Megan Cook

Head of Product at Jira (Atlassian)

Megan Cook is Head of Product for Jira at Atlassian, having spent 11 years at the company, previously working as an analyst, developer, and agile coach.

The Operator The Craftsperson

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 60%

Execution & Craft 80%

Data & Experimentation 50%

Growth & Distribution 50%

Team & Leadership 80%

User Empathy & Research 60%

Key Themes

Fight Club conflict resolution enterprise product management structured conflict rituals cross-functional leadership proactive disagreement Jira product evolution

Episode Summary

Megan Cook shares how she leads product for Jira, the world's most popular project management tool used by 75% of Fortune 500 companies. Her standout practice is 'Fight Club' — a weekly 30-minute meeting with her engineering and design leads dedicated specifically to having conflicts and solving hard problems early before they escalate.

Leadership Principles

→ Schedule regular 'Fight Club' sessions with your leadership triad to address conflicts early
→ When you have a specific time for hard conversations, you enter with the right mindset
→ Being conflict-averse makes problems bigger — get on top of disagreements early

Notable Quotes

"We call it Fight Club. It's 30 minutes every week for myself, my engineering, and my design leader; and we know we're going there to have a conflict."
— Describing her ritual for proactive conflict resolution among leadership

"By having a specific slot of time in your week for something like that, you're in that mindset. You know you're going in there to solve a hard problem."
— On why scheduled conflict outperforms ad-hoc difficult conversations

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