AI And The Future Of Work with Atlassian Futurist Dom Price
Dom Price - Work Futurist at Atlassian, TED Speaker
Born to Joy in the harsh Manchester Winter of 77, Dominic has a career that has reached far and wide through Europe, US and Asia Pacific.
An accomplished TED speaker, Dom is proud to work at Atlassian, where he’s spent 12 years helping teams unleash their potential in how they work. As their resident Work Futurist. Dom is Atlassians in house “Team Doctor” helping distributed teams at Atlassian scale by being ruthlessly efficient and effective.
He also spends over half his time helping our customers navigate transformation, agility, leadership, and the future of work. Dom has a deep passion for elite human performance, highly effective distributed teams, and building thriving businesses.
How we work today, isn’t how we’ll work tomorrow. Here’s what a world-leading Work Futurist told us about AI and the future of work.
In this conversation, We Are Human Leaders hosts Alexis Zahner and Sally Clarke discuss the profound changes in work culture brought about by the pandemic, the resurgence of old management practices, and the need for flexibility and trust in the future of work with Atlassian's Work Futurist Dom Price.
We explore the role of AI as a tool for enhancement rather than a weapon, emphasizing the importance of redesigning organizational systems to accommodate new technologies. The discussion also highlights the agency of middle managers in driving change and the significance of sustainable, incremental improvements over dramatic transformations.
In this conversation, Dom shares his thoughts around the evolving landscape of work, emphasizing the importance of co-designing sustainable partnerships, redefining productivity, and focusing on outcomes rather than outputs. We discuss the need for trust in low-trust environments (and how to build it), the courage to seek feedback, and essential leadership skills for the future. The conversation also touches on the impact of AI on business and the necessity for a complete overhaul of education to keep pace with societal changes.
What the episode covers:
The pandemic acted as a catalyst for change in work practices, and how old management behaviour's are resurfacing post-pandemic.
Flexibility and trust are essential in the future of work.
AI is often viewed as a weapon rather than a tool, how organizations need to redesign systems to accommodate AI.
Sustainable change comes from small, incremental steps, how to focus on continuous improvement rather than dramatic transformations.
Redefining productivity to focus on outcomes.
Leaders must balance process with genuine care for people and how storytelling helps them connect to people.
The future of work will be significantly different due to AI, but rediscovering humanity in the workplace is essential.
Businesses should focus on solving customer problems, not just profit.
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Episode Transcript:
Key Chapters
00:43 Introducing Today's Guest: Dom Price
02:20 The Impact of the Pandemic on Work
04:09 Challenges of Remote Work and Management
10:57 AI: Tool or Strategy?
16:26 Empowering Middle Management
26:28 Rethinking Productivity
29:32 Understanding Value and Delivery
29:52 Measuring Outcomes vs. Outputs
30:46 The Loop of Continuous Improvement
31:45 The Importance of Customer Feedback
35:13 Building Trust in Organizations
40:41 Leadership Qualities for the Future
49:02 The Future of Work in 2030
Alexis Zahner: [00:00:00] Welcome to, we Are Human Leaders. We're so excited to have you here with us, and we invite you in to be part of the global community driving change. Each conversation on this podcast is an invitation to grow, to question, and to co-create a future where people, business and society can flourish together.
Here are human leaders. Myself, Alexis, and my co-host Sally Clark. Are your guides on this journey connecting you to big ideas, bold conversations, and brave questions that will help you live and lead more human? So today's guest, Sally, can you tell us a little bit more about who we are speaking with?
Sally Clarke: This is definitely a conversation full of big ideas, bold, bold questions, and some pretty brave and forthright answers.
We're speaking today with Dom Price, who is a [00:01:00] thought leader extraordinaire, and also work futurist at Atlassian, where he's been working for round 12 years now, functioning as the in-house team doctor. So really solving some of those fundamental issues that distributed teams face when they're scaling by being really ruthless.
Efficient and effective, but also very human. He's also spend some time helping customers navigate transformation, agility, leadership, the future of work. And this is definitely a conversation that I think is gonna answer a lot of your questions about that sort of magical nebulous concept of the future of work too.
It certainly did for us, didn't it? Lex?
Alexis Zahner: Absolutely. And probably one of my favorite things about Dom is that he's never shy on a spicy take. Um, so we certainly asked him the hard questions around where he felt the future of work was going, what it might look like in the next decade. Um, and we were greeted with answers that we did not predict.
So.
Sally Clarke: It's [00:02:00] probably a conversation that could have lasted 10 hours in that every question we asked and every answer he gives. We have 10 more questions 'cause there's just so much to it. It's a dense and fun conversation. Let's delve in. Welcome to We are
Alexis Zahner: Human Leaders. Dom, it's a pleasure to have you here with us today and we wanna dive in.
Super. I'm excited for this. This is gonna be a fun conversation. It's been a long time coming and we wanna start Dom. Can you tell us what do you think has changed or not changed in the world of work since the pandemic?
Dom Price: Good question. 'cause actually, within that, there's a few, like quite violent swings, right?
There's, I, I feel like, I feel like there was this catalyst of wartime response in the pandemic. Where we suddenly opened our eyes to things that previously we'd said were impossible, suddenly became possible. And actually what we didn't quite understand was how simplistic that was, because it was wartime there.
There weren't many, like for knowledge workers, there weren't many choices. It was [00:03:00] like you are restricted. And so what's happened since is those restrictions have dropped. Old school management behaviors have crept in. Right? And not just those, but like they, I remember doing some research like late 2020, early 21, the highest growing segment of software sales was surveillance software, right?
So it, it honestly, like, it makes me, I dunno if it's like LA fall cry, it depends on the date. I think it's both, but. If you just hold those two opposing views in your head at the same time, in the last five years, record amount of research and conversation around psychological safety, highest selling software surveillance.
It's like, no, no, like, like Sally, I completely trust you, but I'm just gonna check every keystroke. 'cause in my mind, if you are whacking that keyboard, you're doing some work. And so what what it showed was these, these, and I mean this in the nicest possible way. Prehistoric management beliefs that are scarily sticky, like they're still around and it, and it kind of needs planks law.
It needs that generation [00:04:00] to move on or, or see the light. Some of 'em have seen the light, the rest just need to move on so that the new way of working can actually thrive. 'cause right now I think it's being hampered. So my prime example here is, I mean, and maybe it's just my LinkedIn feed and it's designed to stress me out, but on a daily basis, I see this like, should people work from home?
Should they be in the office? Right? Why are we debating that when in reality, I reckon like 95% of the businesses I work with are distributed? Yeah. Even if they're all in Australia, they're in different states. So the muscle you need is how do we work in a distributed fashion? The argument we're having is you need to be at home, you need to be in the office.
You're like, you are missing the point. So I think we made advances. It's, it's a bit, a little bit like a Paula Abdul song. I'm gonna check The generational awareness of you two and your audience, like it's three steps forward, two steps back,
Alexis Zahner: right? Yeah. Yeah. We've
Dom Price: made one step forward, but the effort we expanded was three steps, and then we kind of got dragged back to.
Yeah. I think [00:05:00] the flip of that, I think that's the thing that needs to change. It's not that we make the wrong three steps, we just need to stop throttling it back. We just need to kind of trust ourselves that we can evolve into a better way of working.
Alexis Zahner: Yeah. And Dom, you raise a good point there because I think what it alludes to is I think we're asking the wrong questions.
You know, should we work from home? Should we work from the office? Yeah. Shouldn't the question be how do we get the best from our team and what's best for them? And let's go ahead and do that. Yeah.
Dom Price: Yeah, I mean we, we've got a phrase we kind of ly throw around called vocation over location, right? Mm. We care more about how you work and less about where you work.
And it's not that I don't care at all about where you work. I have certain, uh, guardrails in place. So with my team, we aim for three times a year. We're spread across, uh, Europe and US and, and me in Australia. So three times a year we gather in the same country somewhere, and we use that time to build connection.
Bonding and belonging. We do high fidelity work in that moment. It might be strategic, it might be solving a brand new problem we've not solved before, and [00:06:00] we build that, that trust and rapport that we then, uh, utilize almost like a catalyst over the following two, three months. And you can feel it just drop right week by week.
It just drops a little bit and then we meet again. Right. But the important thing is when we meet, it's not to do email or to get in documents or to present to each other. Mm-hmm. It's to bring that rich tapestry of who we are and do something we can't possibly do apart. And when we do that, that gives us that connection in that world.
I don't care if fan my, my guy in Germany, I don't care if he's in the WeWork space or if he works from home or a coffee shop. I trust him as an adult to find the spaces he needs to do the work he needs to do when he needs to do them. And so it's not, Monday is an office day. Wednesday's a team day, and the Fridays are this, like, don't dictate to me as an adult that you are telling me you trust me, but I have to connect with my teammates Wednesday at three o'clock.
And you're like, makes those sense, right?
Sally Clarke: Yeah. That's a little, that's completely incongruous and I think it's that kind of, you know. Distaste that we have a lot of leaders have [00:07:00] for, uh, you know, anything being this kind of ongoing journey, which I think to some extent work is kind of like nature in that way.
It's always gonna be organically moving. It's like leadership. We, it's not a one and done, but we still, when we're asking questions like what we need, how many days should we be in the office? It's like we're looking for that one and done switch that we can just lock in and as if that will solve all the problems and then we can get back to work.
But I think we need to sort of reframe how we think about collaboration. In that way as being this ongoing process of shifting and if we can't get comfortable with that,
Dom Price: it's, it's funny you mention it 'cause that that evolution is, is a fascinating thing that I think. If I think about the hardest leaders I'm working with right now outside of Atlassian, they tend to be legacy organization, a hundred, 150 year old org, right?
Lots of history and heritage and enterprise and scale. Like, it just feels hard to change the thing that like I get the same questions from them and it kind of makes me chuckle and, and a little bit curious at the same time. They're like, what's the best practice singular. And it's gonna be the best. And I'm like, [00:08:00] well, you can go and do a study tourist Spotify, go and hang out with meta, go to Google, you can come to Atlassian.
We bend no resemblance to you. So you're not doing music streaming, you're not running Facebook. Right? And, and you're not building software tools like you. You are your own company. So why not build your own identity? And to your point, so evolve that. Right? How does that evolve over time as it mirrors what's happening in the world?
That's a useful exercise. Go and spend as much time as you want in Silicon Valley, you are, you are not there. So why do you wanna mimic that? And also they mimic the wrong parts. Like they buy a few bean bags and, and speakers and chalkboards and they think it's cool.
Alexis Zahner: Yeah, I think it's a good point, Dom and I, it's.
It's interesting 'cause we've worked with, you know, in Australia specifically some legacy companies, um, in certain industries. For example, government and healthcare that tend to have very beded down systems and very high walls around how they work. Why, why they do things a certain way. And I think a lot of leaders specifically don't understand which of those walls [00:09:00] need to be torn down and how they then keep that sort of iterative process of reassessing how we work, why and where.
Yeah. Alive.
Dom Price: Yeah. It's again, it's, it's funny. So again, that, that comes to like, like de depart, anything that starts with department, right? Yeah. Or any sort of government agency. Um, also anything that has a high compliance bar, right? Yeah, definitely. And so what, what we find is that compliance becomes the currency of the organization.
Alexis Zahner: Right.
Dom Price: And, and if that's your currency, that's what you reward. It's what you recognize, what you do performance reviews on. You're like, Hey, uh, Alexis, you didn't break anything this year. You exceeded expectations. And you're like, yeah, I, I literally did nothing. Like, yeah, just, I just kind of bunker down.
And so we, we've inadvertently rewarded process following an adherence in a world where your returns are based on adapting. Yeah. So you're like, cool. The most successful companies I'm working with right now are the ones with high learning velocity. They adapt quickly. Mm-hmm. That's not about compliance or adherence.
Mm-hmm. Now they still comply and they adhere. [00:10:00] That's just the lowest bar.
Alexis Zahner: Yeah.
Dom Price: Right. And so it, it becomes a thing about going. Please don't tear down the compliance wall. That's actually quite important. But if you thought about renovating it, right? Yeah. If you thought about, maybe put a few little gaps in it to let some air through.
And some lights are like, like I'm not saying throw anything away. And this is where leaders get really worried that they hold onto this history and they're like, but if we stop doing that, we might die. And I'm like, no, no. I'm not saying stop everything. Stop the things that are no longer valuable in the current world that you're in.
And add in new things, right? Yeah. Versus just blindly following the way you used to do it. 'cause it used to work. And I'm not saying it didn't work. It used to in that old environment, you are not there. You're here. So either make it work here or even better make it work there, which is where you're going next, right?
That's a little bit too much for most leaders. I'm like, just make it work today and I'll give you a brownie point.
Sally Clarke: And I think for a lot of leaders who are sort of, you know, impressed on that sort of, you know, future orientation. Term that comes up is ai, [00:11:00] AI strategy, ai. AI is gonna fix everything. Now, you've described ai, I think, very accurately as a tool and not a strategy.
I loved the phrase, it's like excel, but angrier and faster, which just feels very visceral.
Dom Price: The reason I mention that so is, is I think right now it's being weaponized rather than valued. Right? It, it's, it's been used as a weapon versus going, hang on, let pause. How do we want to utilize and, and, and unleash this beast?
Sally Clarke: Can you say more about that?
Dom Price: So I, I, I think whenever anything comes along in, in the popular zeitgeist that just kind of dominates the world, yeah. It's very easy to go either, this is wonderful. It solves all the world problems, Sally, Alexis, go outta my way. I need to solve the world's problems. And you're like, well, if you're gonna solve the world's problems, off you go.
Or you're the opposite and you're like, we're do. It's black mirror, right? The jobs are gone, our careers are gone, our fans are gone. My kids will never learn to socialize. They'll never speak to anyone, right? And it's doom and gloom. And so it, it, it's like more about can I convert you? [00:12:00] That's the worst thing we can do.
Right? What I think we wanna be having is an intellectual conversation, right? We are in the early stages of rolling this out and understanding its capability and the risks, right, and the compliance that we need and the safety measures and all those things. So how do we have a conversation about that?
Rather than me go, I'm gonna convert you to my way. 'cause this is right. And you going, no, you are wrong. Right? Yeah. So in essence, we've taken a political approach to ai. You are wrong. I'm right. Rather than a conversation approach of going, we're both right. It is pretty scary and it's exciting, but both of those are possible.
How do we make it so that it's less scary and a little bit more exciting? Right? And how do we do that on purpose now? Not in five years when we're all sat around a table going, we should have known. Yeah. It was doom and gloom and now we have to go and fix it. So I, I, I think the timing's fascinating. It's just been weaponized because if you don't use the phrase, you are currently irrelevant.
Yeah. And, and that just feels a little bit disjointed to me because it's the wrong [00:13:00] conversation again, that.
Alexis Zahner: It's an interesting point, Dom, and it has been, I think the word itself is so polarizing. It, it, you're so right. There's almost like this foreign against ai. Um, and to sort of build on that political analogy you said there, I think it almost borders on preachy sometimes, whether you are for or against it as well.
Oh yeah. You are. It, it becomes a message that is either very doom and gloom and everyone's losing their job and there's gonna be robots walking there. Or we're gonna ascend to this new transcendent galaxy where AI is everything and we'll never do anything again. And it all feels a very chaotic and terrifying.
Yeah. And, and doesn't make sense really for a lot of us. But to
Dom Price: your point, it's a a and, and again, a apologies if, if this is crossed, but I said this to a mate over identity the other week, so it's fair game for a podcast. I said for for me. AI is like teenage sex, right? Everyone talks about it. No one's actually doing it.
Right. And
Alexis Zahner: it's true. You're not doing it well.
Dom Price: You're not doing it well. Right. But I, I remember being like 16, 17 and all ate in the [00:14:00] playground. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you're, have no idea what that means. Right? And it, it's the same in business firms like AI built an agent and I've got a personal assistant and I'm doing this, and I've saved like a hundred hours alone this week.
Like Did, did you? 'cause if you did, that's wonderful. What is the net benefit of that? Without using the phrase ai, what outcome did you achieve? Did you get product to market faster to better value? Or did you learn more or, or did you take time out of your day and week and you got balance? Like, tell me the thing you did with the saving.
And they look at me blankly. 'cause there isn't any, right? Yeah. And so this is where we need this reality check of going. It's not bad or good. Maybe accept or understand is that the current system that we have was designed pre ai. And what we're trying to do is jam this, this whole new concept into a, into a system that wasn't designed with that in mind.
And so we need some forethought just to pause and go. Okay. If we were to redesign the system with the system, with the [00:15:00] nuances and beliefs of AI in mind around preserving humans, right, and us being more compassionate and, and, and the work that we could do and more balance. If you put all those beliefs in and you design a new system, what would that look like?
Unfortunately, the current economy, most leaders haven't got the time to do that, so they're like, cool, I'll buy the ai. I'm gonna jam it in and hope that something magic unicorn pops out, which means what? What the magic unicorn they want is some random stat on efficiency and productivity. And you're like, yeah, okay.
Great. To what extent, like to what end and also the question I like to ask leaders is what's the honest total cost of that? If, if you save half your headcount, 'cause you rolled out a rolled out ai, what's the cost to society of that headcount loss? Where, where have those people gone? How have they been redeployed?
How has that impact society? 'cause they're now not paying tax and they're not part, they're not earning and they're not happy. Like all those things have to be taken into account. So we look at this holistically, not. I managed to get some bottom line by saving [00:16:00] some headcount. That's, I don't think that's the end goal.
Alexis Zahner: I think that's a really important framing Dom and. You know, I don't necessarily think it's a responsibility entirely of an organization to have the entire sort of foresight for communities around what this is gonna look like, um, because I, there's so many unknowns around this right now. Mm-hmm. And perhaps this isn't even the right question to ask.
It's certainly the one we wanted to kind of get us to, um, and this conversation. A lot of the groups or a lot of the leaders that we work with, t typically are in middle management positions, so they can sometimes feel a little stuck, um, around the change they are able to make at what level they can really, um, bring about drastic change as a result of ai.
So a. I wonder, Dom, in your experience, perhaps within the team that you're leading or with some of the teams you work with, how and why should we be using, um, AI at that kind of team level for perhaps collaboration and things like that?
Dom Price: It's, it's a good question. You [00:17:00] know, we, we could extrapolate that, like aggregate out a little bit if you drop AI from it.
Mm-hmm. Because I think AI is the current sort of towards you. But if you dropped AI from it and you said in the last. Five years or the next five years, what can a middle, middle manager do to have impact? Right? Mm-hmm. And I, and I think that's a relevant question. With or without ai. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause I think that's, there's been a trend for years of middle managers going arms folded.
It's hard being me. And you're like, it is. But I also have a belief that. I dunno. Most of the middle managers I've worked with eventually, it doesn't take long for them to realize they've got a, shell load more agency than they give themselves credit for. Yeah. Yep. And I get it. They're down the dumps.
Things happen to them. You start to feel a bit near and you're like, what's the point? I, I get it. Right. We've all been there, we've all experienced it. Waiting for some unicorn in a throne somewhere to bestow happiness upon them. Right. That's definitely not the strategy. And I mentioned that out loud because I think it's the one most people are waiting for.
They're like. There's gonna be a restructure, there's gonna be a change or a transformation. Or some consultants might come in and sprinkle dust [00:18:00] everywhere like they're waiting for it to happen. I'm like, history should tell you that's not right. So let, let's work out what is within your control, what's within your influence, and what do you inherit?
And I've done this within the number of leaders that I'm coaching right now. I'm like, let's be honest. What is actually within your control? And list a whole lot of stuff out. I'm like, cool. What are doing about that? They're like, well, nothing. There's no point. I'm like, hang on. Right. If you are not doing that, you can't expect someone else to go first, so you go first within your control.
Cool. Let's get that from a, let's say it's a, a two out of five. Let's get it to a three or a four. Doesn't have to be a five out of five. I'm not saying be excellent, but like, so, so what an example, one of the concepts I've been using for years now is the health of your team, right? We've got an exercise we run at Atlassian called the Team Health Monitor.
It's published on our website for free. Any team anywhere in the world can do it. I'm like, you control your team's health. Mm-hmm. So ask them, how are we doing? Right? You use your thumbs, you vote, you find one area, you improve it. Suddenly, you know what happens. Old shoulders lift, right? You're like, you know what, maybe I can do this.
And your [00:19:00] confidence rises and, and it's more a can-do attitude. So then you then look at influence. Who are the two, three stakeholders upstream and downstream that you are reliant on? And how can you build a high fidelity relationship with them, not the whole organization. Stop thinking from within the middle.
You can control the whole organization. That ain't gonna happen. So settle for the two upstream and two downstream. 'cause they're the ones that impact you the most. Even if that means in your bubble things get better and the rest of the organization is screwed, at least you are alright. Like, that's not a bad existence.
You're like, I'm, I'm swimming here. Everyone else is drowning, but I'm good. Yeah. 'cause that goodness will eventually spread, right? Yeah. And then step three is to look at what you inherit. And again, how can you start to get ahead of the curve? That's step three. I think people start with that step. Yeah.
They're like, here's what I've inherited from the organization. I'm done. No choice. Like game over. And you're like, hang on, you've missed two buckets where you can have huge impact because you're suing. And I don't think suing is gonna change any outcome. [00:20:00]
Sally Clarke: Unfortunately not. If we could all use the toddler s sulking approach, we'd, we would, and it would be, you know, we'd all be fine.
It's,
Dom Price: you can understand, you can understand why people don't come back for a second coaching or mentoring session after the first one.
Sally Clarke: Well, I love it because it really centers us back in our agency Dom, and I think that's such an important message for all of us. It's a lot of the work that we do at human leaders.
It's also part of the models that we use for burnout prevention because it's. When we feel overwhelmed, and I think for a lot of us, chronic stress is something we might experience at work, but there's this kind of baseline of chronic stress almost at a sort of global level these days. Centering ourselves back in where we have agency and seeing the change that we can make, and then actually manifesting that in a bubble.
Is such an empowering step that we can take and not, so as you noted like it, it sort of improves our own, um, experience of life. And let's face it, it's going fast. Like let's, let's make it fun while we can and not wait for the powers that be to change things for us. Um, but also it's role modeling and it, and it sparks that kind of idea in others, uh, whether it's within the organization or it's at.
A [00:21:00] dinner party with mates that you can sort of bring that lesson that you are experiencing, the different approach that you are taking and start to see that. And I think if we all focus on that kind of like smaller ripple effect rather than having to sort of change everything drastically, that's when we can really perhaps see some real momentum.
Dom Price: I'm with you. I'm, I'm quite anti the word transformation, like I am a recovering consultant. I worked as a chartered accountant for years, so I understand that transformation was created so that you could charge more for change programs. 'cause change programs for five to 10 million and transformation is 20 to 40.
The exact same slides just, you know, find a, replace the word. So I get the notion of it. Unfortunately, the ferro around that has created this bizarre. Hypocrisy that the only way to change is these giant leap transformations. Yes. So Sally, as a leader, if you decide to change, you have to completely reinvent yourself.
And you're like, whoa, gosh. I said I might do it next week. I've got a lot on this week. Versus saying, you know what? Actually in reality, the best way for you to change is to get one degree better every week. Mm. See, [00:22:00] the problem is with that, when you get one degree better every week, you don't get a case study written about you.
Yeah. Right. You don't, you don't feature in a Forbes article. You're not on LinkedIn and there's no case study. 'cause you just managed your own evolution and you matched where you needed to be. It's way more fulfilling and it's way less stressful. Yes. But there's no story versus what we've started to glamorize in business and a little bit in society is this company was on its deathbed and now it's recovered.
You're like, yeah, let's celebrate that. You're like, what about the one that just did well? Continuously? Yeah. And, and because the one that just did well continuously isn't as sexy. He's not gonna get the headlines. That's a diminished story versus one that completely broke itself and then fixed itself. So I think we've, we've inadvertently glamorized the failure to success rather than the, I can maintain sustainable success.
Alexis Zahner: That is such a important point. I mean, there's so many things. I know Sally's nodding 'cause we had a conversation with a brilliant historian named Martin Goodman, who also, um, looked at this through the lens of history and the people we celebrate in history. And so I think this [00:23:00] has become really embedded and internalized in who we celebrate through time.
And he compares Ernest Shackleton and his, um, pursuits through, um, sort of. Polar exploration age with Ro Edmondson, who is very, uh, very much unknown through history and his pursuits through polar exploration, um, arguably far more successful, not arguably is far more successful. Um, avoided all major calamities and deaths to hiss team by just not doing anything chaotic and not taking the bulldozer approach to life just.
Just adapting, relying on local knowledge through that exploration. Um, and it's such a brilliant, um, uh, comparison of the two. And it's, and it's an important point and what I think underpins it all, Dom, that's really important here, is people separate the idea of driving change in an organization from.
For example, behavioral change. And what we are effectively doing in an organization is asking tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of people to change their behavior, but at an individual level that [00:24:00] requires individual investment. So if we look at it almost like what's the tiny habits that we're doing every day and how are they letting us down?
And how can we maybe shift one tiny habit over a three month period, see how we go, and then maybe roll that out further. It makes what feels like a giant problem. Into just a tiny step forward. And I think it's more accessible and also more realistic.
Dom Price: Yeah. But I think so, so the, the contrast I'll give you there is if you look at how most behavior change or change programs are led in organizations mm-hmm.
They're led by a consultant, not by anyone from within the organization. Yeah. The consultant has a different currency. Yeah. I need to show you immediate value. So you pay my invoice. Yeah. I'm gonna create a dramatic burning platform, a dramatic change. You will pay me, I will exit. That change will no longer exist.
'cause it wasn't real falls apart it's theater. Yeah. 'cause the goal was to create a moment and you create the moment and there's the theater and the fanfare and you go and you're like, we're just the same. I, we're, we're exactly the same. Right? Yeah. So that, that's why there's, [00:25:00] there's this notion of like internalizing change programs that I've seen recently.
It's interesting because again, it's less dramatic, it's more sustainable, it's more personalized. But it comes back to the question of have you got the bandwidth internally to do that? And if not, instead of outsourcing it, who can you partner with? So a few organizations I've been playing with recently, and one of them is taking the partnering co-design model.
They're all ex consultants from Big Four. They formed their own business, but they go in and they're like, in the next 90 days, here's how we think we'll deliver value with with you, not for you, with you. And if we haven't. Don't renew our contract. Mm. And if we have, let's continue to play together. But you have to be with us in this and we're co-designing because if we come in with our best practice on a slide and tell you how to do it, you are as mediocre as everyone else we've seen.
Right. So that that's not cool. So how do we make this sustainable and personalized as that co-design? But if you rely on the organization to do it, it's painfully [00:26:00] slow. Yeah. So you can accelerate that, but it's through partnership, not through outsourcing.
Sally Clarke: That's such an important message, I think, for so many of our listeners, Dom, because we know there's a lot of people who are very much focused on the human in this entire sort of conversation and yet struggle because of these quarterly, you know, KPIs that the, that need to be hit in the metrics that need to be shown.
And really weaving in that capacity to create something sustainable that is founded on, you know, longer term relationships, I think is a really, really amazing approach. Hmm. Now we wanna press you on a term that honestly. I feel like I've used this word already a gazillion times this year. I'm really over it, and I have a personal aversion to the concept of productivity.
Not so much the concept, but just this kind of heaviness that I feel is inherent in the word every time I hear it. Just in my own sort of personal journey, that there's some kind of like, you know, expectation that if a day isn't productive by external metrics, then I've somehow failed. I'm putting that aside.
I'm gonna ask you. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Thank you. Thank you. [00:27:00] Center again. Um, so productivity, it is something that we're seeing pretty much every day in the media and this kind of, you know, stagnation of productivity. How do you define productivity for yourself and for your team? Um, how should we measure it?
Should we measure, measure it? And do you think like a leader's too focused on this word right now? Do we need to shift the narrative?
Dom Price: So I think we have to go back to like the true definition of, of prob of. Productivity to start right, which is a 1910, 1920s measure of a very mechanistic workforce. Where we were, we were productive and we cared about productivity.
If I could move the widget one degree faster on, on the production line, and it was human labor at, at that time, that made me more productive. I got more widgets out, I could sell more widgets, and I made more money. So there, there was a world where that was a very good measure. Activity and a proxy for success.
Um, that ended [00:28:00] in about 1960 or 1970. Unfortunately, the word has stuck around. Um, and we continued to use it either incorrectly. Correctly. Like it's more scary for me when it's used correctly, when I'm like, oh, you are actually using it. And you mean the 1920s version that like, it's not that you are ignorant or stupid.
You actually are intelligent and know what it means and you think that's what you want. That for me is scary because I'm like. If you look at the knowledge workers that you have, the ip, the creativity, the innovation, the ability to adapt and change, right? If you look at all those layers, you wanna be an effective organization, you wanna be resilient, you wanna stay relevant to your, uh, stakeholders, both the ones that you pay dividends or, or financial gain to your customers, your suppliers, as a whole network effect of how you need to do that.
And so the reason it bothers me right now is it's very much an output measure. At best, a highly outdated output measure, right? At best, right? Mm-hmm. You swing the pendulum [00:29:00] violently and you go, if I was creating a net new organization today and I didn't have to worry about productivity 'cause I had good stakeholders that were smart and sensible and savvy, what would I care about?
How, how would I still drive the business to do the things that it needed to do? Um, I, I've landed on a really dull but simple concept, which is input measures, output measures, and outcome measures. When I have all three, I'm successful input measures. Do I have the right ingredients to start? Yeah or no?
Like am I starting with an intention to succeed? Do I know who I'm delivering to? What value is? Like just the rough concepts in the guard graph. Still theory, still a bit gray, still a bit fluffy, but rough concepts. As I progress, I should get more confident. As I get more confident, I ship things, right? I ship assets or or products or services or whatever that are part ready and that is the output, right?
A delivery of a thing. There's then the outcome, which is. Subtle to do with me and all about the impact I have on someone else, and that happens three or six [00:30:00] months after the event. So yeah, if I, if I'm doing a keynote talk, the input measures is, do I know who, who's in the audience? What's the mood? What's the vibe, what's the persona?
What topics have I got the right content to build? Right? I then ship the torque itself, and I get a score at the end, 4.6. It's an output measure. The outcome measure is three or six months later when Alexis pings me and goes. Off the back of listening to that, here's the action I took. And you're like, boom, there you go.
That's it. That's the reason I did the thing. But it happens afterwards and it's not me, it's you. So when companies have those three. Stay on there successful. Like you can just see the mojo. You can see the flow. They start the right things. They stop the right things, they celebrate the outcome. But that, you know, shipping isn't the end.
Mm. It's immediately a milestone. They track the bread club. What worked, what didn't. We thought you'd use this feature more. You didn't. You used it this way. I didn't expect that. What can we learn from it? And it's a loop. So the best companies do, it's a loop. The wrong [00:31:00] ones are going, did you move more things this week?
Were you productive? And you're like, what if I move things? But they're the wrong things. Don't care. You're productive. So it, it misses the mark. And I just think like, I don't know what the alternative is. I can't find a good word that everyone can hang their hat on and go, that's the thing we should be measuring in 2025.
I just know it's not productivity, right? It's not, it, it doesn't yield good. Projects, it doesn't yield good initiatives and focus areas and it, it actually yields some quite weird counterproductive behavior that I actually think you, weirdly makes you less productive. Right there. There's a deep irony in that the pursuit of productivity will mean you take shortcuts and in the long run I think you'll less productive.
Sally Clarke: Absolutely. Agreed.
Alexis Zahner: Yeah. It's an interesting point, Dom, and so it sounds to me a little bit like. Organizations are getting stuck in the output side of things rather than measuring the outcomes. I wonder, could you tell us what are some other sort of indicators that the [00:32:00] outcomes are hitting the mark for what we need them to, like is it customer satisfaction?
Like you said, that feedback coming in from people.
Dom Price: Yeah. What
Alexis Zahner: kind of things should we be looking for?
Dom Price: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, that's you, you, you've nailed it. That's the hardest part, right? It's someone else's measure of your value, not yours. Right. And so first of all, you have to give a shit, and second of all, you have to go and ask them, both of which are pretty hard.
So you're like, so, so we deliver a new feature in Atlassian and we can go, we deliver that feature. It's now available to 10 million users. Cool. And that's true. That's technically true. It's available. Now the outcome is we have a hypothesis that 30% of those users should use that 50% of the time, and here's the way they should use it.
So our job is to watch their behavior. We think we've delivered that behavior. Our job is to watch over the first 30, 60, 90 days, right? Track it. Maybe we made a mistake, maybe the feature's too hidden. Uh, and we can roll out, we can do an AB test like it's never over. You can tweak it, you can adapt it, you get better usage, you get low usage.
So you're [00:33:00] experimenting. You are exploring until you land in a place where you are happy, but the hypes isn't the work that you did. It's the, it's the thing that happened after the event, the impact that you had. And when you see it, you're like there. That was the impact we intended. So you're like, brilliant.
So, you know, we can build a collaboration tool. I can ship that to an enterprise that locks every document down. 'cause they don't trust each other. Right. What I need to do is to get 'em to change their behavior and start sharing more. So it's not the release of the software. That's my measure of success.
It's, are you collaborating more? Now there's not Ophthalm moment where I can shove in them and go, you're collaborating yet at 6.7 and now you're at 9.3. But you can sense there's way more sense and feeling measures that we, we really don't give credit to where you can really get a feel for if that's happening or
Sally Clarke: not.
And I can't help but think, Dom, that there, it takes an inherent level of courage for us to seek that kind of feedback, to really hold ourselves open to it. Because if you've spent some time, energy, and a lot of, you know, collaboration as a team into a new product and it goes out, you know. Hearing that it [00:34:00] didn't land exactly as you expected, it can be incredibly valuable data, but it can be uncomfortable if that's not what you're expecting to hear.
So I think there's like some real courage that we need to be bringing in those situations. And I can think it's a very micro level for individuals, but also macro example you've just given,
Dom Price: I think it maps also beautifully to culture. Like if I've got a culture of punishment, I will not bother tracking outcomes.
I'll just track the output I delivered. There you go. All all you can hold me accountable for is I delivered, I shipped the thing. Give me, give me 10. Outta 10, I'm brilliant. Whereas because I don't go and ask how it got used on the 'cause, I know for a fact half the time I'm gonna get a data, a bit of data about that shows me a behavior that's different than I expected in a great company.
That's a chance to learn in a bad company. That's a reason to get fired. It's the same data point, right? So do, do you exist in a company where sharing that someone's gonna go, oh, Sally, I'm so like, great research, so how can we use this so we get better in the future? You're like, awesome, I'll share more.
Versus Alexis, uh, you failed, you got that wrong. Your [00:35:00] hypothesis is bad. Clear your desk, you're out of here. Right? You are never gonna share. So the, the, that cultural layer. PE people treat it as like a nice to have. That cultural layer determines how you treat that data inside, inside.
Alexis Zahner: I'm so glad you went there, Dom.
'cause I wanna double click on this and dive deeper into it. And that isn't to, I, I wanna look at this idea of trust. Now. Trust is something that we hear. Um. As a word, used a lot, um, by consultants, in organizations, by leaders, but I don't think there's a lot of understanding around what actually builds trust.
So I wanna know from you, Dom, you are walking into an organization and the trust in senior leadership is super low. Where does the first, where do you go to first to start rebuilding that trust?
Dom Price: First thing is to ask why I try and. Assumptions kill me every now and then, because once I make the first one, I make the second one, then the third, then the, and then I'm onto assumption 20, and I'm like, I've solved it.
I've solved the puzzle, and [00:36:00] I just forgot to ask a question. So I got, I solved the wrong puzzle. Yeah, hast and speed. Like just pause. Really understand why, why, why? I just ask why a huge man? And it actually to the point where it annoys most people that I work with, I'm like, I'm gonna continue to ask why till I really understand the root cause here.
Right? What actually happened? Not, not the surface level root cause or not your interpretation, the actual root cause. You're like, cool. And once you understand that, you can then start to like, what behaviors happened after that? So the root cause is one thing that that's the trigger, that's the stimulus.
What happened after that? And then I can start to understand what was your role and, and the reason I always like, it's, it's a weird question three, but whenever I have a leader of any level comes to me and go, yo, the pro, and it's normally a phrase, you would've heard it along the lines of, the problem in this place is management and you're.
I just wanna check, I, I think you are management. And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Not, not me. The rest of the management, everyone else. And you're like, cool. So you are the one area. [00:37:00] That's fine. And everyone else is toxic. This is fascinating. You know, you've been here for 20 years and so trying to understand like what, what behaviors have manifested and why might they have manifested?
And what I'm looking for is what's the currency of the business? Is it recognition? Is it experimentation? Is it innovation? Is it compliance? And actually just knowing that, it's funny, there's a lot of leaders I work with where I'm like, if, if you're not happy with that, you join the wrong company. Right?
They're unequivocally honest. They think they value more than anything. Anything else is compliance, so don't join there. If you're a maverick, you're gonna hate it, right? Like find a place where you can be you and you can thrive. If you don't wanna leave where you are, there's then this challenge of going, how do you think about rebuilding trusts?
And, and again and again. I think the mistake a lot of ladies make is they wait for someone else to take the first step versus going, how can I start to build trust? So again, I used the example before, right? There was some teams I was working with that were in a, a low trust environment, and I'm like, you know what?
Let's, let's do a, [00:38:00] let's do a bold thing here. Let's do a health monitor of your team and how they're performing. Let's show where that your team is struggling. Let's show the thing that we did to improve. Now let's show how we've improved. We're now scoring better and now let's go and tell that story to other people.
'cause one of two things is gonna happen, either fomo, everyone else wants to mimic it. You are the first mover. Well done. Or you are the pariah and you've just worked out, you are in the wrong organization and it's not gonna change, right? It's just if, if that's the way it is, it's not gonna change. So either accept it, stop whinging about it because I'm not gonna listen to you or move on, right?
To go somewhere where you can be you.
Sally Clarke: And I think at that point there's almost kind of a healthy, I don't wanna use the word recklessness, but kind of like liberty to kind of experiment. Because if, you know, if you're saying things like, you know, this is, everyone else is untrustworthy, I'm, I'm fine. Then if that's true, then you should probably leave.
But before you leave, test that theory, get some, gather some data, make sure you're, [00:39:00] you're, you're really, you're validating that before you claim to be. Yeah. But,
Dom Price: but also, like Sally, like you, you, no one's got more human capital. Then the place where they're at now. So you're like, you like, like if you join a new company, you, you ask, you need permission to go to the toilet, let alone get paper and a stapler.
Whereas where you are, you've actually got a little bit of latitude. So if you're gonna experiment anyway, if you're gonna leave anyway, experiment there. If it works and it gets better, stay. If it doesn't, at least you tried it and you're gonna be really employable 'cause you'll interview really well. And, and I wanna call out the alternative behavior here, the people that interview for new roles that haven't tried to fix it in their current environment.
I can smell them from a mile off and I never hire them. Mm-hmm. Because they've got a story of the change that should have happened, but they weren't willing to do anything to contribute towards it, and they will not thrive in my environment. And so I can spot the, the arms folded. It wasn't fair. They whinge about it and you're like, oh, what did you do to try?
And they're like, nothing. There was no point. And you're. I, I dunno if I want you to [00:40:00] just come and settle here and be mediocre either
Alexis Zahner: and
Sally Clarke: victim mentality written all over you
Alexis Zahner: and that's where I was gonna go. So I think it's such an important point, Don, because I think we just outsource our agency in that scenario and it's both a learned sort of helplessness as well.
We, we are continuously blaming those around us for the scenario that we are in, which feels awful for us and it's just useless to the organization. Yeah.
Dom Price: Yeah. And it's just a cycle, right? You just, and your, your energy changes. You, you change from cando to can't, and it's not fair. So next time a, a problem gets thrown at you, instead of going opportunity, you're like, happened again.
And you're like, okay. That once you're in that stage, it's just, you've gotta, you've gotta find your own circuit breakup.
Sally Clarke: Now, Dom, if, uh, there was one leadership quality or skill that you think that all leaders now should really be focusing on, what would it be? Um, and, and why? Where's the need? I'm gonna
Dom Price: be greedy.
I'm not gonna pick one. I'm gonna pick three. Love it. There's three front of [00:41:00] mind right now. There might be, they might compete with each other, but there's, there's three that I think are, are, are super, super crucial. One is storytelling. I, I, I think it's been on the rise a little bit anyway, but I, I, when I project forward, if I look at the current environment and I project forward.
You've talked about behavior change, we've talked about that. If we change from productivity to something else, we talk about ai, like huge amount of change. If I'm gonna get people to change, I have to be able to tell a story that gets them excited and energized and focused on that change, right? Not this is happening to me, but I'm in this and it's gonna be better.
And I've got the agency we talked about before and I think I, I'll let, like whilst it might be hard, the destination's worth it. Like you've gotta have that. And that takes storytelling, which is not. Telling it's storytelling, right? People are like, but I've told them what to do and they didn't do it.
That's telling, right? If you add the story bit on the start, it's slightly different. There's more emotion. It's head, it's heart, it's hands, right? And it has to be authentic and credible and believable. So [00:42:00] that's one that I think, uh, I, I've put a lot of leaders through it in, in Atlassian, and I continue to do it with people that I coach and mentor as.
Just a universal skill we all need. Right. And lead leaders especially. Um, second one is around it. It's like package of like curiosity, empathy, um, exploration, that, that kind of stuff to go, let's just assume that tomorrow's different than today. How do I get comfortable just. Just doing that, just, just taking that stride and taking that step and what do I let go of and, and, and how does it help me get that sort of one step closer?
Right. Um, and then the third one is, uh, and it shouldn't be new, but I feel like it's just a genuine focus on people. I, I still think a lot of leaders that I work with are addicted to process and procedure and policy. Um, which again, is that compliance, adherence side. The, you know what, Alexis, like, what, what's going on with you right now?
And, and like, how are you? Right. And like, and genuinely caring. [00:43:00] And, and I'll give you an example. I, I, I had, um, an exercise I used to run probably a few years ago with my old boss. He's, he's no longer with us, where I did a quarterly reflection. I, it was what, what have I nailed this, this quarter? Uh, we call them less positives.
And then column three was personal, and then under that was a table with a fuel gauge of the five different areas I was focusing on. And as the fuel gauge gone up, had gone down right, and it was a reflection on the last quarter and a promise for the next quarter. When, when I stood up my new team, they saw it and, and I never asked them to, they started doing it.
So we now do it as a regular practice. We now do it half yearly. And there's an openness to that in, in that sharing where you're like, I'm not a victim. Sorry, to your point before I'm gonna share here. This, this event didn't go so well. Here's what I learned from it. Here's what I'd like to do differently and here's how I'm holding myself accountable and someone else.
And you're like, it's a genuine care about people. Like my biggest asset is my people. Like I sell software, I make money through selling Ns and [00:44:00] ones and code, but my biggest asset is my people. And if they're not thriving. Nothing else is gonna thrive, right? So, ha, having that, that balance, uh, is, is super important.
And then the, the third one is the B word. Again, the balance is, I think the skill leaders need is when's the right time to detach, when's the right time to detox, and when's the right time to double down? And, and, and you have to be really aware of your body and your soul, and your mind, and your state, and your environment.
You have to be like super, super aware to go, this is a double down moment. There's an opportunity. I've got the energy. I can see the moment, I've got the skill. This is a double down. You've gotta have the time to go, whoa, whoa, whoa. I need to detach from this one. This isn't for me. Someone else can take this.
Right? It's not my race to run. And then you've got the detox, which is the, I need to plug into an alternate energy source, right? Whether that be for me, it can be the kids I, my alternate energy source is [00:45:00] cooking, right? I do cooking for my wife, and the kids like it. It's things that just fill a different cup.
And it's funny because it's absolutely subtle to do with productivity. When? When I like, just for anyone listening up, when I finish this call with you, I'm gonna go to the supermarket. Now I'm still being paid. Technically I'm gonna go to the supermarket, but I start the day early and I'll probably send an email tonight, but I'm gonna go to the supermarket.
I'm gonna get some ingredients. I'm gonna cook a nice dinner for me and my wife and the kids. And, and it's like it doesn't make me more productive. Please don't try and measure that. It makes me a better human. And it's really important in 2025 and then in 2030, and that we know what it is to be human.
'cause we need to stop competing with the bloody machines, let the machines do the machine thing. And we need to rediscover what it is to be uniquely human. And too many of the leaders I work with are robotic. Like, you've got a heart. It's in there. You're not the tin man, right? You've got a heart, bring it.
And it doesn't make you weak. It makes you better.
Sally Clarke: Such an important point, Dom, and I love how you elucidate this, this [00:46:00] wise discernment that I think we need to bring in a culture where the doubling down is kind of just baked in. It says always double down, keep going, go deeper, work harder. Yeah. Having that, you know, wisdom to be able to really see and feel, as you said, in our bodies, in our souls, in our hearts, this is actually a time where I need to plug into something else.
This is a time where I need to, you know, find a different energy source. And I think that's such an important and inspiring and you know, message that I think. Everyone listening can take away to really, you know, bring to those moments where you're automatically thinking, well, I'll just work through the nights.
Like, is that really the best choice for me? For the people around me? Yeah. For the outcomes that we are looking to achieve right now.
Dom Price: Yeah, like I, I don't imagine a graystone for me that says Dom, like, was productive. Like, you know, worked hard through the night, like highly efficient. Like that's, I don't want that written anywhere about me in an obituary or a Grace Stone or anything.
So I'm like, if I don't care about those things, why am I stressing about them? Do I wanna be a good dad and a good husband? And do I wanna be happy? Hell [00:47:00] yeah. I don't wanna be a good employee and a good team. I wanna be all those things, but it's all of them. And I'm not gonna pick one of them as the sole contributor to my life and my happiness and fulfillment when actually it needs all if.
If, if I don't have a job and happy teammates and I don't enjoy it, I can't be a good husband. Right. And I can't be a good dad because I'm a Gru pade. Right. So it it like, and, and I think we've, it, it's like in, in life we've tried to draw silos. Like here's the work me, the social media and the family. You can't draw silos 'cause they all interact with each other.
I don't wanna be five people on a given day. I wanna just be me. And I wear a slightly different, uh, hat, right? Or a slightly different tone depending on what I'm doing. But at the core, I just wanna be me. And if you let me be, me as a husband and a dad, and a colleague, and a teammate, actually that's just taking a huge tax away.
I'm not having to convert and I just get to bring my true value and true self. You're like. Why not
Alexis Zahner: such an important message dom, and it's this compartmentalizing that we feel so compelled to do for so long now [00:48:00] that I think is stopping us from really experiencing the depth and the richness of the human experience in the workplace as our whole selves as well.
Yeah.
Dom Price: Yeah. I mean, I, I remember my, my first ever of a job at Deloitte. I used to like. When I put the suit on and the tie, the compendium, like I became a different person. There was like a work version of Dom and, and I acted a certain way. At the end of the day, I'd loosen the tie and I'd leave the compendium in, in the office.
I'd go for a drink with my mates, but they were kind of colleagues and mates and slightly looser version. Then I'd get home, the suit would come off, right? Shorts, t-shirt. Then Maverick dom comes out and you're like, I'm having to maintain three people. This is exhausting. Like, and, and I get it. Like I'm, I'm not saying take everything from your personal life.
Bring it into your world. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying know at your core, who you are, what you stand for, what your values are, how you wanna be remembered, how you wanna turn up, know those things and adapt to your environment. But because of who you are, and it is not either I, I think with a little bit of foresight we [00:49:00] can do both.
Fully. Agreed. Go for
Alexis Zahner: perfect. So Don, we wanna know from you the year is 2030. What has changed in the world of work and what has stayed the same?
Dom Price: Um. I tell you what, one thing I think that's definitely gonna have changed is the leaderboard will have been rewritten. I, I think we've gone through. Long period of relatively consistent change.
Like even if I look at the internet era, it was the mechanization of things that were already partially mechanized. It just changed the curve. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Whereas I think AI hasn't changed the curve. It's changed the game. Right. And you're like, wow. So I, I'll give you an example. There's, um, uh, an Australian based company, um, uh, that I work with that, uh, let's just say that they're naming, uh, they, they, they lend money to people.
And they may or may not be called Lendy, but it's fascinating because they will be classed as a small, medium business in the world of financial services. I, I know their CEO really well. One of the things [00:50:00] they did when they looked at the power of AI was they were like, let's go through our last three years worth of business cases that we said no to, and look at which ones work now we have ai.
Alexis Zahner: Mm.
Dom Price: Ooh. Yeah. Right. And I, and, and, and he told me and I was like, interesting. And, and, and I had that moment. I'm like, what? And he is like, we may have said no to them. 'cause the ROI wasn't there because it was human-based ROI, but maybe if it's agent-based ROI, maybe there's now margin there and we can actually find addressable markets we would've said no to in the last three years because our cost base was too high that we now say yes to.
So we're using AI to expand our business. I'm like. Now
Alexis Zahner: brilliant.
Dom Price: In the same week I had that conversation with you. This is a true story. I was chatting to a CTO of a giant financial services company and he is like, you know what, Dom, in the next financial year, we are thinking of looking at the possibility [00:51:00] of trying an idea around maybe, and you're like, woo.
Ai and you're like, whoa. You're maybe thinking about possibly because the guy down the road, he's already done it. Yeah. And he's now attacking the market you are thinking of. Now, if you are the giant tech CTO in a huge bank, the, the, the margin that that's been taken from, it seems small today, and each day it'll seem small until it's gone.
And then you're like, oh, it's gone. Right. So the leaderboards gonna get rewritten. Mm. Because what I'm seeing is small, medium businesses and. Businesses led by people that just have that experimental exploratory mindset. They're getting ahead. 'cause they're not waiting for the burden of proof. Mm. They're experimenting right now.
But they're doing so with a customer-centric lens. There's a whole of people I know using AI 'cause they like toys. Mm. Like they've been to the toy shop, they're like, I've got everything. I've got Gemini and GPT, and I've got Claude, I've got Alaskan Rover, I've got got everything. And you're like, what are you doing with it?[00:52:00]
Right. They're doing nothing 'cause they've got everything. This is going, hang on, where are my customers? How can I delight them? How can I look at this in terms of workflows? Where do I need people in IP and compassion? How do I partner them with agents? Like the ones doing it methodically and experimentally brilliant.
That leaderboard will get rewritten. So that's one thing. Second ones are hope, right? And you two are lovely people. So I do this, to be honest with you, it's not a belief yet. It's a hope that we actually take some of the time saving that AI can give us. We reinvest it in people. Mm. I had the same hope with the pandemic that we'd stop, we'd stop the commute to work and if I save two hours a day, that's 10 hours a week that I'd get 10 hours back.
What's happened is, it's quite fair. I reckon Atlassian's taken three or four, maybe five those hours and I've taken the other five. Right? So I've got something that goes, that feels quite fair. Right now. Feels equitable with, with, with ai when talking, is it the same thing? Ai, I'm not campaign four day working week.
I think that's silly, but like, do we have to. Challenge the construct of nine to five, Monday to Friday. [00:53:00] And do we have an ability through technology to have a more fulfilling life where we have more time for society and community and friends and herb gardens, whatever else. We wanna do more time for that and we can afford the lifestyle.
'cause we still have the income, right. That, that's the hope. It's not gonna be a belief until I see some systemic change. And then the, the third one is, is that we actually find a way of focusing businesses. On the problems people have, not the money they can make. And, and it's, it's weird. Like I, I look at the arc of businesses and it's, it's hard to pick examples without offending people, but there's an example I saw recently around Google.
Yeah. I'm almost enough to remember when Google first came out and you'd get like a couple of sponsored links at the top. Yeah. But then that first page was the answer to the things you went looking for. Yeah. Now the first page is all sponsorship. Because they're not serving me. They're serving the advertiser.
Yes. And so I go through PA three pages before I get the real thing I was searching for. [00:54:00] So if you ever need to see an example of this. Search for a telephone number for your favorite restaurant. Mm. You'll get telephone numbers for seven other restaurants that have spent more on adverts than that restaurant.
Yeah. But you won't get the phone number for the restaurant you're actually searching for. Yeah. So they've made it harder for me to get the information I want, but my inconvenience makes them money. Yeah, right. Blockbusters their inconvenience. Right. The late fee made them money. So there's all these businesses where like we're making a monster.
From pissing off our customers. I think that needs to get rewritten to what is true customer value. And in a world where technology's more easily adoptable, uh, what does that look like? And the final one is I think education will have to have been completely overhauled. Mm-hmm. Like tertiary education.
Primary education. Yeah. Adult education. All of them need to be completely overhauled, and I have no idea who's gonna do that. No one seems brave enough or bold. Someone's gonna have to. Mm-hmm. My kids should be educated completely differently than I was. And as employees, we should all go through a [00:55:00] mass education right now, so that we stay relevant.
And I, and I, I've not yet seen that. Truly ha. It's not like an l and d program here or a course there. It's as the world materially changes, how do you help me stay relevant? Yeah, right. As a contributing member of society and I, I've not, again, not seen that happen yet, but it's gonna have to.
Sally Clarke: Probably the lead will be taken by a Scandinavian country.
I expect
Dom Price: I'm with you. I think we should also, let's not go there in the winter, but in the summer let's go. We need to call the Dames.
Alexis Zahner: Yeah.
Dom Price: With you. Yeah, yeah,
Sally Clarke: yeah. Oh, it's been so amazing to chat to you. Um, we'd love to have you back in a couple of years to see how we're tracking towards the 2030. Um, Fiji you just mapped for us.
Uh, thanks again, just epic to chat with you today on vi Be hard.
Alexis Zahner: Thanks for being with us for this episode of We Are Human Leaders with Dom Price from Atlassian. If you'd like to connect with Dom and learn more about his work, check out our show notes at www dot. We are human [00:56:00] leaders.com. As human leaders, we are seeking to lead better, live truer, and be the change that we wanna see in the world.
This is how we recreate workplaces in a world where people and societies can truly flourish and thrive. We're human first, lead a second. Thanks for being with us, and we'll see you next time.