April 24, 2025 • 19 mins
Molly Sands is Head of Teamwork Lab at Atlassian, where she helps distill what makes teams great, the practices, tools, exercises, behaviors and rituals that great teams tick. Built on first person research, delivered by Molly and team from the Teamwork Lab. Results are published regularly via a number channels including the State of Teams report.
I was able to grab some time with Molly in Anaheim at the Atlassian Team ‘25 show, and surface a wellspring of insight from the latest State of Teams, Personal Productivity, and so much more.
Please join me in welcoming Molly Sands to the Work 20XX podcast
Atlassian’s always done things a bit differently. Born in Sydney, scaling from profit not venture, replacing email with JIRA, and building one of the earliest distributed-first cultures.
Thank you Molly
Editor's Note:
Recorded 2025-Apr-09, 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.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Yes, so I’ll just count down
three, two one
and then we'll start.
Okay.
All right.
In three, two
Hey welcome backeverybody Jeff Frick here.
Coming to you not from the home office
but from Anaheim, California
right across the street fromthe happiest Place on Earth.
We're here for the Atlassian Team ‘25 conference.
About 5,000 peopletalking about the future of work,
(00:21):
talking about softwaredevelopment.
And really they've been about
distributed teamssince the very beginning.
They've been off emailsince they had JIRA.
So we're excited to be down here
and really share some of the open source information,
which Atlassian is so good to publish
and share with usso we can all get better.
So I'm excited for my next guest.
She's Molly Sands, the Head of Teamwork Lab for Atlassian.
(00:42):
Molly, great to see you.
Yeah, you too Jeff
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
So, ‘State of Teams’report.
You guys come outwith this every year.
What were some of the,
the highlights of this onethat just came out?
Yeah, with ‘State of Teams’ are always really interesting in understanding
what are the biggest challengesteams are facing
and what are the best teams doing to overcome them.
And this year, one of the problemswe were really focused on was information.
(01:05):
We know that we are all so connected.
You just mentioned beingdistributed across the world.
We have so many amazing toolsto communicate with each other,
but people are reallydrowning in information.
We have so much information,
so many notifications,so many meetings
that it makes it hard toactually get our work done.
And what we found in this year's report
(01:25):
was that over aquarter of the time
that executives, leaders, everyone in organizations is spending at work
[Molly] is actually looking for information[Jeff] is looking for information
It's looking for information.
And how much of that’sinformation that they know is there
or they're trying to just learn it
for whatever the project is or all the above.
It's a mix.
(01:45):
It's everythingfrom that slide deck
that you probably savedon your desktop,
but you can't quite rememberwhat it was called
to I'm pretty sure somebody is doing a project about this,
but I'm actually not sure who.
So let me message26 different colleagues
and go down the rabbit holeto try to find the right person,
to trying to learn contextabout what's going on
so that they can makeinformed decisions.
(02:07):
[Jeff] Right.
So that's the bigthat's the big gotcha.
Is the actually the collecting of the information
or the gettingof the information.
Yeah.
And it's amazing that we haveall this information available.
And what we're rightat this moment with AI,
where we can startto take advantage of it
and actually turn itinto really useful content.
[Jeff] Right.
Because silos of informationand department level silos,
(02:27):
that's not a new problem.That's been around forever.
So how are you findingAI as a solution
to kind of break downsome of those silos?
Yeah.
So what we're seeing is that
people are so really worried about this
We saw in the reportthat 98% of executives
felt like their teams are not yetusing AI to break down silos.
But what we're seeingis that it is possible.
(02:47):
So the teams that are usingAI most effectively
and really putting information online,
so the teamsare working in ways
where they're actually building
that organizationalknowledge base.
So they're sharing what their goals are.
They're sharing progress.
They're sharing more widelyhow things are going
and what they're doing.
That's what's helpingpeople overcome those silos
(03:08):
and making it so much easier
for anyone in the company
[Molly] to actually work together[Jeff] Right
So you've done a bunch of cool stuff.
You, did something called the
‘Personal Productivity’study
that I looked that I was looking at before,
actually getting ready for this.
And you talkedabout the calendars
and how a lot of peopleget managed by their calendars
instead of peoplemanaging their calendar.
(03:30):
What are some
And the other one is notificationsand notification fatigue
and the constant,you know
interruptions from trying to get work done when,
you know, you got this thingbinging and this thing binging.
Wonder if you can share some best practices
about how you can kind of take control
of your day backfrom these distractions
so that you actually have time
[Jeff] to work. Instead of[Molly] Yeah
(03:51):
Instead of just respondingto dings and charges
and this, that and the other.
Yeah, work has become so reactive for most teams.
And people are they’re drowning in meetings,
they’re drowning in messages.
It's hard to get realwork done right now.
And we have a lot of suggestions
about what really does work for this.
And I was just comingfrom a session
that we had withlots of customers
(04:12):
where we were having conversations
about how people can takebetter control of their time,
and almost everyone wasreally excited about this
concept of‘Page-Led Meetings’
So when we think about designing our workdays
there's a couple of stepsyou want to go through.
First, you want to get reallyclear on what our goals are.
And so my team hasdone a lot of research
to help people with strategies
(04:33):
that make it easier to figure outwhat your priorities really are,
and then to focus on those as youlook at your work day.
So we ran experimentswith teams at Atlassian
where we had them do this practice
of setting a North Starfor every day.
Saying what is one actually meaningful piece of work
that I want to get done
and then finding timein their calendar
(04:55):
canceling some meetings,turning some meetings into Looms
changing around their day
moving things to create at least a 90 minute to 2 hour block
to really work on that thing.
Just for that one.
Just. Yeah,just for that one thing.
Give yourself a good amount of time.
So you can actually think, right.
We need the timeto get deeply into thinking.
And that can be aloneor that can be with other people.
(05:16):
Either way is great.
It depends on whatyou're trying to do,
whether you want thatto be collaboration time,
more time for you to think orwrite or code or whatever it is
[Molly] you're job really requires.[Jeff] Right.
It's so illustrative though,cause so many people just have
too many‘To Do’ lists, right?
Too many goals
and, and you know,we need to have better kind of
ruthless prioritization to to really focus on the ones.
(05:38):
But to even say
I'm taking, you know, 20% of my day, today
to work on the thing
that I put at the top of my list today.
That's a really different approach.
I don't thinkmost people
gosh that they wouldprobably love the opportunity
but don't really know how to have the discipline
to set aside and say no
(05:58):
so that they've got that blockof time to work on those things.
[Molly] Yeah.
One strategy that I like a lot
is this idea of budgeting your time
like you would budget dollars.
So we often encourage teamsto play what we call the $10 game
where you give yourself $10 for the week.
That's like roughlyhalf a day.
And then you look at
what are we really trying to accomplish as a team right now,
(06:19):
and you go ahead and budget your hours
in a way that's similarto budgeting your time.
And this is a very high level exercise.
Right, right.
And we've had teams do this
and then align with their manager and their team
on what they think
and that gives themso much more goal clarity.
It helps people makeway more progress.
But it also helps with that piece you're tapping into about
really getting buy-in, right.
(06:39):
You want to make sureif you're saying no to stuff,
and you're gettingreally focused
on spending a lot of time on one thing
That thing needs to be the right thing
[Molly] right? [Jeff] Right
We want thatto be impactful,
and ifit is,
then everyone around you is so thrilled
to see the progressyou make
and how much faster youactually get the work done.
[Jeff] Right
And so as people think about designing their calendars
(07:02):
and taking this kind of radically different approach
of designing it around the work
[Molly] rather than the meetings that appear[Jeff] Right
getting really clear onwhat the goals are.
And what really matters tothe team is a good place to start.
It's really this, this theme of,
of clarificationof goals
and really, you know,
making sure you're workingtowards the right goals
(07:23):
and making sure everybody knows kind of
the great question,what success looks like.
[Jeff] And a lot of people[Molly] Yeah
never ask that question.
So they never got the answerto that question.
Totally, and it's
I think it's those rituals
that really makethe difference for teams.
Like what we see is that the best teams
are super clear on what work matters,
and they have really good processes for coordinating that work
[Molly] within the team. [Jeff] Right, right.
(07:44):
Everyone actuallytakes the time
at the beginningof a project to say,
What are we doing?
And how are we going to do it?
And how are we going to work together
to get to that outcome?
And when you do some of those simple exercises
like even writing down,‘What does success look like?’
In most companies, most projects,
that is nowhere to be found.
[Jeff] Not, never happened[Molly] Probably in someone's mind it’s there.
(08:05):
But what I always tell leadersthe one great trick is just
in your next meetingask your team
Molly] why you're doing the project.[Jeff] Right
[Molly] Ask everyone to tell you.[Jeff] Right.
And probably everyonein that group
does not have the samedescription or understanding
of what you're trying to do,
why you're trying to do it,
what success looks like.
Right.
And if you just havethat conversation
you can getto the other side of it
(08:27):
with everyone havingthat shared understanding.
And that helps you scale decision making so much better
because everybody getswhat the point of this really is.
[Molly] They can move so much[Jeff] What a concept
It's like fully empowering.
I know it sounds like the mostobvious thing in the entire world,
and you get into real teams
and it doesn't happen enough
(08:47):
Right, right.
The other thing is,as you said,
it makes you happyyou
I think it was in your thing.you said
‘People, get more satisfaction
from checking things off of their To-Do list
than they do praisefrom a colleague
or praise from their boss.’
They totally do.
They absolutely do.
Which is so funny.
But these ways of workingdo feel better.
And this is one of the thingsI love about studying work.
(09:08):
I've been studying workfor a long time
and getting things done
feels good to people
reaching meaningfulgoals.
That feels great.
Right.
So it's both good for organizations
and it's good for the people.
And that's a really nice combination.
When you get to work on something
that is like both beneficial to the business
and also genuinely makes people’s workdays better
(09:28):
Right, right.That's great.
So you've been working onwork for a while.
We're still kind of stuckwhere the traditional office
is basically a paper versionof what a factory used to be.
Right?
I mean, I was around not that long ago
where work was at the office.
Right. The files were at the office.
The phone number,there’s one phone number
It rang in the front.
Then they would route youto your phone in the office.
(09:50):
The mail came to the office,the forms were to the office.
And I think you made aninteresting statement.
That work nowis in laptops.
It's not in hallways.
Yeah.
And really being ableto work effectively
in that digital world,
it's really, really important.
Yeah.
A lot of what my team is focused on
is how do we set teamsup for success
(10:11):
in this distributed world,
and we're all distributed.
Whether you work in an office,some or all of the time,
you're working with peoplethat are in other buildings
or on other floors.
You might be having callswith clients or customers.
Sometimes you probably travelto see those people.
You might answer emails or,you know, messages on your phone
or on your computer at night.
All that stuff is distributed work.
(10:32):
And so I really think distributed
is very much the way we need to think about the future.
And work happens online.
There still are, of course
jobs where you're doingvery physical things
in physical spaces.
[Jeff] Right, right.
But so much of how we communicateand collaborate with each other
and share informationhappens through the computer.
And the more that we can acknowledge that reality
(10:54):
and actually buildthe right systems
to capture that information,
the better off we're going to be
in this era of AI
where we can start to build AI
into our teamsin really smart ways,
but only if itknows and learns
from what we're doing
what we know and what we're learning.
Yeah
I think the distributed wordis the right word.
(11:16):
You know, better than digital,
better than remote,better than all this stuff.
Because, as Kate Lister would say
six floor, six states or six time zones,
even if you'rein the same building,
most of the timepeople are not on the same floor.
I mean, if you go to some of these campuses,
[Molly] Huge[Jeff] They’re huge
[Molly] They’re huge. [Jeff] so I think that’s away
Everyone's on their laptop
from their different buildings,
[Molly] from their desks[Jeff] Exactly
And yeah, it is just the realityfor how modern work happens.
(11:38):
Right.
And there's a lot of amazing things that
things that’s unlocked, right, like
We can work with people anywhere.
We can have customers and clientsthat are anywhere in the world.
[Jeff] Right
That's huge for businesses.
So there's this huge advantage
to having that flexibilityand for our lives too, right.
Work and life can be integrated in
more fluid ways than they ever have before.
(12:00):
And there’s lots of good thingsthat comes from that too.
So you had a cool Substackpost out the other day,
and you had a really interesting quote in there. You said
‘Share strong opinionsloosely held.’
I love this.
This is my favorite thing.I learned as a product manager.
I've never heard that quote before.
Share strong opinionsloosely held.
What does that mean and why isthat really a formula for success?
(12:23):
This was reallymy best.
I've built a lot of technology
to help teams transform how they work
for a long time.
My best learning from being a product manager was this
that you really want to be clearabout your point of view,
and that is what helpsthe team the most.
But you need to always be readyto integrate new information.
We never have perfect context.
(12:44):
We almost, we can always learnfrom other people around us, right?
Right.
We can always learn moreand come up with better solutions.
And so I think the best thingthat you can do as a leader
in any organization
is be really clear about your vision
and about whatyou want to accomplish
and about what you think success looks like.
But you always needto be updating that.
(13:04):
And so that's where the loosely held piece comes in.
I like it.
When I learn somethingthat I didn't know before.
That might mean thatI need to update
what my strong opinion is.
Right
But I do want to have one.
Well, too.
It's this.
It's thisjuxtaposition
of having a strong, a strong opinion about something.
And really as
as we've already been talking about
goals and mission and what we're trying to accomplish.
At the same time, being kind ofloosely connected to how it gets done,
(13:27):
which really goes back to team empowerment.
It's like, here's where I want us to get to.
I want you guys to figure outhow to get there.
And then that gets to kind ofthis loosely held
because they may choosea path or a different way.
And then,
you know, Andy Jassy from,from Amazon loves to talk about,
you know,
leaders are not afraid to changetheir mind with new information.
And a lot of timeswe get stuck in the,
(13:47):
you know, we get stuckand it becomes a battle of wills
as to who’s right or wrong,because for whatever reason.
But I,you know
my favorite concept from business school is sunk cost.
You have to make the decisionfrom this point forward
This is wherewe're at.
Right
You can't
Exactly
worry about how much money you dumped in.
It doesn't matter. It's gone
[Jeff] And I think that’s[Molly] Yeah
one of the hardest conceptsfor people to really, really
embrace because, you know,you are invested in
(14:10):
in what you've done before.
And I do think that's kind of
what the future of agilityreally looks like, right,
is that we are alwaysable to update
and integratenew information
and we know thatwe're starting from here
where we are today.
It’s one of the things I like about science to.
Certainly lots of scientists
hold on to their prospectsfor much of their career,
but the whole idea is thatwe're always wrong,
(14:31):
but we're learning.
So we're gettingwe're getting closer.
[Jeff] I like it[Molly] Right, we’re evolving
[Jeff] we're always wrong.
[Jeff] But we’re leaning, we’re getting closer[Molly] None of it holds
None of it holds forever
It never does.
Right
We always learnnew things.
Every little bit,a little bit
better microscope, right.Get in a little bit.
Yeah
Yeah. You give peoplesomething to build on
and so they can get a little bit.
Yeah. They have a new foundation.
And those foundationskeep moving us forward.
(14:52):
So 2025, a lot of chaos in the world.
People need support.
You guys are doing a lotin terms of the tooling.
You're sharinglots of information.
You're doing a lot of research.
What are you excited aboutfor this year?
What are some of your goals and priorities?
So I am very excited aboutthe work we're doing on goals.
I think that a lot of the waythe world is moving,
(15:13):
we are going to get a lotclearer on
what we're tryingto accomplish together
and what those outcomesreally look like.
I would love for workto move to a place where
it's much more outcome based, and it's a lot less about the inputs.
I think AI is going to make that a reality.
In the companies that get reallyclear on what they want to do,
what is their mission,what is that vision
(15:35):
that they're rallying around,
and what does success look like for them
are going to fare the best.
I'm also excited about the information opportunity.
Like even what we've been able to do with AI so far
is leaps and bounds ahead ofwhere we were a year ago.
In our research,we're already seeing
that teams that are using AIas a more strategic collaborator,
(15:55):
so like building it inacross their workflows,
using it to find information,
using it asa sparring partner,
really thinking about AI as part of the team
are able to accomplishso much more.
And in a world where work feels very draining
for a lot of peopleright now,
I think that that can bemassively empowering
because they can startto craft their jobs,
(16:16):
to the things thatthey actually love
and are makingunique contributions in,
and they can also startto get some of the pieces
that are monotonous or difficult,
and not fulfilling orenjoyable off their plate.
[Jeff] off their plate.
And that's exciting.
And you guys are sharing a lot oftips and tricks on different ways
that people can use an AI toolon all these different little
(16:37):
bits and piecesof their workflow.
You've got all kindsof suggestions here.
We do.
We've beenwe've been working on this a lot
Which is great though.
Cause so many people.
I mean, a surprisingamount of people
have still notever tried,
have still notever tried it.
[Molly] Yeah[Jeff] Right.
Yeah. It is
It’s just
Because they don’t know how to start. Right?
And one of the things we see
that I would recommend to leadersand companies everywhere
is that community based learning and sharing
(17:00):
is one of the most effective waysto get people going.
So if you can set up forumswithin your team,
if you're someone that leadsa team within your company,
or people that have similar jobsor do similar tasks
can actually say,
‘Hey, this is a problem I havethat I think could be fixed.’
Can we work on it together?
My team does this thing called ‘Fix It’ Friday
where for about a month
they'll keep a list of everythingthat sucks about their job.
(17:23):
So they just likewrite down.
It's true, it's all available,
anyone in the company can see it and it's like,
these are the horrible processes we have.
These are the things we dothat take forever.
Like whatever the worst thing is in your week
you’re supposed to write it on this list.
And then they come togetherabout once a month and are like,
‘Okay, let's just allfix one workflow.’
And sometimes that only benefitsone person in the team.
(17:43):
But the whole team workson that solution.
And everyone has learned a massive amount
about how to use AI more effectively
from doing that.
How to build in automations,like all these amazing things,
because some of them had learned how to do that
and they shared with the others.
And now more and more of my team
is very quickly able to see,
oh, this is a patternwhere I probably
(18:05):
don't need to do thisin a manual way or
oh, this isa place where
we actually should have more
of our team,our human team,
working on it.
Those ‘Ah ha’ moments arecoming from someone saying
‘Hey, look, you do this,I do this too.’
And now I do it like this.
Right.
[Molly] And that is massively impactful [Jeff] Right.
Especially from a peer.
[Molly] Yes, exactly [Jeff] Right, especially from a peer
Exactly, it's somebody elsewho's in your shoes every day.
(18:27):
[Jeff] Right.
And they, you know, they need to know, like
they're doing the thingin the old way
and they want to knowhow you're doing it.
And of course, you need a somewhatcohesive team environment.
But I think this is actuallya good way to build that to.
Yeah.
[Molly] That sharing [Jeff] Yeah, I think so.
Well Molly I don't think you'll haveany shortage of things to keep you busy
in your focus of workand all your research.
(18:47):
So thanks for stopping byand sharing a bit of information.
Congrats on the show.
I'm sure you're super, super busy,so I really appreciate the time.
Yeah, it was great to see you.
Thank you so muchfor having me.
All right.
She's Molly, I'm Jeff
We’re at the Atlassian Team ‘25 show
It's in Anaheim California.
Thanks forwatching.
Thanks for listening inon the podcast.
Catch you next time. Take care.
Boom!
(19:07):
Awesome.
Out.
Okay, great.
This was fun.
Thank you Jeff.
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
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.
(19:31):
Thanks for listening.Take care. Bye bye.
Yes, so I’ll just count down
three, two one
and then we'll start.
Okay.
All right.
In three, two
Hey welcome backeverybody Jeff Frick here.
Coming to you not from the home office
but from Anaheim, California
right across the street fromthe happiest Place on Earth.
We're here for the Atlassian Team ‘25 conference.
About 5,000 peopletalking about the future of work,
(00:21):
talking about softwaredevelopment.
And really they've been about
distributed teamssince the very beginning.
They've been off emailsince they had JIRA.
So we're excited to be down here
and really share some of the open source information,
which Atlassian is so good to publish
and share with usso we can all get better.
So I'm excited for my next guest.
She's Molly Sands, the Head of Teamwork Lab for Atlassian.
(00:42):
Molly, great to see you.
Yeah, you too Jeff
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
So, ‘State of Teams’report.
You guys come outwith this every year.
What were some of the,
the highlights of this onethat just came out?
Yeah, with ‘State of Teams’ are always really interesting in understanding
what are the biggest challengesteams are facing
and what are the best teams doing to overcome them.
And this year, one of the problemswe were really focused on was information.
(01:05):
We know that we are all so connected.
You just mentioned beingdistributed across the world.
We have so many amazing toolsto communicate with each other,
but people are reallydrowning in information.
We have so much information,
so many notifications,so many meetings
that it makes it hard toactually get our work done.
And what we found in this year's report
(01:25):
was that over aquarter of the time
that executives, leaders, everyone in organizations is spending at work
[Molly] is actually looking for information[Jeff] is looking for information
It's looking for information.
And how much of that’sinformation that they know is there
or they're trying to just learn it
for whatever the project is or all the above.
It's a mix.
(01:45):
It's everythingfrom that slide deck
that you probably savedon your desktop,
but you can't quite rememberwhat it was called
to I'm pretty sure somebody is doing a project about this,
but I'm actually not sure who.
So let me message26 different colleagues
and go down the rabbit holeto try to find the right person,
to trying to learn contextabout what's going on
so that they can makeinformed decisions.
(02:07):
[Jeff] Right.
So that's the bigthat's the big gotcha.
Is the actually the collecting of the information
or the gettingof the information.
Yeah.
And it's amazing that we haveall this information available.
And what we're rightat this moment with AI,
where we can startto take advantage of it
and actually turn itinto really useful content.
[Jeff] Right.
Because silos of informationand department level silos,
(02:27):
that's not a new problem.That's been around forever.
So how are you findingAI as a solution
to kind of break downsome of those silos?
Yeah.
So what we're seeing is that
people are so really worried about this
We saw in the reportthat 98% of executives
felt like their teams are not yetusing AI to break down silos.
But what we're seeingis that it is possible.
(02:47):
So the teams that are usingAI most effectively
and really putting information online,
so the teamsare working in ways
where they're actually building
that organizationalknowledge base.
So they're sharing what their goals are.
They're sharing progress.
They're sharing more widelyhow things are going
and what they're doing.
That's what's helpingpeople overcome those silos
(03:08):
and making it so much easier
for anyone in the company
[Molly] to actually work together[Jeff] Right
So you've done a bunch of cool stuff.
You, did something called the
‘Personal Productivity’study
that I looked that I was looking at before,
actually getting ready for this.
And you talkedabout the calendars
and how a lot of peopleget managed by their calendars
instead of peoplemanaging their calendar.
(03:30):
What are some
And the other one is notificationsand notification fatigue
and the constant,you know
interruptions from trying to get work done when,
you know, you got this thingbinging and this thing binging.
Wonder if you can share some best practices
about how you can kind of take control
of your day backfrom these distractions
so that you actually have time
[Jeff] to work. Instead of[Molly] Yeah
(03:51):
Instead of just respondingto dings and charges
and this, that and the other.
Yeah, work has become so reactive for most teams.
And people are they’re drowning in meetings,
they’re drowning in messages.
It's hard to get realwork done right now.
And we have a lot of suggestions
about what really does work for this.
And I was just comingfrom a session
that we had withlots of customers
(04:12):
where we were having conversations
about how people can takebetter control of their time,
and almost everyone wasreally excited about this
concept of‘Page-Led Meetings’
So when we think about designing our workdays
there's a couple of stepsyou want to go through.
First, you want to get reallyclear on what our goals are.
And so my team hasdone a lot of research
to help people with strategies
(04:33):
that make it easier to figure outwhat your priorities really are,
and then to focus on those as youlook at your work day.
So we ran experimentswith teams at Atlassian
where we had them do this practice
of setting a North Starfor every day.
Saying what is one actually meaningful piece of work
that I want to get done
and then finding timein their calendar
(04:55):
canceling some meetings,turning some meetings into Looms
changing around their day
moving things to create at least a 90 minute to 2 hour block
to really work on that thing.
Just for that one.
Just. Yeah,just for that one thing.
Give yourself a good amount of time.
So you can actually think, right.
We need the timeto get deeply into thinking.
And that can be aloneor that can be with other people.
(05:16):
Either way is great.
It depends on whatyou're trying to do,
whether you want thatto be collaboration time,
more time for you to think orwrite or code or whatever it is
[Molly] you're job really requires.[Jeff] Right.
It's so illustrative though,cause so many people just have
too many‘To Do’ lists, right?
Too many goals
and, and you know,we need to have better kind of
ruthless prioritization to to really focus on the ones.
(05:38):
But to even say
I'm taking, you know, 20% of my day, today
to work on the thing
that I put at the top of my list today.
That's a really different approach.
I don't thinkmost people
gosh that they wouldprobably love the opportunity
but don't really know how to have the discipline
to set aside and say no
(05:58):
so that they've got that blockof time to work on those things.
[Molly] Yeah.
One strategy that I like a lot
is this idea of budgeting your time
like you would budget dollars.
So we often encourage teamsto play what we call the $10 game
where you give yourself $10 for the week.
That's like roughlyhalf a day.
And then you look at
what are we really trying to accomplish as a team right now,
(06:19):
and you go ahead and budget your hours
in a way that's similarto budgeting your time.
And this is a very high level exercise.
Right, right.
And we've had teams do this
and then align with their manager and their team
on what they think
and that gives themso much more goal clarity.
It helps people makeway more progress.
But it also helps with that piece you're tapping into about
really getting buy-in, right.
(06:39):
You want to make sureif you're saying no to stuff,
and you're gettingreally focused
on spending a lot of time on one thing
That thing needs to be the right thing
[Molly] right? [Jeff] Right
We want thatto be impactful,
and ifit is,
then everyone around you is so thrilled
to see the progressyou make
and how much faster youactually get the work done.
[Jeff] Right
And so as people think about designing their calendars
(07:02):
and taking this kind of radically different approach
of designing it around the work
[Molly] rather than the meetings that appear[Jeff] Right
getting really clear onwhat the goals are.
And what really matters tothe team is a good place to start.
It's really this, this theme of,
of clarificationof goals
and really, you know,
making sure you're workingtowards the right goals
(07:23):
and making sure everybody knows kind of
the great question,what success looks like.
[Jeff] And a lot of people[Molly] Yeah
never ask that question.
So they never got the answerto that question.
Totally, and it's
I think it's those rituals
that really makethe difference for teams.
Like what we see is that the best teams
are super clear on what work matters,
and they have really good processes for coordinating that work
[Molly] within the team. [Jeff] Right, right.
(07:44):
Everyone actuallytakes the time
at the beginningof a project to say,
What are we doing?
And how are we going to do it?
And how are we going to work together
to get to that outcome?
And when you do some of those simple exercises
like even writing down,‘What does success look like?’
In most companies, most projects,
that is nowhere to be found.
[Jeff] Not, never happened[Molly] Probably in someone's mind it’s there.
(08:05):
But what I always tell leadersthe one great trick is just
in your next meetingask your team
Molly] why you're doing the project.[Jeff] Right
[Molly] Ask everyone to tell you.[Jeff] Right.
And probably everyonein that group
does not have the samedescription or understanding
of what you're trying to do,
why you're trying to do it,
what success looks like.
Right.
And if you just havethat conversation
you can getto the other side of it
(08:27):
with everyone havingthat shared understanding.
And that helps you scale decision making so much better
because everybody getswhat the point of this really is.
[Molly] They can move so much[Jeff] What a concept
It's like fully empowering.
I know it sounds like the mostobvious thing in the entire world,
and you get into real teams
and it doesn't happen enough
(08:47):
Right, right.
The other thing is,as you said,
it makes you happyyou
I think it was in your thing.you said
‘People, get more satisfaction
from checking things off of their To-Do list
than they do praisefrom a colleague
or praise from their boss.’
They totally do.
They absolutely do.
Which is so funny.
But these ways of workingdo feel better.
And this is one of the thingsI love about studying work.
(09:08):
I've been studying workfor a long time
and getting things done
feels good to people
reaching meaningfulgoals.
That feels great.
Right.
So it's both good for organizations
and it's good for the people.
And that's a really nice combination.
When you get to work on something
that is like both beneficial to the business
and also genuinely makes people’s workdays better
(09:28):
Right, right.That's great.
So you've been working onwork for a while.
We're still kind of stuckwhere the traditional office
is basically a paper versionof what a factory used to be.
Right?
I mean, I was around not that long ago
where work was at the office.
Right. The files were at the office.
The phone number,there’s one phone number
It rang in the front.
Then they would route youto your phone in the office.
(09:50):
The mail came to the office,the forms were to the office.
And I think you made aninteresting statement.
That work nowis in laptops.
It's not in hallways.
Yeah.
And really being ableto work effectively
in that digital world,
it's really, really important.
Yeah.
A lot of what my team is focused on
is how do we set teamsup for success
(10:11):
in this distributed world,
and we're all distributed.
Whether you work in an office,some or all of the time,
you're working with peoplethat are in other buildings
or on other floors.
You might be having callswith clients or customers.
Sometimes you probably travelto see those people.
You might answer emails or,you know, messages on your phone
or on your computer at night.
All that stuff is distributed work.
(10:32):
And so I really think distributed
is very much the way we need to think about the future.
And work happens online.
There still are, of course
jobs where you're doingvery physical things
in physical spaces.
[Jeff] Right, right.
But so much of how we communicateand collaborate with each other
and share informationhappens through the computer.
And the more that we can acknowledge that reality
(10:54):
and actually buildthe right systems
to capture that information,
the better off we're going to be
in this era of AI
where we can start to build AI
into our teamsin really smart ways,
but only if itknows and learns
from what we're doing
what we know and what we're learning.
Yeah
I think the distributed wordis the right word.
(11:16):
You know, better than digital,
better than remote,better than all this stuff.
Because, as Kate Lister would say
six floor, six states or six time zones,
even if you'rein the same building,
most of the timepeople are not on the same floor.
I mean, if you go to some of these campuses,
[Molly] Huge[Jeff] They’re huge
[Molly] They’re huge. [Jeff] so I think that’s away
Everyone's on their laptop
from their different buildings,
[Molly] from their desks[Jeff] Exactly
And yeah, it is just the realityfor how modern work happens.
(11:38):
Right.
And there's a lot of amazing things that
things that’s unlocked, right, like
We can work with people anywhere.
We can have customers and clientsthat are anywhere in the world.
[Jeff] Right
That's huge for businesses.
So there's this huge advantage
to having that flexibilityand for our lives too, right.
Work and life can be integrated in
more fluid ways than they ever have before.
(12:00):
And there’s lots of good thingsthat comes from that too.
So you had a cool Substackpost out the other day,
and you had a really interesting quote in there. You said
‘Share strong opinionsloosely held.’
I love this.
This is my favorite thing.I learned as a product manager.
I've never heard that quote before.
Share strong opinionsloosely held.
What does that mean and why isthat really a formula for success?
(12:23):
This was reallymy best.
I've built a lot of technology
to help teams transform how they work
for a long time.
My best learning from being a product manager was this
that you really want to be clearabout your point of view,
and that is what helpsthe team the most.
But you need to always be readyto integrate new information.
We never have perfect context.
(12:44):
We almost, we can always learnfrom other people around us, right?
Right.
We can always learn moreand come up with better solutions.
And so I think the best thingthat you can do as a leader
in any organization
is be really clear about your vision
and about whatyou want to accomplish
and about what you think success looks like.
But you always needto be updating that.
(13:04):
And so that's where the loosely held piece comes in.
I like it.
When I learn somethingthat I didn't know before.
That might mean thatI need to update
what my strong opinion is.
Right
But I do want to have one.
Well, too.
It's this.
It's thisjuxtaposition
of having a strong, a strong opinion about something.
And really as
as we've already been talking about
goals and mission and what we're trying to accomplish.
At the same time, being kind ofloosely connected to how it gets done,
(13:27):
which really goes back to team empowerment.
It's like, here's where I want us to get to.
I want you guys to figure outhow to get there.
And then that gets to kind ofthis loosely held
because they may choosea path or a different way.
And then,
you know, Andy Jassy from,from Amazon loves to talk about,
you know,
leaders are not afraid to changetheir mind with new information.
And a lot of timeswe get stuck in the,
(13:47):
you know, we get stuckand it becomes a battle of wills
as to who’s right or wrong,because for whatever reason.
But I,you know
my favorite concept from business school is sunk cost.
You have to make the decisionfrom this point forward
This is wherewe're at.
Right
You can't
Exactly
worry about how much money you dumped in.
It doesn't matter. It's gone
[Jeff] And I think that’s[Molly] Yeah
one of the hardest conceptsfor people to really, really
embrace because, you know,you are invested in
(14:10):
in what you've done before.
And I do think that's kind of
what the future of agilityreally looks like, right,
is that we are alwaysable to update
and integratenew information
and we know thatwe're starting from here
where we are today.
It’s one of the things I like about science to.
Certainly lots of scientists
hold on to their prospectsfor much of their career,
but the whole idea is thatwe're always wrong,
(14:31):
but we're learning.
So we're gettingwe're getting closer.
[Jeff] I like it[Molly] Right, we’re evolving
[Jeff] we're always wrong.
[Jeff] But we’re leaning, we’re getting closer[Molly] None of it holds
None of it holds forever
It never does.
Right
We always learnnew things.
Every little bit,a little bit
better microscope, right.Get in a little bit.
Yeah
Yeah. You give peoplesomething to build on
and so they can get a little bit.
Yeah. They have a new foundation.
And those foundationskeep moving us forward.
(14:52):
So 2025, a lot of chaos in the world.
People need support.
You guys are doing a lotin terms of the tooling.
You're sharinglots of information.
You're doing a lot of research.
What are you excited aboutfor this year?
What are some of your goals and priorities?
So I am very excited aboutthe work we're doing on goals.
I think that a lot of the waythe world is moving,
(15:13):
we are going to get a lotclearer on
what we're tryingto accomplish together
and what those outcomesreally look like.
I would love for workto move to a place where
it's much more outcome based, and it's a lot less about the inputs.
I think AI is going to make that a reality.
In the companies that get reallyclear on what they want to do,
what is their mission,what is that vision
(15:35):
that they're rallying around,
and what does success look like for them
are going to fare the best.
I'm also excited about the information opportunity.
Like even what we've been able to do with AI so far
is leaps and bounds ahead ofwhere we were a year ago.
In our research,we're already seeing
that teams that are using AIas a more strategic collaborator,
(15:55):
so like building it inacross their workflows,
using it to find information,
using it asa sparring partner,
really thinking about AI as part of the team
are able to accomplishso much more.
And in a world where work feels very draining
for a lot of peopleright now,
I think that that can bemassively empowering
because they can startto craft their jobs,
(16:16):
to the things thatthey actually love
and are makingunique contributions in,
and they can also startto get some of the pieces
that are monotonous or difficult,
and not fulfilling orenjoyable off their plate.
[Jeff] off their plate.
And that's exciting.
And you guys are sharing a lot oftips and tricks on different ways
that people can use an AI toolon all these different little
(16:37):
bits and piecesof their workflow.
You've got all kindsof suggestions here.
We do.
We've beenwe've been working on this a lot
Which is great though.
Cause so many people.
I mean, a surprisingamount of people
have still notever tried,
have still notever tried it.
[Molly] Yeah[Jeff] Right.
Yeah. It is
It’s just
Because they don’t know how to start. Right?
And one of the things we see
that I would recommend to leadersand companies everywhere
is that community based learning and sharing
(17:00):
is one of the most effective waysto get people going.
So if you can set up forumswithin your team,
if you're someone that leadsa team within your company,
or people that have similar jobsor do similar tasks
can actually say,
‘Hey, this is a problem I havethat I think could be fixed.’
Can we work on it together?
My team does this thing called ‘Fix It’ Friday
where for about a month
they'll keep a list of everythingthat sucks about their job.
(17:23):
So they just likewrite down.
It's true, it's all available,
anyone in the company can see it and it's like,
these are the horrible processes we have.
These are the things we dothat take forever.
Like whatever the worst thing is in your week
you’re supposed to write it on this list.
And then they come togetherabout once a month and are like,
‘Okay, let's just allfix one workflow.’
And sometimes that only benefitsone person in the team.
(17:43):
But the whole team workson that solution.
And everyone has learned a massive amount
about how to use AI more effectively
from doing that.
How to build in automations,like all these amazing things,
because some of them had learned how to do that
and they shared with the others.
And now more and more of my team
is very quickly able to see,
oh, this is a patternwhere I probably
(18:05):
don't need to do thisin a manual way or
oh, this isa place where
we actually should have more
of our team,our human team,
working on it.
Those ‘Ah ha’ moments arecoming from someone saying
‘Hey, look, you do this,I do this too.’
And now I do it like this.
Right.
[Molly] And that is massively impactful [Jeff] Right.
Especially from a peer.
[Molly] Yes, exactly [Jeff] Right, especially from a peer
Exactly, it's somebody elsewho's in your shoes every day.
(18:27):
[Jeff] Right.
And they, you know, they need to know, like
they're doing the thingin the old way
and they want to knowhow you're doing it.
And of course, you need a somewhatcohesive team environment.
But I think this is actuallya good way to build that to.
Yeah.
[Molly] That sharing [Jeff] Yeah, I think so.
Well Molly I don't think you'll haveany shortage of things to keep you busy
in your focus of workand all your research.
(18:47):
So thanks for stopping byand sharing a bit of information.
Congrats on the show.
I'm sure you're super, super busy,so I really appreciate the time.
Yeah, it was great to see you.
Thank you so muchfor having me.
All right.
She's Molly, I'm Jeff
We’re at the Atlassian Team ‘25 show
It's in Anaheim California.
Thanks forwatching.
Thanks for listening inon the podcast.
Catch you next time. Take care.
Boom!
(19:07):
Awesome.
Out.
Okay, great.
This was fun.
Thank you Jeff.
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
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.
(19:31):
Thanks for listening.Take care. Bye bye.
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