The Atlassian Playbook for Building a Fast-Moving, Outcome-Driven Marketing Team

#264 Async Work | In this episode, Dave is joined by Ashley Faus, Director of Lifecycle Marketing at Atlassian, and Dr. Molly Sands, Head of the Teamwork Lab at Atlassian. Ashley brings deep experience in cross-functional B2B marketing leadership, while Molly leads a team of behavioral scientists designing better ways for teams to collaborate. Together, they unpack how Atlassian has rethought marketing org structure, internal comms, and meetings to drive higher output with fewer syncs. Dave, Ashley, and Molly cover:The framework Atlassian uses to reduce meetings and communicate asynchronously (including how to structure updates that actually get read)How to balance transparency with clarity and avoid information overload across Slack, Loom, and ConfluenceTactical ways to structure team rituals, recurring meetings, and brainstorms to focus on output, not performative busywork You’ll walk away knowing how to run a leaner, more effective marketing team (without drowning in Slack and Zoom). Timestamps (00:00) - – Intro (03:39) - – Why marketers showed up live: too many meetings, too little output (06:39) - – Meet the guests: Ashley Faus and Dr. Molly Sands from Atlassian (09:09) - – What “Team Anywhere” means at Atlassian (11:09) - – The difference between information sharing and real connection (13:39) - – Why marketing updates often fall flat internally (15:39) - – How to communicate clearly inside the org (and get your message read) (19:09) - – Structuring updates: topic, who it’s for, action, context (22:09) - – When you need a meeting vs. when async works better (26:09) - – “Sparring” meetings: real-time collaboration between equals (28:39) - – What actually builds team connection (hint: not team happy hours) (32:13) - – Async tools Atlassian uses across marketing (34:43) - – Getting quiet team members to contribute in meetings (37:13) - – How Atlassian runs recurring team rituals without wasting time (41:13) - – Cross-functional alignment: structure, scorecards, and shared goals (44:13) - – Best practices for async tools like Loom and Confluence (47:13) - – Do brainstorming meetings even work? Here’s when they do. (50:13) - – What to share with non-marketers (and what to skip) (53:13) - – Why creating focus is the most underrated leadership skill (55:13) - – Final takeaways from Ashley and Molly Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.com Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/ Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership *** Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut. Why are we spending all this time on marketing… just to push buyers to a “Request a Demo” button? Even if they’re interested, no one wants to click that. No one wants to “talk to sales.” They just want to try the product for themselves! Good news: now they can - with Walnut. Walnut is the interactive demo platform for marketers who are done hiding their product and want to put it front and center. You can build guided, self-serve demos in minutes. No engineers. No developers. No waiting. Embed them on your site. Drop them in emails. Let buyers explore your product on their terms - at any stage of the funnel. And the best part? You get the data. See what features prospects are engaging with, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. 500+ companies use Walnut - including Adobe and NetApp. Their teams save 400+ hours a year building demos… and have prevented over 1.5 million minutes of bad ones. So if you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product, go check out Walnut.io (and tell their team you heard about it on the Exit Five podcast!).