As a researcher interested in teamwork and team effectiveness, March 2020 was a fascinating moment for me. Around the world, knowledge workers at organisations large and small were suddenly forced to work from their homes. As we scrambled to get a read on the effect this was having inside Atlassian, we also commissioned an international, multimodal study to capture and make sense of the impact on individuals and teams across a range of industries as they grappled with these extraordinary changes.

Here’s the cool part: if just one team member increases their cultural acuity, the whole team benefits.

It’s fashionable in the tech world to say that you’re cool with failing. But failure leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The only way to get it out is to prove you’ve learned from your mistake. In that spirit, I recently kicked off a discussion amongst the engineering teams at Atlassian about setting deadlines for the sake of deadlines and, worse, prioritizing that deadline above customer value or the overall health of your product (and team, for that matter).

Help your team thrive – win or lose.

Their answers will show you how to keep your top performers happy over the long haul.

This is it! This is the project you’ve been waiting for. The one that’s going to define your career and challenge you and totally transform “the way things are done around here.” The project your team will point to five years from now as the inflection point that ushered in a new era of awesome. If, that is, you can get the project approved, prioritized, and properly resourced.

In today’s workplace, saying yes to everything isn’t realistic – or healthy. By learning to say no the right way, you can reduce stress levels and advance your career, without burning a single bridge.

The one I’m talking about was a meeting with my boss in one of those conference rooms with clear walls, like a fishbowl, when she told me I didn’t get promoted. I’d had a fun, intense, wild ride working at a late-stage startup. But three years later, I felt like a shell of a person. I was commuting ninety minutes each way to work. I was feeling uninspired, dreading the relentless marketing campaign cycles that at one time were exciting.

We’ve all been on two types of projects: ones that ran smoothly, and ones that crumbled to pieces. While there are lots of contributing factors in each case, I’ll go out on a limb and say that project ownership (or lack thereof) is what makes the biggest difference.

5 marketers from HubSpot share their tips for producing inspired work every time.