14:57):
telco or the best absolutely.
They're trying to trying to godown that path, but not actually
reflecting on what the maturityin their organization is the
culture of the reality, thereality of their own.
Dominic Price (15:06):
So there's there's a couple of uh sort of
authors right now that if Icould take their content and put
it on every billboard thatevery business leader saw, I
would.
So one is um a guy called hegavera rao and bob sutton.
They're from stanford uni, umauthors.
They've written a book calledthe friction project and there's
a whole chapter on the art ofsubtraction and when I read it I
(15:29):
was like, damn, that is whatthe if the business world needs
a kick in the ass right now.
It's like before you addanything, remove the things that
are no longer valuable.
I remember reading it and goingno one does that.
We lay you in on top, but wedon't do that.
And then the second author is awonderful friend of mine called
Barry O'Reilly.
Barry published a book yearsago probably five or six years
(15:51):
old now called Unlearning, andit's actually a leadership book,
but I think you can apply it tothe business lens of going what
are the old habits I need tounlearn and leave in the past so
I can do that experimentation?
So when you talk aboutimprovement, I think we've only
got time to improve if we removesomething from our calendar
first to give ourselves thespace, otherwise we're never
(16:12):
going to get around to it yeah,absolutely.
Fatimah Abbouchi (16:14):
It's actually a really good point as well in
relation to unlearning andlearning and just around this
whole transformation.
I find that leaders spend theleast time learning and
unlearning and they expect theorganization to change, but
they're meant to be leading fromthe front.
Why do you think that is?
Dominic Price (16:28):
um, I think the whole host of reasons.
You can look at the shorttenure of leadership, like if
you're an average ceo in an asxorganization, right, maybe
you're doing four to six years.
Do you really feel the need tochange?
Maybe you've been hired and theboard has told you we've hired
you, fatima, because of yourexperience.
We want you to do your playbookthat you rolled out of those
other fuckers.
Just do that, and so you startto believe your own bs after a
(16:49):
while.
Right, and and so I see thatAlso.
I think humility takes a hugeamount of energy.
So does empathy, and it takestime.
And a lot of these people areworking on really tight
timeframes where they believethat banging the table and
getting people to blindly followis the quickest path.
And it might be quick.
It's just not very effectivebecause it's a path to somewhere
(17:10):
, but it's just not the place wewant to be.
I've been involved with somequite I won't even call it slow,
just call it methodical changewhere we took our time over it
but it's stuck.
I'm like, yeah.
So whenever I hear people talkabout change fatigue, I'm like I
don't think we've got changefatigue, I just think about it,
managing it, to be honest.
So I get it again.
I've got a bit of sympathy withthese leaders because they're
(17:31):
often being given a challengethat they're not up for.
I think you know the.
The average sort of agiletransformation was given to
probably a 55 year old male CIORight, who hadn't he?
Who has 35 years experience ofwaterfall technology, software
change.
You're like, yeah, I get why wepicture, I'm not sure you're
the best person for the job.
Yeah, I get why we picked you.
I'm not sure you're the bestperson for the job.
Actually, maybe there's someonenot as senior as you but
(17:54):
actually better at this skill,right, or this technique or this
capability.
But again, I think, as youmentioned before, our hierarchy
is getting in the way.
Yes, be more vulnerable anddemonstrating empathy with their
teams to get the change tohappen.
(18:15):
And it's probably some of themost fascinating coaching I do,
because technically, thesepeople are often crazy smart,
but they've not done the thingthey're about to try and do.
Fatimah Abbouchi (18:22):
Yeah, absolutely, and that makes it
hard for it to stick and youwonder why some of these fail
the sense that these leaders aretrying to drive a change from
the top that they don'tunderstand, and then they're
trying to get other parts of theorganization on board,
particularly in Agile, whereoperational teams are usually
forgotten about and completelymisguided.
They don't understand projectmanagement fundamentals, let
(18:42):
alone putting this thing calledAgile on top, and it's a really
confusing situation.
Dominic Price (18:46):
Yeah, if you ever want to see that play out, just
put a CIO and CFO in the sameroom.
I do it on every giant agileproject.
So, like before we do anything,yeah, I want those two people
in the room and I'm like right,so, cio, you're about to roll
out this thing called agility.
Let's not call it agile, callit agility.
What are some of yourprinciples and philosophies?
And they explain it and say howdo you feel about that?
They're like well, we're stilldoing annual planning yeah,
(19:08):
exactly right, we're still doingthis, we're still doing this
kind of budgeting.
And so you're like well, ifthat's the currency of the
business, in what way are youagile anymore?
Right, if you're making peoplesign up for annual goals, annual
budgets, annual everything Idon't know?
I mean, maybe agility makes yougo a little bit faster in
between, but are you going toget the nimbleness of agility,
are you going to get the coursecorrection of agility if you're
(19:28):
just going to deliver what yousigned up for anyway?
So that's where this tensioncomes in.
Fatimah Abbouchi (19:32):
Absolutely.
You mentioned, I believe in myresearch that productivity is a
shit measure.
Dominic Price (19:38):
Is that correct?
I hate it.
I absolutely hate it.
Fatimah Abbouchi (19:40):
If I could delete a word from the business
language, it would be that I wasgoing to say can you elaborate
why and maybe provide someguidance on alternative metrics
that you would use or approaches?
Dominic Price (19:49):
Yeah, so use or approaches, yeah, so, um, why so
?
I I think if you were, if yougo back in time, productivity,
as it's measured, right, itsoutput over time, um, worked
really well when we were solelyor or proportionally
manufacturing, right?
Uh, when we're producingphysical goods, um, and in a
time when we weren't reallyusing iq or even eq develop,
(20:12):
there was no creativity orcuriosity.
The production line was peoplestood there doing a task,
handing it over, right, and,weirdly, productivity ends up
being a good measure for that.
But if you look at where that'shappening in the world right
now, it's very rarely humans.
That's the stuff that we'veautomated, that we have robots
and machines doing.
So I don't think we want thatmeasure on humans.
Humans, I think we want toempower with curiosity, with
(20:35):
creativity, with empathy andvulnerability, with compassion,
right, all these things thatmake us uniquely human, none of
which gets measured inproductivity not at all.
And so when someone says to me,like how do I measure my
productivity this week, let'stake this conversation as an
example right, how do we measurethe time?
Me and you invested in thisconversation in the world of
(20:56):
productivity?
Well, productivity is outputover time.
So we spent time on this thisweek and we've gained no output,
zero.
So we're in a deficit, we fail,we shouldn't have done this.
And you're like, well, that's agreat conversation, we learned
something from it.
It goes out, it benefits otherpeople, they learn, they learn,
they get better.
And you're like, oh, how do youmeasure that?
That's that's impact, that'soutcomes right, that happens
(21:16):
after the event and it's theimpact on someone else, yes, and
people stray away from that.
It feels too orthogonal.
So my cool measure measuregoals, measure effectiveness,
measure engagement like, if yourteams are happy and they're
engaged and they have a strongnorth star and goals, you
probably just need to get out ofthe way and and stop prodding
(21:37):
them and tame productivity,because you're actually making
them less productive.
So that's where I come at thelens.
Where this has got heightened, Ithink, in the last three or
four years is around mentalhealth, right, and and it
baffles me that we can stillcontinue to talk about increases
in productivity, so output, andthen people go.
I'm struggling with burnout andmental health.
We're like, oh, okay, cool,here's a membership for
(21:59):
something that might make youfeel better, but I need you to
be more productive, I need youto do more things in less time
and you're like we're not goingto correlate those things,
Because I'm Dom when I'm aparent, I'm Dom when I'm a
parent, I'm Dom when I'm apartner and I'm Dom when I'm in
work.
I'm the same person, I'm thesame asset, I'm the same
resource, but trying to squeezeout some productivity from a
human feels like a false economyto me.
(22:20):
So I think effectiveness,alignment to goals, engagement
are really strong lead measures.
And then the lag measures.
For me, the real stuff isimpact and outcomes, and so I
normally use a proxy of thosetwo, and with my team, they're
the conversations we have on aregular basis.
Right, we're trying to look atthose input measures, are they
(22:41):
right?
And then impact over time iswhat we really care about, but
we have to give ourselvespatience to do that.
Fatimah Abbouchi (22:47):
It's interesting because you know
you're right around some ofthose metrics and measures that
could be used.
But it still seems that in alot of organizations, even when
they've supposedly imploredagile, they are still measuring
the impact or outcomes of aproject at the very end, after
six, nine, twelve months, Likeit's counterintuitive.
Dominic Price (23:06):
Yeah.
So this is where the wholechallenge of value drop right
becomes an amazing essence to go.
The real point of agility isadding value over time.
So I don't, you know, Iremember a leader I was working
with years ago was very excitedabout cutting the ribbon on the
agile room as part of theiragile transformation and I
thought they were joking andthey weren't.
I was like, well, I'm hopingyou delivered value before the
(23:29):
ribbon.
And, by the way, what is anagile room?
I didn't know.
There was a space that you atwo by two you went into anyway,
but what it showed me was thisthis, this waterfall approach to
agile, which I think is aliveand doing very well, like not
serving any value, but but alivein many organizations which is
it's going to be a year beforewe see any value at all.
And you're like, oh, I don'tknow why you do that.
(23:52):
I'm not building roads here.
Often I'm building technologyor software or things where I
could at least experiment and Ican get directional feedback
really early on.
So we look at very smalllearning loops in Atlassian and
we're fortunate to do that aspart of our mindset in our world
.
But those learning loops meanwe can add value very quickly,
not huge value, but incrementalvalue, and that just de-risks
(24:14):
the whole thing.
Fatimah Abbouchi (24:15):
Absolutely, and I think these large
organizations just going back towhat we said earlier, they
don't have the, I guess, thedesire to do some of these
experiments, because there's somuch red tape to actually get
passed and there's usually nobudgets to do that, and then
people don't have the authorityto do that, and it's mean, it's,
(24:37):
it's crazy, but a lot of theseorganizations are doing, uh,
doing things backwards and theyare actually, as you said, heavy
waterfall at the beginning interms of their investment slate
and they're managing in theannual budgets but they call
themselves agile and they'reabsolutely not agile well, I
think you've touched onsomething as well.
Dominic Price (24:48):
There's this whole essence of like sunk cost.
Like I've sunk so much costinto, I might as well finish it.
So the the thing whenever I gointo a new organization I always
find you can always find thisperson.
I'm like can you tell me aboutthe projects that changed name?
They're the ones I go lookingfor because it's the same
project under a new name,hopeful that something changes.
And you're like it used to becalled project phoenix and now
(25:09):
it's called project radar, andand you're like Project Phoenix
was never going to ship andneither is Radar.
Is it like neither of that?
But you've changed the name andeveryone thinks it's a new
project.
So it's like why didn't youkill it?
Or who's doing the pre-mortem tosay how do we increase the
chance of success or reduce thechance of failure, or an
exercise we do sometimes.
If we're starting again rightnow, would we do this?
(25:30):
And sometimes the answer is no.
We're like oh, we'll stop itthen, because the next best
thing is better, because it's anopportunity cost.
If we finish this project,we're not starting another one.
Yeah, absolutely.
The opportunity cost is oftenthere and we're quite nimble in
that regard, and we do sowithout damaging egos.
But I think most organizationswould finish those projects
regardless, then do apost-implementation plan.
(25:52):
That said, we should never havedone that.
You're like it's a bit late,you've spent all the money.
Fatimah Abbouchi (25:56):
It's like there was a really large home
loan program that I was part ofand they had restarted it three
times and on the third time,after spending about $20 million
absolutely failure of a programthey shut it down for the third
time, mind you, and one of thebiggest challenges was the
operational sme knowledge inthat bank that was over the last
(26:16):
50 years in home loans and thedelivery team was completely
agile.
The two could not meet in themiddle.
Yeah, they just clashed yeah,and they didn't define their
ways of working.
Dominic Price (26:24):
Their guard drives all that stuff up front
to kick off the programsuccessfully so they can see an
out, an output and an outcomebut just just like, listen to
that example right and multiplythat out on steroids In every
organization where you're likeoh it's not that you had a bad
idea, the idea was great.
In fact, there was a marketopportunity there.
You boogied it up in yourdelivery.
Your execution stopped thatgood idea ever making it to
(26:46):
market and you had threeattempts.
And I don't think that's anabnormal story.
I think every organization'sgot that story where they're
like yeah, that's a great idea,why did we never ship it?
It's because you had two teamsthat just had organ rejection
that you they never found a wayof operating together absolutely
.
Fatimah Abbouchi (27:00):
It's the strategy not meeting delivery
and operations in the same place, which is exactly why we, um,
we.
I was having some conversationsthis week and one one of the
person, one of the people I wastalking to were saying oh so, so
you identify changes needed inan organization, but you execute
them as well.
And it goes back to yourthought leadership comment,
where everyone out there ishappy to tell you the theory,
but how many people are actuallyputting into practice and
(27:21):
experimenting?
Dominic Price (27:22):
Yeah, it's funny.
I've become aware recently, inthe last few years, of a thing I
call knowledge obesity.
It's a whole lot of people thatare just consuming endless
knowledge and doing nothing withit.
Fatimah Abbouchi (27:34):
Yes, and you're like you know.
Dominic Price (27:35):
So I did a talk late last year at South by
Southwest on duocracy how do wemove from knowledge obesity,
from just gaining knowledge anddoing nothing with it, to going
hang on?
What's the next best step?
What's the thing I should doright now to drive improvement?
So don't talk about continuousimprovement, do continuous
(27:57):
improvement.
And it's funny how, like theminute I thought about that, I'm
like I can think of all thepeople I've worked with in the
past that are in the do phase.
Yes, and all the ones that are.
They can talk an amazing game,they're never going to actually
do it yep, absolutely.
Fatimah Abbouchi (28:03):
That's.
A lot of consultants these dayscan tell you what to do.
Dominic Price (28:06):
But not actually execute, not roll the sleeves up
and actually do it with youspeaking of um?
Fatimah Abbouchi (28:10):
you know you talk about knowledge.
Obesity just brought me to athought.
I want to sort of touch on ai.
So it seems like with ai Idon't know if you would agree
with this, but it seems likemost people are just content
consumers and there's verylittle creation happening in
well, at least where I'm seeing.
What's your views on what'shappening in ai and what do you
think is like the most excitingthings on the horizon?
Dominic Price (28:32):
Yeah, there's.
I mean there's a spectrum ofstuff I'm seeing, right, there's
.
There's a whole sort of backendAI stuff that is like
fundamental infrastructure styletechnology stuff that looks a
bit clunky right now, but onceyou get over the tipping point
you're like, damn right.
So I spent some time with theteam from Amazon Web Services
the other week and you look atthe experiments they're running,
(28:53):
you're like that's cool, scarystuff.
That's also a huge investmentand they've got the bandwidth to
do that.
So they're going big on thatstuff, right?
If you look at most sort ofnormal organizations right now,
sadly for me, the reality isthey've gone.
How can we use this as a marginplay?
I run a call center.
How can I use ai to take on xpercent of my calls so I can
(29:16):
reduce my staff numbers?
Because staff are expensive andai is cheaper and and that is
just a chase for profit andmargin and shareholder return,
which is not the worst thing todo, but I don't think it's the
reason to do it.
It doesn't feel like asustainable, you know, societal
way of thinking about it.
Right?
So that that bit I'm like, oh,I get it.
Every time a new tech comes out, we're like how can it save us
money so we can all make more um, or some people make more um.
(29:40):
The reality is is we're havingthere's two experiments we're
running right now that I'mreally fascinated by.
One is responsible tech.
Um, this was a bit of acurveball.
So our legal, privacy andgovernment affairs team
partnered with our technologyteam and they were like what
does responsible tech look like?
How do we understand whichstakeholders might be impacted?
(30:02):
How do we understand truth?
How do we understand ethics andmorals?
And you're like, damn so latelast year, we released our
template that we use internally.
So every technology changewe're going through internally,
we've we've created thistemplate of all these things
that we consider, like, how dowe avoid inequity with ai?
And you're like, oh, that is abig, bold question.
(30:23):
So we're going through that umall the time.
And with my colleague, uh, annajaffe, I'm doing a presentation
next week to a whole lot oftech muffins right on ai.
But it's not about the tech ofai, it's about the
responsibility of ai um and thesecond experiment we're running
is how do we talk about this?
not from a technology standpointhere's a large language model
and blah, blah, blah, blah, umbut from a here's the use case.
(30:44):
Yes, and and that's the thingthat when I see it it really
warms me because I'm like, oh, Iget that, get that, I can
consume that.
But when I see the here's thetechnology and the network
diagram and all the stuff itcould do, I'm like, okay, but
what is it going to do?
And I don't think we've askedthat question enough.
I think we've got carried awayby the toy but not yet worked
out where we're going to deploythe toy in our world.
(31:05):
That makes our life better, notjust a transaction at work
faster, but our actual livesmore enriched.
So we're doing that and it'shard, it takes a while, because
you want to like we've got awhole lot of tech people that
just want to play with the tech.
And I might not go play withthe tech, but through the lens
of what use case am I improvingand what does this look like for
an end consumer and how does itimpact their day-to-day life,
(31:26):
their work, their context, theirhappiness, their engagement,
all those things?
So that that gives me the warmfuzzies that we might do it
right.
But I think right now we'reright in that midpoint of you
know, as a society as a whole,we're part curious and part
petrified.
We're hopeful it doesn't ruineverything, but deep down we're
worried that it might.
But actually it's humans makinga lot of these decisions.
(31:47):
Right, the technos is notmaking the decisions for us.
Fatimah Abbouchi (31:49):
So I think there's more conversations to be
had around the ethics and themorality part oh, 100, I think,
just the ip risk alone, as someorganizations are not even using
it because they just don't knowwhat you know.
Dominic Price (32:00):
Legal situation might end up coming as a result
of that so, yeah, the fair, thefair fact is high, because I
think that the upside, theupside, is potentially good, but
the downside consequence ispotentially high.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Fatimah Abbouchi (32:11):
You don't want Disney coming after you for
using their IP and doing soillegally, Absolutely.
I just wanted to come back towe're talking about mental
health and mental wellness a bigadvocate of that, and obviously
it relates to how organisationstreat their staff and whatnot.
One of the things I'm seeing andI wonder if you're seeing the
same thing is that organisationsthat are trying to deploy agile
(32:31):
ways of working are actuallystarting to reduce layers of
governance.
So line managers but whatthey're doing is they're not
reducing the work, they're not,as you said before, removing
things, and then there's thispressure of workload shifting to
the remaining resources, andthen that's actually adding
layers and layers of stress.
Are you seeing that in placesyou're working as well?
Dominic Price (32:52):
Yeah, it's a funny one it's.
Sometimes it's a short-termsymptom of the change.
Like in any change you gothrough, you've got an element
of pain.
Yeah, I liken it to um whenever, whenever no one talks about
imposter syndrome, like if, ifyou feel 100 comfortable and
content in your job today, thenyou should be nervous, right,
you, you, you probably grow byjust stepping into that next
(33:14):
level and being a bituncomfortable for a bit and that
discomfort helps you grow.
And then you get good at thatjob and you're like I might go
again, right, and it might notbe up, it might be across, you
might move across.
It's the same in organizationalchange, right, people tend to
sit there and go oh, this way ofworking is rubbish, it's crap,
it's terrible.
(33:34):
No, we need to fix it and weput the new one out.
They're like, oh, I don't likethat, oh, it's uncomfortable,
and you're like it's, it'sprobably going to feel
uncomfortable for a while.
The question is, are wenavigating out of that like, do
we find a new reality which isbetter, or are we just thrashing
because we're missing anessential ingredient?
So I would say about half thetime it's companies missing an
essential ingredient and theingredient is either have they
trained their people, have theygot the right practices, and now
(33:56):
they're amplifying it withtechnology.
But the reason I mentioned thatis a lot of agile change is
technology driven.
They roll out a new tool butthey don't train the people,
they don't change the practices.
No, as I've seen in othercompanies, like I was working
with a large bank recently theythey trained all their people
really well great trainingcourses, right.
Great l.
They trained all their peoplereally well.
Great training courses, right.
Great L&D.
That evolved all theirpractices and their ways of
(34:16):
working and they had an archaic1984 tool.
So people were like I want towork that way, but the system
you've given me is the oppositeof that and so that tension you
can genuinely feel.
So you've got to get thosethree congruent and consistent
right.
If you get those consistentuentand consistent right, if you
(34:37):
get those consistent, I thinkyou've got a chance.
It's still going to be painful,but you've got a chance.
So whenever anyone's in thatthis feels uncomfortable.
Fatimah Abbouchi (34:40):
I always ask them which one of the three is
missing, and that's the secretand it's interesting because a
lot of the time I'm seeingorganizations will start with
the tech.
They'll make a decision on techbut not actually think of how
that's going to impact theirprocess and the changes as well.
So, no, that's a really goodway of looking at it, thinking
about the people side ofbusiness and cultural elements.
How do you scale culture in anorganisation?
(35:01):
Because it seems like you'vedone that at Atlassian, from
where you guys had started allthe way to now.
Dominic Price (35:07):
How do you think we've scaled culture?
Fatimah Abbouchi (35:09):
Oh, I don't know there's so many.
I mean you had the opportunityto start, start on the right
foot as a civilization as astartup.
That start mentality.
Yes, you know, weeding out anybad eggs from the beginning, um,
and then layering up from there.
So I think you got theopportunity to start right, but
I guess what was it that you didat the beginning that helped
you get to the point you are,and have you seen a shift in
(35:31):
that culture and an organisationso big?
Dominic Price (35:33):
Yeah, look.
I mean, when I joined at lastyear we were about 700 people.
We're now over like 11 and abit thousand.
We had 35,000 customers when Ijoined.
We're now 300,000.
We were privately listed,publicly listed, like
competitions.
Changed text, everything'schanged, and so the culture's
changed as well.
Our values have stayed largelyconsistent and so, having those
(35:56):
as an anchor point, they getchallenged occasionally.
You reach certain milestonesand you know, certainly right
now, in an environment where theeconomy is tougher and you've
got to ratchet things up, youwant to be true to those values,
but you might actually bebehaving differently than when
we're in a rising tide.
Right In the pandemic, wheneveryone was buying
collaboration software, it feltlike that was going to continue
(36:18):
forever.
And then the pandemic ceases,people start traveling again,
things change and you get thistrue up and you've got to work
harder for your dollar, right.
So I think our values havelargely stayed the same.
Our culture has evolved, andI'd even go as far to say we
don't have a singular culture.
I think we have a mixture ofcultures that aren't threatening
(36:39):
or challenging each other, butare locally optimized.
You know, I spent time in ouroffice in India.
They have a slightly differentculture to our office in Poland,
to our office in Amsterdam, toour office in San Francisco, to
New York, to Sydney right, and Ithink that's right.
I don't know that we strive fora monoculture.
I've worked in environments inprevious existence where I think
(37:02):
I was part of a monoculture andit's very comfortable because
everyone's the same, but reallydull, there's no cognitive
diversity there.
So I think, embracing thedifference in cultures there, I
think we've got that balanceright.
I think I think the way it'sworked is the accommodation of
almost like pessimism andhumility, like we're always
(37:25):
worried that the wheels mightcome falling off and so we
strive for more, for improvement, for better.
Every time we finish a project,even if it's successful, we'll
talk about the success, but wealso want to talk about how we
could have done it better orfaster or quicker, and so
getting that and thatcombination is hard.
You don't want to ruinsomeone's mojo.
They've just shipped an amazingproject.
How could you have done thatbetter?
You're like blah right.
(37:45):
But similarly, if you just clapall the time, then we all
become mediocre and I don't wantto celebrate mediocrity anymore
.
So finding that balance is hard.
I think the other thing is likeand this is always a funny one
to talk about I try to talkabout this as much as possible
(38:05):
and no one wants to listen.
We get a lot of things wrong andwhenever I talk about it,
people are like no, like yourshare price and your products
and your culture and you win allthese awards, I'm like.
But we win those awards byexperimenting and half our
experiments go wrong.
And when they do, we're like ah, we got that wrong, oops, right
.
And then we're like what wentwrong?
What was our intent?
How did we do it better?
And that's normally nine timesout of ten a very open dialogue.
(38:25):
And when you see that frompeople of all shapes and sizes,
you're like oh, this, this is asafe environment where, where I
can explore and experiment andbe curious and I'm not going to
get punished.
In fact, I might get recognizedfor it.
Um, and so our recognitionsystem.
We have a system called kudos.
You know, someone does a greatjob and they get a kudos within
(38:45):
sort of 24 hours.
You know, fatima, here's thething that you did, here's the
value that you lived, and here'sa 40 gift factory.
Go and get yourself a coffee ora treat or whatever, and it's
not the monetary reward, it'sthe recognition from your peers
if you did a great job above andbeyond um, that stimulates a
lot of our cultural change andso it's like osmosis.
It's not, there's not a culturechampion, it's not owned.
(39:07):
We don't have a people andculture team, we have a people
team.
They don't own culture, neitherdo I, and either scott or mike,
like.
No one singularly owns it, butcollectively we all contribute
to it every day.
So how do we not walk past badbehaviors?
Yes, that's probably thebiggest question I ask on a
daily basis, and that is harderin a distributed world, where
it's harder to see badbehaviours.
Fatimah Abbouchi (39:28):
Yeah, absolutely I like that idea,
even thinking about the culturesbeing different in different
countries and different regionsaround the world.
It makes logical sense becauseyou visit a country and they
have different cultures anddifferent governance
requirements and different waysof working and different
delivery, but you're stillfollowing that same central
essence as well.
Dominic Price (39:47):
So I think Fatima , go back to your point before
about those two teams comingtogether, right?
Yes, so my engineering team inIndia is working with my
marketing team in San Francisco.
Right, they have differentcultures, but therefore, one of
the most important things iswhen they start to work together
, what's the common way ofworking that unites them so you
keep your cultural elements?
I'm not taking those away,exactly, I'm only going to have
(40:09):
one way of working as you uniteas a team, because I'm not
paying the translation taxAbsolutely, and that's the bit
of the conversation that oftengets forgotten.
We celebrate the diversity ofculture, but we forget to bring
people together absolutely it's.
Fatimah Abbouchi (40:21):
It's interesting.
It's like one organization Iwas working and they had all
these different agile tribesacross the company and what they
were trying to do is geteverybody to work the way that
they work, because that's whatworked for them in their tribe
and it's actually moredisconnect than actually
connectiveness.
It's yeah.
Dominic Price (40:36):
Yeah, we can work any way we want, as long as
it's my way yeah, absolutely,it's simple.
Fatimah Abbouchi (40:40):
Things like even aesthetically, you know,
formats of powerpoints and theway that it's just, it's like
that's what you're focused on.
That you're really not going tobe successful you said it
before, fixed mindset.
Dominic Price (40:49):
This is the way.
Fatimah Abbouchi (40:50):
It's a singular way and makes them
comfortable, as you were talkingabout before.
Thinking about um, you know,just thinking about teamwork and
um, the distributed teams.
So people ask the question alot of how to get the most out
of their teams when they aredistributed.
What's worked really well foryou so, culture side, what's
worked really well for Atlassianto have that?
Dominic Price (41:14):
Three really simple steps.
Step one accept right now yourteams are distributed.
Like, stop fighting it, stopdebating it.
Like, accept it.
Virtually every company of anysize I work with they're
distributed in some way, and Idon't mean work from home versus
work from office.
I mean you're in Melbourne andI'm in Sydney.
We're distributed right.
Even if we're both in an officeright now, we're still
distributed.
So step one accept it.
Step two is build it.
(41:43):
So my favorite exercise rightnow is the working agreement
play which I do with any team Iwork with.
Like when we first cometogether, what is our social
contract of how we're going towork?
Don't assume that because it'slazy.
You just need to invest a tinybit of time working on that.
And once you've got that socialcontract, you're bringing
people together.
And then the third step is, on aregular basis, do a check-in on
team health.
Team health is something that Iknow at last year.
We care about a lot, a lot oforganizations I talk to.
(42:05):
They nod and they're like I getit, we don't do it and I'm like
why?
But like why are you notchecking in on a team to go?
I know you've got that socialcontract.
How's it working for you, whatis working, what's not, and
what's one thing we could dodifferently the next two weeks
to be better.
That's free, I didn't cost youanything.
Um, and the teams that do that,you genuinely see they focus on
the environment and when theycreate an environment where
(42:27):
people can thrive, those teamsthrive like it's not rocket
science.
So you know, dealing with thatemotional side as well as the
kind of iq side has been veryimportant.
Fatimah Abbouchi (42:36):
Those three things together create
formidable teams that areresilient and can achieve pretty
much anything and please don'tcreate team social contracts,
like I've seen them do,organizations do and then
completely forget about it.
Dominic Price (42:49):
File it and they never see it again yeah, yeah,
and that's what we said.
I mean, yeah, you've seen thatas well, the set and forget.
You're like it's not a tick boxexercise.
I mean, I, I went with a team,uh, middle of last year we came
up with one and then after aboutafter about three weeks, we all
sat down and it's not workingfor us.
So we revised it, we tweaked itand then we're like, let's try
this.
Three weeks later, we're likethere you go, version two, but
(43:09):
then it changed again because wegot a new team member and so on
maternity leave.
Each time we had a milestonechange, we revisited that social
contract, but again, not abusiness case, not written in
blood, not a compliance document.
How are we choosing to worktogether and is that effective
for us?
And it's different for everyteam.
Fatimah Abbouchi (43:32):
Absolutely.
You talked about makingmistakes and learning from them.
Is there a pivotal moment inyour career, either in your
current line of work or previousroles, where you've made maybe
a significant mistake, but a biglearning came from it that you
can share?
Dominic Price (43:41):
There's a whole load for me there's.
There's been no like huge, likeepiphany moments, and that's
because I'm probably making lotsof little mistakes all the time
, and so there's no like, oh mygod, I think there's.
There's a favorite bit offeedback I got.
There's a a keynotepresentation I built a couple of
years ago and I was reallyhappy with it and, uh, maybe my
(44:02):
got in the way.
It was a good deck and I wasdelivering it at a conference
once and the usual thing anyonegot any questions, feedback at
the end.
And there's this one guyhanging around afterwards and
I'd had 10 minutes of peoplegoing.
That was amazing.
It was inspirational.
I learned so much.
I was like yeah, yeah, yeah.
And there's this one guy hangingaround.
I'm like I don't know, I don'tthink he's here for a compliment
(44:26):
that my little spidey sensewent off and he said um, would
you like some feedback?
I was like yeah, no, of course.
He's like, no, honestly, you doyou want some feedback?
And I was like, yeah, no, I,actually I do.
He's like cool.
He said I feel like in yourpresentation you've just told me
what fit looks like.
He's like at no point in yourpresentation have you
acknowledged that I'm fat and Iwant to get fit, and I was like
tell me more.
(44:47):
And he's like.
He said I feel like yourpresentation was like Instagram
yeah, I see a super fit, healthyperson, but they you've not
helped me understand where tostart.
You've not acknowledged me andwho I am and he's like so you
telling me what a highperforming team looks like has
actually just pissed me off,because I'm not in one right now
.
I want to be.
You've not told me how to do itand I was like honestly, mate,
(45:08):
that is an absolute gem.
Like it was the biggest gift Igot.
Because I went back and I'mlike my, my presentation had
good intent, but it was missingthe point.
So I reverse engineered like,instead of talking about what a
high performing team looks like,I then start to talk about
here's how you create, here'sthe conditions for creating a
high performing team and here'show you acknowledge where you
might be today in your firststep.
(45:29):
And so that, for me, was agreat nudge and I've been very
fortunate with coaches, mentorsand feedback that I get these
regular nudges that help meimprove but that that was one
where I honestly like eyes, eyeswide open.
I thought that was a greatpresentation, until someone told
me it wasn't, and it's just agreat reminder it's so important
(45:49):
.
Fatimah Abbouchi (45:50):
It goes back to what you said around um team
health as an example gettingfeedback from the team, whether
you know, you're rolling outcertain metrics or measurements
and getting that directly instand-ups or other.
You're getting it from a, froma prospective customer, and then
applying applying.
You went and applied somethingso you didn't just put it on the
backlog and forget about itanything with it.
Dominic Price (46:09):
That's so powerful yeah, I literally got
on.
I.
I got on the plane and startedplaying with the slides.
I'm like the.
The narrative doesn't reallyhave to change.
It's the perspective, it's thelens that changes.
It's how do I help, instead ofme showing off and massaging my
ego by going I know what a highperforming team looks like.
I flipped it to.
I do, but what I'm going totalk about is what are the steps
(46:29):
to start to build that and howdoes that feel like?
yeah, and that was a way morepowerful presentation it makes
sense.
Fatimah Abbouchi (46:35):
There's a lot, a lot of um, you know um
speakers out there at the momentthat are sharing the theory and
how what good looks like yeahbut nothing to actually help you
move from nothing tangible.
Dominic Price (46:45):
We're in like framework frenzy heaven.
Like if one person gives meanother framework, I'm like I
don't need any more frameworks.
Like what's the thing I'm meantto do.
Fatimah Abbouchi (46:52):
Like, don't give me a three by three exactly
and and so then, thinking aboutall the speaking that you do,
what's the most common questionthat you get asked?
Dominic Price (47:01):
um more so now, because I'm doing a lot of kind
of activation type keynotes andworkshops is where do I start?
And that, for me, is when I getthat as a question.
I know I've started to do myjob Because they've gone through
the theory, they're sold on theidea, they're now thinking
about implementation, so that'sreally good.
What I get a lot from people iscan I come and work at
(47:24):
atlassian?
And normally when I unpack thatit's because they're unhappy
where they're where they are.
And I give every single personthe same advice try and do it
where you are first, like usethe human capital you've built
up in that environment and tryit there, because if you improve
it there, you might like it andyou might stay, which is good
for you, and if you don'timprove it there, you've got a
great story for an interview.
Fatimah Abbouchi (47:44):
But if you run away from it because it's crap,
I don't want to hire you I wantyou to be willing to do the
hard work oh, absolutely and inand you know, work through that
challenge so that you becomeanother learning experience for
yourself absolutely what do youthink has been?
you know, as as a small businessourselves, and with aspirations
to grow big.
What do you think has helpedAtlassian to get to where it is
(48:07):
today?
You know, aside from theculture that we talked about,
what do you think?
Do you think it was making thetech easy for people?
Do you think it was?
You know what are the keycharacteristics that have helped
the organization grow to whereit is today.
Dominic Price (48:22):
I'm going to try and pick two things.
There's many things, but I'mgoing to try and pick two.
One is our focus on teamwork sothere is no superhero, there's
no lone person, lone ranger thatstands on the soapbox and says
I won, we.
We only ever say we won, uh.
And similarly, we, we screwedit up, not I screwed it right,
we, we, we share ourcelebrations as a team and we
(48:44):
share our losses as a team.
That that seems like a like ano-brainer ethos, really hard to
do when, when egos and successand failure is like a whole lot
of stuff going on.
But that that's been a profoundpart of my existence in my 10,
nearly 11 years now at atlassian.
And the second one is we've gotdistracted occasionally by
getting bigger.
(49:04):
But if I could give you a freecoaching moment, fatima, I'd say
don't have a dream of gettingbig, have a dream of getting
better.
There is an art form to scalinggracefully and many
organizations I work with scaled, but they didn't scale
gracefully, they didn't getbetter.
In fact, as they got bigger,you, you got less inclined to
(49:27):
work there.
Um, and I think that's a sadreality for so many
organizations.
You hear people go oh, like weused to do, used to do this, or
the good old days, and you,there's always some of that, but
you get so much of that.
You're like when did we losethat?
When, when, when did we losethe goodness, the rich tapestry,
the fun?
Because they were the growthdays.
That's when we're deliveringvalue, because it was like when
(49:47):
did we grow up?
And so there's a mindset coach.
I work with Ben Crow who usedto coach Ash Barty, the World
and World Tennis player, and awhole lot of other sports stars.
But whenever I talk to him he'slike the opposite of play isn't
work.
The opposite of play isn't work.
The opposite of play is fear andI think there's too much fear
in business and in AtlassianI've certainly always been
(50:08):
fortunate.
I don't know if everyone elsehas the same experience.
It's it's quite a playfulenvironment.
That doesn't mean we don't takelife seriously.
We do.
We take our customers and ourresponsibilities very seriously,
but we do do it in a playfulmanner and I think that's been a
secret to our scalinggracefully.
Is that the playfulness or thehumility that's in there?
Fatimah Abbouchi (50:27):
And you know what they say fear is fake
events appearing real.
Dominic Price (50:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's very true, right, and we've all
been in that environment, right.
And you're just petrified,You're like this seems real but
it's not, and you just it's ahuge amount of self-doubt and
weird stuff happens with it.
I get it.
There's a lot of leaders whochoose to lead that way.
That's their choice.
I would rather lead throughplayfulness.
Fatimah Abbouchi (50:47):
Absolutely.
And, like you said, if you'vegot permission to fail, you can
just do something.
Just move the dial, do anything.
Dominic Price (50:54):
Yeah, like trust your gut instinct and take a bet
right.
Because, you're not betting thehouse.
Yeah, absolutely yeah you'renot.
Fatimah Abbouchi (51:00):
You're not betting everything on this.
You're betting somethingexactly as long as you know.
I say to my team as long asthey're not going to sink the
business to my um, experimentand experimentation is
completely fine yeah so we'realmost out of time today.
My last question for you is, um, if there's anything else that
you'd like to share with ourlisteners, a call to action, a
piece of advice or a question toponder today uh, one one, one
(51:24):
thing, one thing, uh,self-compassion.
Dominic Price (51:28):
Uh, I've been been noodling this for a while.
If, if you want to be asustainable leader, partner,
boyfriend, girlfriend, husband,wife, you know, parent, uh, team
, whatever it is we're allmembers of many different teams
in life, society, business,whatever you have to start with
some level of self-compassion.
And I think in the world rightnow we're so distracted by
(51:49):
external motivations Like, as acompany, I want to do this to be
more like Spotify.
No, no, I don't Do it to bebetter for your customers and
better for yourself and a greatplace to work.
Do it for those reasons, andthey seem selfish.
I don't think it's bad place towork.
Do for those reasons, and theyseem selfish.
I don't know.
I don't think it's bad, rightand so for me, that, that
self-compassion, if, if leadersand employees and teammates
could start with that right now,I I think we've, uh, we've got
(52:11):
a really good chance of creatinga wonderful future sounds
really good and it will probablyhelp on the mental wellness
side as well 100 thank you somuch for joining us on.
Fatimah Abbouchi (52:20):
This has been incredibly valuable.
We could have talked for a lotlonger, I feel I know you've
probably got a million and onethings to do, but thank you so
much for I saw it's a greatconversation.
Dominic Price (52:28):
Thanks for hosting.
Fatimah Abbouchi (52:29):
Thank you so much for listening to this
podcast.
Please share this with someoneor rate it if you enjoyed it.
Don't forget to follow us onsocial media and to stay up to
date with all things Agile Ideas, go to our website, www.
agilemanagementoffice.
com.
I hope you've been able tolearn, feel or be inspired today
(52:50):
.
Until next time, what's yourAgile idea?
You're listening to Agile Ideas, the
podcast hosted by FatimahAbbouchi.
For anyone listening out therenot having a good day, please
know there is help out there.
Hi everyone and welcome back toanother episode of Agile Ideas.
I'm CEO, at Agile ManagementOffice, mental Health Ambassador
(00:20):
and your host.
Before we get into today'spodcast, I just wanted to
quickly share and remind youthat next month we will be
starting the PMO coachingprogram.
So if you are interested inuplifting or building a PMO from
scratch, please reach out to usvia www.
agilemanagementoffice.
com or one word, or reach out tome on LinkedIn if you'd like to
(00:45):
be part of that PMO program,looking forward to running it
next month and having you allbeing part of it.
Now on to our guest today,someone I'm very excited to have
had the opportunity to get onthe podcast.
His name is Dominic Price.
Dominic is currently the workfuturist at Atlassian.
(01:07):
For those of you who don't know, atlassian is one of the most
successful tech startups comingout of Australia.
Dom is passionate deeply aboutteamwork and particularly the
intersection of technology andhumans.
He has spent over 10 yearshelping tech company Atlassian
scale effectively by focusing onhow teams and humans should
(01:28):
work together and how technologycan help to amplify that.
In his time, atlassian hasscaled from hundreds of staff to
over 12,000 and from 35customers to over 280,000
worldwide.
Dom is passionate about modernleadership, building learning
organizations and thriving teams, and none of this happens by
(01:51):
accident.
So please join me in welcomingDom to the show.
Welcome Dom to the show.
Thanks for joining us.
Dominic Price (01:57):
I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Fatimah Abbouchi (01:59):
I am too.
I'm really excited because Iwas obviously been following
your journey for quite a whileand, for those of us that don't
know, I've already told everyonethat you're the work futurist
at Atlassian.
But what exactly is a workfuturist?
Because for many peoplelistening they probably don't
know what that means.
Dominic Price (02:16):
Yeah, it's a two part.
First of all, we have to behonest to your audience because
they're all nice people, they'reself-selected to listen in.
It's a made up job audiencebecause they're all nice people,
they're self-selected to listenin.
Um, it's a made-up job like wemade it up um, just over eight
years ago now.
Because we we saw anopportunity in market whereby
we've been focusing for years inAtlassian on how we worked and
how we scaled, how we createdwhat we used to call our secret
(02:37):
sauce.
And I sat down with our foundersone day and we're talking about
it and they were like, insteadof it being a secret sauce, why
don't we make it a source andjust like, give it to the world
and give it to our customers?
Like, if we're getting betterat how we work, why don't we
gift it and pay it forward?
And in doing that, we realizedthat what we were helping teams
and organizations do was todiscover their future.
Right, it wasn't that.
(02:59):
A future was something you hadto dream about and not the
future something you had to buyfrom a consultant for 40 million
dollars.
Yes, a future was something youcould deliver yourself on.
But you had to think a bitdifferently and actually beg
borrowing and stealing fromother organizations was their
way of doing that, and so I justbecame very passionate about
two things that created the workfuturist role.
(03:19):
One was the future of work, butthe second thing was the human
part of that, and if I go backeight years at the time, as it
kind of is now, everything wastech focused.
Tech's going to solve the world.
Tech's going to do this, andyou're like, you know what we
need humans to be workingeffectively as well, and so for
me, when I talk and focus on thefuture of work, it's very much
(03:41):
how do we unleash the potentialof humans and teams and then how
do we use technology to amplifythat, and that is something I'm
very passionate about it's, um.
Fatimah Abbouchi (03:50):
it's really good to see that, because we in
our team have already engagedsome of your content, um, as at
the last, in in terms of, likethe, my user manuals and other,
and it's just so crazy how manyplays that you have available on
the website, like you said,completely free to download, and
they've been, you know,effectively helpful for us, let
alone others that aredownloading.
(04:11):
So how do you, how would you asan organization, with the
amount of people that you have,come up with these things?
Do you have like a team ofpeople, or is it just IP that
gets built on based on having anidea?
Dominic Price (04:23):
It's a good question.
So let's talk because it'shappened in different ways,
right?
So if you go back eight years,when I first, you know, moved
into the role of work futurist,it was kind of hacky, right.
We had a couple of people whothought it was a good idea.
We're like, yeah, let's give ita shot.
Right, we were a smallercompany, you know, it was just
(04:45):
easier to do.
Scrappiness was something thatwe were famous for, and now, as
we've matured, we've gotten alittle bit more systematic.
The reason I mentioned that iswhen people are starting their
journey towards, like, a new wayof working, they tend to look
at other people's end productand say I want that.
What they forget to look at isthe work they did to get there
right.
So the scrappiness was me, aproduct manager, a designer
engineer and a program manager.
(05:06):
There's five of us.
We're like should we have aplay with this?
Like, is it worth trying?
And it was such a smallexperiment Even if it went wrong
it wouldn't have really costanything Absolutely and as it
sort of bubbled up, we kind ofsat there one day and went, oh,
like, this is a thing now, thismaybe needs a team.
But does now this?
This maybe needs a team, butdoes it need a team or do we
(05:27):
make it a self-service thing?
We've we've chopped and changedon that in the last eight years
.
Sometimes we we sort of take astep back and say let the system
right, let the wisdom of thecrowd do this, but it's
everyone's last job in a week,right?
If I say to we've got 11 000people globally.
If I say, if you land on agreat way of working this week,
can you please write it down?
Someone's going to land on anew way of working this week,
can you please write it down?
Someone's going to land on anew way of working and never
write it down because they'vegot a million other things to do
(05:47):
.
Absolutely, the balance we'vefound is we've got a few people
dedicated to it.
We have a lab right of humanswho do experiments and explore
and wonder and try new things,but also we've got 11,000 people
who are experimenting every dayand it's the confluence of
(06:10):
those two things that make itmagical, because I've seen a lot
of other organizations do thisand call it thought leadership,
and a little bit of me diesevery time I hear the words
thought leadership, because Idon't want a thought I want a
practice, yes, and so I knowthat when a, a leader or a
teammate in Atlassian shares anidea with me of here's the way
my team works, I, I know they'vetried it 15 times, so I know it
works.
It's not me sharing somethingfor marketing, it's me sharing
something because we've tried itand it worked for us.
(06:31):
And so we source from a varietyof different avenues, and then
our mantra is share early andoften.
So, as a fan of the playbook,you may have seen, we removed a
few plays a few years agobecause we put them out there.
They worked for a while andthen they didn't, so we removed
them.
Right, it's not.
It's not a finished product.
You can't download it, youcan't print it, it will never be
finished.
(06:51):
It's constantly evolving andthat requires thousands of
Atlassians every week to beexperimenting with their new
ways of working.
Fatimah Abbouchi (06:58):
And as soon as we get something decent, we
share it externally it's areally good um, yeah, really
good way of taking that conceptof iterative improvement and and
the fact that you've got thatmany clients, as you said,
you're probably learning thingsthrough those client engagements
we currently have and then youactually evolve that product or
service offering and, like yousaid, not paying you know 40
(07:19):
million dollars for a consultantto just sell me or provide me
gated theory that then actuallydoesn't help when we move the
dial.
Dominic Price (07:27):
So but, fatima, there's something you've touched
on there that I think themarket's hungry for right now,
which is lived experience.
Yes, so.
So for every play we produce,not only do I get to play with
thousands of teams and at lastin with it, but I get to go to
the big banks in australia and atelco here and a company in the
US and a company in Europe,like I get to play.
I mean, we've got over 300,000organizations use our products
(07:49):
who are all trying to experimentwith new ways of working.
When they try this stuff,sometimes it works, sometimes it
doesn't.
Sometimes they send us back anew version and say we made
these changes.
I'm like, oh now, that alwayshelps me keep my eyes open,
because I'm like, just becauseit works at Atlassian doesn't
mean it will work for you.
The principles and philosophyprobably will, but the exact
(08:10):
practices it's written you mightneed to tweak and tailor.
So I think that iterativeexercise is something that we
all have the capability to do inbusiness right now.
For some reason, so manyorganizations push it to the
side.
The ability to learn fast isthere for every organization and
we keep on going on these 18month leaps and you're like why?
(08:31):
Why wait 18 months to learnsomething when you can learn
something in 18 minutes?
Fatimah Abbouchi (08:35):
yeah, absolutely, and I think one of
the things that stifles at leastwhat I see with some companies
is the the hierarchy.
So unless it's made by acertain person, it's not
considered as a deal where itcould be the best idea in that
company for that day yeah, Ithink.
Dominic Price (08:47):
I think hierarchy also there's.
There's a weird sort of fetishin business certainly in
australia, but I'm seeing it alot in the us as well to manage
everything through process orpolicy or procedure, like even
if you take the you know, postpandemic, where do people work?
And and every hr person in theworld was like we need a policy
policy.
And you're like why?
I mean, maybe the policy justsays work where you're most
effective.
You're an adult.
I pay you good money, I'vegiven you the tools, like work
(09:10):
where you can do the best workyou can Like.
No, no, you must work from homeon this day, you must work from
the.
And so again, we've gone downthe path of policy.
What I, what we want, isevolutionary.
Fatimah Abbouchi (09:21):
Yeah, absolutely.
Actually, that's a good point.
So one of the challenges at themoment is the whole debacle and
debate around returning to thework, and you know different
companies apply, and I'm veryaware of how Atlassian's
approach to that is.
I think I'm thinking you know,organisations that have good
measures of accountability andgood practices in place and
understanding around theguardrails of ways of working
(09:43):
shouldn't really have a concernaround how people return to work
.
But what are you seeingglobally in terms of
organisations and bosses, mayberegretting the demand for people
to return to work?
Dominic Price (09:51):
Yeah, I think, look, I've got this is going to
sound weird, but I've got a hugeamount of sympathy for legacy
leaders, right, it's an oddstatement to make, but I
genuinely have.
There's a whole lot of leadersout there who grew up in a very
different world to the one we'rein today and I think to some
extent, we're being a little bitconveniently mean to them by
(10:13):
saying I can't believe you don'tunderstand this new thing and
you're like I can believe that Ican believe they don't
understand it Because if you'vebeen in the world of business
for 40 years, everything wasabout the office, like where you
worked with the office.
You communicated in the office,you had meetings in the office,
right.
You had this lovely structureand ritual nine to five, monday
to friday.
(10:34):
You also, you know,pre-internet turned off work
when you left work right, youactually left an office and work
stayed there and home started.
So there's a whole lot ofthings that happen in that
environment.
I actually quite like the soundof.
I don't know that I want to beworking 24 by 7.
So sometimes we say, oh,flexibility is really cool.
Fatima, I'm going to call youat 11 pm and I need you on this
(10:54):
thing and you're like, under thebanner of flexibility, you're
like, yeah, now, like, so I?
I think for those people there'sso much unlearning to do of
what worked for them.
Yes to them, embrace this newworld.
And you can multiply that outfor historical organizations,
right, there's a couple of banksthat I work with are like 160,
170 years old.
There is so much history andheritage in there.
(11:16):
Yes, it has probably paid adividend for them.
The world around them's changedand they've woken up and gone.
Oh, the world's changed.
I think it's a bit cruel of usto expect a 50 000 person
organization with 160 yearsexperience to change on a dime
right.
And so I want them to changeand I'm passionate about them
changing.
I think sometimes we miss theempathy and we miss the patience
(11:38):
and then we get this veryconvenient narrative.
So like I've just been laughingfrom the sidelines the last few
weeks as everyone piles intonike, right, so nike was like ah
, they returned everyone fromthe office, they wanted to be
more innovative and their shareprice is quite low.
They've lost a bit of marketshare, share price is quite low
and there's a whole lot ofconvenient commentators going.
Nike share price is downbecause they don't work from
(11:58):
home.
And here's this other randomsports company and they do
flexible work and their shareprice is up.
So see, and you're like, hangon, that might be, that might be
some correlation, but that isnot causation, right?
So I just think we need to likepause and go.
Maybe nike has got someone'slegacy.
It's hard to do distributedwork.
I'm in a company and I think wedo well at it.
(12:19):
That doesn't mean it's easy,and I think I think if we, if we
make it sound easy and thenpeople struggle with it, all
we've done is alienate them.
We're not taking the long onthe journey we're going.
I'm distributed, you're not,and you're you're, you're not as
good as me, which I think isjust unnecessary.
This is saying how do weembrace this, how do we accept
it as a new reality and embraceit?
And that's just going to take alittle bit of patience and for
(12:41):
those organizations, a lot oflegacy to let go of.
Yeah, and then this bravery tobe curious again, right.
Fatimah Abbouchi (12:47):
This bravery to experiment, which is hard in
the current environment, right,when all your shareholders like
I don't care where you peoplework, I need, I need more margin
, I need more return and andit's interesting because, just
on the mindset thing, you hear alot about the fixed mindset
versus growth mindset and thereis a lot of fixed mindset in
some of these organizations haveto work with some of these
banks and I think one of thechallenges I know if you see
(13:09):
this as well.
But even when it comes toimplementing new ways of working
and you're under the agileumbrella, they're really trying
to copy and paste what anotherorganization has done, which is
a bad start yeah, yeah, it'slike, and I get why, because
we're all trying to shortcut,right it's.
Dominic Price (13:25):
It's funny that, yeah, we're still selling agile
transformation.
And agile's 24 years old, right, it can, it can drink and vote
in every country in the world.
So you know, we can stillpretend that it's new and it's
not.
But I think there'sorganizations waking up to it,
going, oh, we need to now catchup.
How can we accelerate this?
Uh, let's go, let's go tospotify and let's go to meta and
let's go to google and let's goto all these other places and
(13:47):
we'll copy them.
Yeah, I, I was chatting to asenior leader of a telco a few
years ago because they weredoing a study tour in the us and
they'll tell me the list ofcompanies.
I'm like, oh, um, you're a telco, right.
And they're like, yeah, andit's like, you're not going
seeing any telcos.
So so don't tell me you want tobe more like Spotify, because
their business model isfundamentally different to yours
(14:08):
.
So what works for them?
Understand the principles, thephilosophies, right, the
guardrails in there.
But copy, cutting and pastingis lazy and dangerous,
absolutely.
What you'll know and I've seenon steroids recently is when
they do the copy, cut and paste.
They copy on top of the otherway of working A hundred percent
.
So their hybrid is not the bestof both worlds, it's the worst
of both worlds.
(14:28):
It's policy, process, procedure, you know, waterfall structure
with bits of agile in the middle.
You're like, oh God, you'vecreated Frankenstein.
Fatimah Abbouchi (14:36):
Yes, absolutely that, literally
that's what I'm living andbreathing at the moment.
It's just they don't actuallytake time to look at the what's
in place at the moment and thenobviously evolve that or even
try to improve it.
And, to your point, when theygo and a lot of the banks have
gone and copied the ing or thespotify model because I think
that's worked and they haven'tlooked at telcos because they
want to be innovative and youknow, we want to be the best
(14:57):
telco or the best absolutely.
They're trying to trying to godown that path, but not actually
reflecting on what the maturityin their organization is the
culture of the reality, thereality of their own.
Dominic Price (15:06):
So there's there's a couple of uh sort of
authors right now that if Icould take their content and put
it on every billboard thatevery business leader saw, I
would.
So one is um a guy called hegavera rao and bob sutton.
They're from stanford uni, umauthors.
They've written a book calledthe friction project and there's
a whole chapter on the art ofsubtraction and when I read it I
(15:29):
was like, damn, that is whatthe if the business world needs
a kick in the ass right now.
It's like before you addanything, remove the things that
are no longer valuable.
I remember reading it and goingno one does that.
We lay you in on top, but wedon't do that.
And then the second author is awonderful friend of mine called
Barry O'Reilly.
Barry published a book yearsago probably five or six years
(15:51):
old now called Unlearning, andit's actually a leadership book,
but I think you can apply it tothe business lens of going what
are the old habits I need tounlearn and leave in the past so
I can do that experimentation?
So when you talk aboutimprovement, I think we've only
got time to improve if we removesomething from our calendar
first to give ourselves thespace, otherwise we're never
(16:12):
going to get around to it yeah,absolutely.
Fatimah Abbouchi (16:14):
It's actually a really good point as well in
relation to unlearning andlearning and just around this
whole transformation.
I find that leaders spend theleast time learning and
unlearning and they expect theorganization to change, but
they're meant to be leading fromthe front.
Why do you think that is?
Dominic Price (16:28):
um, I think the whole host of reasons.
You can look at the shorttenure of leadership, like if
you're an average ceo in an asxorganization, right, maybe
you're doing four to six years.
Do you really feel the need tochange?
Maybe you've been hired and theboard has told you we've hired
you, fatima, because of yourexperience.
We want you to do your playbookthat you rolled out of those
other fuckers.
Just do that, and so you startto believe your own bs after a
(16:49):
while.
Right, and and so I see thatAlso.
I think humility takes a hugeamount of energy.
So does empathy, and it takestime.
And a lot of these people areworking on really tight
timeframes where they believethat banging the table and
getting people to blindly followis the quickest path.
And it might be quick.
It's just not very effectivebecause it's a path to somewhere
(17:10):
, but it's just not the place wewant to be.
I've been involved with somequite I won't even call it slow,
just call it methodical changewhere we took our time over it
but it's stuck.
I'm like, yeah.
So whenever I hear people talkabout change fatigue, I'm like I
don't think we've got changefatigue, I just think about it,
managing it, to be honest.
So I get it again.
I've got a bit of sympathy withthese leaders because they're
(17:31):
often being given a challengethat they're not up for.
I think you know the.
The average sort of agiletransformation was given to
probably a 55 year old male CIORight, who hadn't he?
Who has 35 years experience ofwaterfall technology, software
change.
You're like, yeah, I get why wepicture, I'm not sure you're
the best person for the job.
Yeah, I get why we picked you.
I'm not sure you're the bestperson for the job.
Actually, maybe there's someonenot as senior as you but
(17:54):
actually better at this skill,right, or this technique or this
capability.
But again, I think, as youmentioned before, our hierarchy
is getting in the way.
Yes, be more vulnerable anddemonstrating empathy with their
teams to get the change tohappen.
(18:15):
And it's probably some of themost fascinating coaching I do,
because technically, thesepeople are often crazy smart,
but they've not done the thingthey're about to try and do.
Fatimah Abbouchi (18:22):
Yeah, absolutely, and that makes it
hard for it to stick and youwonder why some of these fail
the sense that these leaders aretrying to drive a change from
the top that they don'tunderstand, and then they're
trying to get other parts of theorganization on board,
particularly in Agile, whereoperational teams are usually
forgotten about and completelymisguided.
They don't understand projectmanagement fundamentals, let
(18:42):
alone putting this thing calledAgile on top, and it's a really
confusing situation.
Dominic Price (18:46):
Yeah, if you ever want to see that play out, just
put a CIO and CFO in the sameroom.
I do it on every giant agileproject.
So, like before we do anything,yeah, I want those two people
in the room and I'm like right,so, cio, you're about to roll
out this thing called agility.
Let's not call it agile, callit agility.
What are some of yourprinciples and philosophies?
And they explain it and say howdo you feel about that?
They're like well, we're stilldoing annual planning yeah,
(19:08):
exactly right, we're still doingthis, we're still doing this
kind of budgeting.
And so you're like well, ifthat's the currency of the
business, in what way are youagile anymore?
Right, if you're making peoplesign up for annual goals, annual
budgets, annual everything Idon't know?
I mean, maybe agility makes yougo a little bit faster in
between, but are you going toget the nimbleness of agility,
are you going to get the coursecorrection of agility if you're
(19:28):
just going to deliver what yousigned up for anyway?
So that's where this tensioncomes in.
Fatimah Abbouchi (19:32):
Absolutely.
You mentioned, I believe in myresearch that productivity is a
shit measure.
Dominic Price (19:38):
Is that correct?
I hate it.
I absolutely hate it.
Fatimah Abbouchi (19:40):
If I could delete a word from the business
language, it would be that I wasgoing to say can you elaborate
why and maybe provide someguidance on alternative metrics
that you would use or approaches?
Dominic Price (19:49):
Yeah, so use or approaches, yeah, so, um, why so
?
I I think if you were, if yougo back in time, productivity,
as it's measured, right, itsoutput over time, um, worked
really well when we were solelyor or proportionally
manufacturing, right?
Uh, when we're producingphysical goods, um, and in a
time when we weren't reallyusing iq or even eq develop,
(20:12):
there was no creativity orcuriosity.
The production line was peoplestood there doing a task,
handing it over, right, and,weirdly, productivity ends up
being a good measure for that.
But if you look at where that'shappening in the world right
now, it's very rarely humans.
That's the stuff that we'veautomated, that we have robots
and machines doing.
So I don't think we want thatmeasure on humans.
Humans, I think we want toempower with curiosity, with
(20:35):
creativity, with empathy andvulnerability, with compassion,
right, all these things thatmake us uniquely human, none of
which gets measured inproductivity not at all.
And so when someone says to me,like how do I measure my
productivity this week, let'stake this conversation as an
example right, how do we measurethe time?
Me and you invested in thisconversation in the world of
(20:56):
productivity?
Well, productivity is outputover time.
So we spent time on this thisweek and we've gained no output,
zero.
So we're in a deficit, we fail,we shouldn't have done this.
And you're like, well, that's agreat conversation, we learned
something from it.
It goes out, it benefits otherpeople, they learn, they learn,
they get better.
And you're like, oh, how do youmeasure that?
That's that's impact, that'soutcomes right, that happens
(21:16):
after the event and it's theimpact on someone else, yes, and
people stray away from that.
It feels too orthogonal.
So my cool measure measuregoals, measure effectiveness,
measure engagement like, if yourteams are happy and they're
engaged and they have a strongnorth star and goals, you
probably just need to get out ofthe way and and stop prodding
(21:37):
them and tame productivity,because you're actually making
them less productive.
So that's where I come at thelens.
Where this has got heightened, Ithink, in the last three or
four years is around mentalhealth, right, and and it
baffles me that we can stillcontinue to talk about increases
in productivity, so output, andthen people go.
I'm struggling with burnout andmental health.
We're like, oh, okay, cool,here's a membership for
(21:59):
something that might make youfeel better, but I need you to
be more productive, I need youto do more things in less time
and you're like we're not goingto correlate those things,
Because I'm Dom when I'm aparent, I'm Dom when I'm a
parent, I'm Dom when I'm apartner and I'm Dom when I'm in
work.
I'm the same person, I'm thesame asset, I'm the same
resource, but trying to squeezeout some productivity from a
human feels like a false economyto me.
(22:20):
So I think effectiveness,alignment to goals, engagement
are really strong lead measures.
And then the lag measures.
For me, the real stuff isimpact and outcomes, and so I
normally use a proxy of thosetwo, and with my team, they're
the conversations we have on aregular basis.
Right, we're trying to look atthose input measures, are they
(22:41):
right?
And then impact over time iswhat we really care about, but
we have to give ourselvespatience to do that.
Fatimah Abbouchi (22:47):
It's interesting because you know
you're right around some ofthose metrics and measures that
could be used.
But it still seems that in alot of organizations, even when
they've supposedly imploredagile, they are still measuring
the impact or outcomes of aproject at the very end, after
six, nine, twelve months, Likeit's counterintuitive.
Dominic Price (23:06):
Yeah.
So this is where the wholechallenge of value drop right
becomes an amazing essence to go.
The real point of agility isadding value over time.
So I don't, you know, Iremember a leader I was working
with years ago was very excitedabout cutting the ribbon on the
agile room as part of theiragile transformation and I
thought they were joking andthey weren't.
I was like, well, I'm hopingyou delivered value before the
(23:29):
ribbon.
And, by the way, what is anagile room?
I didn't know.
There was a space that you atwo by two you went into anyway,
but what it showed me was thisthis, this waterfall approach to
agile, which I think is aliveand doing very well, like not
serving any value, but but alivein many organizations which is
it's going to be a year beforewe see any value at all.
And you're like, oh, I don'tknow why you do that.
(23:52):
I'm not building roads here.
Often I'm building technologyor software or things where I
could at least experiment and Ican get directional feedback
really early on.
So we look at very smalllearning loops in Atlassian and
we're fortunate to do that aspart of our mindset in our world
.
But those learning loops meanwe can add value very quickly,
not huge value, but incrementalvalue, and that just de-risks
(24:14):
the whole thing.
Fatimah Abbouchi (24:15):
Absolutely, and I think these large
organizations just going back towhat we said earlier, they
don't have the, I guess, thedesire to do some of these
experiments, because there's somuch red tape to actually get
passed and there's usually nobudgets to do that, and then
people don't have the authorityto do that, and it's mean, it's,
(24:37):
it's crazy, but a lot of theseorganizations are doing, uh,
doing things backwards and theyare actually, as you said, heavy
waterfall at the beginning interms of their investment slate
and they're managing in theannual budgets but they call
themselves agile and they'reabsolutely not agile well, I
think you've touched onsomething as well.
Dominic Price (24:48):
There's this whole essence of like sunk cost.
Like I've sunk so much costinto, I might as well finish it.
So the the thing whenever I gointo a new organization I always
find you can always find thisperson.
I'm like can you tell me aboutthe projects that changed name?
They're the ones I go lookingfor because it's the same
project under a new name,hopeful that something changes.
And you're like it used to becalled project phoenix and now
(25:09):
it's called project radar, andand you're like Project Phoenix
was never going to ship andneither is Radar.
Is it like neither of that?
But you've changed the name andeveryone thinks it's a new
project.
So it's like why didn't youkill it?
Or who's doing the pre-mortem tosay how do we increase the
chance of success or reduce thechance of failure, or an
exercise we do sometimes.
If we're starting again rightnow, would we do this?
(25:30):
And sometimes the answer is no.
We're like oh, we'll stop itthen, because the next best
thing is better, because it's anopportunity cost.
If we finish this project,we're not starting another one.
Yeah, absolutely.
The opportunity cost is oftenthere and we're quite nimble in
that regard, and we do sowithout damaging egos.
But I think most organizationswould finish those projects
regardless, then do apost-implementation plan.
(25:52):
That said, we should never havedone that.
You're like it's a bit late,you've spent all the money.
Fatimah Abbouchi (25:56):
It's like there was a really large home
loan program that I was part ofand they had restarted it three
times and on the third time,after spending about $20 million
absolutely failure of a programthey shut it down for the third
time, mind you, and one of thebiggest challenges was the
operational sme knowledge inthat bank that was over the last
(26:16):
50 years in home loans and thedelivery team was completely
agile.
The two could not meet in themiddle.
Yeah, they just clashed yeah,and they didn't define their
ways of working.
Dominic Price (26:24):
Their guard drives all that stuff up front
to kick off the programsuccessfully so they can see an
out, an output and an outcomebut just just like, listen to
that example right and multiplythat out on steroids In every
organization where you're likeoh it's not that you had a bad
idea, the idea was great.
In fact, there was a marketopportunity there.
You boogied it up in yourdelivery.
Your execution stopped thatgood idea ever making it to
(26:46):
market and you had threeattempts.
And I don't think that's anabnormal story.
I think every organization'sgot that story where they're
like yeah, that's a great idea,why did we never ship it?
It's because you had two teamsthat just had organ rejection
that you they never found a wayof operating together absolutely
.
Fatimah Abbouchi (27:00):
It's the strategy not meeting delivery
and operations in the same place, which is exactly why we, um,
we.
I was having some conversationsthis week and one one of the
person, one of the people I wastalking to were saying oh so, so
you identify changes needed inan organization, but you execute
them as well.
And it goes back to yourthought leadership comment,
where everyone out there ishappy to tell you the theory,
but how many people are actuallyputting into practice and
(27:21):
experimenting?
Dominic Price (27:22):
Yeah, it's funny.
I've become aware recently, inthe last few years, of a thing I
call knowledge obesity.
It's a whole lot of people thatare just consuming endless
knowledge and doing nothing withit.
Fatimah Abbouchi (27:34):
Yes, and you're like you know.
Dominic Price (27:35):
So I did a talk late last year at South by
Southwest on duocracy how do wemove from knowledge obesity,
from just gaining knowledge anddoing nothing with it, to going
hang on?
What's the next best step?
What's the thing I should doright now to drive improvement?
So don't talk about continuousimprovement, do continuous
(27:57):
improvement.
And it's funny how, like theminute I thought about that, I'm
like I can think of all thepeople I've worked with in the
past that are in the do phase.
Yes, and all the ones that are.
They can talk an amazing game,they're never going to actually
do it yep, absolutely.
Fatimah Abbouchi (28:03):
That's.
A lot of consultants these dayscan tell you what to do.
Dominic Price (28:06):
But not actually execute, not roll the sleeves up
and actually do it with youspeaking of um?
Fatimah Abbouchi (28:10):
you know you talk about knowledge.
Obesity just brought me to athought.
I want to sort of touch on ai.
So it seems like with ai Idon't know if you would agree
with this, but it seems likemost people are just content
consumers and there's verylittle creation happening in
well, at least where I'm seeing.
What's your views on what'shappening in ai and what do you
think is like the most excitingthings on the horizon?
Dominic Price (28:32):
Yeah, there's.
I mean there's a spectrum ofstuff I'm seeing, right, there's
.
There's a whole sort of backendAI stuff that is like
fundamental infrastructure styletechnology stuff that looks a
bit clunky right now, but onceyou get over the tipping point
you're like, damn right.
So I spent some time with theteam from Amazon Web Services
the other week and you look atthe experiments they're running,
(28:53):
you're like that's cool, scarystuff.
That's also a huge investmentand they've got the bandwidth to
do that.
So they're going big on thatstuff, right?
If you look at most sort ofnormal organizations right now,
sadly for me, the reality isthey've gone.
How can we use this as a marginplay?
I run a call center.
How can I use ai to take on xpercent of my calls so I can
(29:16):
reduce my staff numbers?
Because staff are expensive andai is cheaper and and that is
just a chase for profit andmargin and shareholder return,
which is not the worst thing todo, but I don't think it's the
reason to do it.
It doesn't feel like asustainable, you know, societal
way of thinking about it.
Right?
So that that bit I'm like, oh,I get it.
Every time a new tech comes out, we're like how can it save us
money so we can all make more um, or some people make more um.
(29:40):
The reality is is we're havingthere's two experiments we're
running right now that I'mreally fascinated by.
One is responsible tech.
Um, this was a bit of acurveball.
So our legal, privacy andgovernment affairs team
partnered with our technologyteam and they were like what
does responsible tech look like?
How do we understand whichstakeholders might be impacted?
(30:02):
How do we understand truth?
How do we understand ethics andmorals?
And you're like, damn so latelast year, we released our
template that we use internally.
So every technology changewe're going through internally,
we've we've created thistemplate of all these things
that we consider, like, how dowe avoid inequity with ai?
And you're like, oh, that is abig, bold question.
(30:23):
So we're going through that umall the time.
And with my colleague, uh, annajaffe, I'm doing a presentation
next week to a whole lot oftech muffins right on ai.
But it's not about the tech ofai, it's about the
responsibility of ai um and thesecond experiment we're running
is how do we talk about this?
not from a technology standpointhere's a large language model
and blah, blah, blah, blah, umbut from a here's the use case.
(30:44):
Yes, and and that's the thingthat when I see it it really
warms me because I'm like, oh, Iget that, get that, I can
consume that.
But when I see the here's thetechnology and the network
diagram and all the stuff itcould do, I'm like, okay, but
what is it going to do?
And I don't think we've askedthat question enough.
I think we've got carried awayby the toy but not yet worked
out where we're going to deploythe toy in our world.
(31:05):
That makes our life better, notjust a transaction at work
faster, but our actual livesmore enriched.
So we're doing that and it'shard, it takes a while, because
you want to like we've got awhole lot of tech people that
just want to play with the tech.
And I might not go play withthe tech, but through the lens
of what use case am I improvingand what does this look like for
an end consumer and how does itimpact their day-to-day life,
(31:26):
their work, their context, theirhappiness, their engagement,
all those things?
So that that gives me the warmfuzzies that we might do it
right.
But I think right now we'reright in that midpoint of you
know, as a society as a whole,we're part curious and part
petrified.
We're hopeful it doesn't ruineverything, but deep down we're
worried that it might.
But actually it's humans makinga lot of these decisions.
(31:47):
Right, the technos is notmaking the decisions for us.
Fatimah Abbouchi (31:49):
So I think there's more conversations to be
had around the ethics and themorality part oh, 100, I think,
just the ip risk alone, as someorganizations are not even using
it because they just don't knowwhat you know.
Dominic Price (32:00):
Legal situation might end up coming as a result
of that so, yeah, the fair, thefair fact is high, because I
think that the upside, theupside, is potentially good, but
the downside consequence ispotentially high.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Fatimah Abbouchi (32:11):
You don't want Disney coming after you for
using their IP and doing soillegally, Absolutely.
I just wanted to come back towe're talking about mental
health and mental wellness a bigadvocate of that, and obviously
it relates to how organisationstreat their staff and whatnot.
One of the things I'm seeing andI wonder if you're seeing the
same thing is that organisationsthat are trying to deploy agile
(32:31):
ways of working are actuallystarting to reduce layers of
governance.
So line managers but whatthey're doing is they're not
reducing the work, they're not,as you said before, removing
things, and then there's thispressure of workload shifting to
the remaining resources, andthen that's actually adding
layers and layers of stress.
Are you seeing that in placesyou're working as well?
Dominic Price (32:52):
Yeah, it's a funny one it's.
Sometimes it's a short-termsymptom of the change.
Like in any change you gothrough, you've got an element
of pain.
Yeah, I liken it to um whenever, whenever no one talks about
imposter syndrome, like if, ifyou feel 100 comfortable and
content in your job today, thenyou should be nervous, right,
you, you, you probably grow byjust stepping into that next
(33:14):
level and being a bituncomfortable for a bit and that
discomfort helps you grow.
And then you get good at thatjob and you're like I might go
again, right, and it might notbe up, it might be across, you
might move across.
It's the same in organizationalchange, right, people tend to
sit there and go oh, this way ofworking is rubbish, it's crap,
it's terrible.
(33:34):
No, we need to fix it and weput the new one out.
They're like, oh, I don't likethat, oh, it's uncomfortable,
and you're like it's, it'sprobably going to feel
uncomfortable for a while.
The question is, are wenavigating out of that like, do
we find a new reality which isbetter, or are we just thrashing
because we're missing anessential ingredient?
So I would say about half thetime it's companies missing an
essential ingredient and theingredient is either have they
trained their people, have theygot the right practices, and now
(33:56):
they're amplifying it withtechnology.
But the reason I mentioned thatis a lot of agile change is
technology driven.
They roll out a new tool butthey don't train the people,
they don't change the practices.
No, as I've seen in othercompanies, like I was working
with a large bank recently theythey trained all their people
really well great trainingcourses, right.
Great l.
They trained all their peoplereally well.
Great training courses, right.
Great L&D.
That evolved all theirpractices and their ways of
(34:16):
working and they had an archaic1984 tool.
So people were like I want towork that way, but the system
you've given me is the oppositeof that and so that tension you
can genuinely feel.
So you've got to get thosethree congruent and consistent
right.
If you get those consistentuentand consistent right, if you
(34:37):
get those consistent, I thinkyou've got a chance.
It's still going to be painful,but you've got a chance.
So whenever anyone's in thatthis feels uncomfortable.
Fatimah Abbouchi (34:40):
I always ask them which one of the three is
missing, and that's the secretand it's interesting because a
lot of the time I'm seeingorganizations will start with
the tech.
They'll make a decision on techbut not actually think of how
that's going to impact theirprocess and the changes as well.
So, no, that's a really goodway of looking at it, thinking
about the people side ofbusiness and cultural elements.
How do you scale culture in anorganisation?
(35:01):
Because it seems like you'vedone that at Atlassian, from
where you guys had started allthe way to now.
Dominic Price (35:07):
How do you think we've scaled culture?
Fatimah Abbouchi (35:09):
Oh, I don't know there's so many.
I mean you had the opportunityto start, start on the right
foot as a civilization as astartup.
That start mentality.
Yes, you know, weeding out anybad eggs from the beginning, um,
and then layering up from there.
So I think you got theopportunity to start right, but
I guess what was it that you didat the beginning that helped
you get to the point you are,and have you seen a shift in
(35:31):
that culture and an organisationso big?
Dominic Price (35:33):
Yeah, look.
I mean, when I joined at lastyear we were about 700 people.
We're now over like 11 and abit thousand.
We had 35,000 customers when Ijoined.
We're now 300,000.
We were privately listed,publicly listed, like
competitions.
Changed text, everything'schanged, and so the culture's
changed as well.
Our values have stayed largelyconsistent and so, having those
(35:56):
as an anchor point, they getchallenged occasionally.
You reach certain milestonesand you know, certainly right
now, in an environment where theeconomy is tougher and you've
got to ratchet things up, youwant to be true to those values,
but you might actually bebehaving differently than when
we're in a rising tide.
Right In the pandemic, wheneveryone was buying
collaboration software, it feltlike that was going to continue
(36:18):
forever.
And then the pandemic ceases,people start traveling again,
things change and you get thistrue up and you've got to work
harder for your dollar, right.
So I think our values havelargely stayed the same.
Our culture has evolved, andI'd even go as far to say we
don't have a singular culture.
I think we have a mixture ofcultures that aren't threatening
(36:39):
or challenging each other, butare locally optimized.
You know, I spent time in ouroffice in India.
They have a slightly differentculture to our office in Poland,
to our office in Amsterdam, toour office in San Francisco, to
New York, to Sydney right, and Ithink that's right.
I don't know that we strive fora monoculture.
I've worked in environments inprevious existence where I think
(37:02):
I was part of a monoculture andit's very comfortable because
everyone's the same, but reallydull, there's no cognitive
diversity there.
So I think, embracing thedifference in cultures there, I
think we've got that balanceright.
I think I think the way it'sworked is the accommodation of
almost like pessimism andhumility, like we're always
(37:25):
worried that the wheels mightcome falling off and so we
strive for more, for improvement, for better.
Every time we finish a project,even if it's successful, we'll
talk about the success, but wealso want to talk about how we
could have done it better orfaster or quicker, and so
getting that and thatcombination is hard.
You don't want to ruinsomeone's mojo.
They've just shipped an amazingproject.
How could you have done thatbetter?
You're like blah right.
(37:45):
But similarly, if you just clapall the time, then we all
become mediocre and I don't wantto celebrate mediocrity anymore
.
So finding that balance is hard.
I think the other thing is likeand this is always a funny one
to talk about I try to talkabout this as much as possible
(38:05):
and no one wants to listen.
We get a lot of things wrong andwhenever I talk about it,
people are like no, like yourshare price and your products
and your culture and you win allthese awards, I'm like.
But we win those awards byexperimenting and half our
experiments go wrong.
And when they do, we're like ah, we got that wrong, oops, right
.
And then we're like what wentwrong?
What was our intent?
How did we do it better?
And that's normally nine timesout of ten a very open dialogue.
(38:25):
And when you see that frompeople of all shapes and sizes,
you're like oh, this, this is asafe environment where, where I
can explore and experiment andbe curious and I'm not going to
get punished.
In fact, I might get recognizedfor it.
Um, and so our recognitionsystem.
We have a system called kudos.
You know, someone does a greatjob and they get a kudos within
(38:45):
sort of 24 hours.
You know, fatima, here's thething that you did, here's the
value that you lived, and here'sa 40 gift factory.
Go and get yourself a coffee ora treat or whatever, and it's
not the monetary reward, it'sthe recognition from your peers
if you did a great job above andbeyond um, that stimulates a
lot of our cultural change andso it's like osmosis.
It's not, there's not a culturechampion, it's not owned.
(39:07):
We don't have a people andculture team, we have a people
team.
They don't own culture, neitherdo I, and either scott or mike,
like.
No one singularly owns it, butcollectively we all contribute
to it every day.
So how do we not walk past badbehaviors?
Yes, that's probably thebiggest question I ask on a
daily basis, and that is harderin a distributed world, where
it's harder to see badbehaviours.
Fatimah Abbouchi (39:28):
Yeah, absolutely I like that idea,
even thinking about the culturesbeing different in different
countries and different regionsaround the world.
It makes logical sense becauseyou visit a country and they
have different cultures anddifferent governance
requirements and different waysof working and different
delivery, but you're stillfollowing that same central
essence as well.
Dominic Price (39:47):
So I think Fatima , go back to your point before
about those two teams comingtogether, right?
Yes, so my engineering team inIndia is working with my
marketing team in San Francisco.
Right, they have differentcultures, but therefore, one of
the most important things iswhen they start to work together
, what's the common way ofworking that unites them so you
keep your cultural elements?
I'm not taking those away,exactly, I'm only going to have
(40:09):
one way of working as you uniteas a team, because I'm not
paying the translation taxAbsolutely, and that's the bit
of the conversation that oftengets forgotten.
We celebrate the diversity ofculture, but we forget to bring
people together absolutely it's.
Fatimah Abbouchi (40:21):
It's interesting.
It's like one organization Iwas working and they had all
these different agile tribesacross the company and what they
were trying to do is geteverybody to work the way that
they work, because that's whatworked for them in their tribe
and it's actually moredisconnect than actually
connectiveness.
It's yeah.
Dominic Price (40:36):
Yeah, we can work any way we want, as long as
it's my way yeah, absolutely,it's simple.
Fatimah Abbouchi (40:40):
Things like even aesthetically, you know,
formats of powerpoints and theway that it's just, it's like
that's what you're focused on.
That you're really not going tobe successful you said it
before, fixed mindset.
Dominic Price (40:49):
This is the way.
Fatimah Abbouchi (40:50):
It's a singular way and makes them
comfortable, as you were talkingabout before.
Thinking about um, you know,just thinking about teamwork and
um, the distributed teams.
So people ask the question alot of how to get the most out
of their teams when they aredistributed.
What's worked really well foryou so, culture side, what's
worked really well for Atlassianto have that?
Dominic Price (41:14):
Three really simple steps.
Step one accept right now yourteams are distributed.
Like, stop fighting it, stopdebating it.
Like, accept it.
Virtually every company of anysize I work with they're
distributed in some way, and Idon't mean work from home versus
work from office.
I mean you're in Melbourne andI'm in Sydney.
We're distributed right.
Even if we're both in an officeright now, we're still
distributed.
So step one accept it.
Step two is build it.
(41:43):
So my favorite exercise rightnow is the working agreement
play which I do with any team Iwork with.
Like when we first cometogether, what is our social
contract of how we're going towork?
Don't assume that because it'slazy.
You just need to invest a tinybit of time working on that.
And once you've got that socialcontract, you're bringing
people together.
And then the third step is, on aregular basis, do a check-in on
team health.
Team health is something that Iknow at last year.
We care about a lot, a lot oforganizations I talk to.
(42:05):
They nod and they're like I getit, we don't do it and I'm like
why?
But like why are you notchecking in on a team to go?
I know you've got that socialcontract.
How's it working for you, whatis working, what's not, and
what's one thing we could dodifferently the next two weeks
to be better.
That's free, I didn't cost youanything.
Um, and the teams that do that,you genuinely see they focus on
the environment and when theycreate an environment where
(42:27):
people can thrive, those teamsthrive like it's not rocket
science.
So you know, dealing with thatemotional side as well as the
kind of iq side has been veryimportant.
Fatimah Abbouchi (42:36):
Those three things together create
formidable teams that areresilient and can achieve pretty
much anything and please don'tcreate team social contracts,
like I've seen them do,organizations do and then
completely forget about it.
Dominic Price (42:49):
File it and they never see it again yeah, yeah,
and that's what we said.
I mean, yeah, you've seen thatas well, the set and forget.
You're like it's not a tick boxexercise.
I mean, I, I went with a team,uh, middle of last year we came
up with one and then after aboutafter about three weeks, we all
sat down and it's not workingfor us.
So we revised it, we tweaked itand then we're like, let's try
this.
Three weeks later, we're likethere you go, version two, but
(43:09):
then it changed again because wegot a new team member and so on
maternity leave.
Each time we had a milestonechange, we revisited that social
contract, but again, not abusiness case, not written in
blood, not a compliance document.
How are we choosing to worktogether and is that effective
for us?
And it's different for everyteam.
Fatimah Abbouchi (43:32):
Absolutely.
You talked about makingmistakes and learning from them.
Is there a pivotal moment inyour career, either in your
current line of work or previousroles, where you've made maybe
a significant mistake, but a biglearning came from it that you
can share?
Dominic Price (43:41):
There's a whole load for me there's.
There's been no like huge, likeepiphany moments, and that's
because I'm probably making lotsof little mistakes all the time
, and so there's no like, oh mygod, I think there's.
There's a favorite bit offeedback I got.
There's a a keynotepresentation I built a couple of
years ago and I was reallyhappy with it and, uh, maybe my
(44:02):
got in the way.
It was a good deck and I wasdelivering it at a conference
once and the usual thing anyonegot any questions, feedback at
the end.
And there's this one guyhanging around afterwards and
I'd had 10 minutes of peoplegoing.
That was amazing.
It was inspirational.
I learned so much.
I was like yeah, yeah, yeah.
And there's this one guy hangingaround.
I'm like I don't know, I don'tthink he's here for a compliment
(44:26):
that my little spidey sensewent off and he said um, would
you like some feedback?
I was like yeah, no, of course.
He's like, no, honestly, you doyou want some feedback?
And I was like, yeah, no, I,actually I do.
He's like cool.
He said I feel like in yourpresentation you've just told me
what fit looks like.
He's like at no point in yourpresentation have you
acknowledged that I'm fat and Iwant to get fit, and I was like
tell me more.
(44:47):
And he's like.
He said I feel like yourpresentation was like Instagram
yeah, I see a super fit, healthyperson, but they you've not
helped me understand where tostart.
You've not acknowledged me andwho I am and he's like so you
telling me what a highperforming team looks like has
actually just pissed me off,because I'm not in one right now
.
I want to be.
You've not told me how to do itand I was like honestly, mate,
(45:08):
that is an absolute gem.
Like it was the biggest gift Igot.
Because I went back and I'mlike my, my presentation had
good intent, but it was missingthe point.
So I reverse engineered like,instead of talking about what a
high performing team looks like,I then start to talk about
here's how you create, here'sthe conditions for creating a
high performing team and here'show you acknowledge where you
might be today in your firststep.
(45:29):
And so that, for me, was agreat nudge and I've been very
fortunate with coaches, mentorsand feedback that I get these
regular nudges that help meimprove but that that was one
where I honestly like eyes, eyeswide open.
I thought that was a greatpresentation, until someone told
me it wasn't, and it's just agreat reminder it's so important
(45:49):
.
Fatimah Abbouchi (45:50):
It goes back to what you said around um team
health as an example gettingfeedback from the team, whether
you know, you're rolling outcertain metrics or measurements
and getting that directly instand-ups or other.
You're getting it from a, froma prospective customer, and then
applying applying.
You went and applied somethingso you didn't just put it on the
backlog and forget about itanything with it.
Dominic Price (46:09):
That's so powerful yeah, I literally got
on.
I.
I got on the plane and startedplaying with the slides.
I'm like the.
The narrative doesn't reallyhave to change.
It's the perspective, it's thelens that changes.
It's how do I help, instead ofme showing off and massaging my
ego by going I know what a highperforming team looks like.
I flipped it to.
I do, but what I'm going totalk about is what are the steps
(46:29):
to start to build that and howdoes that feel like?
yeah, and that was a way morepowerful presentation it makes
sense.
Fatimah Abbouchi (46:35):
There's a lot, a lot of um, you know um
speakers out there at the momentthat are sharing the theory and
how what good looks like yeahbut nothing to actually help you
move from nothing tangible.
Dominic Price (46:45):
We're in like framework frenzy heaven.
Like if one person gives meanother framework, I'm like I
don't need any more frameworks.
Like what's the thing I'm meantto do.
Fatimah Abbouchi (46:52):
Like, don't give me a three by three exactly
and and so then, thinking aboutall the speaking that you do,
what's the most common questionthat you get asked?
Dominic Price (47:01):
um more so now, because I'm doing a lot of kind
of activation type keynotes andworkshops is where do I start?
And that, for me, is when I getthat as a question.
I know I've started to do myjob Because they've gone through
the theory, they're sold on theidea, they're now thinking
about implementation, so that'sreally good.
What I get a lot from people iscan I come and work at
(47:24):
atlassian?
And normally when I unpack thatit's because they're unhappy
where they're where they are.
And I give every single personthe same advice try and do it
where you are first, like usethe human capital you've built
up in that environment and tryit there, because if you improve
it there, you might like it andyou might stay, which is good
for you, and if you don'timprove it there, you've got a
great story for an interview.
Fatimah Abbouchi (47:44):
But if you run away from it because it's crap,
I don't want to hire you I wantyou to be willing to do the
hard work oh, absolutely and inand you know, work through that
challenge so that you becomeanother learning experience for
yourself absolutely what do youthink has been?
you know, as as a small businessourselves, and with aspirations
to grow big.
What do you think has helpedAtlassian to get to where it is
(48:07):
today?
You know, aside from theculture that we talked about,
what do you think?
Do you think it was making thetech easy for people?
Do you think it was?
You know what are the keycharacteristics that have helped
the organization grow to whereit is today.
Dominic Price (48:22):
I'm going to try and pick two things.
There's many things, but I'mgoing to try and pick two.
One is our focus on teamwork sothere is no superhero, there's
no lone person, lone ranger thatstands on the soapbox and says
I won, we.
We only ever say we won, uh.
And similarly, we, we screwedit up, not I screwed it right,
we, we, we share ourcelebrations as a team and we
(48:44):
share our losses as a team.
That that seems like a like ano-brainer ethos, really hard to
do when, when egos and successand failure is like a whole lot
of stuff going on.
But that that's been a profoundpart of my existence in my 10,
nearly 11 years now at atlassian.
And the second one is we've gotdistracted occasionally by
getting bigger.
(49:04):
But if I could give you a freecoaching moment, fatima, I'd say
don't have a dream of gettingbig, have a dream of getting
better.
There is an art form to scalinggracefully and many
organizations I work with scaled, but they didn't scale
gracefully, they didn't getbetter.
In fact, as they got bigger,you, you got less inclined to
(49:27):
work there.
Um, and I think that's a sadreality for so many
organizations.
You hear people go oh, like weused to do, used to do this, or
the good old days, and you,there's always some of that, but
you get so much of that.
You're like when did we losethat?
When, when, when did we losethe goodness, the rich tapestry,
the fun?
Because they were the growthdays.
That's when we're deliveringvalue, because it was like when
(49:47):
did we grow up?
And so there's a mindset coach.
I work with Ben Crow who usedto coach Ash Barty, the World
and World Tennis player, and awhole lot of other sports stars.
But whenever I talk to him he'slike the opposite of play isn't
work.
The opposite of play isn't work.
The opposite of play is fear andI think there's too much fear
in business and in AtlassianI've certainly always been
(50:08):
fortunate.
I don't know if everyone elsehas the same experience.
It's it's quite a playfulenvironment.
That doesn't mean we don't takelife seriously.
We do.
We take our customers and ourresponsibilities very seriously,
but we do do it in a playfulmanner and I think that's been a
secret to our scalinggracefully.
Is that the playfulness or thehumility that's in there?
Fatimah Abbouchi (50:27):
And you know what they say fear is fake
events appearing real.
Dominic Price (50:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's very true, right, and we've all
been in that environment, right.
And you're just petrified,You're like this seems real but
it's not, and you just it's ahuge amount of self-doubt and
weird stuff happens with it.
I get it.
There's a lot of leaders whochoose to lead that way.
That's their choice.
I would rather lead throughplayfulness.
Fatimah Abbouchi (50:47):
Absolutely.
And, like you said, if you'vegot permission to fail, you can
just do something.
Just move the dial, do anything.
Dominic Price (50:54):
Yeah, like trust your gut instinct and take a bet
right.
Because, you're not betting thehouse.
Yeah, absolutely yeah you'renot.
Fatimah Abbouchi (51:00):
You're not betting everything on this.
You're betting somethingexactly as long as you know.
I say to my team as long asthey're not going to sink the
business to my um, experimentand experimentation is
completely fine yeah so we'realmost out of time today.
My last question for you is, um, if there's anything else that
you'd like to share with ourlisteners, a call to action, a
piece of advice or a question toponder today uh, one one, one
(51:24):
thing, one thing, uh,self-compassion.
Dominic Price (51:28):
Uh, I've been been noodling this for a while.
If, if you want to be asustainable leader, partner,
boyfriend, girlfriend, husband,wife, you know, parent, uh, team
, whatever it is we're allmembers of many different teams
in life, society, business,whatever you have to start with
some level of self-compassion.
And I think in the world rightnow we're so distracted by
(51:49):
external motivations Like, as acompany, I want to do this to be
more like Spotify.
No, no, I don't Do it to bebetter for your customers and
better for yourself and a greatplace to work.
Do it for those reasons, andthey seem selfish.
I don't think it's bad place towork.
Do for those reasons, and theyseem selfish.
I don't know.
I don't think it's bad, rightand so for me, that, that
self-compassion, if, if leadersand employees and teammates
could start with that right now,I I think we've, uh, we've got
(52:11):
a really good chance of creatinga wonderful future sounds
really good and it will probablyhelp on the mental wellness
side as well 100 thank you somuch for joining us on.
Fatimah Abbouchi (52:20):
This has been incredibly valuable.
We could have talked for a lotlonger, I feel I know you've
probably got a million and onethings to do, but thank you so
much for I saw it's a greatconversation.
Dominic Price (52:28):
Thanks for hosting.
Fatimah Abbouchi (52:29):
Thank you so much for listening to this
podcast.
Please share this with someoneor rate it if you enjoyed it.
Don't forget to follow us onsocial media and to stay up to
date with all things Agile Ideas, go to our website, www.
agilemanagementoffice.
com.
I hope you've been able tolearn, feel or be inspired today
(52:50):
.
Until next time, what's yourAgile idea?
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