May 6, 2025 • 28 mins
Mark Cruth, Principal Modern Work Coach and Advocate at Atlassian, has been knee deep in the Atlassian system of work for years. A driving force behind Atlassian’s Team playbook,and a big fan of starting from templates, Mark has been helping organizations implement better ways of working.
Such a treat to sit down with Mark at the Atlassian Team ‘25 event in Anaheim, California. He walked me though some of this foundational team effectiveness philosophies, starting with alignment around goal, clear working agreements, clear roles and responsibilities, and an emphasis on getting closer with the teams one step removed, upstream, and downstream, to stay aligned.
Please join me in welcoming Mark Cruth to the Work 20XX podcast
Let’s make things more explicit. More communication, fewer assumptions.
Thanks again Mark.
Editor's Note:
Recorded 2025-Apr-10, Anaheim Convention Center. My first solo onsite recording with some new gear. Missing my rock star production team.
Special shout out to Rob Castaneda and Team ServiceRocket for sharing their booth to enable this recording.
YouTube - Click Here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF0JsaJfR8M&list=PLZURvMqWbYjmmJlwGj0L0jWbWdCej1Jlt
Transcript and Show Notes - Click Here
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Okay, so I'll count us down
and we will go.
in three, two, one.
Hey welcome back everybodyJeff Frick here.
Coming to you from not from the home office
like I usually am
But I jumped on the road,went down I5 to Anaheim to
right next door to the happiest place on earth.
Maybe this is the happiestplace on Earth this week.
It's the Atlassian Team ‘25 show.
(00:20):
5,000 people running around
learning all about teams and teamwork
So we're really excitedto have our next guest
who's really an expert in the field.
He's Mark Cruth, thePrincipal Modern Work Coach
[Jeff] and Advocate[Mark] Oh yeah
at Atlassian. Mark, great to meet you finally in person
I know right.We've interacted online.
I'm excited to see you.And you know what
I would we are the happiest place on earth.
And you just get the benefit of going off to Disney
(00:42):
[Mark] to enjoy the other part.[Jeff] That’s right
[Jeff] This is the true ‘E’ ticket[Mark] It truly is right.
You feel the spirit aroundthis place, right?
This is so much stuffgoing on here today.
So, so manybig themes.
So there's a lot of placeswe're going to go.
But let's talk about someof the foundation
you talked about you know,
you need kind of the foundationbefore you can build the house
Yeah
before you build anything.
You have to have some ofthese foundations.
(01:03):
So what are some of thefoundational pieces
Yeah
that have to be in placeto be successful as a team?
I think it really comesback down to
I always think of there's really four things
that any good team needs,
and I find it it works for
you know, development team,
a finance team,an executive team
with stuff like
you got to have alignment on where you're going
We have this‘Team Playbook.’
You probably heard about it at Atlassian.
(01:24):
[Jeff] Yep
You know, these have different practices
that we've done,at Atlassian
to help us kind ofform how we work
And really these come out of there.
So we have things like a team poster
get alignment on whereyou're going as a team.
Why you're going there.Who's your customers?
You got things likeworking agreements.
I think working agreementsare probably the
biggest element to anyteam coming together,
because it comesdown to like
let's make thoseimplicit assumptions
(01:45):
that we have when we work together
very explicityou know.
Right, right
You got roles andresponsibilities. Super simple
but it's missed all the time.
And then we have, you know,
work has become so complex nowadays
that you need to understand
the network of teamsyou're working with.
So we actually run aplay around that.
And really, what it's all about is,
again giving teams the intention of what they're doing,
who they are, where they're playing
(02:06):
and who they’re playing with.
And if you can give them that,
you can then start layering in tooling
to actually make them more efficient.
But without that, you're not effective at all.
It's so interesting,right?
Because I don't think very many companies
put in the rules
not only about how we work in general,
but even like around a specific tool.
They put in a new tool here,they put in a new tool there,
(02:27):
nobody really knows.
Yeah.
What you're supposed to do
when and where and how, what the rules are.
I think one of the best ways to
that company if they're struggling with that too.
And to approach thatis with templates
like I'm a big advocate of templates
is like, you know
and we woulddo that
whether it be in Confluence or Jira, whatever it is
And they give youlike saying,
‘Hey, you're creating a new team with a new space.’
Let's give you some ofthese pages
(02:47):
that will be like, ‘Hey, you should run this play.’
You should do this playbecause these are core pieces
You know, if you're in Jira
Here let's set you upwith a good workflow.
I love it in how we set up
like the different projects in Jira
if your a marketing team, or your a software team
We'll give you not just ato do, in progress, done,
you knowworkflow
We'll give you somethingthat says,
‘Hey, based off the way most teams work,
this is a good place to start
(03:09):
And I think that's somethingthat gets missed so often is that
[Jeff] Right
you give themjust a blank slate
and people need to have not
a blank slate feels goodbecause you're like,
I can havefreedom.
But I also need to knowwhat good could look like.
And so it's good to startsomewhere, I find.
[Jeff] Right, right.
[Jeff] Yeah, structure helps[Mark] Oh yeah
even just like the basic one you've talked about a lot
How do we measure success?
Most people
(03:29):
never get to the stage to say,
What does successlook like?
And as I think Dom saidin his session,
success isn't the actual work productthat you're working on right now
It's a muchbroader concept.
[Mark] Oh, it comes back down to like,
I think so often it’s a
one of the things wecreated, about two years
was this idea of a ‘Modern Work Manifesto’
And one of those thingswithin that
(03:49):
is looking at outcomes over output.
And one of the things wefind is that so often you look at
I delivered the thing
that's my success.
It’s like no. What was the reasonyou delivered that thing?
What was the thing thatyou were trying to achieve?
Because there was likelysome sort of customer impact
or some sort of efficiencyor something in the
in your ecosystemyou're trying to get.
That's what you got to look at.
And so often to your point,
we get
(04:10):
it’s like we're inundated bythe busy, like what's the next thing
And we never go back anddo that measurement.
And so for me,
that’s actually one of the things I lovewith how we use things like our goals
in Atlassian home,because
when you have these things
you separate them enough from the work
where the work is happening, but you don't close the goal until
you’ve actually donethe measurement.
So now you can go back and be like, okay,
(04:30):
What did we learn?
Did we actually have the impact?
Because otherwise you justcomplete the work,
mark it done.
So often you don'tgo back to it.
And I think that's one of those
biggest things that
cause of company just to keep
repeating theissues they experience.
Right, right.
I mean, Simon Sinek saidit many, many times, right
It's about the ‘why’ people wanna
Not only the why for internally
but the why from thecustomer point of view.
They alsowant to know,
(04:51):
you know, why you're doing it.
And we see such a hugemisalignment in goals.
Right
I think you said when you’ve talked to teams
you get to that question
Ohoooo
you get all kinds of different answers.
Well you know what’s interesting with goals too
It’s, I think we
I still think in generalmost organizations
need to fundamentally changehow they approach goals because
goals today are beingapproached from more of like
(05:11):
an organizational perspectivewhere like you have
a top goal in an organization
and then it goes down,be like, all right
I'm gonna send it to the departments.
You've got marketing and finance, and now they have a goal
to go tothat goal,
and then they sub down.
And now all of a sudden,instead of having a goal that
makes sense across an organization, you have
well finance’s goalis to do this
and this marketingis to do this
Software is to do this.
(05:32):
The thing is, is those don't necessarily work together now
And so we've broken it down.
It's like we’ve siloed our goals
And I think
that's one ofthe big areas
like I mentioned thingslike our network of teams.
That was a big piece forus to try to look at.
When we understand the teams we need to work with to get work done
we say we should have a goal across those teams
and then yes,it might ladder up
to something higher upin the organization,
(05:52):
but we don't want to havethose individual siloed ones.
Otherwise, again.
You're just doingthe motion in my opinion
you're just going through and saying,
Oh, I did thegoal thing.
Okay, but
But did it have the impact?
[Jeff] Right, right.
One of the things that Don talked about
when I had him on the show before is also
really focusing not on the entire organization
[Jeff] because it's big[Mark] Yes, it’s too vast
But really thosedirect teams that are
(06:14):
one degree upstream and one degree downstream
and making surethat you guys are aligned.
Yup
And really getting thatleverage point is
how can I help you get your job done better?
Yep.
Then thatyou know
[Jeff] And you get this great impact [Mark] Well and it’s facinating when you think about that
You get like a chain, you know
it's like the links of a chain all of a sudden yes
if you were to try to getall the chain pieces to come together,
it doesn't happen.
But if you link thesepieces together,
(06:35):
yes, this teamdown here
doesn't need to know what I knew.
He doesn't need toworry about me.
But as I connect down the line,
all of a sudden we have a shared you know,
essentially a shared understandingthat gets built across the link.
So one of the things you talk about is
autonomy with alignment
Yeah, yeah.
Tell us a little bit aboutmore about that, its.
You know, at first glance
(06:56):
somebody might think that they’re diametrically opposed
but in fact they need to be used in concert
to really achievegreat results.
I think, you know, one ofthe things that you see a lot of times
especially with teams, is they would say
we want to have the freedom
to work however we wanna work.
And I'm supportiveof that to the extent
of what we want totry to accomplish.
Let's say I've got five teams
(07:16):
and they all have their vastlydifferent ways of working,
and then we try to make sense of things the next layer up
They have vastly differentways of working
and different ways ofmeasuring success.
We start to struggle totry to connect the dots.
Now we got apples and Volksyou know, Volkswagens, you know, its
you're not playing with the same thing.
And so for me I'm like,all right,
what's the minimal levelof standardization.
(07:36):
What's the, you know,minimal, what’s that?
Minimal Viable Process MVP
that's what I like tothink of MVP as
And so what you do is youcome up with that and say,
maybe it's workflows,maybe it's statuses,
whatever it is
But you find that minimalthing and say,
this is the thing we need to align on,
and if we getalignment on that,
we can then now all of asudden make better decisions
We can move faster layers up.
(07:58):
And I think especiallyin the day,
in an age of the enterprise
with needing to have differentbusiness units come together
and actually workin concert
having that MVP, thatminimal viable process up the chain
gives you theability to then
actually move quickly
but then you still give the teams as much autonomy as possible
You give them the abilityto, you know, decentralize
(08:18):
as much of the decisionmaking as possible.
[Jeff] Right
But you say
these are the few thingsthat we need to align on.
That's actually I used todo a lot of work with our prduct Jira line
and that was the biggestmessage that we would
then bring to ourcustomers is like,
We love our team autonomy,
but if we want to haveorganizational agility,
we have to findthe compromise.
Right.
And what's the biggest pushback
(08:38):
you get from people who are trying to
change the waythey work?
Either push back because they don't think they can do it or
push back like, Mark, you're crazy
[Mark] It’s usually the latter.[Jeff] we’ll never get this done
Or I just don't see how this could possibly happen
So I think the biggest thing
Fun story, I was workingwith a customer,
a big consumer products company and they
we were bringingin this kind of idea
of autonomy and alignment,
(08:58):
and we were talking aboutchanging the workflow for
just a story, a story,a simple story.
We're saying, hey
we need this to be changed so we can line up
and they’re like, no, we have a very strict process
And I was like,okay,
they walk me throughand it's very complex
It was a poor process and altogether.
But they were like, no,this is our way of working
and I says ‘Okay’
So if you
you can keepdoing that.
(09:18):
I never as a coach, I said
I never want totell you what to do
But I’m going to say
I’m going to tell you what you don't get
because you do that
And so for them,
they were tryingto ladder things up
to be ableto see this
like leadership level alignment
and I says,
you're not going to be able to do that.
You'll have to go inmanually and set that
and I showed themhow to do it manually,
and they’relike okay
And it's funny, it was
I let them kind of experience the pain
(09:38):
You know, they hadto go through that.
I swear to God,
three months later they reach out to me and they’re like
so I think we want to tryto align on the workflow
because we do
they realized that wasn't the hill to die on
because so often we gettied to the things
that we maybe invested our time into
but not realizing like,
what's it actually serving?
What's the outcome thatwe're looking for, you know
And so for them, it justtook them some time.
(09:59):
And so for me,
I find if I go and I thrust an idea on somebody
like, no, we're all going to do it, you know
and the human responseis to be like,
No, I don't want to do it you know
But if I can show them andkind of let them kind of
feel what that process might cause them,
all of a suddenthey’re like
all right,
maybe the outcomeis actually different than the output
which isthat workflow.
(10:19):
It's just interesting howcalcified things get.
My favorite are like justweekly status meetings
[Mark] Oh yeah. Yeah, right.
which consume how much time?
[Mark] Oh, gosh, I remem’[Jeff] per day
And it's usually one person talking and 15 people listening
And you know,
I get my two minutesmaybe, maybe not
so totally different way
It is fascinating.
I remember I used to sit in, it was a Thursday.
We would sit in like a five hour status meeting in the afternoon
(10:42):
And the funny thing is, I always like to joke is that
that was the day we all went to the bar after work to you know
because we all needed to have a drink after that
[Jeff] Right.
And so, you know, that wasand that was something
we never fixed that when I was there.
And as I've gone throughother organizations,
I've seen that play out.
And we started realizing we're like, all right
what are wetrying to learn?
And that's whereeven Atlassian,
things like our status reporting,things like that
(11:03):
is so drasticallydifferent.
It's that aspect where we say, hey,
let's be ableto update
you know, once a week.
Let's give you a quick update,
but then show you what you need to know,
not what you don't.
You know, if a projectneeds help, if you need
if you have an issue
let's elevate that.
But if it's great andeverything's fine,
don't worry about that
Don't spend your timespending 15 minutes on that
Be hearing that everything is fine.
(11:24):
It's like I can see that myself.
And you guys are so ahead of the curve on
on email as well
I mean, you had Jira as aninternal tool to use,
but I remember learning like
nobody at Atlassian uses email internally.
[Jeff] I’m like, that’s Genius[Mark] I know, right?
I mean, how much time has that saved you every single day?
Well it's and it's funny because when I joined
so I've been at the company abouta little over five years.
And I remember when I joined
(11:44):
we were.
And it all goes down to how we intentionally do it too is
I remember my onboarding
They actually talked to usabout email.
They talked to us aboutSlack messaging,
all these sorts of things.
They said, this is how we do it at Atlassian.
Because, you know, if I
if I just came in,bring my old habits,
I probably would have beenusing email but they’re like
this is how we communicate.
And they say, and you’re just like
so when someone,lets say for example
sends you a Slack message
(12:06):
or you want to send someone
don’t just first say ‘Hi’ and then say,
and wait for a reply,
like ask your questionbecause they say
we are an asynchronous company
Right
We are a company that youhave to rely on the fact that
someone around the world might get this you know tomorrow
Don't give yourself thatmuch time.
Go through the process andactually say, hey,
assume that they'll get it
and give them what they need to get back to you,
(12:26):
Right, right
So another big piece wedidn't talk about yet, but
I think Annie Dean talked about it in her session
about how many hours are spent searching for information and
And I know it's somewhereI have a little recall
I can't remember is it a DM, is it a text?
Is it a Slack, is it a email, is it a Jira ticket?
And you guys have really,especially with the new AI push
(12:47):
[Mark] Oh yeah.
Making a big move tobasically making that information
way more discoverable
[Jeff] not only discoverable [Mark] 100%
[Jeff] but even presented to you[Mark] 100%. Right.
Well, it's things like having that kind of unified search
You know, I was actually just having a conversation
with a group in oneof our brain dates about
the usage of AI for like search and like really unifying information
(13:07):
And it's that aspect where now
I can connect the rightdata sources.
And now when I ask myquestion, I can do it in a way that give me
essentially a response thatlooks across those data sources
So now to your point,
I can save that, what is itfour, five, six hours,
I'm spending every couple days searching
to actually say,
hey, this is theinformation I need.
Okay, so you have another jobbeyond your formal job
(13:28):
that's on yourLinkedIn title.
[Mark] Yeah, yeah,
that's the executive producer of ‘Experts Unleashed’ [podcast]
[Mark] Yes, I am.
So I want to ask you a couple questions
about‘Experts Unleashed’
Yeah, yeah
We're gonna start with oneof my favorite people,
and that's Patty McCord.
Oh, I lovethat episode.
It’s such a great episode.
And you know, her point that,
if you give somebodypositive feedback
(13:49):
immediately after they dosomething positive
to her quote was
they'll do that three more times, before the end of the day
[Mark] Right, exactly.
And I think that's
that's something acrossevery single one of those episodes
There's been those nuggets like that.
And like Patty, I loveShe's a pistol, you know
Yeah.
And the way she wouldapproach it, she was like,
it was almost that aspect of like, you know,
(14:10):
We want to beWe want to be
What was it?
Is it Brené Brown that says,
we want to be
don't want to be nice. We want to be kind.
You know, we want to be.
We want to work fast,
but we want to give effective feedback
And she said, like, that's the biggest issue out there
is that people don't know how to give effective feedback
And it’s knowing the moment to do it
it's knowing when to do it and how to do it.
That's great.
(14:30):
Okay, another one
Andy Walshe
Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah.
[Mark] The bear, I love that one[Jeff] talking about really.
There was.
So I'll let you tell the story.
But there was a couple of sides to it.
So tell the story aboutwhat he does to get people
to kind of open up theirsenses, if you will.
It's almost like scrapingoff the top layer
so you expose the nerve endings.
It really is!
And that's you said that same thing,
(14:51):
where it's that aspectwhere it's like
you got to take people outof their comfort zone, you know,
put them in a spot wherethey're not, like in danger.
But from a sense perspective,
they feel they're a fish out of water.
So like in their case,what they do
is they take a bunch of leaders
and they bring them out to the wilderness.
And, you know, what they would do
is they say, you gotta learn how to survive. We're with you
They would teach them out on the spot
where maybe they werereliant on other people,
(15:12):
and then they had to figure outhow to work then as a team
because that's the one of the biggest issues
that he would see is that
these leadership teams were never leadership teams.
They were a group ofleaders, you know, and so
as they were going through this,
they would exposethem to things like
a bear, like theyactually worked with a
What was it? A circus trained bear handler.
And they would bring it in
And they bring the bear in
and people would, they would be like
(15:33):
that aspect of adrenalinethat they went through
it just
right straight to the amygdala.
Exactly.
And it was like how theyreacted together with that
And it was
and they told them afterwards why they did it
but it was just
it's one of those things where you have to
pull yourself out of the moment
Actually, even here,
that's kind of like whatthese events for me are about
You know, it's like we get people
out of their normal work environments
(15:54):
[Jeff] Right
to show them what'spossible in work.
You know, like, hey, they
you know, I get so many people come up and they’re like
this conference is so differentthan any other conference I go to
And I'm like, I want youto remember that feeling.
Yeah, it was cool.
And I love I loved, Dom's take on it too,
which was
even if it's not asextreme as the bear,
even if it's something like sing a song or, you know
it’s so easy
(16:14):
to get fixed in this little lane
that we're fixed into
and it doesn't take thatmuch to get bumped off.
And suddenly it just wakes you up and
[Mark] I took a,
I went through,
been trained in like anorganizational coaching in the past
And I remember going to a coaching camp
where, you know,
you could go somewhere, I could stay in a Hilton,
and then you know, go tothe conference room and do it
And what they did was theyactually rented out a,
(16:36):
like a, it was like a Airbnbthis big Airbnb
where, like, they made thefood free and stuff like that.
We all stayed thereand, you know, we
we had ourown rooms
But it wasn’t just when this training was done,
we went back to our hotel room.
No, we were all there, middle of the woods somewhere you know
And so we got to break bread and kind of bond through
not just the coaching,
but like just the experience of being together
(16:56):
And it for me, it's always been
one of the most formativeevents of my life
because it was somethingwhere it was different.
[Jeff] Right
It wasn't the standard,you know, hey,
go to, you know, go to this boardroom from 8 to 5
and then we'll see you tomorrow from 8 to 5.
[Jeff] Right.
Okay, I got some moreI want to drop
you just tell me
What comes to your mind?
Ben Crowe
Ben Crowe
Ben Crowe
(17:17):
One of my favorite thingsabout Ben Crowe
is that we rereleasedhis episode, back in December,
because the first episodewas cut down a little bit.
And so I'd seen Ben Croweand it was.
And his,his full episode.
I told Dom, said
we gotta bring this whole thing out there because
he had so many great gems
about how you kind of likeeven approach,
you know, when he was working with his clients,
(17:37):
like the tennis star like
getting them to get overtheir internal, like, blockers.
We got missed thatin the first episode.
And he's like,
that is such a rich pieceof information
that we got to sharewith the world.
So Ben Crowe is fantastic,I love him,
I will probably have him back on again.
That's great.
And that's the cool thingabout podcasts.
[Jeff] I mean, [Mark] yeah
you can clip them upand you can make clips
that are digestible,but the whole idea is
(17:57):
you don't have to clip upthe original source asset
[Mark] I love [Jeff] Let it run, right?
Know, it's that first.
It was funny.We did the first episode.
We was a very professionally done, you know,
and I looked at it and Dom came to me
he’s like, hey, what do you think?
You know, would you liketo help with these?
I'm like, yeah, and I said my one.
My one stipulation for helping with this is
I want this to be a conversation.
I want it to be unedited, you know?
And, you know,the first one had edits.
(18:19):
I was like, and he's like, Yeah, I would love that.
And so from then on,everything has been unedited.
And it has been
full run, you know, whether it be 40 minutes
or 55 minutes, you know,
he's runs the whole time and it's just
it’s cool to get people in their natural element like that.
So I, and then to your pointwe'll create clips
and release them outto get those teasers out there.
There's really great nuggets, but
(18:39):
absolutely love like just having that full conversation.
Right.
One more Genevieve Bell
Oh, so Genevieve Bell was funbecause she talked about like,
AI and like, you know, how
how like, what are we goingto learn from today and how
what wish do we wishwe knew today?
Like tomorrow, what did we wish we knew today?
And she talks about how
(19:00):
[Jeff] Scary
I know it is and you’re like.
Well and she even talksabout things like,
you know, what was that?
Oh I forgot.
His name's James Bell, I thinkthe creator of the steam engine.
You know how I love that story, she said.
It's like, wow, if we would have
if we hada magic wand
and we could go back in time and tell him, it’s like, wow,
if you thought about making thatjust a little bit differently
to prevent, you know, all the
the pollution we see today, like,
(19:21):
could we be like, wow, wouldn't that be awesome?
It's like, how do we keep that mindset today
as we're approaching AIand other technologies?
Be like, what will the future personin 200 years ask us?
And I was like, oh, that's a good question.
Yeah
Especially as quicklyas things are going.
We're in a spot where we could
easily not ask that question.
(19:41):
[Jeff] Right
And then who knowswhat will happen.
So I think that was the big thing I took from her was like
taking that timeto actually say,
Huh? What will peoplebe asking?
Like wishing we did back then.
It's really interesting.
I'm actuallyreally scared about that,
because if you look at, say,Social Dilemma [Netflix 2020]
And what we didn't do around social media
and the law of unintended consequences that in
(20:02):
an ad based model
that's based on clicks,
really does much betterwith inflammatory content.
[Mark] 100%
Nothing to do with anything else
[Mark] I know. Right, exactly.
[Jeff] Right, just simple, simple math [Mark] We're going to kind of stoke the fires
So they see how the it's impact to the world.
Yeah.
And the other onethat really is,
disconcerting is our privacy stancehere in the States.
If you look at GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]
(20:23):
Yeah
Fact that the EU could come togetheras a group of countries
and come up with a unified standard.
Yeah,
We can't even do it as a group of states.
Right.
And then you look ahead at AI
and talk about governanceand regulation.
And everyone's like,‘Well it's gonna stop the innovation.’
Like not necessarily.
Well, I think that's athere’s this fear of it
of it stoppinginnovation.
But the thing is, is that
(20:43):
Is that
do should webut there
we need to do itresponsibly.
[Jeff] Right
You know, that's the thing.
Like there's nothing saying that we shouldn't innovate.
We just need to do itin a responsible way.
Like to your point with the EU and has how they've approached it,
it's not slowing them down, you know.
Although I don't know.
[Mark] I guess we'll see[Jeff] We'll see.
We'll see.
I don't think it'll slow them.
I think there's plentyof opportunity, the
Yeah.
(21:03):
The question is who's going to follow the regs
who’s not going to bother regs
but at least be talking about it
instead of just you know,
[Jeff] We’ve just [Mark Yeah]
it’s not just technology, business
business unfettered
does not have a long history
of doingthe right things,
right
to people or the planet or anybody.
And I think that's, again,it goes back to Genevieve Bell.
And for me,and that's like going back like,
all right, let's ask that question of like,
what are people going to be sayingasking, and wishing we did.
(21:25):
Right.
In you know, 200 yearsfrom now with this
So companies change a lot.
[Mark] Yeah.
Went from two CEOs to one CEO.
I think that was last year.
You got the biggest logo on the Formula One, or the F1 car
[Mark] I know, right?
in the back.
So you've been here for five years.
How are you seeing Atlassian
kind of grow and change
as it's no longer two guysin Sydney working on Jira tickets
(21:45):
to get rid of open source.
The story I always like to tell with this one is like.
So when I joined,we were like 2,000 people.
And I don't know if you've heard the numbers
Mike keeps throwing around[CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes]
[Mark] keeps saying 15,000[Jeff] 15,000 I heard, right
isn’t that wild
And so as you can imagine,
that changes the way an organization works.
And for us, the way we've looked at
and what I love about Atlassian is that
(22:05):
I see a lot of organizationsas they grow and
I’ve experienced this as they've grown,
is that as they get bigger,
they start adding more valuesor principles or things like that
to try to kind of justify different waysof working across an organization.
But for us, we've stuck with our same values,
and what we do is continueto look at our decisions
from those lenses.
And honestly, having people like Mike and Anu [Bharadwaj]
(22:26):
and others there
who continue to help reinforce that for us,
has really helped to shape the way the organization continues to grow
We get new ideas,we get new process
things that come inbecause as we get bigger,
we need it and we have different ideas.
That's why we hire these people that come in
[Jeff] Right
But as long as we'restill grounded in those values
of you know, play as a teamand things like that,
(22:47):
that helps us to actuallystill keep the Atlassian spark.
And for me, that's somethingthat's so important.
That's why I joined this company.
[Jeff] Right.
Was I absolutely lovehow we work with the customers,
how we had fun as a teamand we still do that.
It's really interesting.
Companies that are value led,you can really tell
because everyone you talk tois weaving the values in.
(23:07):
[Jeff] All the time[Mark] All the time
Right?
[Mark] Yup [Jeff] It’s pretty
And it goes back to kind ofyour autonomy with alignment.
Right.
Bring in a bunch of fresh smart people.
Let them do their thing.
But you know now you've got thisconsistency on the values.
So that you’re all going in the right direction.
[Mark] Exactly.[Jeff] You guys are so
[Mark] Let us do our things[Jeff] focused on goal alignment right
you know and then but know where we're all headed.
Right.
So you've been herefor a couple days now.
(23:27):
I'm curious, what are some of the,most interesting
or surprising things
that you've heard in the hallwaysor after a session from
from some of the people.
So it's interesting.
We even did today.
We did some of these reaction videos
for customers out there to say,
‘Hey, we watched the keynote,
We gave them some segments.
What did you guys think?
And some of the coolthings I've heard is that
one of course, Rovo being freeon a general basis, that's
(23:49):
that's somethingpeople are excited about,
because I think a lot ofpeople are like,
they want to play with these AI agents,
they just don't know
one, they don't want to have to pay the price
to actually go pay,but
they want to beable to then
see what's possible.
And, I
the analogy I've been using,it's just like
AI today is like copy and pastein a word processor.
You know,
you wouldn't pay extra for copyand paste in a word processor.
(24:11):
It's necessary to actually helpyou get your job done.
That's kind of the way Rovo is
for us and our platform and I love that.
Also things like Teamwork Collections.
It's being able to bring inproducts like a loom now
Now that they'repart of our system,
are really our system of work.
Being able to showcase that
people are really excited.
They did a customer briefing this morning and
the customer wanted to know about loom,
and we started talkingabout how they
(24:32):
we create training from it
how we share meetingupdates from it.
We get rid of meetings.
And you justsee their eyes
get bigger and bigger,and they're like,
these are all the things I struggle with
[Jeff] Right
And we're like, yeah.
And we sharedwe did a live one right there.
We went right through the process
and they're like,I didn't realize it was that easy.
And so there's a lot of aha's.
And like I've been hearing more and more
people going to our customer hub,
to talk to all of our teams
(24:53):
that there's just genuinely like
wow, these are things that I never thought was possible.
I'm going to goplay with that.
Right
I think that's what I'm excited.
I want people to goplay and explore now,
and we're giving peoplethose opportunities with Rovo,
with teamwork collectionsactually going explore.
It's interesting on the on the video side with loom because
Yeah
I've been in video for a long time.
The problem with videoused to always be
(25:14):
that if the best part, well say like your podcast, right?
If the best minutewas in minute 23.
Yeah.
How do you ever?
How do you find it?
How do you consume it?
And how do youshare it?
And you couldn'tdo it before
without the advances
that we now have aroundtranscription and closed captions.
So you can now have a searchable database.
Yep.
The other piece of it that
(25:35):
is newnow is
and I can imagine
how many times do I shoot the thirty second loom
because I don't like the way my hair looks,
Right
or I screw upthe script.
But now you've got
a whole generation of peoplewho are much more comfortable
talking to their phone.
[Mark] Yep
you know, having shortcuts.
So how do you avoid kind ofthe Instagram's got to be perfect.
[Jeff] Just get it out there [Mark] I know, right
You know that's the biggest thing for me
is actually workget like
(25:56):
my biggest feedbackto people
when using loom is like
treat it like the like the Instagram thing like
don't feel like you have to make it perfect.
If anything, when you try to make it perfect
it actually ruins the authenticityof it in my opinion
And so I said, yeah, get it going.
If you don't wantto be on video.
You know what?
Don't worryabout it
It’s just, don't do it. You know,we have that ability.
We even have the abilitycoming out I think
it’s some of our new beta featuresis to even create your own avatars.
(26:19):
So you can have that avatar, and the avatar can now represent you.
It just gives you the abilityto still get the message across.
[Jeff] Right.
And for me, you know I
what I love about itis that you can go in
and you can again
have that convo like
share thoseideas
and then whenI consume it
and I consume it at like 2x speed, you know.
And so, I mean, I may not even be looking at it,
I'm just consuming it like verbally,you know, from a verbal perspective.
(26:39):
And that's justit helps so much.
And I just love toon the road
that you guys are giving
so many examples to help people.
because I think the biggest problem for most people,
I’ve gotta cheat you know
we went from slide rules to,
you know, Excel, or no HP, HP calculators,
I still never learned how to operate one of those reverse English notation.
Right. The spreadsheet.
(26:59):
And now this is a new tool butpeople don't know where to begin.
So I think you guyshave really done a good job in
in sayinghere's some
here's some waysthat you
can integrate thisas a thought partner,
here's this way you can help discover things
and find waysto help people
work it into their workflow.
Well, it kind of goes right back to that first question you asked around,
you know, what are those foundations?
And those foundations aren't a product
(27:20):
They’re practices.
They're jobs to be done
they’re things that you know,you're trying to accomplish.
And I think we've donea really good job at
really bringing thoselike system of work
is how we position this.
And it's not these sets of tools.
It’s hey, you're trying to get these jobs done,
and now these tools are idealto help you get those jobs done
And this is how they do it.
And I think that's something
a lot of organizations struggleto actually find that connection.
(27:43):
And so we're trying to answerthe questions of how they work
and then show themthis is how you can do it.
Then with a Jira, a loom, a Rovo,what have you.
Right.
Well Mark love the enthusiasm
Jeff, it’s been great
lots of stuff going on.
Congrats to you and the team and
Ah, thank you.
Yeah, a lot of big announcementsand a great show.
It's been awesome.
Thank you so much Jeff for the chat. I've loved it.
My pleasure. I was glad we finally got to meet
(28:04):
I know, finally made it happen.
All right. He's Mark,I'm Jeff
you're watching Work 20XX
from the Atlassian Team ‘25in Anaheim California.
Thanks for watching.Thanks for listening.
We'll catchyou next time.
Take care.
Boom.
Yeah, buddy.
Thank you man.
Yeah, it was fun.
Hey, Jeff Frick Here
big shout out to the podcast audience.
Thanks for listening in.
You can get show notes and transcripts at Work20XX.com
(28:29):
And that also has links to the videos as well.
Appreciate you listeningin on the podcast
Do reach out
say hello, like subscribeand smash that notification bell.
Thanks for listening.Take care. Bye bye.
Okay, so I'll count us down
and we will go.
in three, two, one.
Hey welcome back everybodyJeff Frick here.
Coming to you from not from the home office
like I usually am
But I jumped on the road,went down I5 to Anaheim to
right next door to the happiest place on earth.
Maybe this is the happiestplace on Earth this week.
It's the Atlassian Team ‘25 show.
(00:20):
5,000 people running around
learning all about teams and teamwork
So we're really excitedto have our next guest
who's really an expert in the field.
He's Mark Cruth, thePrincipal Modern Work Coach
[Jeff] and Advocate[Mark] Oh yeah
at Atlassian. Mark, great to meet you finally in person
I know right.We've interacted online.
I'm excited to see you.And you know what
I would we are the happiest place on earth.
And you just get the benefit of going off to Disney
(00:42):
[Mark] to enjoy the other part.[Jeff] That’s right
[Jeff] This is the true ‘E’ ticket[Mark] It truly is right.
You feel the spirit aroundthis place, right?
This is so much stuffgoing on here today.
So, so manybig themes.
So there's a lot of placeswe're going to go.
But let's talk about someof the foundation
you talked about you know,
you need kind of the foundationbefore you can build the house
Yeah
before you build anything.
You have to have some ofthese foundations.
(01:03):
So what are some of thefoundational pieces
Yeah
that have to be in placeto be successful as a team?
I think it really comesback down to
I always think of there's really four things
that any good team needs,
and I find it it works for
you know, development team,
a finance team,an executive team
with stuff like
you got to have alignment on where you're going
We have this‘Team Playbook.’
You probably heard about it at Atlassian.
(01:24):
[Jeff] Yep
You know, these have different practices
that we've done,at Atlassian
to help us kind ofform how we work
And really these come out of there.
So we have things like a team poster
get alignment on whereyou're going as a team.
Why you're going there.Who's your customers?
You got things likeworking agreements.
I think working agreementsare probably the
biggest element to anyteam coming together,
because it comesdown to like
let's make thoseimplicit assumptions
(01:45):
that we have when we work together
very explicityou know.
Right, right
You got roles andresponsibilities. Super simple
but it's missed all the time.
And then we have, you know,
work has become so complex nowadays
that you need to understand
the network of teamsyou're working with.
So we actually run aplay around that.
And really, what it's all about is,
again giving teams the intention of what they're doing,
who they are, where they're playing
(02:06):
and who they’re playing with.
And if you can give them that,
you can then start layering in tooling
to actually make them more efficient.
But without that, you're not effective at all.
It's so interesting,right?
Because I don't think very many companies
put in the rules
not only about how we work in general,
but even like around a specific tool.
They put in a new tool here,they put in a new tool there,
(02:27):
nobody really knows.
Yeah.
What you're supposed to do
when and where and how, what the rules are.
I think one of the best ways to
that company if they're struggling with that too.
And to approach thatis with templates
like I'm a big advocate of templates
is like, you know
and we woulddo that
whether it be in Confluence or Jira, whatever it is
And they give youlike saying,
‘Hey, you're creating a new team with a new space.’
Let's give you some ofthese pages
(02:47):
that will be like, ‘Hey, you should run this play.’
You should do this playbecause these are core pieces
You know, if you're in Jira
Here let's set you upwith a good workflow.
I love it in how we set up
like the different projects in Jira
if your a marketing team, or your a software team
We'll give you not just ato do, in progress, done,
you knowworkflow
We'll give you somethingthat says,
‘Hey, based off the way most teams work,
this is a good place to start
(03:09):
And I think that's somethingthat gets missed so often is that
[Jeff] Right
you give themjust a blank slate
and people need to have not
a blank slate feels goodbecause you're like,
I can havefreedom.
But I also need to knowwhat good could look like.
And so it's good to startsomewhere, I find.
[Jeff] Right, right.
[Jeff] Yeah, structure helps[Mark] Oh yeah
even just like the basic one you've talked about a lot
How do we measure success?
Most people
(03:29):
never get to the stage to say,
What does successlook like?
And as I think Dom saidin his session,
success isn't the actual work productthat you're working on right now
It's a muchbroader concept.
[Mark] Oh, it comes back down to like,
I think so often it’s a
one of the things wecreated, about two years
was this idea of a ‘Modern Work Manifesto’
And one of those thingswithin that
(03:49):
is looking at outcomes over output.
And one of the things wefind is that so often you look at
I delivered the thing
that's my success.
It’s like no. What was the reasonyou delivered that thing?
What was the thing thatyou were trying to achieve?
Because there was likelysome sort of customer impact
or some sort of efficiencyor something in the
in your ecosystemyou're trying to get.
That's what you got to look at.
And so often to your point,
we get
(04:10):
it’s like we're inundated bythe busy, like what's the next thing
And we never go back anddo that measurement.
And so for me,
that’s actually one of the things I lovewith how we use things like our goals
in Atlassian home,because
when you have these things
you separate them enough from the work
where the work is happening, but you don't close the goal until
you’ve actually donethe measurement.
So now you can go back and be like, okay,
(04:30):
What did we learn?
Did we actually have the impact?
Because otherwise you justcomplete the work,
mark it done.
So often you don'tgo back to it.
And I think that's one of those
biggest things that
cause of company just to keep
repeating theissues they experience.
Right, right.
I mean, Simon Sinek saidit many, many times, right
It's about the ‘why’ people wanna
Not only the why for internally
but the why from thecustomer point of view.
They alsowant to know,
(04:51):
you know, why you're doing it.
And we see such a hugemisalignment in goals.
Right
I think you said when you’ve talked to teams
you get to that question
Ohoooo
you get all kinds of different answers.
Well you know what’s interesting with goals too
It’s, I think we
I still think in generalmost organizations
need to fundamentally changehow they approach goals because
goals today are beingapproached from more of like
(05:11):
an organizational perspectivewhere like you have
a top goal in an organization
and then it goes down,be like, all right
I'm gonna send it to the departments.
You've got marketing and finance, and now they have a goal
to go tothat goal,
and then they sub down.
And now all of a sudden,instead of having a goal that
makes sense across an organization, you have
well finance’s goalis to do this
and this marketingis to do this
Software is to do this.
(05:32):
The thing is, is those don't necessarily work together now
And so we've broken it down.
It's like we’ve siloed our goals
And I think
that's one ofthe big areas
like I mentioned thingslike our network of teams.
That was a big piece forus to try to look at.
When we understand the teams we need to work with to get work done
we say we should have a goal across those teams
and then yes,it might ladder up
to something higher upin the organization,
(05:52):
but we don't want to havethose individual siloed ones.
Otherwise, again.
You're just doingthe motion in my opinion
you're just going through and saying,
Oh, I did thegoal thing.
Okay, but
But did it have the impact?
[Jeff] Right, right.
One of the things that Don talked about
when I had him on the show before is also
really focusing not on the entire organization
[Jeff] because it's big[Mark] Yes, it’s too vast
But really thosedirect teams that are
(06:14):
one degree upstream and one degree downstream
and making surethat you guys are aligned.
Yup
And really getting thatleverage point is
how can I help you get your job done better?
Yep.
Then thatyou know
[Jeff] And you get this great impact [Mark] Well and it’s facinating when you think about that
You get like a chain, you know
it's like the links of a chain all of a sudden yes
if you were to try to getall the chain pieces to come together,
it doesn't happen.
But if you link thesepieces together,
(06:35):
yes, this teamdown here
doesn't need to know what I knew.
He doesn't need toworry about me.
But as I connect down the line,
all of a sudden we have a shared you know,
essentially a shared understandingthat gets built across the link.
So one of the things you talk about is
autonomy with alignment
Yeah, yeah.
Tell us a little bit aboutmore about that, its.
You know, at first glance
(06:56):
somebody might think that they’re diametrically opposed
but in fact they need to be used in concert
to really achievegreat results.
I think, you know, one ofthe things that you see a lot of times
especially with teams, is they would say
we want to have the freedom
to work however we wanna work.
And I'm supportiveof that to the extent
of what we want totry to accomplish.
Let's say I've got five teams
(07:16):
and they all have their vastlydifferent ways of working,
and then we try to make sense of things the next layer up
They have vastly differentways of working
and different ways ofmeasuring success.
We start to struggle totry to connect the dots.
Now we got apples and Volksyou know, Volkswagens, you know, its
you're not playing with the same thing.
And so for me I'm like,all right,
what's the minimal levelof standardization.
(07:36):
What's the, you know,minimal, what’s that?
Minimal Viable Process MVP
that's what I like tothink of MVP as
And so what you do is youcome up with that and say,
maybe it's workflows,maybe it's statuses,
whatever it is
But you find that minimalthing and say,
this is the thing we need to align on,
and if we getalignment on that,
we can then now all of asudden make better decisions
We can move faster layers up.
(07:58):
And I think especiallyin the day,
in an age of the enterprise
with needing to have differentbusiness units come together
and actually workin concert
having that MVP, thatminimal viable process up the chain
gives you theability to then
actually move quickly
but then you still give the teams as much autonomy as possible
You give them the abilityto, you know, decentralize
(08:18):
as much of the decisionmaking as possible.
[Jeff] Right
But you say
these are the few thingsthat we need to align on.
That's actually I used todo a lot of work with our prduct Jira line
and that was the biggestmessage that we would
then bring to ourcustomers is like,
We love our team autonomy,
but if we want to haveorganizational agility,
we have to findthe compromise.
Right.
And what's the biggest pushback
(08:38):
you get from people who are trying to
change the waythey work?
Either push back because they don't think they can do it or
push back like, Mark, you're crazy
[Mark] It’s usually the latter.[Jeff] we’ll never get this done
Or I just don't see how this could possibly happen
So I think the biggest thing
Fun story, I was workingwith a customer,
a big consumer products company and they
we were bringingin this kind of idea
of autonomy and alignment,
(08:58):
and we were talking aboutchanging the workflow for
just a story, a story,a simple story.
We're saying, hey
we need this to be changed so we can line up
and they’re like, no, we have a very strict process
And I was like,okay,
they walk me throughand it's very complex
It was a poor process and altogether.
But they were like, no,this is our way of working
and I says ‘Okay’
So if you
you can keepdoing that.
(09:18):
I never as a coach, I said
I never want totell you what to do
But I’m going to say
I’m going to tell you what you don't get
because you do that
And so for them,
they were tryingto ladder things up
to be ableto see this
like leadership level alignment
and I says,
you're not going to be able to do that.
You'll have to go inmanually and set that
and I showed themhow to do it manually,
and they’relike okay
And it's funny, it was
I let them kind of experience the pain
(09:38):
You know, they hadto go through that.
I swear to God,
three months later they reach out to me and they’re like
so I think we want to tryto align on the workflow
because we do
they realized that wasn't the hill to die on
because so often we gettied to the things
that we maybe invested our time into
but not realizing like,
what's it actually serving?
What's the outcome thatwe're looking for, you know
And so for them, it justtook them some time.
(09:59):
And so for me,
I find if I go and I thrust an idea on somebody
like, no, we're all going to do it, you know
and the human responseis to be like,
No, I don't want to do it you know
But if I can show them andkind of let them kind of
feel what that process might cause them,
all of a suddenthey’re like
all right,
maybe the outcomeis actually different than the output
which isthat workflow.
(10:19):
It's just interesting howcalcified things get.
My favorite are like justweekly status meetings
[Mark] Oh yeah. Yeah, right.
which consume how much time?
[Mark] Oh, gosh, I remem’[Jeff] per day
And it's usually one person talking and 15 people listening
And you know,
I get my two minutesmaybe, maybe not
so totally different way
It is fascinating.
I remember I used to sit in, it was a Thursday.
We would sit in like a five hour status meeting in the afternoon
(10:42):
And the funny thing is, I always like to joke is that
that was the day we all went to the bar after work to you know
because we all needed to have a drink after that
[Jeff] Right.
And so, you know, that wasand that was something
we never fixed that when I was there.
And as I've gone throughother organizations,
I've seen that play out.
And we started realizing we're like, all right
what are wetrying to learn?
And that's whereeven Atlassian,
things like our status reporting,things like that
(11:03):
is so drasticallydifferent.
It's that aspect where we say, hey,
let's be ableto update
you know, once a week.
Let's give you a quick update,
but then show you what you need to know,
not what you don't.
You know, if a projectneeds help, if you need
if you have an issue
let's elevate that.
But if it's great andeverything's fine,
don't worry about that
Don't spend your timespending 15 minutes on that
Be hearing that everything is fine.
(11:24):
It's like I can see that myself.
And you guys are so ahead of the curve on
on email as well
I mean, you had Jira as aninternal tool to use,
but I remember learning like
nobody at Atlassian uses email internally.
[Jeff] I’m like, that’s Genius[Mark] I know, right?
I mean, how much time has that saved you every single day?
Well it's and it's funny because when I joined
so I've been at the company abouta little over five years.
And I remember when I joined
(11:44):
we were.
And it all goes down to how we intentionally do it too is
I remember my onboarding
They actually talked to usabout email.
They talked to us aboutSlack messaging,
all these sorts of things.
They said, this is how we do it at Atlassian.
Because, you know, if I
if I just came in,bring my old habits,
I probably would have beenusing email but they’re like
this is how we communicate.
And they say, and you’re just like
so when someone,lets say for example
sends you a Slack message
(12:06):
or you want to send someone
don’t just first say ‘Hi’ and then say,
and wait for a reply,
like ask your questionbecause they say
we are an asynchronous company
Right
We are a company that youhave to rely on the fact that
someone around the world might get this you know tomorrow
Don't give yourself thatmuch time.
Go through the process andactually say, hey,
assume that they'll get it
and give them what they need to get back to you,
(12:26):
Right, right
So another big piece wedidn't talk about yet, but
I think Annie Dean talked about it in her session
about how many hours are spent searching for information and
And I know it's somewhereI have a little recall
I can't remember is it a DM, is it a text?
Is it a Slack, is it a email, is it a Jira ticket?
And you guys have really,especially with the new AI push
(12:47):
[Mark] Oh yeah.
Making a big move tobasically making that information
way more discoverable
[Jeff] not only discoverable [Mark] 100%
[Jeff] but even presented to you[Mark] 100%. Right.
Well, it's things like having that kind of unified search
You know, I was actually just having a conversation
with a group in oneof our brain dates about
the usage of AI for like search and like really unifying information
(13:07):
And it's that aspect where now
I can connect the rightdata sources.
And now when I ask myquestion, I can do it in a way that give me
essentially a response thatlooks across those data sources
So now to your point,
I can save that, what is itfour, five, six hours,
I'm spending every couple days searching
to actually say,
hey, this is theinformation I need.
Okay, so you have another jobbeyond your formal job
(13:28):
that's on yourLinkedIn title.
[Mark] Yeah, yeah,
that's the executive producer of ‘Experts Unleashed’ [podcast]
[Mark] Yes, I am.
So I want to ask you a couple questions
about‘Experts Unleashed’
Yeah, yeah
We're gonna start with oneof my favorite people,
and that's Patty McCord.
Oh, I lovethat episode.
It’s such a great episode.
And you know, her point that,
if you give somebodypositive feedback
(13:49):
immediately after they dosomething positive
to her quote was
they'll do that three more times, before the end of the day
[Mark] Right, exactly.
And I think that's
that's something acrossevery single one of those episodes
There's been those nuggets like that.
And like Patty, I loveShe's a pistol, you know
Yeah.
And the way she wouldapproach it, she was like,
it was almost that aspect of like, you know,
(14:10):
We want to beWe want to be
What was it?
Is it Brené Brown that says,
we want to be
don't want to be nice. We want to be kind.
You know, we want to be.
We want to work fast,
but we want to give effective feedback
And she said, like, that's the biggest issue out there
is that people don't know how to give effective feedback
And it’s knowing the moment to do it
it's knowing when to do it and how to do it.
That's great.
(14:30):
Okay, another one
Andy Walshe
Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah.
[Mark] The bear, I love that one[Jeff] talking about really.
There was.
So I'll let you tell the story.
But there was a couple of sides to it.
So tell the story aboutwhat he does to get people
to kind of open up theirsenses, if you will.
It's almost like scrapingoff the top layer
so you expose the nerve endings.
It really is!
And that's you said that same thing,
(14:51):
where it's that aspectwhere it's like
you got to take people outof their comfort zone, you know,
put them in a spot wherethey're not, like in danger.
But from a sense perspective,
they feel they're a fish out of water.
So like in their case,what they do
is they take a bunch of leaders
and they bring them out to the wilderness.
And, you know, what they would do
is they say, you gotta learn how to survive. We're with you
They would teach them out on the spot
where maybe they werereliant on other people,
(15:12):
and then they had to figure outhow to work then as a team
because that's the one of the biggest issues
that he would see is that
these leadership teams were never leadership teams.
They were a group ofleaders, you know, and so
as they were going through this,
they would exposethem to things like
a bear, like theyactually worked with a
What was it? A circus trained bear handler.
And they would bring it in
And they bring the bear in
and people would, they would be like
(15:33):
that aspect of adrenalinethat they went through
it just
right straight to the amygdala.
Exactly.
And it was like how theyreacted together with that
And it was
and they told them afterwards why they did it
but it was just
it's one of those things where you have to
pull yourself out of the moment
Actually, even here,
that's kind of like whatthese events for me are about
You know, it's like we get people
out of their normal work environments
(15:54):
[Jeff] Right
to show them what'spossible in work.
You know, like, hey, they
you know, I get so many people come up and they’re like
this conference is so differentthan any other conference I go to
And I'm like, I want youto remember that feeling.
Yeah, it was cool.
And I love I loved, Dom's take on it too,
which was
even if it's not asextreme as the bear,
even if it's something like sing a song or, you know
it’s so easy
(16:14):
to get fixed in this little lane
that we're fixed into
and it doesn't take thatmuch to get bumped off.
And suddenly it just wakes you up and
[Mark] I took a,
I went through,
been trained in like anorganizational coaching in the past
And I remember going to a coaching camp
where, you know,
you could go somewhere, I could stay in a Hilton,
and then you know, go tothe conference room and do it
And what they did was theyactually rented out a,
(16:36):
like a, it was like a Airbnbthis big Airbnb
where, like, they made thefood free and stuff like that.
We all stayed thereand, you know, we
we had ourown rooms
But it wasn’t just when this training was done,
we went back to our hotel room.
No, we were all there, middle of the woods somewhere you know
And so we got to break bread and kind of bond through
not just the coaching,
but like just the experience of being together
(16:56):
And it for me, it's always been
one of the most formativeevents of my life
because it was somethingwhere it was different.
[Jeff] Right
It wasn't the standard,you know, hey,
go to, you know, go to this boardroom from 8 to 5
and then we'll see you tomorrow from 8 to 5.
[Jeff] Right.
Okay, I got some moreI want to drop
you just tell me
What comes to your mind?
Ben Crowe
Ben Crowe
Ben Crowe
(17:17):
One of my favorite thingsabout Ben Crowe
is that we rereleasedhis episode, back in December,
because the first episodewas cut down a little bit.
And so I'd seen Ben Croweand it was.
And his,his full episode.
I told Dom, said
we gotta bring this whole thing out there because
he had so many great gems
about how you kind of likeeven approach,
you know, when he was working with his clients,
(17:37):
like the tennis star like
getting them to get overtheir internal, like, blockers.
We got missed thatin the first episode.
And he's like,
that is such a rich pieceof information
that we got to sharewith the world.
So Ben Crowe is fantastic,I love him,
I will probably have him back on again.
That's great.
And that's the cool thingabout podcasts.
[Jeff] I mean, [Mark] yeah
you can clip them upand you can make clips
that are digestible,but the whole idea is
(17:57):
you don't have to clip upthe original source asset
[Mark] I love [Jeff] Let it run, right?
Know, it's that first.
It was funny.We did the first episode.
We was a very professionally done, you know,
and I looked at it and Dom came to me
he’s like, hey, what do you think?
You know, would you liketo help with these?
I'm like, yeah, and I said my one.
My one stipulation for helping with this is
I want this to be a conversation.
I want it to be unedited, you know?
And, you know,the first one had edits.
(18:19):
I was like, and he's like, Yeah, I would love that.
And so from then on,everything has been unedited.
And it has been
full run, you know, whether it be 40 minutes
or 55 minutes, you know,
he's runs the whole time and it's just
it’s cool to get people in their natural element like that.
So I, and then to your pointwe'll create clips
and release them outto get those teasers out there.
There's really great nuggets, but
(18:39):
absolutely love like just having that full conversation.
Right.
One more Genevieve Bell
Oh, so Genevieve Bell was funbecause she talked about like,
AI and like, you know, how
how like, what are we goingto learn from today and how
what wish do we wishwe knew today?
Like tomorrow, what did we wish we knew today?
And she talks about how
(19:00):
[Jeff] Scary
I know it is and you’re like.
Well and she even talksabout things like,
you know, what was that?
Oh I forgot.
His name's James Bell, I thinkthe creator of the steam engine.
You know how I love that story, she said.
It's like, wow, if we would have
if we hada magic wand
and we could go back in time and tell him, it’s like, wow,
if you thought about making thatjust a little bit differently
to prevent, you know, all the
the pollution we see today, like,
(19:21):
could we be like, wow, wouldn't that be awesome?
It's like, how do we keep that mindset today
as we're approaching AIand other technologies?
Be like, what will the future personin 200 years ask us?
And I was like, oh, that's a good question.
Yeah
Especially as quicklyas things are going.
We're in a spot where we could
easily not ask that question.
(19:41):
[Jeff] Right
And then who knowswhat will happen.
So I think that was the big thing I took from her was like
taking that timeto actually say,
Huh? What will peoplebe asking?
Like wishing we did back then.
It's really interesting.
I'm actuallyreally scared about that,
because if you look at, say,Social Dilemma [Netflix 2020]
And what we didn't do around social media
and the law of unintended consequences that in
(20:02):
an ad based model
that's based on clicks,
really does much betterwith inflammatory content.
[Mark] 100%
Nothing to do with anything else
[Mark] I know. Right, exactly.
[Jeff] Right, just simple, simple math [Mark] We're going to kind of stoke the fires
So they see how the it's impact to the world.
Yeah.
And the other onethat really is,
disconcerting is our privacy stancehere in the States.
If you look at GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]
(20:23):
Yeah
Fact that the EU could come togetheras a group of countries
and come up with a unified standard.
Yeah,
We can't even do it as a group of states.
Right.
And then you look ahead at AI
and talk about governanceand regulation.
And everyone's like,‘Well it's gonna stop the innovation.’
Like not necessarily.
Well, I think that's athere’s this fear of it
of it stoppinginnovation.
But the thing is, is that
(20:43):
Is that
do should webut there
we need to do itresponsibly.
[Jeff] Right
You know, that's the thing.
Like there's nothing saying that we shouldn't innovate.
We just need to do itin a responsible way.
Like to your point with the EU and has how they've approached it,
it's not slowing them down, you know.
Although I don't know.
[Mark] I guess we'll see[Jeff] We'll see.
We'll see.
I don't think it'll slow them.
I think there's plentyof opportunity, the
Yeah.
(21:03):
The question is who's going to follow the regs
who’s not going to bother regs
but at least be talking about it
instead of just you know,
[Jeff] We’ve just [Mark Yeah]
it’s not just technology, business
business unfettered
does not have a long history
of doingthe right things,
right
to people or the planet or anybody.
And I think that's, again,it goes back to Genevieve Bell.
And for me,and that's like going back like,
all right, let's ask that question of like,
what are people going to be sayingasking, and wishing we did.
(21:25):
Right.
In you know, 200 yearsfrom now with this
So companies change a lot.
[Mark] Yeah.
Went from two CEOs to one CEO.
I think that was last year.
You got the biggest logo on the Formula One, or the F1 car
[Mark] I know, right?
in the back.
So you've been here for five years.
How are you seeing Atlassian
kind of grow and change
as it's no longer two guysin Sydney working on Jira tickets
(21:45):
to get rid of open source.
The story I always like to tell with this one is like.
So when I joined,we were like 2,000 people.
And I don't know if you've heard the numbers
Mike keeps throwing around[CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes]
[Mark] keeps saying 15,000[Jeff] 15,000 I heard, right
isn’t that wild
And so as you can imagine,
that changes the way an organization works.
And for us, the way we've looked at
and what I love about Atlassian is that
(22:05):
I see a lot of organizationsas they grow and
I’ve experienced this as they've grown,
is that as they get bigger,
they start adding more valuesor principles or things like that
to try to kind of justify different waysof working across an organization.
But for us, we've stuck with our same values,
and what we do is continueto look at our decisions
from those lenses.
And honestly, having people like Mike and Anu [Bharadwaj]
(22:26):
and others there
who continue to help reinforce that for us,
has really helped to shape the way the organization continues to grow
We get new ideas,we get new process
things that come inbecause as we get bigger,
we need it and we have different ideas.
That's why we hire these people that come in
[Jeff] Right
But as long as we'restill grounded in those values
of you know, play as a teamand things like that,
(22:47):
that helps us to actuallystill keep the Atlassian spark.
And for me, that's somethingthat's so important.
That's why I joined this company.
[Jeff] Right.
Was I absolutely lovehow we work with the customers,
how we had fun as a teamand we still do that.
It's really interesting.
Companies that are value led,you can really tell
because everyone you talk tois weaving the values in.
(23:07):
[Jeff] All the time[Mark] All the time
Right?
[Mark] Yup [Jeff] It’s pretty
And it goes back to kind ofyour autonomy with alignment.
Right.
Bring in a bunch of fresh smart people.
Let them do their thing.
But you know now you've got thisconsistency on the values.
So that you’re all going in the right direction.
[Mark] Exactly.[Jeff] You guys are so
[Mark] Let us do our things[Jeff] focused on goal alignment right
you know and then but know where we're all headed.
Right.
So you've been herefor a couple days now.
(23:27):
I'm curious, what are some of the,most interesting
or surprising things
that you've heard in the hallwaysor after a session from
from some of the people.
So it's interesting.
We even did today.
We did some of these reaction videos
for customers out there to say,
‘Hey, we watched the keynote,
We gave them some segments.
What did you guys think?
And some of the coolthings I've heard is that
one of course, Rovo being freeon a general basis, that's
(23:49):
that's somethingpeople are excited about,
because I think a lot ofpeople are like,
they want to play with these AI agents,
they just don't know
one, they don't want to have to pay the price
to actually go pay,but
they want to beable to then
see what's possible.
And, I
the analogy I've been using,it's just like
AI today is like copy and pastein a word processor.
You know,
you wouldn't pay extra for copyand paste in a word processor.
(24:11):
It's necessary to actually helpyou get your job done.
That's kind of the way Rovo is
for us and our platform and I love that.
Also things like Teamwork Collections.
It's being able to bring inproducts like a loom now
Now that they'repart of our system,
are really our system of work.
Being able to showcase that
people are really excited.
They did a customer briefing this morning and
the customer wanted to know about loom,
and we started talkingabout how they
(24:32):
we create training from it
how we share meetingupdates from it.
We get rid of meetings.
And you justsee their eyes
get bigger and bigger,and they're like,
these are all the things I struggle with
[Jeff] Right
And we're like, yeah.
And we sharedwe did a live one right there.
We went right through the process
and they're like,I didn't realize it was that easy.
And so there's a lot of aha's.
And like I've been hearing more and more
people going to our customer hub,
to talk to all of our teams
(24:53):
that there's just genuinely like
wow, these are things that I never thought was possible.
I'm going to goplay with that.
Right
I think that's what I'm excited.
I want people to goplay and explore now,
and we're giving peoplethose opportunities with Rovo,
with teamwork collectionsactually going explore.
It's interesting on the on the video side with loom because
Yeah
I've been in video for a long time.
The problem with videoused to always be
(25:14):
that if the best part, well say like your podcast, right?
If the best minutewas in minute 23.
Yeah.
How do you ever?
How do you find it?
How do you consume it?
And how do youshare it?
And you couldn'tdo it before
without the advances
that we now have aroundtranscription and closed captions.
So you can now have a searchable database.
Yep.
The other piece of it that
(25:35):
is newnow is
and I can imagine
how many times do I shoot the thirty second loom
because I don't like the way my hair looks,
Right
or I screw upthe script.
But now you've got
a whole generation of peoplewho are much more comfortable
talking to their phone.
[Mark] Yep
you know, having shortcuts.
So how do you avoid kind ofthe Instagram's got to be perfect.
[Jeff] Just get it out there [Mark] I know, right
You know that's the biggest thing for me
is actually workget like
(25:56):
my biggest feedbackto people
when using loom is like
treat it like the like the Instagram thing like
don't feel like you have to make it perfect.
If anything, when you try to make it perfect
it actually ruins the authenticityof it in my opinion
And so I said, yeah, get it going.
If you don't wantto be on video.
You know what?
Don't worryabout it
It’s just, don't do it. You know,we have that ability.
We even have the abilitycoming out I think
it’s some of our new beta featuresis to even create your own avatars.
(26:19):
So you can have that avatar, and the avatar can now represent you.
It just gives you the abilityto still get the message across.
[Jeff] Right.
And for me, you know I
what I love about itis that you can go in
and you can again
have that convo like
share thoseideas
and then whenI consume it
and I consume it at like 2x speed, you know.
And so, I mean, I may not even be looking at it,
I'm just consuming it like verbally,you know, from a verbal perspective.
(26:39):
And that's justit helps so much.
And I just love toon the road
that you guys are giving
so many examples to help people.
because I think the biggest problem for most people,
I’ve gotta cheat you know
we went from slide rules to,
you know, Excel, or no HP, HP calculators,
I still never learned how to operate one of those reverse English notation.
Right. The spreadsheet.
(26:59):
And now this is a new tool butpeople don't know where to begin.
So I think you guyshave really done a good job in
in sayinghere's some
here's some waysthat you
can integrate thisas a thought partner,
here's this way you can help discover things
and find waysto help people
work it into their workflow.
Well, it kind of goes right back to that first question you asked around,
you know, what are those foundations?
And those foundations aren't a product
(27:20):
They’re practices.
They're jobs to be done
they’re things that you know,you're trying to accomplish.
And I think we've donea really good job at
really bringing thoselike system of work
is how we position this.
And it's not these sets of tools.
It’s hey, you're trying to get these jobs done,
and now these tools are idealto help you get those jobs done
And this is how they do it.
And I think that's something
a lot of organizations struggleto actually find that connection.
(27:43):
And so we're trying to answerthe questions of how they work
and then show themthis is how you can do it.
Then with a Jira, a loom, a Rovo,what have you.
Right.
Well Mark love the enthusiasm
Jeff, it’s been great
lots of stuff going on.
Congrats to you and the team and
Ah, thank you.
Yeah, a lot of big announcementsand a great show.
It's been awesome.
Thank you so much Jeff for the chat. I've loved it.
My pleasure. I was glad we finally got to meet
(28:04):
I know, finally made it happen.
All right. He's Mark,I'm Jeff
you're watching Work 20XX
from the Atlassian Team ‘25in Anaheim California.
Thanks for watching.Thanks for listening.
We'll catchyou next time.
Take care.
Boom.
Yeah, buddy.
Thank you man.
Yeah, it was fun.
Hey, Jeff Frick Here
big shout out to the podcast audience.
Thanks for listening in.
You can get show notes and transcripts at Work20XX.com
(28:29):
And that also has links to the videos as well.
Appreciate you listeningin on the podcast
Do reach out
say hello, like subscribeand smash that notification bell.
Thanks for listening.Take care. Bye bye.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.