Molly Sands: Clarity, Empowered, Disciplined, Rituals | Work 20XX Ep36

Molly Sands: Clarity, Empowered, Disciplined, Rituals | Work 20XX Podcast with Jeff Frick, Ep36

English Transcript 

Cold Open:
Yes, so I’ll just count down 
three, two one and then we'll start. 
Okay. 
All right. In three, two

Jeff Frick:
Hey welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here. Coming to you not  from the home office but from  Anaheim, California right across the street from the happiest Place on Earth. We're here for the  Atlassian Team ‘25 conference. About 5,000 people talking about the future of work, talking about software development. And really they've  been about distributed teams since the very beginning. They've been off email since 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 us so we can all get better. So I'm excited  for my next guest. She's Molly Sands, the Head of Teamwork Lab for Atlassian. Molly, great to see you.

Molly Sands:
Yeah, you too Jeff Thanks for  having me. 

Jeff Frick:
Absolutely. So, ‘State of Teams’ report. You guys come out with this every year. What were  some of the, the highlights of this one that just came out? 

Molly Sands:
Yeah, with ‘State of Teams’ are always  really interesting in understanding what are the biggest challenges teams are facing and what are the best teams  doing to overcome them. And this year, one of the problems we were really focused on was information. We know that we  are all so connected. You just mentioned being distributed across the world. We have so many amazing tools to communicate with each other, but people are really drowning in information. We have so  much information, so many notifications, so many meetings that it makes it hard to actually get our work done. And what we found  in this year's report was that over a quarter of the time  that executives, leaders, everyone  in organizations is spending at work is actually looking for information

Jeff Frick:
is looking for information 

Molly Sands:
It's looking  for information. 

Jeff Frick:
And how much of that’s information that they know is there or they're trying  to just learn it for whatever the project is  or all the above. 

Molly Sands:
It's a mix. It's everything from that slide deck that you probably saved on your desktop, but you can't quite remember what 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 message 26 different colleagues and go down the rabbit hole to try to find the right person, to trying to learn context about what's going on so that they can make informed decisions.

Jeff Frick:
Right. So that's the big that's the big gotcha. Is the actually the collecting  of the information or the getting of the information.

Molly Sands:
Yeah. And it's amazing that we have all this information available. And what we're right at this moment with AI, where we can start to take advantage of it and actually turn it into really useful content. 

Jeff Frick:
Right, Because silos of information and department level silos, that's not a new problem. That's been around forever. So how are you finding AI as a solution to kind of break down some of those silos? 

Molly Sands:
Yeah. So what we're  seeing is that  people are so really  worried about this We saw in the report that 98% of executives felt like their teams are not yet using AI to break down silos. But what we're seeing is that it is possible. So the teams that are using AI most effectively and really putting  information online,  so the teams are working in ways where they're  actually building that organizational knowledge base. So they're sharing  what their goals are. They're sharing  progress. They're sharing more widely how things are going and what  they're doing. That's what's helping people overcome those silos and making it  so much easier for anyone  in the company  to actually work together 

Jeff Frick:
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 talked about the calendars and how a lot of people get managed by their calendars instead of people managing their calendar. What are some And the other one is notifications and notification fatigue and the constant, you know interruptions from trying  to get work done when, you know, you got this thing binging and this thing binging. Wonder if you can share  some best practices about how you can  kind of take control  of your day back from these distractions  so that you  actually have time to work. Instead of just responding to dings and charges and this, that and the other.

Molly Sands:
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 real work done right now. And we have a  lot of suggestions about what really does  work for this. And I was just coming from a session that we had with lots of customers where we were  having conversations about how people can take better control of their time, and almost everyone was really excited about this  concept of ‘Page-Led Meetings’  So when we think about  designing our workdays there's a couple of steps you want to go through. First, you want to get really clear on what our goals are. And so my team has done a lot of research to help people  with strategies that make it easier to figure out what your priorities really are, and then to focus on those as you look at your work day. So we ran experiments with teams at Atlassian where we had them  do this practice of setting a North Star for every day.  Saying what is one actually  meaningful piece of work that I want  to get done and then finding time in their calendar 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. 

Jeff Frick:
Just for  that one. 

Molly Sands:
Just. Yeah, just for that one thing. Give yourself a  good amount of time. So you can  actually think, right. We need the time to get deeply into thinking. And that can be alone or that can be with other people. Either way is great. It depends on what you're trying to do, whether you want that to be collaboration time, more time for you to think or write or code or whatever it is you're job really requires. 

Jeff Frick:
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. 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 think most people gosh that they would probably love the opportunity but don't really know how  to have the discipline  to set aside  and say no so that they've got that block of time to work on those things.

Molly Sands:
Yeah. One strategy that  I like a lot is this idea of  budgeting your time like you would  budget dollars. So we often encourage teams to play what we call the $10 game where you give yourself  $10 for the week. That's like roughly half a day. And then  you look at what are we really trying to  accomplish as a team right now, and you go ahead  and budget your hours in a way that's similar to budgeting your time. And this is a very  high level exercise. And we've had  teams do this and then align with  their manager and their team on what  they think and that gives them so much more goal clarity. It helps people make way more progress. But it also helps with that  piece you're tapping into about  really getting  buy-in, right. You want to make sure if you're saying no to stuff, and you're getting really focused on spending a lot of time  on one thing That thing needs  to be the right thing right?

Jeff Frick:
Right

Molly Sands:
We want that to be impactful, and if it is, then everyone around  you is so thrilled  to see the progress you make and how much faster you actually get the work done. And so as people think about  designing their calendars and taking this kind of   radically different approach of designing it  around the work rather than the meetings that appear, getting really clear on what the goals are. And what really matters to the team is a good place to start.

Jeff Frick:
It's really this,  this theme of, of clarification of goals  and really,  you know, making sure you're working towards the right goals and making sure  everybody knows kind of the great question, what success looks like. And a lot of people  never ask  that question. So they never got the answer to that question. 

Molly Sands:
Totally, and it's I think it's  those rituals that really make the 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 within the team.  Everyone actually takes the time  at the beginning of 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 Frick:
Not, never happened

Molly Sands:
Probably in someone's mind it’s there. But what I always tell leaders the one great trick is just in your next meeting ask your team why you're doing the project. Ask everyone to tell you. And probably everyone in that group does not have the same description or understanding of what you're  trying to do, why you're  trying to do it, and  what success  looks like. And if you just have that conversation you can get to the other side of it with everyone having that shared understanding. And that helps you scale  decision making so much better because everybody gets what the point of this really is. They can move so much 

Jeff Frick:
What a concept 

Molly Sands:
It's like  fully empowering. I know it sounds like the most obvious thing in the entire world, and you get into  real teams  and it doesn't  happen enough 

Jeff Frick:
Right, right. The other thing is, as you said, it makes you happy you 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 praise from a colleague or praise  from their boss.’ 

Molly Sands:
They totally do. They absolutely do. Which is so funny. But these ways of working do feel better. And this is one of the things I love about studying work. I've been studying work for a long time  and getting  things done feels good  to people reaching meaningful goals. That feels great. 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

Jeff Frick:
Right, right. That's great. So you've been working on work for a while. We're still kind of stuck where the traditional office is basically a paper version of what a factory used to be. Right? I mean, I was around  not that long ago where work was  at the office. The files were  at the office. The phone number, there’s one phone number It rang in the front. Then they would route you to your phone in the office. The mail came to the office, the forms were to the office. And I think you made an interesting statement. That work now is in laptops. It's not in hallways.  And really being able to work effectively in that  digital world, it's really,  really important. 

Molly Sands:
Yeah. A lot of what my team  is focused on  is how do we set teams up for success 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 people that are in other buildings or on  other floors. You might be having calls with clients or customers. Sometimes you probably travel to 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. 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 doing very physical things in physical spaces. But so much of how we communicate and collaborate with each other and share information happens through the computer. And the more that we can  acknowledge that reality  and actually build the 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 teams in really smart ways, but only if it knows and learns from what  we're doing  what we know and  what we're learning. 

Jeff Frick:
Yeah I think the distributed word is the right word. 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're in the same building, most of the time people are not on the same floor. I mean, if you go to  some of these campuses, they're huge

Molly Sands
Huge. They’re huge. Everyone's on  their laptop from their  different buildings, from their desks

Jeff Frick:
Exactly  

Molly Sands: 
And yeah, it is just the reality for how modern work happens. 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 clients that are anywhere in the world. That's huge  for businesses. So there's this  huge advantage to having that flexibility and for our lives too, right. Work and life can  be integrated in more fluid ways than  they ever have before. And there’s lots of good things that comes from that too. 

Jeff Frick:
So you had a cool Substack post out the other day, and you had a really interesting  quote in there. You said ‘Share strong opinions loosely held.’ 

Molly Sands:
I love this. This is my favorite thing. I learned as a product manager. 

Jeff Frick:
I've never heard  that quote before. Share strong opinions loosely held. What does that mean and why is that really a formula for success? 

Molly Sands:
This was really my 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 clear about your point of view, and that is what helps the team the most. But you need to always be ready to integrate new information. We never have  perfect context. We almost, we can always learn from other people around us, right? We can always learn more and come up with better solutions. And so I think the best thing that you can do as a leader in any organization is be really clear  about your vision and about what you want to accomplish and about what you  think success looks like. But you always need to be updating that. And so that's where the  loosely held piece comes in.

Jeff Frick:
I like it. 

Molly Sands:
When I learn something that I didn't know before. That might mean that I need to update what my  strong opinion is. But I do want  to have one.

Jeff Frick:
Well, too. It's this. It's this juxtaposition of having a strong,  a strong opinion about something. And really as we've already  been talking about  goals and mission and what  we're trying to accomplish. At the same time, being kind of loosely connected to how it gets done, 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 out how to get there. And then that gets to kind of this loosely held because they may choose a 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 change their mind with new information. And a lot of times we get stuck in the, you know, we get stuck and 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 decision from this point forward 

Molly Sands:
This is where we're at. Exactly 

Jeff Frick:
Right? You can't worry about how much  money you dumped in. It doesn't matter. It's gone And I think that’s one of the hardest concepts for people to really, really embrace because, you know, you are invested in in what you've  done before. 

Molly Sands:
And I do think  that's kind of  what the future of agility really looks like, right, is that we are always able to update and integrate new information and we know that we'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 prospects for much of their career, but the whole idea is that we're always wrong,  but we're learning. So we're getting we're getting closer. 

Jeff Frick:
I like it

Molly Sands:
Right, we’re evolving

Jeff Frick:
We're always wrong. But we’re leaning, we’re getting closer

Molly Sands:
None of it holds None of it  holds forever It never does. We always learn new things. 

Jeff Frick:
Every little bit, a little bit better microscope, right. Get in a little bit.

Molly Sands:
Yeah, you give people something to build on and so they can  get a little bit. Yeah. They have  a new foundation. And those foundations keep moving us forward. 

Jeff Frick:
So 2025, a lot of  chaos in the world. People need support. You guys are doing a lot in terms of the tooling. You're sharing lots of information. You're doing a  lot of research. What are you excited about for this year? What are some of your  goals and priorities?

Molly Sands:
So I am very excited about the work we're doing on goals. I think that a lot of the way the world is moving, we are going to get a lot clearer on what we're trying to accomplish together and what those outcomes really look like. I would love for work to 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 really clear on what they want to do, what is their mission, what is that vision 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 of where we were a year ago. In our research, we're already seeing  that teams that are using AI as a more strategic collaborator, so like building it in across their workflows, using it to  find information, using it as a sparring partner, really thinking about AI  as part of the team are able to accomplish so much more.  And in a world where work  feels very draining for a lot of people right now, I think that that can be massively empowering because they can start to craft their jobs, to the things that they actually love  and are making unique contributions in, and they can also start to get some of the pieces that are monotonous  or difficult, and not fulfilling or enjoyable off their plate. And that's exciting. 

Jeff Frick:
And you guys are sharing a lot of tips and tricks on different ways that people can use an AI tool on all these different little  bits and pieces of their workflow. You've got all kinds of suggestions here. 

Molly Sands:
We do. We've been we've been working on this a lot

Jeff Frick: 
Which is  great though. Cause so  many people. I mean, a surprising amount of people have still not ever tried, have still not ever tried it. It is It’s just Because they don’t know  how to start, right?

Molly Sands:
And one of  the things we see that I would recommend to leaders and companies everywhere is that community based  learning and sharing is one of the most effective ways to get people going. So if you can set up forums within your team, if you're someone that leads a team within your company, or people that have similar jobs or do similar tasks  can actually say, ‘Hey, this is a problem I have that 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 everything that sucks about their job. So they just like write 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 do that take forever. Like whatever the worst thing  is in your week you’re supposed to  write it on this list. And then they come together about once a month and are like, ‘Okay, let's just all fix one workflow.’ And sometimes that only benefits one person in the team. But the whole team works on 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 pattern where I probably don't need to do this in a manual way or  oh, this is a place where  we actually should  have more of our team, our human team,  working on it. Those ‘Ah ha’ moments are coming from someone saying ‘Hey, look, you do this, I do this too.’ And now  I do it like this. And that is massively impactful. 

Jeff Frick:
Especially  from a peer. 

Molly Sands:
Yes, exactly  

Jeff Frick:
Right, especially from a peer 

Molly Sands:

Exactly, it's somebody else who's in your shoes every day. And they, you know,  they need to know, like they're doing the thing in the old way and they want to know how you're doing it. And of course, you need a somewhat cohesive team environment. But I think this is actually a good way to build that to. That sharing.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah, I think so. Well Molly I don't think you'll have any shortage of things to keep you busy in your focus of work and all your research. So thanks for stopping by and sharing a bit of information. Congrats on  the show. I'm sure you're super, super busy, so I really appreciate the time.

Molly Sands:
Yeah, it was  great to see you. Thank you so much for having me. 

Jeff Frick:
All right. She's Molly,  I'm Jeff. We’re at the Atlassian  Team ‘25 show It's in Anaheim, California. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening in on the podcast. Catch you next time. Take care.

Cold Close:
Boom! 
Awesome. 
Out. 
Okay, great.
This was fun. 
Thank you Jeff

Molly Sands: Clarity, Empowered, Disciplined, Rituals | Work 20XX Ep36

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