One of the things I miss most about my time at Atlassian is my team.
The CMX team. (You know who you are — and yes, I still remember the day I stepped away from Zoom and came back to find my background on every one of your screens.)
We created something rare — real team magic. 🪄
And I don’t say that lightly.
Over the years, I’ve worked with brilliant teams on high-impact products that reach millions of users. But this? This was different.
It wasn’t just that we cared about the work, though we did.
It was how we showed up for each other, how we debated.
How we disagreed.
How we kept showing up anyway.
We had trust. Rhythm. Humor.
In our standups, we took turns asking the Question of the Day — from the benign (“What’s your favorite pen?”) to the provocative (“What food would you fight someone over?”).
We celebrated each other’s weirdness.
And we knew how to laugh.
There’s one moment I’ll never forget.
We were mid-Zoom — classic pandemic era. I stepped away for maybe 90 seconds. Didn’t even turn my camera off.
When I came back, every single member of the team had swapped their Zoom background… for mine.
Same whiteboard. Same family photos. Same “I Voted” stickers on the wall.
It took me a second. I just sat there, blinking.
Then I burst out laughing.
They’d planned it in 90 seconds flat.
That was the kind of team we were.
At some point, someone new joined the team — a brilliant analyst who got added to our private Slack channel, “meatballs.”
It was our sacred space. A mix of hard work, hard laughs, random dog pics, and daily motivational chaos. We gave each other karma points (an old Atlassian feature) like it was currency (because it was!)
A few days in, she said:
“This is wild. I’ve never been in a Slack channel like this.”
“It feels like… ILMT.”
I Love My Team. ☕
And we ran with it. ILMT became our shorthand. Our emoji hug. Our way of saying “I see you. We’re in this.”
That team doesn’t exist anymore.
But the feeling? The clarity? The magic?
I’ve never stopped chasing it.
And lately, I’ve been thinking:
If I wanted to build something that felt like that again — in today’s world, with today’s constraints — what would it take?
No, I don’t think AI can replace the magic of a team in flow.
But I do think it can help.
Because even the strongest teams — even CMX — ran into the same problem:
Too many meetings
Not enough prep time
Too much context-switching
Not enough time to create
That kind of overhead pulls people away from each other — and from their best work.
So I’ve been building something. Quietly. Carefully.
Not a product. Not exactly.
Something to help teams flow again.
More soon. ☕
💬 Comments CTA:
What’s the best team you’ve ever been part of? What made it work? I’d love to hear.
📰 Subscribe CTA
Like what you’re reading?
I write about leadership, product, AI, and the messy, magical ways we build things together. Subscribe to stay in the loop →