The Matrix and Marketing Effectiveness - A Formula for Thought Leadership - Ashley Faus - Atlassian

Summary/Abstract

Ashley Faus of Atlassian joins Dr. Jim to discuss a range of topics related to success, including weighted decision matrices, brand building, and credibility. Ashley shares her story of how she found success in multiple passion areas, and offers advice on how others can pursue their own goals.

In this conversation, Ashley discusses her work in product marketing for Atlassian, her experience in a number of different industries, and her philosophy on work-life integration. She also talks about her hobby of baking, which she picked up during the Covid pandemic.

In the beginning of the conversation, the idea of a weighted decision matrix is introduced. This matrix is a tool that can be used to help make decisions. The matrix takes into account different factors that are important to the decision maker and assigns a weight to each factor. The factors are then used to help make the final decision.

Ashley  and her husband used this matrix when deciding on colleges. They considered different factors such as location, cost, and degree programs. In the end, they were able to make a decision that was best for them.

Ashley  spoke about how to  make decisions by weighing different trade-offs. This theory can be used when making decisions about things like job offers, where someone might consider factors such as growth potential, compensation, work-life balance, and the tasks of the role. To use the theory, Ashley recommends picking five categories of things that matter to you, and then assigning a percentage to each category to show how important it is to you. You can then score each job offer you receive in each category, and multiply that score by the percentage to get a total satisfaction score for each job. The job offer with the highest satisfaction score is the one you should take.

Timestamps

00:00:00

Ashley Faus: The Road to Though Leadership - PT 1

00:02:00

Ashley Faus: Work-Life Integration and Baking

00:04:42

The Benefits of a Weighted Decision Matrix

00:06:19

The Benefits of Using a Value-Based Decision Framework

00:10:23

The Power of Defining Your Priorities in Career Progression

00:11:53

The Different Industries I've Worked In

00:13:28

The Reality of Marketing: It's Not Always the 'Cool' Stuff

00:15:38

The Importance of Choosing the Right Manager When Starting Your Career

00:19:46

The Importance of a Sampling Period in Your Career

00:22:28

The Importance of Intentionality in Career Development

00:25:19

The Power of a Weighted Decision Matrix: How Ashley Faus Got Her Dream Job

00:27:00

The Importance of Growth and Development in the Workplace

00:28:41

The Power of Internal Moves: A Conversation with Ashley Faus

Music Credit: Maarten Schellekens - Riviera 

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www.cascadingleadership.com
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linkedin.com/in/1lawrenceobrown

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Jim: welcome to today's episode of Cascading Leadership. I am your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd, Dr. Jim. And today we have a really unique episode in that it doesn't neatly fit into any one of our categories. And here's what I mean by that. Some of the questions that we're gonna answer in this conversation are gonna revolve around what is a weighted decision matrix and how can that help provide a roadmap for success. We're gonna learn how you get started with brand building, and we're also going to learn how you leverage your brand to establish credibility and expertise in your field of choice.

[00:00:38] Dr. Jim: So that is a lot of runway. It doesn't neatly fit into any one of our categories. It could be a marketing show, it could be a branding show, it could be a career search show, it could be anything. Let's call it Pop Huri and the person that is going to guide us through this jour learning journey. Joining us today is Ashley Foss of Atlassian.

[00:00:58] Dr. Jim: Ashley, welcome to the show.[00:01:00] 

[00:01:00] Ashley Faus: It's good to be here after going back and forth with you on LinkedIn comments. I'm excited for us to actually get to chat, so this will be fun. 

[00:01:06] Dr. Jim: I'm, really looking forward to the conversation. We have a lot of ground to cover and just in the stuff that we're introducing in the show, there's a lot of passion areas that that, it fits into.

[00:01:18] Dr. Jim: So I think it's gonna be really interesting diving into that conversation. Before we get to the meat of the discussion, let's set the stage a little bit. Obviously I'm familiar with you because I'm all over your comments in in anything that you post, cuz you know, that's what I do all day.

[00:01:36] Dr. Jim: But the broader audience might not be familiar with who you are. So why don't you share with the listeners a little bit about your story 

[00:01:43] Ashley Faus: So I am a marketer, writer, and speaker by day and a singer, actor and fitness fiend by night.

[00:01:48] Ashley Faus: And as you alluded to in the intro that I have a lot of passion areas, even my short little kind of tagline starts to marry up that personal and that professional. I do bring [00:02:00] in a lot of my hobbies and a lot of my passions into my work. I do solve a lot of work problems while I'm out on the water.

[00:02:06] Ashley Faus: Backstage at a rehearsal or something like that. So for me I am very into that kind of work-life integration and figuring out how do I connect the dots across the personal and the professional. In that vein, I've worked across a number of different industries. I started in solar. I've worked in aviation for a while.

[00:02:23] Ashley Faus: I worked at a communication design and training firm two security startups. And then now I work in the product marketing organization at Atlassian. I primarily focus on Agile and DevOps teams. So it's a little funny. Most of the stuff I post on LinkedIn or the things that I talk about on podcasts, don't really touch that much on Agile and DevOps because I, solve marketing problems and business problems.

[00:02:47] Ashley Faus: So my personal audience is more on the marketing and business side. But the audience that I market to for my day job is more developers and team leads and DevOps engineers and those kinds of things. . 

[00:02:57] Dr. Jim: Even in that intro, there's some [00:03:00] runway for me to get all up in your business.

[00:03:02] Dr. Jim: That's, me trying to work on my street credit. It didn't work, really well. , 

[00:03:05] Ashley Faus: Go. It's a cross generational thing I, yeah, we did a like a general generational communication workshop and all the millennial things. I was like, yes, clearly my generation is doing this the right way.

[00:03:17] Ashley Faus: As the millennials and all the Gen Zs were like, how dare you millennials. Yeah. I, appreciate the street 

[00:03:25] Ashley Faus: cred. 

[00:03:26] Dr. Jim: I really love your philosophy about work-life integration, cuz it aligns really. With my personal philosophy and that's, not related.

[00:03:33] Dr. Jim: It's just resonates with me because I'm all about that. And I think one of the things that I noticed about what you were talking about in your intro, you have 16 different jobs as far as what you do in a day. And that's very similar to what I do and I think I'm disappointed that you left out.

[00:03:48] Dr. Jim: One of the most interesting things about your 16 jobs is that you're actually a pretty good I don't know what to call it, like pastry chef baker cake [00:04:00] maker, whatever the word is. Like you should check out this stuff if it, it track Ashley down on LinkedIn and go through her featured content because she's got some exceptional cakes that she's.

[00:04:09] Ashley Faus: Oh, thank you. Yeah, the baking hobby is actually fairly new. I picked that up during quarantine with Covid. And we were all locked down. So I've, been debating about cuz technically singer and actor in that whole like, singer actor fitness scene, in theory those could be the same thing, right?

[00:04:27] Ashley Faus: You could have musical theater. So then it's okay, is baking has it been around long enough to really be in those three things, right? That's a pretty quippy intro. So if you're gonna be. Listed in that I feel like, you gotta be around for more than like a year and a half in my life.

[00:04:42] Dr. Jim: I don't know. I think you just will stuff into existence. So I'm totally fine with that. The other interesting thing about your intro that you mentioned. So I used to prior to my current role at Circa I worked I was a division director for a staffing company, and I've built the IT division from the ground up.

[00:04:59] Dr. Jim: So [00:05:00] when you said Agile and DevOps, . I already knew Atlassian because one of the requirements that would always come up for DevOps engineers is they need to know the Atlassian suite. And I, yeah, it's been a little while but I remember the entire stack in terms of what what people needed.

[00:05:16] Dr. Jim: So I could have totally nerded out on that conversation. Just by the nature of the fact that your, audience, or not your audience, but your buyer is typically in the DevOps and agile space, which is something that I I know well as a non-technical person, so that was pretty cool too. 

[00:05:32] Dr. Jim: So let's let's get into the conversation. One of the interesting concepts that you mentioned in the beginning, was this idea of the weighted decision matrix.

[00:05:43] Dr. Jim: So before we get into the details of how it's deployed, what is it in the first place? 

[00:05:48] Ashley Faus: It has a very fancy technical name, weighted decision matrix. We actually my husband and I have used this. I used it whenever I was deciding on colleges. My husband and I almost [00:06:00] called it like the life satisfaction matrix.

[00:06:02] Ashley Faus: So when an engineer and an M B A get married, they of course decide to make decisions in this very structured way. So it's basically just a framework to say, what do you value? How much do you value it? How satisfied with the value that it's providing are you currently? And then you can give it a score.

[00:06:19] Ashley Faus: So to give an example for folks, if they're thinking about a job search, they're thinking about potentially buying a house, they're thinking about they could get, crazy. What do you wanna have for dinner tonight? Like, how much does the taste and the texture and the price of the food matter to you?

[00:06:34] Ashley Faus: So we make these kinds of decisions weighing all of these trade-offs all the time. We don't necessarily go in and write out the math to figure out what we should eat for dinner tonight, but we do think about that when we're comparing job offers, for example. What I recommend doing is picking, say, five categories of things that matter to you.

[00:06:51] Ashley Faus: So it could be growth, it could be the industry, it could be compensation, it could be the tasks, it could be the [00:07:00] seniority of the role. There are a variety of different things that it could be. So you pick those categories. Then you say, okay, how much does each category matter to me? So for some people, title matters a lot.

[00:07:10] Ashley Faus: For other people, money matters the most. For other people, work-life balance matters the most, right? So put that in. It should be if you have, say a hundred percent, you wanna divide it among the five categories, and it's not okay. 20 20, 20 20. It's highly unlikely that all these categories are equally valid to you.

[00:07:28] Ashley Faus: And again, right? I'm not here to tell you what does or does not matter in your job search or your hobbies. But you can mark those down and then you could say, okay, here I, let's say I have two or three different job offers. How does each job offer score in each category? So if, work-life balance is the most important thing to me, and there's a job that requires me to travel 90% of the time.

[00:07:51] Ashley Faus: That's gonna get a very low score in work-life balance. If money is the most important thing for me, and this job pays the most, okay, it's gonna get the [00:08:00] highest score in that satisfaction care category. So it's basically a decision making framework. You multiply that out and at the end you get a score and you say, okay, I'm 75% satisfied with this job, 60% with this job, and 90% with this job.

[00:08:15] Ashley Faus: In theory, you then say, okay, the job offer that I'm 90% satisfied with is the one that I should take. 

[00:08:21] Dr. Jim: That, is a great description and breakdown what it is and how you deploy it. And I want to get into the story of how you actually landed your dream job using a version of this. But I'm gonna lay out some context before that.

[00:08:35] Dr. Jim: But one of the interesting things what you just described and, I want to tie it in this way, like whenever we're in a job search and we're interviewing with multiple companies, you get this sort of emotional swirl in your head where you think like every role is great. Yeah. And the value in what you're describing, if I'm understanding it correctly, is that before you get emotionally tied to one or another or multiple things, you know [00:09:00] what the decision criteria is ahead of time and it allows you to be as objective as possible.

[00:09:05] Dr. Jim: Is my read on that Correct? When I when I like translate this back to you, 

[00:09:10] Ashley Faus: Yeah, and I think that being honest, I think a lot of people get caught up in what they think they're supposed to care about. Oh, I'm supposed to care about work-life balance, or I'm supposed to care about compensation in this very specific way.

[00:09:24] Ashley Faus: I'm supposed to care about I wanna get along with my team, or whatever. Whatever these things are that they think they're supposed to care about. And I think what's really nice about laying this out ahead of time is that you don't start adopting what other people think you should care about.

[00:09:40] Ashley Faus: Obviously, whoever the hiring manager is, gonna try to sell you on this role, especially if they've made you an offer. They want you to join. And so whatever matters to them, that's what they're gonna try to sell you on. But if you don't value the same things that they value, there's a lot of things that sound really great, and especially if you've got an passion [00:10:00] enthusiast person telling you like, I, we have this and we have this, and we have this and we have this.

[00:10:04] Ashley Faus: And you're like, I don't really care about any of that, but man, if 10 things, this is a lot of things, maybe I should care about those things. But if you go back and you say, no, these are things that I care about, then you can start to wade through that so that you're not getting that bright shining object syndrome where you're chasing what you think the hiring manager wants you to 

[00:10:23] Ashley Faus: chase.

[00:10:24] Dr. Jim: The other interesting thing about what you just mentioned, and it just connected with with me in a different way. 

[00:10:30] Dr. Jim: And what's interesting about what you just said is the aspect about. You need to clearly define what's important to you. And I think there's a broader career lesson there too, because I'm a Gen Xer, so I came up in all sorts of backwards conditioning about what work is supposed to look like and all that sort of stuff.

[00:10:49] Dr. Jim: Plus I'm an I'm a Generation Zero immigrant, so there's a whole nother set of conditioning, plus I'm Indian, so another set of conditioning. So basically that's just me saying I got a lot of [00:11:00] stuff that was wired the wrong way in my head. That didn't serve me well when it comes to how you progress through your career.

[00:11:07] Dr. Jim: And it wasn't until, to your point that I started focusing on what do I care about? What's important to me? What do I enjoy doing? And what's authentic to me that I started having these sort of breakthroughs instead of looking at it from the lens of what do my parents expect, what do my peers expect, what do my managers expect?

[00:11:28] Dr. Jim: It's, a broad based. Application of that decision matrix. So I think it's a very powerful concept that you have, and thanks for sharing that with us. You actually deployed this to find your dream job, but before we get to that story, tell us a little bit about what you learned through all of those various industries and sectors that reoriented your thinking and prompted you to pursue whatever this dream job was.

[00:11:53] Ashley Faus: So I graduated in 2008, which was the worst recession that we've had in a [00:12:00] long time in us, in the us. And so the job market was terrible. Marketing is a particularly difficult degree, fresh outta college. It's the, book knowledge doesn't quite transfer to the real world.

[00:12:12] Ashley Faus: The same way that maybe some of the hard sciences or engineering stem degrees translate, right? You learn about the algorithm in the book, you then apply it in your day. Job marketing. You learn about the four Ps of marketing. Nobody is quizzing you on your four Ps of marketing once you actually get into the real world.

[00:12:27] Ashley Faus: So it's a particularly challenging degree to have when you're first coming out of school and especially in a recession when people are laying off marketers. And so there was a, ton of more experienced marketers. Looking for jobs. So I took whatever jobs I could get. The solar job was in a startup that pretty much I got in and I was like, these numbers don't make sense.

[00:12:49] Ashley Faus: They don't seem to be based on the same assumptions. This is not gonna work. When I took the job in aviation, I didn't know anything about aviation. I was actually working for the parent company [00:13:00] and was the only marketer for a couple of different child companies that did different things across aviation.

[00:13:06] Ashley Faus: I was working on things like parts and airframes and maintenance and like all of these topics. And I think the biggest takeaway from jumping around to all these industries is that for me The, thing I wanna do is marketing. I used to think, oh, I wanna work for a cool company, right? Like a consumer goods company like Nike or Starbucks or Coke.

[00:13:28] Ashley Faus: Those are, they're doing cool stuff. And the reality is that marketing, the nuts and bolts of marketing are fairly similar across all types of industries. You have to know your audience. You have to know their pain points. You have to identify with them. You have to understand your channels. You have to understand your distribution.

[00:13:45] Ashley Faus: You have to understand how the business works. You have to understand how money works in that business for your audience, right? And so for me, I really learned that I can find something to fall in love with, no matter who the audience is or what products I'm selling or marketing. [00:14:00] I can thrive in a variety of different industries.

[00:14:04] Ashley Faus: I don't have to chase the quote unquote cool industry where it's highly competitive. And it also really helped me. Solidify what types of tasks within marketing I do and don't like. So because I worked at several smaller companies and, was often the only marketer, I did everything. And so that actually helped me when I think about that decision matrix, hone in on, okay, what are the areas within marketing, where I thrive, where I'm passionate, where I do my best work.

[00:14:33] Ashley Faus: I did a bunch of events marketing stuff when I very first started, and that is, is not my forte. I'm great at like staffing booths and working events and speaking at events, but the event planning portion is not my favorite. Like too many spreadsheets in that, world. So those are some of the big takeaways for me.

[00:14:51] Ashley Faus: I think that especially people, even the dream job, I struggle a little bit. I know I teed it up this way. It's let's talk about the dream job. [00:15:00] The world. There's not a dream job that exists in the world. That's something that you choose. You choose to be content, you choose to find the things where you are gonna thrive.

[00:15:10] Ashley Faus: You choose to marry up maybe your personal passions with something that you get paid to do for work. There is no company that will provide you with a dream job. There is no job description. That is the silver bullet. And so I think that for me, having a winding path early in my career actually confirmed that I am the person who is in control of my career satisfaction, my career trajectory quote unquote the dream job that lives inside my head that does not live.

[00:15:38] Ashley Faus: Externally in the industry. 

[00:15:40] Dr. Jim: I wanna dig in a couple of different areas. So thanks for breaking it down. I, got a feeling that this is gonna be another one of those shows where I have 500 takeaways from an hour's worth of conversation. So this is good stuff.

[00:15:51] Dr. Jim: So the first thing that I would I would ask is looking back through all of those experie. and if you're advising an early career [00:16:00] marketer in terms of how they select the organizations that they join in terms of structure, in terms of is it an operations led organization, a sales led organization, a marketing led organization, whatever.

[00:16:11] Dr. Jim: All of those different factors. So if you're coming outta school as a marketer, how should you frame your decision criteria when selecting the company that you wanna work for? Let's take the tasks out of it because you're junior inexperience and you just need to build that up. But from an organizational structure perspective and design perspective, what's the advice that you have for marketers that are early in their career and how they should select which company to land at?

[00:16:37] Ashley Faus: I would actually put it more on who is the hiring manager? Who will you be reporting to, because. I, from my perspective, there's some table stakes. You need to understand your own risk profile. If you wanna go work for a two-person startup or a five-person startup, they're not gonna be financially stable.

[00:16:59] Ashley Faus: Cuz that's [00:17:00] not a thing that a five-person startup can really be compared to someone like a large tech company or an established company that you can go look at their financials and see okay, they're financially stable, I'm probably not gonna get laid off. Like they, they have some, things.

[00:17:15] Ashley Faus: I think from a values perspective there are whatever, your values are, does the company espouse those same things? If you come from a background where you don't drink or smoke, you probably don't want to go work for a spirits or tobacco company. Like those are some table stakes that just immediately cull the list.

[00:17:36] Ashley Faus: Yeah. But once you get down to pretty much any. Any reasonable company that aligns with your risk profile and reasonably aligns with your values, I would actually focus more on who your manager is gonna be, because that is gonna make or break your experience, particularly earlier in your career. If you have somebody that's gonna mentor you, if you have somebody that's gonna go to the mat for you, if you have somebody that's willing to give you the hard [00:18:00] feedback to help you grow, that's way more important than having someone who's doing a high-touch sales model versus product led growth, or having somebody that's a product led company versus a marketing led company, or a sales led company versus an operations led company.

[00:18:15] Ashley Faus: Unless, you were 20 years into your career, those higher level overall strategies are probably not gonna impact your day-to-day enough. To choose the company based on that compared to what you're gonna experience with the hiring manager and your teammates? So I would actually, put more focus on who is the person that I'm gonna have to deal with every single day?

[00:18:38] Ashley Faus: Do I trust them? Do I, do they, do I think that they're, they've got my best interest at heart? Do they know what the heck they're talking about? Are they connected? I think that's more 

[00:18:46] Ashley Faus: important. 

[00:18:47] Dr. Jim: Really good observation. 

[00:18:48] Dr. Jim: I'm, asking the question from the lens of somebody that's mid-career and I'm just like, okay if I'm picking a the, role, these are the things that I would consider.

[00:18:57] Dr. Jim: But you're right. If you're early in your career, [00:19:00] you're gonna be pretty task oriented in terms of the job. So it's how does the person that you're reporting into lead and connect with you as an individual? That's the, that that's, absolutely correct. The other thing that that I want to call out in your work history, that, that kind of Dispel some of the erroneous beliefs that the broader work world of work has conditioned us to believe.

[00:19:24] Dr. Jim: You jumped around from a lot of different opportunities, and one of the things that you mentioned was in the course of moving from opportunity to opportunity, you were, it really helped you identify what you liked to do and what you didn't like to do. Compare that to like older generations where we're told, oh, if leave a job in less than two years, you're a job hopper and you'll be unemployable.

[00:19:46] Dr. Jim: I think that's an important call out. Share a little bit more about why it's important, especially in early career, that you should really consider testing the waters of what's out there when it comes to [00:20:00] industry, type of company function, all of that sort of stuff, so you get a feel for what, works for you.

[00:20:05] Ashley Faus: I recently read the book Range by David Epstein, and it basically talks about being a generalist versus a specialist, and I would call myself a generalist, and a lot of people get offended when you talk about that. Oh, you're calling me a generalist, you're saying I'm not good at anything, and I'm like, No, as a generalist, you're good at a lot of things and you can connect those dots.

[00:20:27] Ashley Faus: So when I read that book, he talks about this concept of a sampling period. And there's some research from a PhD who, studies these types of things. And what she found is that most people who are very successful and have 2, 3, 4 different careers, they have very long careers and they are satisfied in their careers, is that they do go through a sampling period.

[00:20:51] Ashley Faus: And so they figure out and in some cases it's this very wide sampling period of they work in B2B SaaS and they work in a [00:21:00] pastry kitchen and they work as a fitness instructor, right? If I were to take my own hobbies, and that allows them to start seeing what are their transferrable skills, where do they excel, where are they uniquely capable?

[00:21:12] Ashley Faus: I would not suggest moving Every six months, you're gonna struggle with the ramp up period. In my case, I had some involuntary moves. That startup in 2008, it closed. Like I didn't have a job. I was only there for eight months because that's, all the business had. The, two startups that I was at in between both got acquired by very large companies less than a year into my tenure.

[00:21:37] Ashley Faus: And I was like, I don't wanna work for these companies. This is not, I'm not going to thrive in these companies. And so I left. So I think that you do have to be intentional. You, can't just jump every six to 12 months to the next thing, but. I do think that if you're starting to see that you're getting pigeonholed in an area that you don't wanna be pigeonholed into, go ahead and cut your losses and [00:22:00] take that leap and say, okay, what from this experience, would I wanna translate into something else?

[00:22:05] Ashley Faus: Do I need to go back to school to get a new set of skills? Or is this something where I've got transferrable skills, but maybe the industry or the types of roles don't I'm, not excelling because I'm not the best version of myself in these roles. And then you can take a look. So I will also say too, That raising your hand to take on stretch projects in the position that you're currently in?

[00:22:28] Ashley Faus: Especially if you're at a larger company. I've been Atlassian for almost five years. I would say that I'm in my fourth role here. I've sat on three different teams, which obviously necessitated three different roles, and then I just recently launched our associate product marketing manager program, which I would consider to be a fourth role.

[00:22:46] Ashley Faus: That is a new type of work for me. It's stretching me into a different skillset and it's, forcing me to reevaluate and rethink how I view marketing and, my practice of. the skills that I have. So [00:23:00] I think there's, also an opportunity, it's that growth mindset. So it's not running away oh, I'm bored today, I'm just gonna get a new job.

[00:23:07] Ashley Faus: No, it's, what is the sampling period? What am I learning about myself? How am I growing? Okay, can I do that internally at my current organization? Or do I need to look externally to make those kinds of moves? So I think it really stems from a growth mindset versus a I got bored one day, or I'm flighty and don't know what I wanna 

[00:23:27] Ashley Faus: do. 

[00:23:28] Dr. Jim: Those are really good observations and especially your point about intentionality. You shouldn't just make these decisions on, a flight of fancy. The broader lesson that I take away from what you described is from a mindset perspective, it's important to think of your career in terms of a web versus a ladder.

[00:23:46] Dr. Jim: And I think that's a trap that a lot of people fall into is that, okay, I'm in this function. How do I get to this next level in this function without really examining what do I even like about it? And what's what's interesting about this is that I'm [00:24:00] going through that decisioning process right now because I've always been I've always been in sales and I pretend to know marketing.

[00:24:07] Dr. Jim: And I've been in these player coach roles where I've had. large p and l responsibility, but they've been in smaller organizations where I'm in the game. Like I absolutely love the phrase generalist because it allows me to spread across a lot of different areas and drive impact in those areas.

[00:24:25] Dr. Jim: But what's interesting is that right now I'm in an accelerating growth organization versus throughout my career I've been generally a startup person. And what's interesting about an accelerating growth organization is that this is the first time that I've been in a role where I'm a pure people leader at the manager level.

[00:24:45] Dr. Jim: I'm not in the game. Drives me nuts to, I was like, oh, let me get in there and do some stuff and it's, a difficult transition, which I don't mind. I think the part that is really interesting about this role that I'm [00:25:00] in, Is the level of tightness that I need to have from an operational and metrics perspective.

[00:25:06] Dr. Jim: That is a completely new universe for me I think big picture and then we need to get from here to here. So for those listening, I'm just pointing at two different polls and, drawing a line, and then we just figure it out as we go.

[00:25:19] Dr. Jim: So that adjustment has been really interesting to your point about growth mindset and identifying what you like and don't like and what's the best role to be in. I think that's that's, some really good insight there. All right, so we have all that context laid out now.

[00:25:35] Dr. Jim: How did that position you leveraging your your, weighted decision matrix, how did that position you to get your dream job? 

[00:25:44] Ashley Faus: All of those basically feedback into the weighted decision matrix to say, okay I had several offers on the table.

[00:25:51] Ashley Faus: Obviously one of those was from Atlassian. And looking at what is the growth opportunity? So for me, one of the things that I value a lot is that ability from a [00:26:00] career trajectory perspective. I, do like to climb the ladder. I do care about growing in my career and title and team size and scope of work.

[00:26:07] Ashley Faus: I care about all of that a lot. And so Atlassian is an organization was and continues to grow which obviously means there's more opportunity for me. They have a really strong support system for making internal moves. So that was something that was interesting to me. It's okay, I can start to see where being a generalist on this team allows me to make those connections into other teams and to be able to continue to take the best parts for my past and leverage those going forward as I built a career here.

[00:26:40] Ashley Faus: And then again from just calling it out like the leaders that I was speaking to. I think our C M O is an excellent leader. He has an excellent vision. He cares about his people. He understands what's happening at the organization and really takes time to try to have that individual mindset [00:27:00] when he's speaking to you or looking at your work or those kinds of things.

[00:27:03] Ashley Faus: And so that connection to leadership was also very strong. I. I have continued to interview and evaluate that decision. And every so often saying, okay, is this still the right place for me? Is this still the right role for me? What is my next role, whether that's at Atlassian or another company.

[00:27:21] Ashley Faus: And so to date, it has continued to say I've continued to come to the conclusion that I am still growing. I am still making progress, and there is still more growth for me where I am. But I think that's the other thing, is making sure that you're continuing to understand that where you are right now, is this the right place for you?

[00:27:42] Ashley Faus: Is it set milestones to check in for yourself to say, okay, if I don't hit this milestone, whatever it is by this time then. I need to, take some steps to make a change, whether that's changing teams internally, whether that's asking for a promotion or a raise whether that's [00:28:00] taking on a new project.

[00:28:01] Ashley Faus: So again, just thinking about this if, folks are looking at different job opportunities and you're looking at what is the support network internally for you to continue to grow some of the, markers that we have that are public, we have a marketing rotation program, for example, we have formal pathways for secondments internally so that you can go flex different skills or try different skills.

[00:28:24] Ashley Faus: So that's something that also helps me evaluate if I'm feeling that I personally need to make a move. Then my next question is, okay, is it an internal move or an external move? Okay. If I determine that it's an internal move, which move? Is it? Is it something that I need to work on with my manager?

[00:28:41] Ashley Faus: Is it something like doing the marketing rotation program or something like that? Again, I, I. I struggle a bit with calling it the dream job because that's, always in flux. But when you do have supportive leadership who says, we wanna hire smart people, we wanna empower them to solve hard problems, [00:29:00] that is a much better conversation to have.

[00:29:02] Ashley Faus: Then we hired you to do this very narrow, specific job, and you're stuck in that job forever. And so I think it's, more about that ongoing conversation than it is about this exact role at this exact moment. Again, I'm very excited about my work. I'm getting to do some really cool things. But that was also true when I started here and I was doing something very different.

[00:29:24] Ashley Faus: It's been an evolution. 

[00:29:26] Dr. Jim: You mentioned earlier about there's no such thing as a dream job. Your dream job is whatever you make of it while you're in the seat and how you. Leverage your passions to make it into what what gets you out of bed and, drives you in the morning.

[00:29:40] Dr. Jim: The one thing that I'm, really wondering is how much of your organizational commitment or job commitment is tied to the level of brand building that you do in your role? And the reason why I'm asking that question is Atlassian is a known organization, [00:30:00] and typically when I'm looking at some of the larger organizations like Apple and Microsoft, and while all of those sort of companies for the size that they are, they're relatively quiet in terms of people that are evangelizing for the brand.

[00:30:12] Dr. Jim: And, granted, like Microsoft doesn't need evangelists, but you get where I'm going. How much of your organizational commitment is tied to the fact that you're al you're allowed to brand build. As an individual while you grow your career internally? Is there a relationship there that that's important to call out?

[00:30:29] Ethan: Tune in next time to Cascading Leadership for the answer to this question and the conclusion of the conversation.