Question 1

What are the key takeaways from Megan Cook's episode on Lenny's Podcast?

Accepted Answer

1. The opposite of play is not work but fear - when teams lose psychological safety, ideas become incremental. Small peer feedback groups that meet biweekly to review rough drafts can rebuild the muscle of giving and receiving honest feedback. 2. Getting buy-in is a journey, not a single meeting. Partner with stakeholders early, share hypotheses rather than polished proposals, and be genuinely open to different solutions. Credibility comes from exposing what you don't know. 3. Remote work succeeds through intentional connection and protected deep work time. Bringing teams together 3-4 times a year boosts connection and productivity by 30%, and syncing calendars for 3-4 hour deep work blocks protects creative time. 4. New product innovation at scale requires small teams with stage gates (wonder, explore, make, impact, scale) and different expectations than mature products. Give these teams freedom to move fast and hold them to a different standard than the core business. 5. When you see a successful feature, always ask: can we 10X this? Can it apply to more users, more products? Missing the bigger platform opportunity in a feature that works is a subtle but expensive failure.

Question 2

What does Megan Cook say about psychological-safety and remote-work?

Accepted Answer

"I was looking at my team and thinking, 'Yeah, something doesn't feel quite right here.' And then I went to this leadership outside, and one of the speakers talked about how to be in that state of flow. There needs to be this sense of play and that things are fun. And it's funny because when I thought about play where my mind went to the opposite of play is work. But his point was actually that the opposite of play is fear." - Megan Cook "We divided the team into these smaller groups for peer feedback groups and the idea is that they meet every two weeks or so, somebody brings something that's in a pretty rough draft that they want to get reviewed and then everyone's expected to give feedback. Because we've got people in there who are different leadership levels, it's a really good opportunity to model the kind of feedback that's helpful." - Megan Cook "A lot of it is just building that muscle. You might go through an experience once every quarter or once every six months and that can feel really stressful, but if you're doing it again and again, you get used to it. You get used to what to expect, you get a bit more practice, it can feel much more comfortable." - Megan Cook

Question 3

What are Megan Cook's views on psychological-safety, remote-work, buy-in?

Accepted Answer

Megan Cook: "I was looking at my team and thinking, 'Yeah, something doesn't feel quite right here.' And then I went to this leadership outside, and one of the speakers talked about how to be in that state of flow. There needs to be this sense of play and that things are fun. And it's funny because when I thought about play where my mind went to the opposite of play is work. But his point was actually that the opposite of play is fear." Megan Cook: "We divided the team into these smaller groups for peer feedback groups and the idea is that they meet every two weeks or so, somebody brings something that's in a pretty rough draft that they want to get reviewed and then everyone's expected to give feedback. Because we've got people in there who are different leadership levels, it's a really good opportunity to model the kind of feedback that's helpful."

Megan Cook

Lessons from Atlassian | Megan Cook (Head of Product, Jira)

TRANSCRIPT

Megan Cook

Lessons from Atlassian | Megan Cook (Head of Product, Jira)

Megan Cook

Lessons from Atlassian | Megan Cook (Head of Product, Jira)

TRANSCRIPT

Megan Cook

Lessons from Atlassian | Megan Cook (Head of Product, Jira)