On teamwork
Issue 258: The attributes of great teams and one year at Atlassian
I've always been an admirer of great teams of all sorts. Whether it’s in sports, tech companies, or fictitious teamups, the dynamics of a group of people coming together to accomplish a shared outcome are something I always root for. The first concept of a team I recall in my early childhood occurred on Saturday morning cartoon runs with the Uncanny X-Men in the 90s. You knew when they queued up the iconic theme song during the episode that the group of mutants would take down the villain of the week.
Though I’ve had stints in solo efforts and appreciate the indie track, I spent most of my career joining tech companies for the team, especially talented ones. There is a saying that you want be the worst player in a jazz band; meaning the situation is beneficial for your growth and development. As a result, I join tech companies to be in an environment to build great teams of ambitious people who want to grow together.
This past month marked my one year at Atlassian, where the mission is to unleash the potential of every team. To reflect, I created an unordered list of teams I enjoy and identified attributes that make them memorable. Here’s an unordered list of teams that come to mind:
1997 Chicago Bulls - When “Sirius” by The Alan Parsons Project hit the stadium speakers, you weren’t just losing a basketball game — you were walking into a three-act tragedy starring Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman.
Impossible Mission Force (IMF) - A rotating cast of specialists with questionable moral compasses, all somehow trusting Ethan Hunt enough to dangle from a plane together.
2010 Los Angeles Lakers - The chaos alchemy of Ron Artest’s unpredictability, Lamar Odom’s versatility, Kobe Bryant’s killer instinct, and Pau Gasol’s quiet brilliance.
2001 Oakland Raiders - A pirate ship of washed-up legends and renegades who played like they were in a bar fight you didn’t want to break up.
Halo Reach Noble Team – A squad bound by loyalty and shared duty, facing an unwinnable fight on a dying world. Each member knew the mission would likely cost their life, yet they stood together until the end, sacrificing themselves so others could carry on the fight.
Uncanny X-Force - Deadpool, Archangel, Wolverine, and Psylocke sent on a morally questionable mission to kill baby Apocalypse — like Ocean’s Eleven but with more claws and existential dread.
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - Harmonizing about mortality over beats that made “1st of tha Month” and “Tha Crossroads” universal anthems.
Foxhound (Metal Gear Solid) - The only special ops unit where the job description included espionage, genetic experimentation, and owning a giant walking tank.
Pixar Braintrust – A behind-the-scenes crew of directors and storytellers whose brutally honest feedback sessions turned rough drafts into Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Inside Out. Proof that candor and trust can be as important as talent.
General Magic - A secretive Silicon Valley lab where the interns (including Tony Fadell) would go on to invent the iPod, the iPhone, and half the future.
The Fellowship of the Ring: Nine wildly incompatible personalities walking into almost-certain death for the sake of a magical piece of jewelry.
Great teams are recognized for the people on them, their working style, and the achievements they accomplish.
Attributes of great teams
High trust
High-performing teams have high trust — the most important attribute of all. If trust is lost, the core of the team crumbles entirely. Having a teammate’s trust means they believe you are focused on achieving the shared outcome before chasing personal glory. That doesn’t mean individuals shouldn’t have personal ambitions (I encourage it), but it has to operate within the constructs of the team setting. When I join a team at a company, I commit to widening my aperture of success to include the company’s and the customer’s goals.
High trust also means shared accountability — being prepared and executing when the game or mission begins. Consistency builds trust, and in a team environment, that consistency is critical. The New England Patriots1 (yes, I can’t stand them either) have a mantra: Do Your Job. It’s a reminder that trust comes from every player knowing their role, preparing for it, and delivering without someone having to look over their shoulder.
Identity and character
Great teams all have a recognizable identity and character. This might come from the people on the team, the way they approach the work, or a combination of both — but it results in a signature style that’s impossible to mistake for anyone else’s.
A strong identity builds a brand for the team. People inside and outside the group know what you stand for and what to expect, which makes it easier to build trust and credibility. It also creates a strategic advantage — when your values and style are clear, you can make decisions faster and adapt without losing your core approach. And, perhaps most importantly, it helps attract talent. People want to join teams that have a strong sense of self, where they can see how their skills and personality will fit.
The Harlem Globetrotters blended basketball and comedy into a traveling spectacle, making the entertainment as iconic as the sport itself. The Avengers, in contrast, brought together wildly different personalities and powers under one mission, each member retaining their individuality while contributing to a shared cause. In the same way, Perplexity’s design team is known for experimenting through making — jumping straight into building artifacts rather than burning cycles on polished board decks.
Shared intuition
When a team has a telepathy-like way of working, it moves faster and produces higher-quality results. This comes from practicing deep empathy (not just sympathy) for how teammates approach their craft. Understanding this creates shared intuition — the ability to anticipate someone’s next move even when you’re not directly present.
It’s like a Formula 1 pit crew: a dozen people swarm a car for less than three seconds, each completing a precise task without wasted motion or extra words. The entire operation depends on anticipating one another’s timing and adjusting instantly if something goes off-script. Or like a high-end restaurant kitchen during dinner service. Chefs, sous chefs, and line cooks move in a choreographed flow, sliding pans, swapping ingredients, and plating dishes while barely speaking. A raised eyebrow or a shift in body position can signal the next move — all built on trust, repetition, and a deep understanding of how the others work.
When I worked with Matilda at Black Pixel, we had a shared intuition. I was based in Seattle, and she was in Berlin. Despite the small work time overlap, we instinctively knew how to split the work and trust each other to deliver with continued alignment. We collaborated so smoothly that even if we didn’t have time to sync, we could open each other’s Sketch files and immediately see where to pick things up — no extra conversation required.
Shorthand communication
Shorthand communication is what allows a team to move faster while staying aligned. When you have a shared language of cues — verbal or nonverbal — you cut down on unnecessary explanation, keep momentum, and reduce the risk of misinterpretation. It also builds confidence: everyone knows they’re reading from the same playbook, even if they’re not saying it out loud. And in high-pressure moments, it’s the difference between smooth execution and chaos.
In American football, there’s a concept called the silent snap count. It’s used when the crowd noise is so loud that players can’t hear the quarterback’s cadence. Instead of calling out the count, the offense uses visual cues or predetermined timing to start the play. It’s a perfect example of shorthand communication — no words needed, just a shared understanding.
In the workplace, this can be just as subtle. Maybe you’re in a conference room and notice a misalignment in the discussion. You glance at your teammate and give a slight nod — a signal that says, “We need to follow up on this,” or “Time to steer this conversation back on track.” These small, precise signals keep the team coordinated without slowing things down.
Mission-driven
Mission-driven teams are dangerous in the best way — they have clarity of purpose, urgency, and a reason to push beyond what’s reasonable. A strong mission aligns effort, filters out distractions, and keeps the focus on what matters most. Even when personal differences or competing priorities surface, the mission acts as a unifying force. It’s not just about having a goal; it’s about having a why so strong that every member is willing to sacrifice, adapt, and keep going long after others would quit.
Take the Thunderbolts, for example. In Marvel lore, they were a group of misfits and villains who had burned their reputations but were determined to claw their way back. Their mission wasn’t just about defeating an enemy; it was about redemption and rewriting their story.
That same energy fueled the 2008 U.S. Olympic basketball team — the “Redeem Team.” After the embarrassment of settling for bronze in Athens 2004, they came together with a singular goal: to reestablish American dominance on the world stage. Every game was a statement. Every possession, an act of reassertion.
I love working with people who have that same drive. Sometimes it’s born of spite — the fire that comes when someone doubts you or passes you over. Other times, it’s pure craft — the person who could retire tomorrow but keeps showing up because they love the work. In both cases, that hunger transforms a group of talented individuals into a team that refuses to accept limits.
Negative signals
Super teams
Star power alone doesn’t guarantee success. Building a team of only high-profile talent can backfire if the chemistry, roles, and shared purpose aren’t there. Without trust and complementary skills, super teams often become fragile under pressure — the egos and expectations overshadowing the actual work. The most effective teams balance top talent with role players who understand and embrace their part in the bigger picture.
My beloved Los Angeles Lakers once assembled one of the most disastrous “super teams” in NBA history: Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Karl Malone, and Gary Payton. On paper, it looked unstoppable. In reality, the chemistry never clicked.
In the NFL, the Washington Football Team — known at the time by a different name — earned the tongue-in-cheek title of “Offseason Champs” in the 2000s. They could lure big names like Deion Sanders and Bruce Smith by spending heavily, but the results on the field never matched the hype.
Even the legendary 1990s Chicago Bulls relied on role players. Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman were icons, but they leaned on Luc Longley, Ron Harper, and Steve Kerr to come off the bench and deliver. They even had deep-bench veterans like Bill Wennington and Robert Parish — players who might not have been in the spotlight but were ready to step in when needed, bringing steady leadership.
Size of the team
Bigger isn’t always better. Large teams can deliver impressive results, but size alone isn’t a recipe for success. In fact, once a team grows beyond a certain point, autonomy and ownership often erode. Communication slows, accountability blurs, and it becomes easy to hide behind layers of process or assume “someone else will handle it.” The best teams — no matter their headcount — operate with the agility and clarity of a small one.
Think of the Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars: massive in number, but notoriously ineffective — constantly missing shots and getting in each other’s way.
The Replit Design team was one of the smallest I’ve ever been on, but each person had so much talent and autonomy that they could deliver at the level of teams several times their size. Large teams wish they could bottle that kind of focus and energy.
Ball hogs
Credit should follow contribution, not whoever speaks or acts first. When recognition is disconnected from actual outcomes, it creates resentment, erodes trust, and encourages performative behavior over real progress. In great teams, attribution is clear, shared openly, and tied to the work itself — not to ego or politics.
In basketball, there’s a term for the player who constantly controls the ball and won’t pass: the ball hog. Every play runs through them, not because it should, but because they refuse to let others contribute.
The workplace version of this is the person who rushes out of a meeting to be the first to create a doc or send an announcement, taking credit for work that wasn’t theirs. This behavior is toxic — especially in leadership. Collaboration isn’t about every single person touching the ball equally; it’s about trusting people to stay in their positions and deliver when it’s their time to act.
Reflecting on teamwork at Atlassian Design
When I joined Atlassian, a lot of people were surprised — someone from hyper-growth startups stepping into a company more than two decades old. Truth is, nobody was more surprised than me. But the decision wasn’t about age or scale; it was about opportunity.
Atlassian is founder-led, which means it has the rare combination of long-term conviction and the willingness to disrupt itself. That mindset drew me in. So did the caliber of people choosing to join, like Scott Belsky joining the board; a signal that Atlassian isn’t just maintaining, it’s leveling up. And, at its core, the company has a mission rooted in continuous improvement in the spirit of agile: always learning, always iterating, always striving to unleash the potential of every team.
What makes working at Atlassian Design special isn’t declaring we’re the best team in the world. It’s the shared belief that we can get there. Better together.
Every design team I’ve been part of has left me with great memories: ExactTarget, Black Pixel, One Medical, Webflow, Replit, and now Atlassian. When it’s all said and done, it’s the people you worked with, what you achieved together, and the moments you shared along the way. Go team.
Hyperlinks + notes
A collection of references for this post, updates, and weekly reads.
The Design Investor Era by
Inside the Longevity Gold Rush: Look Younger or Get Left Behind by
The career move that never happened by
How to make Buttons more Glass-y in iOS 26 by
Congrats to Retro on breaking the App Store charts; one of my favorite apps today
Previous issues mentioned:
Job opportunities
Atlassian is hiring a Senior Design Manager, AI → My team!
Atlassian is hiring a Principal Product Designer, AI (Mobile) → My team!
Atlassian is hiring a Lead Product Designer → My team!
Loom is hiring a Design Manager → Go work with Christina
Replit is hiring a Developer Relations Engineer
Webflow is hiring a Staff Product Designer, New Products
As a Raiders fan, it pains me to use the Patriots as a reference (it was a fumble)
The short-hand communication is so important and in my experience it's often the missing piece. My assumption is that it's harder to read these cues when everyone is remote, curious about your take on developing this with teams?
Fantastic write up ! Gives so much perspective