#264 Async Work | In this episode, Dave is joined by Ashley Faus , Director of Lifecycle Marketing at Atlassian, and Dr. Molly Sands , Head of the Teamwork Lab at Atlassian. Ashley brings deep experience in cross-functional B2B marketing leadership, while Molly leads a team of behavioral scientists designing better ways for teams to collaborate. Together, they unpack how Atlassian has rethought marketing org structure, internal comms, and meetings to drive higher output with fewer syncs. Dave, Ashley, and Molly cover: The framework Atlassian uses to reduce meetings and communicate asynchronously (including how to structure updates that actually get read) How to balance transparency with clarity and avoid information overload across Slack, Loom, and Confluence Tactical ways to structure team rituals, recurring meetings, and brainstorms to focus on output, not performative busywork You’ll walk away knowing how to run a leaner, more effective marketing team (without drowning in Slack and Zoom). Timestamps (00:00) - – Intro (03:08) - – Why marketers showed up live: too many meetings, too little output (06:08) - – Meet the guests: Ashley Faus and Dr. Molly Sands from Atlassian (08:38) - – What “Team Anywhere” means at Atlassian (10:38) - – The difference between information sharing and real connection (13:08) - – Why marketing updates often fall flat internally (15:08) - – How to communicate clearly inside the org (and get your message read) (18:38) - – Structuring updates: topic, who it’s for, action, context (21:38) - – When you need a meeting vs. when async works better (25:38) - – “Sparring” meetings: real-time collaboration between equals (28:08) - – What actually builds team connection (hint: not team happy hours) (31:20) - – Async tools Atlassian uses across marketing (33:50) - – Getting quiet team members to contribute in meetings (36:20) - – How Atlassian runs recurring team rituals without wasting time (40:20) - – Cross-functional alignment: structure, scorecards, and shared goals (43:20) - – Best practices for async tools like Loom and Confluence (46:20) - – Do brainstorming meetings even work? Here’s when they do. (49:20) - – What to share with non-marketers (and what to skip) (52:20) - – Why creating focus is the most underrated leadership skill (54:20) - – Final takeaways from Ashley and Molly Join 50,0000 people who get our Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/ *** Today's episode is brought to you by Knak . Email (in my humble opinion) is the still the greatest marketing channel of all-time. It’s the only way you can truly “own” your audience. But when it comes to building the emails - if you’ve ever tried building an email in an enterprise marketing automation platform, you know how painful it can be. Templates are too rigid, editing code can break things and the whole process just takes forever. That’s why we love Knak here at Exit Five. Knak a no-code email platform that makes it easy to create on-brand, high-performing emails - without the bottlenecks. Frustrated by clunky email builders? You need Knak. Tired of ‘hoping’ the email you sent looks good across all devices? Just test in Knak first. Big team making it hard to collaborate and get approvals? Definitely Knak. And the best part? Everything takes a fraction of the time. See Knak in action at knak.com/exit-five . Or just let them know you heard about Knak on Exit Five. *** Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more
