Archana Rao - CIO at Atlassian

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. I'm curious to know how many of you have a leadership pipeline. We know that great leaders grow companies because we talk to them here on the show every day. But what are you doing to create great leaders within yours? If you're a CTO, it is 100% your responsibility to grow and improve your people beyond just their coding abilities.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:20) We've built a tool that improves your people in their craft and in leadership. Visit leaderbits.io to learn more. Today, we are talking to Archana, the CIO at Atlassian, and we discuss why tension can make healthy teams, three tips to up your communication skills, and we even keep it classy by drinking our own champagne instead of eating our own dog food. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:50) This is the Modern CTO podcast. Hey.

(Archana at 00:01:02) Hello.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:03) How are you today?

(Archana at 00:01:04) I'm doing great. How are you, Joel?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:07) Oh, I'm so fantastic. So where are you calling in from today?

(Archana at 00:01:10) I'm in Mountain View.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:12) Okay. Is it nice out there? Is it beautiful weather?

(Archana at 00:01:16) The weather can't quite make up its mind today. It started out sunny, and we got a lot of rain. Everything gets all wet and squelchy outside, and now it's sunny again. So we'll see.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:28) That's how it is in Florida in the summers. It'll rain for like twenty minutes twice a day.

(Archana at 00:01:33) You're out of Florida?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:35) Yeah, we're out of Florida. Have you been down this way much?

(Archana at 00:01:39) Been to Miami, mostly. And actually, we went down to the Keys. That was excellent. Love the Keys.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:48) You can get a lot of lobster. You can like snorkel and find lobster and all sorts of cool stuff.

(Archana at 00:01:52) That's right. Only issue is I'm vegetarian, so I find a lot of lobster to run free.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:59) You can go down there and you can motivate them. I didn't say you had to eat them. I just said you could go snorkel and see them.

(Archana at 00:02:06) Exactly. If I'm down there, I'm like, be free. Be happy. Swim away.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:13) There you go. We'll go down there with megaphones. By the way, this is the podcast. Like, we just record the whole time. It's just you and I hanging out, being a little nerdy, talking about technology and life and stuff. Is that okay?

(Archana at 00:02:27) Sounds great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:29) I saw that you know Sheila Jordan. Have you read her book?

(Archana at 00:02:32) I do, and I have the book. She's been my mentor for many years. I worked for her at Cisco. She was my boss at Symantec when I went there. Yeah, she's great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:47) She's incredibly sharp and articulate. Like, when I started talking with her, I was like, whoa, she's amazing.

(Archana at 00:02:54) Yep. Yep. Just has an amazing vision for her team and for IT.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:01) Yeah. And then she was kind enough, because I have a wife and two kids, and she sent me a book. And so I have the book. I gave it to my wife, and she loved it. And so I've plugged the book a bunch, and yeah, I was like, anything I can do to help, Sheila, just let me know.

(Archana at 00:03:16) Yeah. That's great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:17) So I'm really excited to be talking to you. I was just talking last week to the CTO, Sri, right?

(Archana at 00:03:24) Yes. Sri's fantastic. He's been at Atlassian longer than I have. When I joined Atlassian, he works out of the Mountain View office as well. So when I joined Atlassian, he was my buddy, and it really helped me navigate Atlassian as I came in new from the outside.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:41) So one of the conversations that comes up a lot is every company has a different way that they have their CIO, CTO set up. So could you tell me a little bit about how that looks at Atlassian?

(Archana at 00:03:52) Yeah. You know, Sri and I, we look at it pretty fluidly. It depends on what we're looking to do. Are we building things? Are we running things? And you're right. I think in different companies, it's structured differently. And we talk very openly about what should sit where, what skill sets are suited to what, what part of the business, and where there is growth for teams. Sometimes having just one or two people in one organization means you don't really have a team. You don't really have much of a line of sight to your growth. So having the right teams sit in the right places within the organization and doing the right thing for their career growth is important. So we do revisit some of, you know, where's infrastructure, who manages AWS, who's doing commerce, some of those areas where we have intersection. But we work it out and do the right thing for Atlassian and for our teams.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:54) That's—I love it. And the culture over there, when I was talking with them, one of my favorite culture items was open company, no bullshit. Like, I loved that, and it seems as I read through your website and the other culture items too, I was like, wow. You guys have a really strong community.

(Archana at 00:05:13) We do, and we're big on running open. That's what attracted me to Atlassian. You know, when I talk to the leadership, it's not just words on a piece of paper or on a website. We actually embody it. We live it every day. And that was the most exciting thing for me coming into Atlassian, and I've loved every minute that I've been here. The team really believes in open, and we live it every day. We learn from it. It's open, balanced, very outcome focused, and doing the right thing is a big deal. Right? So I love all parts of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:50) So I know where you are today, right, at Atlassian, but I want to step all the way back. What was the beginning of your experience with technology, like, when you were young? Were you in college? Like, when did you first start interacting with tech?

(Archana at 00:06:05) So, growing up in India as a young girl, I did most of my middle school and beyond schooling at my grandparents'. They had better schools where my grandparents were. And I remember my grandmother would start fretting anytime my dad or uncle were to visit. Both were electrical engineers. And you know, they loved fixing broken things or attempting to fix broken things, and my grandma would be in a tizzy trying to get it fixed before they came over because her contention was, if your dad or your uncle gets their hands on this, it can never be fixed ever again. She would joke about it, but sometimes she wouldn't be able to make it to the repair shop before my dad or uncle arrived. And that was the most fun part for me because we would open it up. We would open up radios and clocks, and the parts would be all laid out. And we were trying to find that one offending part and get it fixed or change it out so that we could make the radio work again. It was super exciting for me, and both my dad and uncle were really patient. So as they were laying it out, they would explain to me what each part did. And you know, I got incredibly curious about it, and I used to go around telling everybody that I would be an engineer or electrical engineer when I grow up, and I did. So I did follow that path. And you know, I love technology because of what it solves, but also because you really have the opportunity to fix things. And that's where it started, and it's kind of held up, I guess.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:55) So then from there, you have a deep interest in it from a younger age because your parents and family were involved with it. And then was that, like, what you had your eyes set on for college?

(Archana at 00:08:07) Yeah. So you know, growing up in India, engineering was not—back then, especially—wasn't quite the logical career path. I had many people in my family that tried to change my mind. It's like, maybe you should become a doctor instead. And I said, no. I want to be an engineer. And I did pick up math, you know, a lot of the STEM subjects. And it was hard, but it was fun because every time that challenge and the bar getting higher was, to me, you know, something that I wanted to go after. So I did go to engineering school as an electrical engineer. I did my master's as an electrical engineer and started working here at Cisco as a hardware engineer, and then became a chip designer. So kind of—and then moved to software. So it's been—you know, I was an engineer by trade, and I worked in product development in the early part of my career.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:13) And so now that you're at Atlassian, and we were talking about culture, and it's distributed, so you've traveled quite a bit around the world. The company is based around the world. I think it started in Sydney, right?

(Archana at 00:09:25) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:26) Yep. Perfect. And so how—because you're in the culture and I read some of your interviews online about diversity and culture and inclusion. How do you do that on a macro? Like, when you're all the way up as CIO of such a large organization, how do you ensure that all the different areas all over the world have that culture? How do you scale the culture?

(Archana at 00:09:48) You know, this isn't something that there's a magic bullet for. Every company that I've been in is a little different, right, in how we operate. Specifically Atlassian—Atlassian was started in Sydney. Our founders are based out of Sydney. Many of our business function leaders are in San Francisco. Sri and I, CTO, CIO, we sit here in Mountain View. We have a team in Austin, a team in Manila, and just stood up a new team in Bengaluru. So you can imagine just that global team. One thing that I'm really—feel lucky to inherit—is every meeting we do is video. We are very comfortable as a company with video. We're also beginning to tread some new ground on understanding remote work and, you know, understanding what makes it really work. You have eight people in a room. You have one person remote. That's not a very effective meeting. But if you have everybody remote, you can actually have a much more inclusive meeting where everybody has a voice and feels very comfortable speaking up. So that's—as we look at those kind of learnings, we're trying to adapt our meetings to make sure that there is that open, inclusive feel to these meetings, where people are encouraged to voice their opinions. And just because you're that one person that's remote and in Manila and the rest of everybody is in Sydney, you really do have a voice. So I wouldn't say we've figured it all out, but we are trying and experimenting our way into making sure that that inclusiveness is kind of part of everything we do, a part of how we collaborate. You know, Atlassian's mission is to unleash the potential of a team. So if you think about that and you say, today, teams are distributed. They're not centralized. They're not in one location. They're distributed. They might be remote. They might be in other locations. You have to bring teams together to get their best work done. So how do you make that efficient, and how do you use our, you know, our open culture, our processes in place, and, of course, our technology to enable it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:08) No, I love it. Like, those are—this is why I love having experts like you come on and share with what you're experiencing and what you're learning as you're growing these large companies. One of your quotes that I read was that you're very passionate about talent management, and you intentionally make space to invest time and energy in your people. And so one of the things people always ask me, maybe they're trying to level up, make a transition from individual contributor to team lead or from team lead to director, is what sort of habits, what traits do you value? Do you look at and say, hey, when I see a person doing these things, I know to invest my time and energy into them?

(Archana at 00:12:46) Yeah. You know, I believe that different people bring different skills and strengths to the table. My team, my staff, and people that I mentor and coach that have reached out to me and said, hey, I like this attribute in you. Can you work with me to figure this out? It isn't that, you know, everything that I do is something they're looking to emulate. Maybe there's one or two things that, you know, they appreciate or admire. It's the same in the talent that I'm looking for. One thing that I think can be a big differentiator in today's world is that curiosity factor. Right? People talk about IQ and EQ. I add CQ to that, the curiosity quotient. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:25) I love it.

(Archana at 00:13:26) I think it's really important in today's world. If you think about how rapidly technology is changing, how rapidly companies are changing, the ability to actually leverage and have that openness and that curiosity is what I think differentiates that acceleration of career growth within individuals. So I'm a big believer in that, and I do look for that. You don't have to know everything, but if you're curious, you will have that passion to learn and absorb. And you will have plenty of exposure in companies like Atlassian where we have tremendous growth, and we're investing in our people and new technology and new capabilities for the company. The opportunity is there. If you're curious, you're going to embrace it and really accelerate your career growth.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:15) I love that. You win the originality. I've never heard that before, and I'm a huge fan. Because like, I've heard be curious, but when you call it CQ, like, you win. I love it. That's my favorite conversation of today. Because I'm an incredibly curious individual, and so I'm always looking and exploring new things. And then I always like to figure out, like, who else has seen it. One thing that makes me think of—because we were just talking about growing your teams and looking at how you can get them to work well together. And something that's come up recently for me is I've seen a series of these tools, and I don't even know how to classify them. So maybe you can help me with that. But, essentially, what they are is they plug into, like, your Jiras and your GitHubs, and they plug into all these different types of tools. And then they give you these analytics on your people and like how they work together, and they give you some insights. Have you seen some of these tools?

(Archana at 00:15:15) Yeah. So to me, that stems from that hunger for data. Right? Almost every company that is successful in transforming and being able to drive a level of customer loyalty is doing it through data and how you mine and leverage data within the organization. So how you build something, how you collaborate, how you're able to interact with your customers. If you have rich data that you can leverage and, you know, tie it to analytics and dashboards and kind of have a continuous view of what's happening in your business, you can react much faster than if you don't know. If you're going to wait two, three years to get the feedback from your customer and go, oh, I should have done this, this, and that. But if you have data at your fingertips and you're able to react rapidly to that—and we do that through personalization and experimentation—so we do have tools and technology that plug into the systems that we use. And more and more, it's about not just that reactive analytics, but the predictive analytics. So you have data as things are happening, and you're able to respond to them on almost near real time, which is what's super exciting about, you know, some of the technology plays that we see out there in the market.

(Archana at 00:16:43) And at Atlassian, what we've done is a couple of things. We want to make sure that our data, the baseline, right, the data lake, the data warehouse is solid and complete, and it's trusted by everybody. Once you kind of have that, you can build a lot on top of it. You could build AI, ML capabilities. You could build data science capabilities.

(Archana at 00:17:04) You could automate things. You could get bots into the system so that, you know, instead of talking to people and throwing people at it, right, it takes longer, whereas technology can do what humans can do at much shorter time.

(Archana at 00:17:21) So how do you leverage the right balance of technology with cognition is a very interesting space, and I'm really excited about it. Again, I wouldn't say we've cracked it, but some of the new technology and tools that are coming out in the marketplace that drive what you talked about, analytics, I think is fascinating.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:41) Have you seen it? Here's what I'm actually trying to get to the bottom of. I'm trying to figure out, is it a category yet? Because I've seen a couple. The one that stood out to me the most was called Pinpoint. I don't know if you've heard of them or not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:50) But, yeah, so it's called Pinpoint. And, you know, people always send me stuff from the show. They're like, oh, have you seen this? Have you seen this? This is really cool. So I'm always looking at new products all the time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:00) And then recently, I saw Pinpoint and, like, two or three other companies come out that were really similar to them. And I haven't dove deep into them yet. Like, you know, you see the sales website and you're like, okay, I kind of see what you kind of do. But I actually have a demo with them later this week because I saw it emerging as a category, and then I couldn't figure out what's the name for this category. So that's the mission I'm on personally is what is the name of this category of these new tools that are going to plug into everything you do and then give you insights on your people working. So if you come across an answer for that, please follow back up with me.

(Archana at 00:18:39) I'll be sure to. To me, I still think of it as tools and systems that help drive better decision making. Right? And if you look at the last couple of decades, the category names for this thing has evolved. What has changed, though, is the technology has leapfrogged. Right?

(Archana at 00:18:58) And the pace at which you can now get access to this is doubled and tripled over the last decade. Right? So that's what's causing, even robotics process automation. I mean, for decades, we've been talking about process automation.

(Archana at 00:19:15) But what technology can do today and how rapidly that has evolved is beginning to create these new categories, I think.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:24) Yeah. And then it's up to people like me to figure out what are we going to name them?

(Archana at 00:19:29) Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:30) And then so here's what I'll do. I'm going to actually, I have a demo scheduled because I want to go in deep and see what it is. And then if I find anything interesting from it, I'm going to kick it off to you.

(Archana at 00:19:40) Yeah. I'd love to chat about it. Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:43) I just like to get to the bottom. I'm super nerdy, so I like to figure out things.

(Archana at 00:19:48) We love nerdy at Atlassian. We're full of nerdy people at Atlassian.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:54) I feel at home. I take pride in it. Right? Shree said you guys had some developer conferences coming up in the next couple months. So I might pop out there and say hi for them because I feel at home with all the people.

(Archana at 00:20:07) That's great. You know, at Atlassian, we do quarterly hackathons. We have innovation days. We have, you know, tech teams getting together. So it's culture, and we're a very engineering-heavy culture, and it's fun, actually.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:24) Yeah. I grew up, my father was an engineer as well, and so he taught me. He would do freelancing, so he'd give me these little projects to work on to keep me busy while he could do actual work.

(Archana at 00:20:34) Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Love those little side projects because, you know, the fun is when they really turn into something. Then you go, oh, I had an aha moment, and this could actually become bigger than what we thought it could be. So that's exciting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:48) I think Shree said that they had shipped over a hundred things from the hackathon into their actual base product. That's cool. That's so cool.

(Archana at 00:20:55) Yeah. I think it is really cool. Many of our projects and products have started from these, so it's exciting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:03) So I'd like you to sort of paint a picture of what does an average day look like for you?

(Archana at 00:21:11) Oh, wow. So when I look back on, you know, my engineering days to my days in IT, it is very much around people and communication and strategy, helping figure out, you know, what is strategically where we're heading as an IT organization within Atlassian versus Atlassian heading? How do we align to kind of the problem set that we, through technology, can help solve? So my day is very heavy on both strategy as well as business leadership interactions. In fact, I color code my calendar so that I can kind of assess, am I spending enough time outside with my customers and stakeholders?

(Archana at 00:22:01) It's very easy to get pulled into the day to day, and you could, you know, spend 80% of your time within IT because we're looking at technology. We're building teams. We're solving problems. We're doing projects. So how do you kind of balance that and make sure I'm spending enough time with my customers and stakeholders and listening?

(Archana at 00:22:23) Because it's really important to understand the business strategy because IT's number one job is to make sure that you're driving business outcomes for the company. And so for me, we could have a lot of output. But if we're not driving enough business outcome, then we're not doing our job. So I take that really seriously and spend a lot of time talking to our business stakeholders and listening.

(Archana at 00:22:54) I'm beginning to also, we are using all of our own technology within IT. So, you know, drinking our own champagne.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:04) That's better than dog food.

(Archana at 00:23:06) I think so. I think so.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:08) Way classier. You win.

(Archana at 00:23:11) Right. So drinking our own champagne, I really think, you know, I'm beginning to allocate some amount of time to that where we're beginning to look at how can we, Atlassian IT, you know, talk about how we run open. What are the Atlassian plays that we use? How do we do health monitors to make sure our teams are healthy, working on the right things, growing? How do we make sure we're paying the right attention to talent?

(Archana at 00:23:38) So that is another big part of, you know, what my time is invested in. And then, of course, there is the usual, you know, let's make sure we are operationally strong. Let's make sure we're bringing in strong talent. And I spend a lot of time with my staff and in mentoring talent within my team as well as in the rest of the company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:04) Now that's, first of all, you're awesome. So you're just exploding my notes here. I'm just nonstop writing them. Color coding your calendar. Right?

(Archana at 00:24:15) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:16) How do you do that? Do you use Google Calendar?

(Archana at 00:24:20) I do. We use Google Suite, you know, everything, email, calendar.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:26) So do you have three separate calendars, or does it let you color code your events?

(Archana at 00:24:30) So I just color my meetings differently. So if I look at my week or month, and it's all red, red is all of the internal meetings, projects, my one-on-ones with my staff, and, you know, the coaching, mentoring of internal teams. The green is business stakeholder meetings. So I look at it to see the balance. Is it all green? Is it all red? And then there's the, you know, external engagements. I color code it pink.

(Archana at 00:24:55) And I have, you know, important, really company-level important projects, color coded yellow. So we kind of, I look at my calendar that way, and then I'm always shuffling it around a little bit going, okay, I'm spending way too much time in this area versus that area. You know, if you see a sea of red, then I'm probably not doing what I should be doing. So that's kind of how I look at it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:28) Oh, man. You just taught me something new. You're going to laugh so hard because I have two different calendars. That's how I was separating them because then I could make the different calendars colors. But I just went in real time and clicked on Edit Event. I saw where you could actually change the color of the event.

(Archana at 00:25:45) Right. I think it's a very handy thing to have. Very handy. You know, my EA, she's aware that that's how I'm looking at things. So she herself will color code it for me. So it's very handy to at least have a good gut check on, you know, am I allocating my time smartly, which should help drive the outcome that I want.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:11) My sales team will love it because we've been trying to figure out how to separate first appointments, second appointments, and third appointments because you want to get your calendar and you want to see them all and, like, it would be very useful to know what you're walking into.

(Archana at 00:26:28) Right. Yeah. Calendar consultant. I feel like I owe you a consulting fee. Oh, this is great. So give me some insights, some visualization on what does your direct report team look like?

(Archana at 00:26:41) I have a great staff. They have very diverse thinking. I have to tell you, half of my staff is new in the last year, about 50%, and 50% have been in the company two to five years. And that makes us great as well. But the diverse thinking that they bring to the table, everyone will come at a problem from a different angle.

(Archana at 00:27:06) So you can imagine the norming, storming, forming takes much longer. But I think we're so much richer for it because the decisions are well thought out. We come at it from different angles, so I feel we make better decisions. I feel we're driving better outcomes. And I purposely want that healthy tension in my staff because if you put an idea out there and everybody says, yes, we should do it, then maybe we're missing out.

(Archana at 00:27:42) Right? And I'd like to have the opposing point of view and have a debate and a discussion around it to make sure whatever we're out to do, whether it be with our customers, with our teams, for the business. Let's make sure we're doing the right thing. So I'm really proud of the fact that we have a team with very diverse thinking.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:03) Yeah. So you've got some optimists, some healthy skeptics. Do you ever shut it down?

(Archana at 00:28:07) I'm probably the optimist. And I'll be putting, you know, things out there, and my team will look at me and go, why do you think that's even possible? I'm like, it is. Because I believe it.

(Archana at 00:28:24) You know? I'm a big glass half full kind of person. And the people that are detail oriented and, you know, much more, I don't think, like, they'll put, did you think about this? Did you think about that? Did you think about that? Those are the people that make us stronger. Right? Because that balance, that counterbalance with me, to me is incredibly valuable.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:48) Well, and it's how you can get the job done because I think I'm a lot like you in personality and optimism. And so what will happen is the healthy skepticism will start bringing things up, and sometimes it's just like we have fluid answers. Okay, well, if you had that, you could do this, and you could do that, and you could overcome all these obstacles really quickly. And then they're sold on it. They're like, whoa, you can overcome every objection instantly. And then sometimes you can't. Right? And then now you have to start questioning the idea and figuring out how much, you know, you're going to drill down into it.

(Archana at 00:29:20) Yeah. Yeah. And it also helps us with, you know, we call it, we look at decisions on, is this a one-way or a two-way? Like, once we make this call, can you come back or you can't. Right? Like, if you have those one-way decisions, especially, you really want that thoroughness of thinking. You want the edge cases. You want to look at the negative effects as much, not just the, you know, happy path to the solve because the risk is higher because you can't go back. So we do look at decisions that way as well, and that's where that balanced team really, really helps.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:57) Yeah. It's like I talked to somebody about decision making, and they were saying that your ability to change the decision has direct proportion to how much time you spend making it. Right? It's like the decisions that are harder to change, to come back from, I think you called it a one-way decision, takes more processing power pre-decision than something that's very easily reversible.

(Archana at 00:30:19) Right. Absolutely. And we should take the time for it. In Atlassian, we have something called DACIs, which is like our, we do everything in Confluence. Our intranet runs on Confluence, which is a product. And we have these templates for decision making where you identify who are the people that need to be involved, who are the people that need to be consulted, who needs to be informed, who's the, who makes the final call on this? And we frequently use language around, is this a two-way door or one-way door to make sure we're, you know, at least landing on the right decision?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:58) That's why I love, I would love to work there. Engineering company because you engineer processes to help your people push more processes internally. Like, you engineer your company to be easy to use from within your company, which, you know, what Peter Drucker, famous management author, talks about as the company grows, its internal mass grows exponentially, which makes it, you know, go even slower. But you go inside an engineering company, and they engineered all these tools to counteract that internal mass.

(Archana at 00:31:28) Right. As we grew from, we started, you know, fifteen years ago as a very small company. We've had tremendous growth over the last fifteen years. We're almost doubling every year, every two years. And to accommodate that growth, you have to be really smart at making sure, one, you've got to make sure your values are, you know, continue to be integral to the team because that's what drives that strong, open culture, the collaboration, the balanced view, and the focus on outcomes.

(Archana at 00:32:01) That needs to be maintained as you grow from a hundred-person company to a 3,000-person company, which is what we are. And for IT, this is really exciting because we play a big role in helping scale Atlassian. We are, you know, that was one of the, I heard "scale" literally in every one of my interviews as I was talking to the leadership there. That's something that we want to make sure we're really scaling and growing the company, but we preserve our values. We preserve the way we work.

(Archana at 00:32:32) And, you know, we're building great products that our customers love. So that needs to be maintained through.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:38) Oh, I love it. I don't even know what else to say. You say it so poetically and beautifully. I love it. So what has been growing pains? Right? There's always issues when you grow. So what are some of the areas that weren't so easy that you had to put some more attention on?

(Archana at 00:32:59) Yeah. I think you talked about it when you talked about tools and analytics. And as you grow bigger, I think for IT, we're being asked to help scale the company. So we're looking at many transformations, right?

(Archana at 00:33:14) We're doing four to five large transformations for the company. We're improving our processes. We're bringing in new technology to help scale the business. We're transforming the way we're building products. We're transforming the way we're interacting with customers.

(Archana at 00:33:32) So the challenge has been, initially when we were smaller, we would do projects that would involve smaller teams. Now we're trying to do these massive transformations. We're moving to the cloud in a very big way. It takes about a third of the company gets involved in it, and the ability to run those transformations, be successful in them, drive the right outcome, but also take everybody along and make sure everybody's voice is heard is a hard mix to get right for a company that is our size. And we're learning our way through it.

(Archana at 00:34:11) We're getting more structured where structure is required. We're getting better at, like, everything doesn't have to be built like it was being built for the first time. We can reuse. We can reduce duplication. So we're taking some learnings, making sure we're getting better at that rigor and structure where some things don't need to be built from scratch. Some things can be leveraged and reused.

(Archana at 00:34:35) So what are those pieces that are going to help make sure our capacity is reserved for the areas where we're really driving that high degree of creativity and innovation and driving value for our customers? So that mix is shifting, and I think it needs a different set of skills sometimes to be able to do both, right, and do both well—be operationally strong, but also continue to retain your creativity and innovation. So that's the mix we're still working through in IT.

(Archana at 00:35:11) We actually started measuring our portfolio by that. What percentage of my time? Because any new technology you put into the system, you're going to be—IT runs it. You build it, you run it, right? So what percentage of my time is being spent on running it, and how can more and more of my talent's time be spent on the new build, the creative work?

(Archana at 00:35:32) So that's a mix that as a company, we're going to have to get right if we are going to go through the next phase of growth.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:40) I love it. Now, how do you leverage your network? Like, let's say Sheila, and I'm certain there's other people that are involved in your network that have helped you throughout your career. So when you're working on these things, like these large transformations, do you run ideas past them? Do you leverage them at all?

(Archana at 00:35:57) Absolutely. You know, I've been really, really lucky. In my entire career, I moved from product engineering to IT. I had many female leaders that I reported to, my direct managers, and Sheila was one of them. I've definitely learned a lot from my mentors, and most of my mentors have—you know, I ask a lot of questions, talk about curiosity.

(Archana at 00:36:24) Yeah. I didn't know anything about IT when I came into IT. I understood product development. I didn't understand IT. So I've learned a lot from my mentors who have taught me to always put business outcomes ahead of technology.

(Archana at 00:36:40) I mean, we take pride in being a technologist, and we're always going to stay at the cutting edge of it. But if you're going to be successful as an IT leader, you have to put business outcomes ahead of any technology changes that you might do. In fact, my first job in IT, my first quarter end, that lesson actually really went home for me from one of my mentors. This mentor was a business leader, and her responsibility was closing the quarter. And the IT team, my team, was responsible for all of the processes that would help close the quarter.

(Archana at 00:37:19) And I remember we ran into a big issue. Orders were getting stuck, and we had four hours to close the quarter. I remember getting her on the phone, and I will never forget, her question wasn't, how can we solve the problem? Her question was, what is the impact?

(Archana at 00:37:38) And turns out the impact of that issue, the orders that were stuck, was a million dollars of impact in a $6 billion quarter. And her reaction, I'll never forget, was do nothing. Don't put the quarter at risk. So from, as a technologist, we were trying to solve it, right? We were like, orders are stuck. We can fix it. We can run a script. We can do this. And she was like, you can fix it after the quarter's over.

(Archana at 00:37:57) If we have four hours, do nothing. But sometimes the right thing to do is to do nothing, and I learned that from one of my mentors. So everything that I've learned being an IT leader has been by kind of observing and specifically asking, how would you do this? I still am in connection with her and Sheila, and I'm noodling on this problem, or I'm trying to drive this outcome. How would you do it?

(Archana at 00:38:34) And then for me, it's not about doing exactly the way they would do it because I have to do it the way it works for me and my style within the company that I'm in. But understanding how they got to the outcome and being kind of tied to that result rather than the path allows me to then think about, oh, this is doable, but here's how I would do it, and here are the steps, here's the approach I would take. So I've been lucky to have mentors that have always guided me. I'm still in touch with them, meet them once a quarter for coffee or dinner. And I'm also part of a group—we created a group, Sheila is part of that as well—Bay Area CIO. So we meet once a quarter and just share what's going on in our companies and what kind of challenges we're looking at, what kind of technologies we are looking at. So definitely take advantage of that. And, you know, I've been lucky to have great mentors.

(Archana at 00:39:32) I'm also trying to pay it forward by mentoring people within the organization. People that have worked for me in the past from other companies, they're in touch with me, and we'll meet again once a quarter or twice a year depending on how busy our schedules are. I'm not the best at keeping in touch, but I do try and make it work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:58) But it's also individual ownership on the mentee's part of coming to you with a very clear thing that they need you to process. Like, I found in leveraging my network for mentors, if I come to them and I'm, like, ambiguous or I don't have a very clear thing I need them to think through and come up with an outcome for, then I get not great results. But if I come to them and say, this is the situation. I've thought about it extensively. This is where I'm at. This is the—like, you process this in front of me real quick. And these experts usually process it really fast right in front of you in real time, and then you get that benefit of seeing how they come to their decision. And then you can do that two or three times within your network, and now you have a way better position to make your decision.

(Archana at 00:40:39) Exactly. I always tell people, people ask me, how do you go about it? Like, how do you reach out? How do you keep the conversation going? How often do you meet? What preparation do you do? And to me, it's like, identify the two or three things that are in your mind that you're noodling on that are something if you solved, would be a great win for you or for your team or your company. Identify those things and make sure that that becomes the framing of that conversation. And if you frame it and you have the right conversation, you'll get a lot of value out of it. If you go in completely unprepared, then you're probably not going to get much value out of that conversation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:20) Yeah. Like, if I take you to lunch, I'm just like, mentor me. Yeah, exactly. What are you talking about?

(Archana at 00:41:28) We might just talk about the food, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:32) So do you do any public speaking? Like, do you go to events and conferences and talk?

(Archana at 00:41:38) So I've just started that in Atlassian. We are in the midst of a 10-city Future of IT tour. Just finished the New York one last week, and I'm headed to Berlin and London this weekend to really talk about what a modern IT team looks like, how is the future of work changing, how do we adapt, how do we drive digital transformation. And in Atlassian, what are we doing in IT to really—that, you know, drinking our own champagne story. So we're just started that.

(Archana at 00:42:20) I wouldn't say I've done many of these before this series, but I do intend to do more going forward depending on my schedule and my color-coded calendar.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:31) Yeah. Is this an Atlassian-based event, like, internally, or is this—okay. Very cool. I like that you do that.

(Archana at 00:42:39) Yeah. It's called the Atlassian Future of IT tour. And we're headed to 10 cities. I'm going to five. Our president is going to a couple, and one of my staff is going to another three.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:55) That's awesome. Well, safe travels. As we start to wrap up, I'd like to present a hypothetical scenario to you.

(Archana at 00:43:05) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:06) Because you're in Mountain View, let's say you're driving home, right? And at a red light, Elon Musk pulls up next to you, right? He's not taking his tunnel, he's just driving on top like a normal person. And you two end up having this great conversation at the red light. You end up going back to his SpaceX facility to take a tour, and he's got a time machine there. And you go into the time machine, and you get to go back to yourself right when you're in college getting your mechanical or your electrical engineering degree, and you get to give yourself one piece of advice. What would that be?

(Archana at 00:43:42) Don't underestimate the power of communication. When I was young, I just expected my work to speak for me. And, you know, I look back at young Archana, 18 years old, I go, why would you co-opt your voice? You know, you have the ability to communicate and advocate for things. Why wouldn't you take advantage of it? And, you know, I've grown up and learned that you never co-opt your voice, that you should always advocate for the work, the technology, the team, the business, the right thing. You shouldn't just let someone else take it over or let your work just define it. You should absolutely take advantage of the fact that you can communicate and advocate for things you're passionate about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:45) And so in this process of you becoming a great communicator, you leveraged books, or how did you improve up your communication skills?

(Archana at 00:44:56) Oh, you know, it's an experimental thing. You know, it evolved over time. I don't claim to be an amazing communicator.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:10) You are. I'll claim it for you.

(Archana at 00:45:11) Okay. Thank you. I still think I have a lot of learning to do. I love looking at stories and experiences and netting it out. I'm always looking at how would I say this if I could say it in a sentence, and it's really hard. Being crisp and clear is actually really hard. It's something that you have to practice. You have to ask for feedback. A lot of times when I have these conversations or I'm doing a pitch, I'll ask whoever I'm presenting to, did you get—what are the three things you got out of it? And sometimes it's completely opposite of the three things that I'm trying to get across.

(Archana at 00:45:53) So it is a bit of learning. I have read books. I admire great speakers. I listen to a lot of TED Talks. The ability to just have that crisp, clear way of communicating something and getting it done in 18 minutes is pretty darn amazing. So there is still a lot of learning to do here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:15) Oh, yeah. You know, for me, I found it really interesting as I started speaking. So I did the pod—like, I knew nobody, like, three years ago. I just been writing code for 17 years. Like, I'm super quiet. And then I did the blog, which turned into the book and then the podcast. And then companies started asking me to come out and speak to their companies. I started watching, like, TED Talks and script writers. And here's one of my favorites, Robert McKee. Storynomics, he's won, like, infinite awards for making movies and stories. And so I started—when I read that Storynomics book, I can never watch a movie the same again because he describes, like, how every sentence is specifically built to support the story. And if it doesn't directly support the current story or something happening in the future, the sentence doesn't exist. And so—

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:08) If you look at, the next time you watch a movie after reading that book, it's like it's not how humans talk at all. Like, the script is very direct and clear, and it's almost weird. But, yeah, telling very articulate stories is super fascinating. And then there's TED Talks on how to give great TED Talks.

(Archana at 00:47:27) Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:28) There's no lack of resources.

(Archana at 00:47:31) Storytelling is really important. I have learned that from—you know, been to a couple of classes where they talk about the storytelling and, you know, you listen to the "I Have a Dream" speech, and you start breaking it down and look at kind of that impact of a speech like that. It's really about a story and how you tell that story, how you kind of build up the excitement, the energy, the cadence, and then get to a, here's what we are going to do about it. I think that's what inspiring speakers do, and, you know, I admire that a lot. So communication, I think, is—we underestimate the power of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:11) Fantastic. Thank you so much. We made a podcast. Are you excited?

(Archana at 00:48:17) I am excited. I think this is—it's been fun. It's very easy to talk to you for sure, Joel, and I appreciate you having me on this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:27) Well, thank you for coming on, and I'll follow up with you if I find anything interesting with how we could name that category. I'm going to involve you and, like, three other CIOs and CTOs because I think it would be so cool if we came up with a little nickname for that emerging category.

(Archana at 00:48:44) Yeah. I think we should have a contest.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:47) Oh, yeah. I wish that. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, and you have a fantastic day.

(Archana at 00:48:52) Thanks, Joel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:53) Bye bye. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to help, please take a moment right now to open up the iTunes app and leave a review of the podcast. If you take a screenshot of the review and text it or email it to a friend who needs to listen to the podcast and then CC me, [email protected]—if you CC me on the email, I'll send you a copy of the Modern CTO book or give you a shout-out on the podcast, whichever you prefer.