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What questions/topics do you have on organizational transformation?

Christine P. Dela Rosa

Atlassian is looking for your questions on organizational transformation.

We often talk about issues that affect our immediate teams or share best practices on relationship management.
But, we less frequently talk about scaling change across an entire organization, change management communication that involves an entire company, or issues like burnout that touch all employees.

Pretend this is an advice column on this topic. What would you want to ask Atlassian? What's your company struggling with that other companies may also be experiencing?

Example 1: At X Company, we do a lot of experimentation in delivering Y services to our customers. Sometimes, our email team is running a new program that overlaps with goals from our growth team who also overlaps with goals with our customer advocate team. I know the answer is: "make sure these teams are talking to each other," but that's easier said than done. Any tips?
Example 2: Since working remotely, the entire company has become more silo'd. We jump on Zoom, we Slack chat to ask for links or files, and it's all very transactional. Has Atlassian figure out a way to make space for less transactional collaboration in a distributed world?
Example 3: We didn't start out this way. I was one of X Company's first hires and we lived our values. But with great success, comes great hiring growth. I fear our values have gotten lost, and besides hiring for the "values-aligned" people, what else can be done to reinforce company values--throughout an employee's lifespan?

I encourage any members to respond to answers. After all, that's what Community is for! But, depending on answers, I may also reach out to you individually for a secret Atlassian project.

Responses by April 8 are greatly appreciated. The sooner the better heart

Thanks in advance!

Comments

Andrew Kendris_io3cw5

With transitioning to remote, it can be tough those maintain those meaningful connections we had when we were all in the office (i.e. the hallway encounters when going between meetings, etc.). While the videoconference calls are great, they still don't bring that more personable touch that we use to have. We enjoy the breakout room for large calls for the pseudo-natural encounters to have brainstorming sessions.

We used to actually get a lot of our natural collaboration around lunch gatherings and ideas would grow but those don't happen any more 🙁 Here's to hoping Atlassian has a way to make not only our work collaborative but also keep the humanistic aspect in tact and provide a platform for easy brainstorming for teams that was so structured.

Kevin Tuei_o41sog

Since the onset of the pandemic, companies have had to divide employees into either those providing essential services and need to be at the premise and those providing non-essential services and are forced to work from home.

This has led to disconnect among teams that used to work together at the premise as some feel they should also have the "pleasure" of working from home while some feel they should also be having the "privilege" of doing work at the office where they feel they are more productive.

There is also the aspect of fear when news of a colleague testing positive or losing their job or life due to this pandemic.

How can Atlassian and the power of community help bridge this essential-non-essential divide and squash fear from the workplace?

Christine P. Dela Rosa

@Andrew Kendris thanks for this! I try my best to see how our customers are feeling and I have to say that this has come up, so you're not alone!

At the heart of "natural collaboration" as you put it, is this idea of organic ideation and unstructured collaboration. We too are experimenting in this area.

One of the things we've found is that a distributed world is very transactional. There's no reason to ping someone if there isn't an intentional question or comment, no reason to jump on a Zoom unless you've been invited, and no random assembling of coworkers in the same space without an agenda. As an experiment, we're piloting audio-only events where Atlassians host topics about our work, about how they're feeling, or even about current events. Other Atlassians can join to listen in for part of the conversation, chime in, or leave after only joining for a portion. It's a low pressure, no video, environment, and no deliverables are required. We're starting to find there is some increase in connection and some inspiration added to an Atlassian's energy. But, it's still early days with this experiment.

Another thing we've encouraged, and I think many other companies have found success in, is icebreakers or something to start off each meeting that helps connect as humans as opposed to resource exchangers. Simple, but definitely changes the tone of meetings.

If others out there have suggestions, I'd love to hear what you're doing here.

Christine P. Dela Rosa

Hi @Kevin Tuei !

That's definitely a topical concern given the last year, and one that will remain even after some companies return to physical offices. Because even though we can return to previous routines, the fact that some companies have made determinations about which employees should work from home and which need not, is almost a statement about how roles are viewed.

That said, I think communication matters a lot. How we value our teammates matters in both actions AND words.

I also think that "non-work" impact is very much related to work. We hire whole humans, not roles. Which means that when employees deal with difficult news, even if it is about someone else, we should be aware of that and treat those teammates with that information in mind. Just as a teammate is not at their best when they lose access to one of their tools or can't reach another teammate, our teammates can't be at their best if other parts of them aren't addressed either.

I'm getting a bit philosophical here, but it comes to values and working as a full team. Reinforcing that is a biggie, at least at Atlassian.

One more thing I'd add is for managers, leaders, and anyone at the receiving end of help (*cough* that's everyone), to add detail when recognizing teammates. When you notice that a team had to reprioritize their workload to get something done, let's recognize that not only is the work good, but that we're thankful for a team having to rearrange their portfolio to get it done. Let's acknowledge that you're aware of something going on in someone's life and that you think they should take more time on a project even if they think they can swing a faster timeline. These little things add up in showing that a) you see a teammates for their whole selves and b) you see the value in all the aspects of their work.

These are all things individuals can do and for senior leadership to reinforce from a communication standpoint. But if you (or any user reading this) has any scalable suggestions, please drop them here!

Kevin Tuei_o41sog

Sure, this goes beyond the pandemic.

Just as you have said, it takes the concerted effort of actually everyone to always remember that we hire humans and not roles and that communication is key.

Availing the bare minimum resources to get the work done is simply not enough if there is no human aspect to it.

A proactive leadership that foresees human difficulties in its workforce and makes deliberate efforts to ensure that they are mitigated if at all they can't be neutralized can go a long way in driving productivity.

We can go on and on but as we all know we need to really bring it out through practical SMART strategies e.g. Having constructive "rant" (i think there may be a better word 🙂) sessions every fortnight to have employees just release their work pressures and share the difficulties they are facing at home or at work.

John Hoover_96tono

@Christine P. Dela Rosa

I'm a Project Manager with SEL Engineering Services. I am currently the lead proponent of using JIRA and Confluence within SEL Engineering Services for project management. However, even though I think this is the best option based on the tools and resources available for me and my company, I am faced with CONSTANT frustrations in trying to create a seamless way for my teams to interact with the two products efficiently.

Where should I go to find the "Best Practices" used by large organizations that are managing complex projects with waterfall and agile project management aspects?

I feel like most everything I find in the Atlassian Community is either:

- "Beginner" items like how to list JIRA issues on a confluence page
or
- "Advanced" items like someone asking if it is possible to update a Confluence Task List from Linked JIRA Stories and someone saying "Nope, not possible" or "here's some created code that doesn't really do what you want and can only be inserted by admins".

I like the Jira and Confluence Atlassian products but I need an Intermediate/Advanced user guide that shows me the Best Practices available for Project Managers and exactly how to accomplish those things. Where should I look for that? Where do I find out how the Atlassian project managers use Jira and Confluence for their major, internal projects that involve things like facility upgrades and new engineering design? Or do the internal Atlassian project managers rely on custom code to better integrate Confluence and JIRA, that isn't available to the general public?